Anyone else that WFH and expecting to go back to the office next week?

[Primetoes]

Even though we all work from and it appears to be working quite well we have management that seem to think that working from home is some kind of easy street and they absolutely hate it, you can tell by their language.

From day one the message as been that as soon as we can we’ll be back in the office. Knowing them they’ll find a way to make Sunday’s announcement fit our circumstances and we’ll be expected to go back in, probably the next day or two.

I’m quite anxious at the thought as our offices are down long, narrow corridors, there’ll be no way we cannot not pass each other and of course toilets and kitchen will be shared.

Anyone else feel the same?

My home set up is awful, a family member just died and their belongings are all over our house because we can't do anything with them during lockdown. I'm sat on a old saggy armchair in the spare room using a laptop with no desk (I can't use the kitchen table as my 12 month old will destroy all of my work in seconds)

If you can work from home this should continue. I'm sure that is what will be said on Sunday, I'd bet on it.

We’ve been asked to prepare for a phased return, initially part time rota basis. Those who don’t want to won’t have to, and those who commute. By public transport won’t be allowed.

Pogmella - not returning to work for YEARS. 😂

Military are being prepared to return to office jobs soon.

It’ll be interesting to see how they recruit, onboard and train new staff if nobody is ever going back to work.

We aren’t seeing 500 deaths a day either. More like 50 in English hospitals.

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-7-May-2020.xlsx

It is more than a little misleading to suggest only 50 deaths per day, even based off that chart. Only a single day was below 100, it represents England only and excludes non-hospital deaths.yOf course there is a well documented time lag, but it is still very early to predict how stable things are, particularly if we start to change the environment in which we collect the data (by loosening restrictions). That isn't to say we shouldn't experiment with loosening some, but that was it is, experimentation.

There are also other factors that influence when to reduce restrictions.

I would hope that before a general return to site most offices would be asking each member of staff and their line manger individually about their situation at home and how things have been with their productivity at home. Then they can have a plan to bring some staff back in on that basis so there are significantly fewer people on site than they would normally have.

I more suspect that the vast majority of small to medium sized businesses are wondering how soon they can get back to business, as very few of them have large cash reserves, nor do they expect business to just come flooding back in. They are worried about their very existence.
Of course, most will care about the health issues, but their financial futures won't be far from their thinking and decision making either.

Nope. Work have seen that we can work just as well from home. Message so far is they don’t really expect us back for another 4-6 months. They are also going to look at more felixible approach when we do with a mix of home/office working hours.

Apart from the first few very stressful weeks I’ve now got into a routine that I love - none of this stressful zoom everywhere days sitting down completely exhausted at end of the day.

We had an email on Friday saying that, no matter what was said on Sunday, our working arrangements would not be changing for some time. One of the managers rang me last week and asked me if I wanted to wfh permanently. I was non-committal. I'm NHS admin.

IMO a company's response to WFH is predicated by manager's own ability to do so. I am very productive at home. I have a full office set up and fast Wifi. I am also very disciplined and on days where I'm not, I will make up time.

My present manager is also very good at WFH. She supports it vehemently for working parents and is brilliant at keeping everyone included in team discussions.

My previous manager simply couldn't do it herself and therefore thought (wrongly) no one else could be trusted. She used to make us all "check in" on chat every 15 minutes regardless to prove we were at our desks.

They say that now but this time next year we will all be back in our offices.

I think a small percentage with rethink working from home, but agree with Birdie, most will revert to type and slowly want the office full again.