Will Workers Ever Return To The Office In The Numbers We Had Before?

[youngmafbog]

Johnson is still banging on about this, even though few civil servants are returning.

What did he expect? Months of scaring people witless to control them is not going to go away, couple that with the millions to bring it 'covid safe' why would a company entertain this?

Then the workers, commuting to London is a nightmare - I did it for quite a few years. 2.5 hours each way on top of a full working day and you have no life, and the cost was astronomical. Now you wouldn't be able to mix, probably be eventually forced into a face nappy to get a cuppa or go to the bog, huge queue for the lifs (they were bad enough anyway at peak times) Who would want to go back?

[MartinMillar]

As has ours bednobs.
The government has been pushing their staff to work at home for 2 years now they want us back but there is not enough seats!

[MartinMillar]

Sorry 237 but that last comment is rot!

[237SJ]

True though.

[MartinMillar]

If you say so.
Nothing to do with only 14 workers out of 140 allowed in the office or that due to continued downsizing there is only room for 45 percent of the staff?

[fender62]

id be worried about being outsourced to over seas call centers
if a brit can do it at home, so can for example an indian or a south african.. or where ever.

[237SJ]

If only 14 workers out of 140 are only allowed in the office then there is something wrong there. Someone isn`t doing their job properly.

[New Judge]

//...not all employers are as crap as yours obviously was new judge.//

You've got me wrong, bednobs. My employers were fine. They treated their employees who worked from home perfectly properly. They were supplied with proper office equipment, their premises were checked for suitability - they would not be allowed to WFH if they did not have proper accommodation and they would certainly not be allowed to do so in some of the appalling situations that have been highlighted by people in the past few months (working sitting on beds, on kitchen worktops, etc). I was involved in approving (or very often turning down) many of their applications.

This is in total contrast to what as happened since March. In the main people have been told to stay at home and get on with it. Many of them have the facilities to work at home properly but many do not. My nephew is among them. He lives in a one bedroom flat and has been working for five months in his small kitchen with a laptop on his kitchen table. It has unsuitable lighting for such work and he has developed back and shoulder problems from being forced to work for long periods in a compromised posture.

This was OK for a few weeks or couple of months as an emergency contingency. But it's moved beyond that now. If this is to become a permanent arrangement managers need to ensure their people have proper facilities to work in and by my experience probably somewhere between 25% and 50% of people will not have. Nobody seems to be addressing this at all. Employers are behaving as if their staff are just working the odd day at home whilst waiting in for the washing machine repair man to come. They need to shape up and employees' unions need to get on their case. There's more to "keeping safe" than sitting 2m apart.

[woofgang]

I was in contact with the passport office from March, just after lockdown, until Jine when my passport arrived. None of the delay was the fault of the passport office although there was a delay in getting paper copies of my birth and marriage certificates which held things up. I contacted the passport office staff around fortnightly during the waiting period, never had to wait to get through and was always able to get the information I needed. Maybe the system worked better when almost everybody there was working from home?

[woofgang]

ha not Jine, June

[tomus42]

Newjudge. I hear what you're saying. I wonder if they'll go around to every homeworker's house and check that everyone's ok and make adjustments where necessary, or whether they'll just change the rules and tell people to get on with it? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

[Buenchico]

NJ has made a lot of valid points. In particular that employers would need to provide HSE-compliant equipment (such as desktop computers, monitors correctly-adjusted for angle and height, proper office chairs etc) but
(a) the relevant unions will probably do a great deal to ensure that this actually happens ; and
(b) the costs of providing such equipment would be peanuts to, say, a firm who can give up expensive office space in the City of London.

While he's correct in pointing out that people who work from home might face additional heating costs over the winter though, I feel that such costs are unlikely to impact too highly on WFH employees. They'd only amount to a few pounds per day, which could easily be saved by preparing meals at home, rather than buying lunch in Pret, Costa or local takeaway shops, as most office-based workers seem to do.

Against that there could be far larger savings in travel costs. For example, Ipswich is a major commuter station, with loads of packed commuter trains leaving for London every morning. Just parking at the station costs £1994 per year, with a season ticket to London (including Tube travel to an office anywhere in Zones 1 to 6) priced at £8012 per year. So that's £10k in travel costs saved to start with, with fuel costs driving to and from the station needing to be added onto that.

A few hundred quid possibly added to home heating costs isn't going to seriously bother someone who's saving over ten grand a year in travel expenses (and, at the same time, is avoiding having to spend over 20 hours per week in commuting time).

[New Judge]

//Newjudge. I hear what you're saying. I wonder if they'll go around to every homeworker's house and check that everyone's ok and make adjustments where necessary,...//

That's exactly what I had to do.

[Deskdiary]

I haven't read all the posts, so forgive me if this has already been raised.

I work in a very technical industry that takes an awful lot of formal training, but more valuable than the formal training, is the knowledge of senior, experienced people, that is passed onto younger, less experienced people, on a daily basis, and working remotely this just simply isn't possible...and the younger people are missing development opportunities because of it.

Thankfully, and at long last, we're going back to the office at the end of September, albeit on a one week on and one week WFH basis (although I consider myself lucky that I'm going to be in the office every day).

[Canary42]

Will horses ever return to our roads in the numbers we had before ?

Change happens.

[woofgang]

deskdiary, I don't think that anybody on here has said it will work for everybody all the time, just that its an option.

[bednobs]

I work for an engineering firm. Some people have not been able to wfh (ie those in manufacturing) you could hardly expect them to bring home components and manufacture products in their sheds. However there are various functions that can wfh (project management and controls, hr, admin, buyers, finance and so on) my company's policy is if you can wfh you should. If the thing you are working on needs a bit if extra love that the office can provide you can go in (with a single point of contact for arranging who is going to the office so numbers can be controlled). My office of previously 9 can only fit 3 in now to comply with the govt covid secure guidelines. I would guess that means wfh will carry on for a long while for the majority. As an extra complication quite a few of our staff are usually mobile between England and France with shared facilities both ends. As guidelines, notably on distancing, are different some middle ground has to be reached or some complicated negotiations went on above my level at least

[Prudie]

My company is in the same situation as Bednobs (in fact I think we either work for the same company or one of their rivals). Many of the staff have been in work the whole time because they are considered key workers but the support staff have nearly all been working from home - I've not seen anyone from HR set foot on site and 1 person from Finance has just started coming in 1 day a week. The project managers pop in now and again when they feel like it :-)

[bednobs]

whoops that's me (PM)!
Are they reviled in your place too?

[New Judge]

//Change happens.//

Indeed it does. But it doesn't (and shouldn't) happen overnight as it has here. This revolutionary (rather than evolutionary) change is causing enormous problems for business, for staff, for customers and just about everybody. Many things simply are not working properly and they will not whilst these overnight changes remain in place. The cause is the government trying to convince people that they can be "kept safe" from an infectious disease which is currently running at pandemic levels. And they can't.