Get back to the office! But why?

Are office workers at their desk the entire time between 8am-5pm? Do they never go for lunch, or to the bathroom or talk to their colleagues or slip out to buy a birthday gift for their partner or buy the much-vaunted coffee and sandwiches?

I’d say that many of us who’ve had to call people in their offices have been fobbed off with excuses for why the person is not available such as ‘Sorry, they’re in a meeting or with the boss,’ or simply ‘Not at their desk.’

Galaxy

Grandad you do understand that firms have procedures for working from home, some people will have core hours, some will be more flexible, it really isnt difficult, there are many forms of monitoring.

I am well aware Galaxy that there are many forms of monitoring but in many cases that monitoring is not being carried out as our assignment team members have witnessed on several occasions.

You also only have to read what the OP has posted on regard to walking the dog, Going for runs or jogging, breaking up the day for social reason and not keeping set hours.

Fine life for them but what about all those who need to contact them or are relying on them for essential support. They can go to hell while the home worker is out for a jog or off on a shopping trip?????

Speaking from my DD’s personal experience, she’s contactable all the time when WFH, (unlike during the two hours a day she was driving on her commute). Her phone and computer never stop pinging, even during the evenings, which is how she has been working up until midnight sometimes.

Luckily, she has supportive employers who don’t denigrate their staff and she’s received plaudits from the top bosses for the work she’s done, protecting schools and vulnerable children.

Grandad you do understand that firms have procedures for working from home, some people will have core hours, some will be more flexible, it really isnt difficult, there are many forms of monitoring.

Furret in regard to your post @20:56 today, you refer to persons working from home as having the flexibility to start early, break the day up into separate working sections, work outside standard office hours etc. That may well create a fine working and social life for them, but how about workers who have to collaborate with them or rely on being able to contact such persons for support.

In the above, how are those fellow workers supposed to know when that person working from home are at their desk and contactable. Freedom for the home worker can be loss of efficiency and work output for others.

I referred earlier in this thread to where on of our assignment teams attended a food distribution centre where the essential worker employees had Carrie out their duties throughout the crisis at that workplace to provide for the requirements of all of us. While they carried out that role many of the main office staff had been told to work from home.

Those working from home rapidly became difficult to contact by the distribution centre because they were then not at their desk on a set hour basis. The forging eventually led to a serious safety incident at the centre. When the loading dock staff and their supervisors were interviewed about the incident they all stated that the felt entirely abandoned by "their bosses" and the other office staff as they were at home uncontactable and inaccessible for large parts of each working shift at the distribution centre.

It would seem by reading this thread that many of those working from home rapidly get into a psychological state of isolation feeling that they are no longer a part of what should be a full working team.

Only they matter and no one else, and that is a very large problem in those working in isolation from their homes.

Furret as I posted up thread employers will consider many things when deciding on the WFH / hours spent in office balance. All Companies are different, with a variety of needs / agendas.

From a purely personal point of view, we know who needs to be on the premises and who can work remotely, however the juggling of personnel is a minefield for employers.

So many advantage and perhaps a few imponderables, depending on your personality and the type of job. One of the huge advantages must be the flexibility, especially foe women, and the control it gives you over working patterns and life/work balance.

It’s not about petty little issues such as how long you take for a lunch-break. Lack of control over your life and/or work is a major contributor to stress. If you can choose to start work at 7.00am and finish earlier, or start later and work on after office hours, or split the day into two four hour sessions with a good midday break, then that is flexibility.

This idea that working from home is a skivers charter makes me wonder what kind of person would think that???

But society is changing, and we should perhaps accept that not everything, or every job or things we might hold dear will survive. There will be huge challenges ahead, brave decisions to be made and new opportunities will open up as others close.

Sorry if someone has already written this - I haven't read all the posts (16pages so far).

The changes we are seeing makes me wonder why on earth are we ploughing on ahead with HS2? With so many people working from home, getting used to Zoom etc, why are we wasting so much money on a project that is probably largely obsolete already?

Do we need HS2? 3rd runway at Heathrow?

It's about the same from here into Liverpool Street plus car parking at the station, if you don't have anybody to give you a lift.

I have just checked on the cost of an annual season ticket from Ipswich to Liverpool Street. It's £6944 which means that a commuter has to earn nearly £10,000 salary just to pay to get to work.

The best policy, surely, would to be to drastically reduce commuting which is so bad for the environment, and for health and mental health.

DS2 has worked his socks off during lockdown. He has established his home office and keeps office hours - or more. As he is frequently in contact with colleagues on line or by phone, he couldn't, even if he wanted to, skive off for a long lunch. Not having to commute has saved him around 3 hours each day and his work/life balance has benefited to the extent that he has improved his fitness level by running and cycling. It would have been more difficult if the boys had been younger and needed supervision, but they are old enough to know that 'dad must not be disturbed when he's at work'.
If I was to advise the PM on how to get more people back into their offices, one measure would be to drastically reduce the cost of commuting which becomes more ruinous with every increase in rail fares.

SuDonim Yes, firms seem to be using the fact that their call centres are in the UK as a positive marketing tool.

I must say, it’s been years since I’ve had to phone a call centre and it has been abroad. Everywhere seems to have brought them back to the UK. This past couple of months is when all my insurances renew and I’ve had bank & HMRC dealings as well. All UK-based, or at least, appeared to be, to go by accents.

Not only that but in a few weeks time she is moving out of a 3 bed flat in London to a 3 bed house in Essex and saving herself £500 a month.
Yes, Meryl, our daughter sold her house in London in 2 days just after lockdown was lifted. She had 24 viewers. Admittedly it is in a leafy part of London, on a tube line, but the main reason was it had a purpose built home office in the garden with toilet.

The government is trying to threaten people with losing their jobs if they don’t go to work in the office. This doesn’t follow. Many of the jobs which have been shipped overseas such as call centres just require people to work from a script. Professionals such as lawyers, finance managers, property management etc do need knowledge of the local market, technical qualifications, possible occasional meetings with clients, site visits etc. Some health service jobs are being done from home with the increase in telephone consultations, but there still will be a need for face to face meetings. Surely it doesn’t have to be all or nothing - people can wfh for 3 days and go in for meetings or site visits on 2. , do split shifts with colleagues to help social distancing. if we end up having to wear masks in offices, even more reason to wfh when possible.

I think that some of you are forgetting the changes that have taken place in the work place since we were young.

When I first lived in London there was a department store in Ken High Street (I forget the name - not Barkers) where sales money was put into little objects, which were then attached to overhead cables and sent whizzing around the building. No tills on the shop floor. The sales person gave you a bill and you went to a central position to collect your goods and change.

When I went into articles, early seventies, small firm, we used Olivetti add listing machines and trial balances were done on large sheets of lined paper. I moved to a different firm where the weekly wages for the staff on the Grosvenor estate were paid in cash. Someone from our office used to work out the wages, work out the precise number of different value notes and coins that were required. The front of the wage packets were completed by hand and the money stuffed into them.

In the early 80s I went to one of the top 3 firms which had one large room, climate controlled, for the computers which were lined up along the walls with large reels spinning on the front. I worked in a specialist department that was responsible for the financial affairs of the partners. There was a book-keeper who kept enormous ledgers by hand. Shortly after I arrived, a separate computer was built for us. It was about the size of a packing case.

Some years later, now living in Suffolk I had an interview with a man in his late 70s who ran the accounts department of a small firm of solicitors. He was keeping annual accounts records. I asked when/if the firm was going to be computerised. The answer was that they weren't and they advised clients, when asked, not to do so because it was a waste of money and computers when purchased weren't used.

Time flies. For those of you that don't know, there is something called the cloud. People working in a wide range of employments can access their employers' software, provided they have the right access codes and passwords.
I have a young friend here who works, from home, in the HR department of AmEx. Sometimes she goes to their Paris office.

Nearly every thing is on line to enable people to carry out their work efficiently. There is software for architects, to enable them to draw up plans. I use accounting and taxation software. I can access HMRC's website to research their technical manuals if I want to.

I have a few clients who are pyschotherapists and they do some work, by phone.

There are many ways in which businesses, large and small can communicate. People do not need to be in an office in a city which can be miles away from home.

When I commuted from Suffolk to London, I spent 5 hours per day on travel. This meant that we couldn't go to the cinema in the evening or to see friends, apart from at weekends.

I can remember my father when he commuted from Basildon in Essex to Gower Street in London. Sometimes, especially if a train was late, he would come into the house and his first words were "switch that row off". I was probably listening to Radio Luxemburg whilst doing my homework.

As others have said, there are many benefits to be gained from not commuting, one of the most important being time spent with family and friends. How many of you have small grandchildren who are in bed before a parent gets home from work?

At the moment it is still the school holidays. My daughter would usually manage the long holiday with a mixture of taking time off work, holiday clubs and me as a minder. She has lost too much work this year to take time off, being self employed so it would be without pay, there are no holiday clubs this year for my grandson and so I have been looking after him despite the possible risk to my other half who is over 70.

I can stop working from home and go back to the office when the grandson is back at school. WFH has worked well mainly because we are a close knit team with very clear roles. I just dislike seeing all my household jobs waiting for me every time I move from my desk. I like a distinct difference between home and work.

growstuff

Maybe SueDonim could give further examples.

Local knowledge. My dd’s job involves her having a lot of local knowledge about the area she covers, without which it would be impossible to implement the requirements she has to put in place.

We in Scotland outside of the Central Belt have had experience of what happens when you remove jobs from local areas, such as police called to a supermarket armed robbery being sent to an address in Glasgow instead of Aberdeen, because each city has a road of the same name.

As I think I said, both my sons will be in their workplaces PT from Sept but they both did some WFH anyway. They both have a condition that could make CV very serious I’d they caught it, so reducing their time in contact with others both at work and on public transport is sensible.

I can see people using the law to take employers to court on discrimination grounds if people are forced into unsafe offices.

My step daughter loves it. She's not very sociable so this suits her fine. Not only that but in a few weeks time she is moving out of a 3 bed flat in London to a 3 bed house in Essex and saving herself £500 a month.

Grandad1948 I expect whether or not people who used to work in supermarkets will be able to take delivery jobs will depend on whether the hours are similar to their current hours. I don't want to make the assumption that all childcare or elderly care is the province of the women in a family but it often is.
Women often do jobs that allow them to fulfil their other responsibilities and are not always their first choice of occupation. Therefore it is not always as simple as making a choice between working in a shop and driving a van.

Natasha76 You are absolutely right about human beings but will an employer prioritise their employees mental well being or their profit margins.

We are not lab rats or boffins working from boxes in isolation

Lab rats do need to go into the workplace to do their job. It's another job which is not possible to do at home except for report writing.

Ilovecheese, in regard to your post @17:06 today, I very much agree with what you have stated in that post. However, there is an upside to all that is happening in our society due to the Covid crisis.

Many people now shop online rather than actually visiting town centre retail outlets. That change is bringing forward a large increase in employment opportunities in the transport and distribution industry as Tesco has demonstrated this week with the announcement of a twelve thousand permanent jobs increase in its own home delivery operation. Other supermarket chains are acting similar in their home delivery operations and Amazon are rapidly increasing employment roles in their distribution centres.

The above will counteract to some extent at least the loss of jobs in retail stores and the loss of jobs in offices if those jobs are transferred overseas or lost entirely due to the oncoming recession. The question is will those made redundant in the above be prepared to take on employment that will be shift based and manual in the transport and distribution industry?????

Well said Ilovecheese. Unless there's an autocratic takeover, no government can dictate where employers get employees to do their work. Throughout history, there are hundreds of jobs which have disappeared. Three which have disappeared in my lifetime are shorthand typist, telephonist and bank clerk (almost). Fifty years ago, thousands of people were employed in the UK as shipwrights, miners, steelworkers, etc.