Three years ago, asking your boss to work from home was a rare, and frequently rejected, request.

Managers feared by doing so their staff would spend the day doing the washing, ferrying the kids to and from school or taking the dog out for a walk. While all on company time.

Today, the landscape - courtesy of the pandemic - has completely changed. Now the ability to do all those things are not only expected by staff, but being demanded by those in talks with new employers.

Attitudes it seems have changed dramatically - and are being stoked by the disparity between the number of jobs waiting to be filled (at a record high) and unemployment figures (at a record low).

"One of my colleagues was on holiday in Morocco recently," recalls David Cotton, a director at recruitment agency KHR, with offices in Leybourne and Linton, near Maidstone, "and there was a lady lying next to her at the pool taking work calls. They got talking and it transpired she hadn't told her employers she was on holiday. She was surprised our staff member had actually booked the time off.

"She said: 'Why would I? I can carry on doing the job from here'."

It's an extreme, and rather tempting example, but far from unusual. One woman who was working from the NHS he spoke to was doing her job from home...in Ghana.

The recruitment expert adds he spoke to one candidate recently who was insisting on remote working. The reason? He was planning to travel the world and wanted to log on from the foreign destination of his choice.

"Pre-pandemic," says Jo James, chief executive of the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce, which represents firms across the county, "not many people worked from home. You employed somebody for 37.5 hours a week and that's where they sat and the employer was paying them, say, £20,000 to do it.

"Now you're employing someone for £20,000 a year to carry out a function. Because you're not there to see if they do 37.5 hours a week. If, by working from home they're playing with the kids, walking the dog, doing washing, provided that function is carried out you should be satisfied as an employer.

"It's a total switch round."

The problem is that other than the most progressive of employers, there is currently a clash of heads between potential candidates - all of whom are in great demand courtesy of the plethora of vacancies firms are in desperate need of filling - and employers.

It's a concern heightened by an economic situation widely expected to deteriorate further - recession is expected by the end of the year - before it starts to improve.

"There is a huge difference in what an employer wants and needs and what the employee wants," explains KHR's David Cotton.

"We're getting a lot of people coming to us saying they need to work from home as they've got to pick-up their children. But you think to yourself, is it acceptable just to leave your work and go and pick up the kids? Is that right?

"The number of people coming to us looking for work and this is their expectation. I just think 'really?'. Why isn't it there responsibility to put their children into childcare? Why is it now the expectation for employers to pick up the bill?

"Are you as effective if you have a child running round?

"Before the pandemic we'd never have had such requests. What people would have done then is ask for part-time hours. now the expectation is to work as and when you see fit to fit in and around your childcare.

"I do understand it as childcare is becoming more and more expensive and it's a barrier to work but it's so difficult."

For all the progress we as a society have made towards striking a better work/life balance following the upheaval of the lockdowns, his view is one shared by many. Just ask Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Marmite MP urged civil servants to return to offices for the "benefits of face-to-face, collaborative working and the wider benefits for the economy".

"Typically we think we go to work for money," says Dr Catherine Robinson, an economist and deputy of the Kent Business School at the University of Kent, "but actually a big chunk of your life is determined by those you work with with, the friends you make, the structure it gives you.

"I think people lost a lot during the pandemic. You rely on people around you to give your life some structure and when you move away from that, you think 'now I've got my structure in a different place'.

"There is a theory that people stayed in their jobs during the pandemic but now things are returning to normal they're moving around and that's creating this great churn rate.

"So what we're seeing is just labour market catch-up and it will sort itself out fairly soon."

And before you think it's just the younger worker wanting to have their work/life balance cake and eat it, the same issues are being seen across all ages and all sectors.

Hospitality has been hit hard - but is far from alone - by the drop in those seeking employment.

An aversion to working unsocial hours or weekends to allow them to foster closer friend and family bonds has combined with the likes of the Brexit labour drain and the sense of job insecurity brought about by the industry being closed down, or heavily restricted, for periods of time.

So what of the emerging workforce? Have attitudes changed among those who saw their teenage years so stilted and unsettled by the social restrictions we lived under for two years?

Graham Razey is chief executive officer of EKC Group. It runs further education colleges in Broadstairs, Ashford, Canterbury, Folkestone and Dover. Its Thanet site has a long track record of developing the skills of those going into the hospitality sector. So has he seen a shift in focus?

He explains: “Whilst there is no doubt that the pandemic has changed attitudes to working in every sector, this year we’ve seen a high number of applicants to our Broadstairs College’s hospitality pathways. In fact, we’ve seen applicant numbers grow significantly in professional catering at the college, with a 23.7% rise in people looking to train for the sector.

“Whilst our curriculum area at Broadstairs College is growing, we are finding young people are becoming more discerning in their hunt for jobs.

"That means that employers need to work harder than ever before to attract the top talent, either through aligning more closely with young people’s values, or through offering greater wraparound benefits such as more flexibility in roles.

"Another way employers can do that is to focus on ensuring they’re investing in the young people coming to them, through up-skilling and development opportunities. We’ve seen many of our young people far more focused on those elements when progressing, than simply a particular job role itself.”

"The amount of people we get who want to work from home because of their dogs is incredible..."

But for those focused on office jobs, it's a challenging landscape.

Adds David Cotton: "The amount of people we get who want to work from home because of their dogs is incredible. We've noticed it a lot, where people have got a dog during the pandemic and now they haven't got the facilities to look after them, so they need to fit their work around their pets.

"It's right across the board. Maybe the youngsters want the flexibility to travel the world, but it's the mums with the childcare, and people with pets of any age."

Factor in that many in their 50s and 60s have taken the opportunity to step out of the workplace altogether - many taking the 'life's too short' approach to continuing with the daily grind when the fragility of our very existence was so recently brought into such sharp focus.

It's also worth noting that the 'candidate-driven' marketplace we currently find ourselves in is forcing employers to re-evaluate both wages and working practices.

"What you find," adds the recruitment expert, "is clients will come to us with very set ideas and we'll try and meet their criteria. But over time, as the pressure builds on them to fill the vacancy then they have to compromise somewhere and they are comprising, reluctantly.

"Then you wonder if the recession comes what the employer will then do."

He cites one example of a candidate they positioned with a new employer complete with a £10,000 pay rise. Within a week his old employer had offered him an additional £5,000 to return - netting the worker a £15,000 total uplift in his salary. Firms are, it seems, increasingly keen to splash out to secure the talent they're going to need when they batten down the hatches for recession.

But, so early in this transitional period of evolving from the pandemic's lockdowns and the 'new normal' are we storing up problems in the future?

Adds the chamber's Jo James: "Those in the marketplace now want a flexibility that wasn't there before. They want to be able to work mostly from home.

"That's fine for some organisations but if you have someone new - they need to absorbed in with other people. That's where they learn the knowledge, they can grow and develop.

"People are thinking now 'we don't need this big office' so are getting smaller premises.

"I know a couple of organisations who have said 'we can't cope with this any more, we've just got to bring everybody back'. But what happens if you've given up your premises?"

Adds David Cotton: "This is where working from home is very difficult because we're speaking to a lot of managers who are just burnt out trying to manage people working remotely. It's not easy to do.

"Working form home will, in my opinion, cause long-term issues. I think you'll start to see problems with training and development and then companies will start to struggle in a couple of years' time to find people with a certain skill set.

Working form home will, in my opinion, cause long-term issues

"People have been working from home for too long and they've not been developed."

Coupled with the skills shortage - a warning trumpeted long before Covid reared its ugly head - and there may be further trouble ahead.

However, it is that economic squeeze which we are all feeling which may resolve the problem eventually.

Says the University of Kent's Catherine Robinson: "I think the economy is going to start to bite a little harder so people are going to start thinking about increasing their work hours, about moving to higher paid jobs, about second jobs; things are going to get tighter.

"Companies are going to be selling less as people aren't going to be able to afford more."

It's a view shared by David Cotton who concludes: "It will probably carry on like this for a while, and then the economic factors will change people's perception as they become less bullish and then their attitudes will change and they'll become a bit more flexible."

Employers across Kent are depending on it.