Coronavirus - Part Two.

[HeyBrother 0]

I went back to the office in late June it was the best thing in hind sight for me personally just for getting to see people again.

[Thirsty Relic 215]

I really worry for people who are home-working yet would much rather be among their colleagues.  No, it's not the same using teleconferencing/Zoom or whatever!  Even for those willing to/are comfortable using such technology.

[redruby 279]

5 hours ago, Thirsty Relic said:

I really worry for people who are home-working yet would much rather be among their colleagues.  No, it's not the same using teleconferencing/Zoom or whatever!  Even for those willing to/are comfortable using such technology.

People will be back to workplaces in the not too distant future; there won’t be a total shift to remote working but it will become much more prevalent. For every person unhappy with remote working there are many who find it changes their life for the better.

I suspect in the future there will be room for both and hopefully employees will be able to move to a role that suits their needs.  

[andyofborg 11]

1 hour ago, redruby said:

People will be back to workplaces in the not too distant future; there won’t be a total shift to remote working but it will become much more prevalent. For every person unhappy with remote working there are many who find it changes their life for the better.

I suspect in the future there will be room for both and hopefully employees will be able to move to a role that suits their needs.  

Its changed my life for the better and seems to have done the same for most of my colleagues though some have struggled. 

 

My employer has taken advantage of a pending break clause in the office lease to move one of our offices to smaller premises.  The staff who have to work in an office will work there and there will be space for the others to come in as and when but they majority of their time will be at home. 

 

Our office will hopefully move to a similar model. but as there is less than two years left on the lease we probabaly can't get out now so we are talking about a day or two a week in the office. 

 

Somewhat uniquely, we're more connected to the rest of the world at home than we are in the office. We've been raising the technical deficiencies in the office infrastructure for years and been ignored but we can't go back full time without these being addressed. 

 

I imagine other employers with largely office based staff will be considering moving to a similar model. 

 

 

[Baron99 801]

33 minutes ago, andyofborg said:

Its changed my life for the better and seems to have done the same for most of my colleagues though some have struggled. 

 

My employer has taken advantage of a pending break clause in the office lease to move one of our offices to smaller premises.  The staff who have to work in an office will work there and there will be space for the others to come in as and when but they majority of their time will be at home. 

 

Our office will hopefully move to a similar model. but as there is less than two years left on the lease we probabaly can't get out now so we are talking about a day or two a week in the office. 

 

Somewhat uniquely, we're more connected to the rest of the world at home than we are in the office. We've been raising the technical deficiencies in the office infrastructure for years and been ignored but we can't go back full time without these being addressed. 

 

I imagine other employers with largely office based staff will be considering moving to a similar model. 

 

 

It's a similar situation to my grandson who works for the Home Office down in the Millsands area.  There you have two large buildings, with around a thousand workers in each building. 

 

They have a skeleton staff in the buildings at the moment, just to keep things ticking over & have apparently put COVID-19 measures in place for the return of a limited number of staff but my grandson tells me they can't physically accommodate a thousand staff in each building while maintaining social distancing rules.  A best, they would have to have staff in on a rota basis. 

 

The powers that be are apparently happy with thousands of civil servants working from home for the past 6 months & of course if they did eventually go full time to a rota system of having a smaller number workers attending an office, the Home Office would not require to lease 2 enormous offices, therefore saving the taxpayers money. 

Edited August 30, 2020 by Baron99

[saywhatnow 33]

20 hours ago, redruby said:

Each to their own. Going forward companies offering the opportunity for remote working (at least on part time basis) where appropriate and for those that want it is likely to be here to stay. Benefits are to had on both sides.

I agree. I'd be happy with being in the office part time and that would probably help my productivity at home as well. Saving particular bits of work that I knew are easier to complete if I can get stuck into them without distraction etc. 

At the moment I just don't have that choice.  For me personally, I think rather than working from home being the problem, it's just been the overall distancing from other people in general that's caused me to feel the way I do. Of course someone else in a similar situation to me might still feel differently about home working. 

 

When browsing the jobs market now I do take into consideration whether the job will be remote working and it is affecting the jobs I'm interested in. But as you said each to their own. I'm doing what I think works best for me as others will do for themselves. 

[tinfoilhat 11]

2 hours ago, andyofborg said:

My employer has taken advantage of a pending break clause in the office lease to move one of our offices to smaller premises

Now this is the bit that's really got the government worried, particularly in London. They don't give a toss if a few thousand pret workers lose their jobs but they don't want their monied friends to have big expensive offices stood empty.

 

I've been working from home for years, I miss the banter of an office environment maybe not the back biting. If employers want you to work from home they really need to be making sure you have at least a half decent chair and a desk if you have room. But there are plenty of upsides - no commute and all the time and environmental benefits that brings.

[ECCOnoob 1,049]

5 hours ago, redruby said:

People will be back to workplaces in the not too distant future; there won’t be a total shift to remote working but it will become much more prevalent. For every person unhappy with remote working there are many who find it changes their life for the better.

I suspect in the future there will be room for both and hopefully employees will be able to move to a role that suits their needs.  

I would agree with this. I think there will be some sort of balance and companies will have to be more flexible, with people maybe working part-time in the office.

 

However, I do sometimes think  that the hard core full-time working from home champions do suffer from a little bit of "...I'm alright Jack" mentality. The fact is that not everybody who was being forced to or pushed into full-time working from home has a nice little private office or spare bedroom or study which they can go and work in. Some people may have nothing more than a laptop on their knees on the sofa or at best may be bent over some foldaway kitchen table surrounded by kids or pets or even housemates.

 

In my industry I have seen a lot of one-upmanship and bragging in the white-collar world about how how my company is better than your company at flexible working and has better equipment. But there's been a lot of neglect and forgetfulness about those who don't have the luxury of a big house with lots of rooms to go into.  There's been complete ignoring of those who don't have the luxury of of working from home and whose jobs were wholly dependent on us workers accessing their buildings, using their services, travelling on their transport, buying goods in their shops.  Similarly, in the overexcited celebration of being able to to attend a conference call in ones pants there has been little thought of the wider mental health implications of being isolated all the time from colleagues and contacts and the support network one has with having their team and managers around them. There's a complete loss of that human interaction, that face-to-face observing and the social functions which come of working as part of an organisation that affects people in different and more or less severe ways.

 

Bottom line is that home working will never be for all and it shouldn't be thrust upon people without real consideration as to the wider consequences not only to other businesses but to employees themselves.

[Thirsty Relic 215]

While many seem to be quite happy at the moment working from home and "being able to to attend a conference call in ones pants" when the weather changes and the energy bills come in, the costs of working from home will start to bite.

 

Has anyone given any consideration to insurance and council tax?  If you are working from home and the residence is used for such, I think you will find you will need to be paying higher for both, or find yourselves either not covered if something happens, or paying back council tax at some future date.

 

If I was employed and asked in anything other than the short term to work from home, I'd be drawing up a list of additional expenses I would be expecting to occur, and presenting it to my manager before I agreed.

[RollingJ 2,042]

@Thirsty Relicme too - the insurance implications alone would be concerning me.

[RiffRaff 10]

When I was a sole trader many years ago, I remember my accountant muttering about  being able to charge for "using home as office".

If I remember correctly, entering a round %age (as opposed to a calculated amount) would likely "get through" examination/raised eyebrows.

Times change - whether this arrangement has, I don't know.

[ECCOnoob 1,049]

1 hour ago, Thirsty Relic said:

While many seem to be quite happy at the moment working from home and "being able to to attend a conference call in ones pants" when the weather changes and the energy bills come in, the costs of working from home will start to bite.

 

Has anyone given any consideration to insurance and council tax?  If you are working from home and the residence is used for such, I think you will find you will need to be paying higher for both, or find yourselves either not covered if something happens, or paying back council tax at some future date.

 

If I was employed and asked in anything other than the short term to work from home, I'd be drawing up a list of additional expenses I would be expecting to occur, and presenting it to my manager before I agreed.

1 hour ago, RollingJ said:

@Thirsty Relicme too - the insurance implications alone would be concerning me.

Yep.  Agree.  

 

The emergency of Covid has allowed a lot of things to slip through the net.   

 

However, if permanent home working becomes a "thing" it would be a very different issue.   I bet lots of people would be quite surprised when they read their home insurance policy or lease or tenancy agreement as to what they cannot be doing in their private dwelling.  

 

I would imagine the same goes for a business'  insurance policy and the implementation of appropriate health and safety risk assessment and VDU assessments.

 

Add on the potential minefield of definitions of business premises and residential dwellings, planning restrictions and tax implications and it's going to be a field day for the lawyers.