The pandemic made us all familiar with ‘social distancing’. Employers are starting to glimpse a future where ‘contractual distancing’ is progressively normalised.

For all the suffering it wrought and the challenges it has brought to everyday life, the onset of the pandemic had one positive effect for a significant number of workers: working from home became a reality for millions of employees, in Europe and beyond—relieving them from the daily grind of long commutes, the toxicity of certain…