Remote working is killing city centres...but what's the alternative?

[Eastie77]

Reading today about Pret cutting almost 3,000 jobs and articles about the death of city centres due to the lack of office workers. My company has announced that all employees can work from home for another year. I honestly doubt our central London office will re-open or at least in the form it took before, ie they may just keep renting part of it for occasional client meetings.

The government is pushing workers back into the office but realistically people are not going to go back while they have the option to WFH and companies have realised they can save on office costs and get the same output from their staff. I am happy to WFH but I really feel for all the local businesses that relied on office workers and are now facing closure. I work close to our office and 6 independent coffee shops and small cafes have closed😔 Not sure what the answer is.

Um, well my job requires you to be UK-trained and registered. It could not be done by anyone from abroad.

I never did buy lunch/newspapers/coffee so no change there.

Anyone who needs me can phone or email me directly, exactly as they would if I were sitting somewhere else.

My job requires you to be UK-trained and registered
The requirements can be changed, laws can be amended.

There are people who live in cheaper areas of the UK who would probably do your job for a lot less.
It doesn’t have to be abroad

They don’t see the knock on effect of not buying lunch/newspaper/coffee at the local shops and driving those people out of a business and making others redundant.

(1) I hardly ever bought lunch/coffee at the shops near my workplace, because • I had already spent money on my commute • Therefore to save money I brought my own supplies • I had already spent time on my commute • Therefore I wasn't going to waste time going to external places when I could just have my break at my desk.

(2) It's not anybody's individual duty to buy sandwiches and lattes to prop up any individual business, so unless there's going to be a new law forcing workers to not bring their own lunch to the office? 🤷🏻‍♀️

(3) As I and many others have observed, whilst businesses in city centres may be suffering, local businesses in suburbs and local streets have been booming with people buying, yes, coffee/lunch/etc (this includes me, as I am no longer spending time and money on my commute and therefore suddenly have time and money to spend on these things) - I could easily turn your point around and ask why you want to drive their customers to city centres and push suburban shops out of business making their staff redundant?

More people buying lunch/coffees/drinks locally will not replace the lost jobs from city centre eateries. People working from home will mostly eat from home, especially when the weather turns. And away from colleagues in our own little neighbourhoods we won't do the work-related socialising city eateries and pubs rely on.
Also local cafes won't make much from people sitting for hours with one cup of coffee because they got bored of working in their own house and needed a change of scenery.

I guess I am saying that we spend more eating and drinking when we are further from home and when we are in groups. WFH will boost local areas to some extent but it won't replace that spend for the hospitality sector as a whole.

It's not just cafes though. There is the potential to revitalise small towns, villages, etc, back to how they used to be when people lived and worked in the same locality. More people milling around their own area will encourage other shops too.

It's only 2-3 decades since there were parades of shops in housing areas, including butchers, greengrocers, grocers, etc. Except for dense housing estates, all that's gone because the people living there followed the jobs to the cities, leaving just the occasional garage or convenience store.

We've certainly seen it in our village. Despite Covid, the shops are all reporting being busier and having higher turnover. A new cafe/takeaway has opened and a couple of "touristy" cafes have been open longer hours. Our post office/newsagent has certainly been visibly busier (queues most of the day). That's all on the back of more people being around - people who would usually commute away for their jobs.

Remember a lot of those Baristas and sandwich shop workers won’t be exactly unqualified people

If they get made redundant then these are 20 somethings with qualifications who are hitting the job market in their droves.

Your company might decide there is a pool of people who they can pay so much less to (as they won’t be having to commute in and are so much younger) and as times are hard it might be financially astute to get rid of the older more established workforce who are being paid enough to allow them to commute in each day etc

I don't think the "office" will die but flexible working will be part of many peoples working pattern. That will probably mean one or two days in the office or as and when deemed necessary. However that will mean some local city centre businesses will go and the reduction in commuter will impact the likes of Tfl. On the other hand you will see growth in the outer areas and the suburbs.

There are people who live in cheaper areas of the UK who would probably do your job for a lot less.
It doesn’t have to be abroad

Pay is the same all over the UK

We've certainly seen it in our village. Despite Covid, the shops are all reporting being busier and having higher turnover. A new cafe/takeaway has opened and a couple of "touristy" cafes have been open longer hours. Our post office/newsagent has certainly been visibly busier (queues most of the day). That's all on the back of more people being around - people who would usually commute away for their jobs

Same in my local area. Three new cafes/restaurants have opened since lockdown and all the shops/cafes/restaurants appear busier than ever with loads of extra pavement tables.

Well, if WFHers all get fired for being horrible lazy undeserving destroyers of Pret, and our jobs sent elsewhere, then

• we're not going to be afford to commute to the city centre and buy lattes and sandwiches to save Pret
• we're not going to be able to afford to eat nice little lunches and purchase goods in neighbourhood shops

anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️

so then we'll have three cohorts of jobless people instead of one.

Pay is the same all over the UK

You really think it is.

You will be telling me next that companies adhered to the equal pay act from 1970.

We have lived in areas of the UK where if Dp tried to get a job with his qualifications there was definitely a ceiling to the amount of money paid even for a top job with a company.

No where near the amount he could earn in London.

No one is saying that WFHmers are lazy. I was trying to point out that if a company was looking to save money and they had on their books a group of people who wfh and are drawing a certain salary then they might look at getting rid of that group and replacing them with equally qualified younger people who they don’t need to pay the same amount to.

The job would have changed as it is now wfh so I can’t see any reason they couldn’t do this.

I have known companies do this with less tenuous contract changes

Pay is the same all over the UK

In my job. Yes it is. National rates. Can’t speak for others.

WFH is the worst thing to happen to our country from this pandemic .

It not only affecting our economy but I believe it will affect how we live our lives going forward .

People already were already isolated , didn’t speak to neighbours , etc

Now with everything being done through screens , people are going to forget how important it’s is for us to be with people . We see other people as a pain , always in our way . When did we get like this . I certainly don’t remember this mentality growing up in 80s . People were kind and mannerly , we used to know all our neighbours and the ladies on our local shop .

This has sadly gone and I fear just get worse , people seem to hate each other now .

Whilst the national minimum wage might be the same. When you get higher up the career ladder you get far more in certain areas of the UK than in others.

Friend lived in the South Midlands area and was a qualified professional person. Top of his field he earned £40,000 in the local area and was considered one of the highest paid people in the area.
He swapped his job, doing pretty much the same job and almost trebled his salary but became someone who was only averagely paid.

I’m highly paid thanks and it’s still national rates.

There are people who live in cheaper areas of the UK who would probably do your job for a lot less.It doesn’t have to be abroad

But you will still need to go into the office a few times a week for meetings, face to face updates, training etc plus there will be times you are required at short notice or over a more prelonged period as circumstances dictate. Difficult to be that flexible if you live in Dundee and the office is in Blackfriars. It's not so much WFH but flexible working. There is a big difference.

VickySunshine

There were people on other threads talking about how if they remain wfh then moving to the North East looked a great idea

@Egghead68 can you please give the data source for this? That’s absolutely not my experience and maybe companies are not reporting truthfully. In London base pay for me is £170,000 in Bristol where I would rather live it’s £90,000

@Gothamgirl1970 not without outing myself as I’m in a specialist field. I have a 6 figure salary in London and would have exactly the same outside London as rates are national. Can’t speak for other jobs but that’s how it is for mine.

@Oliversmumsarmy

VickySunshine

There were people on other threads talking about how if they remain wfh then moving to the North East looked a great idea

Let's just hope they don't do a London/SE there. Pushing up housing prices so that locals are forced away from their families and support networks. I can just see people moving there, making housing unaffordable for locals there and keeping a 'bolt hole' down south...so keeping those locals also priced out. Unfortunately I suspect some people would be just fine with an LA style set-up where anyone who has a big of bad luck - redundancy, illness, etc - ends up on the streets. About 30,000 live in LA's Tent City. Locals are finally showing a tiny bit of concern....because desperate and destitute people end up turning to crime. It's also a public health issue.

I should add that in general there seems to be a drive by the government (rightly in my opinion) to decentralise jobs from London and the South-East to the North in any case, so regional pay differences are likely to reduce.

People were already isolated, didn't speak to neighbours

we used to know all our neighbours and the ladies on the local shops

Yes. Successive governments, Labour and Conservative, decided to concentrate jobs in one small part of the UK. People were forced to move away from family and friends to get a job...with the consequence that other people started getting priced out of their homes...and were forced move away from their families and support networks to be able to afford a roof over their heads.

The result: Shattered unconnected communities and a fractured society.

It’s it awful

It becomes a dismal cycle, less peple commuting meaing oublic trnsport companies have to cut services to stay afloat. People then complain because of this and because more people are using cars taking it longer to get anywhere so don't use public transport making it harder to run services so even more cuts to services.

People complain about the cost but everything costs. More people out of jobs and on benefits all cost us more. More people unemployed reduces money being spent in the economy affecting busineses contributing to more job losses.

Less taxes collected due to high unemployment evidently means increase in taxes for those working who then feel there is a decline in their ability to maintain the same llifestyle.

None of this is good!