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.

Lockdown and the subsequent wfh edict has meant that I now know all of my neighbours, and feel much more part of my community then I did before. This is due to shopping in local butchers, greengrocers etc and speaking to people in my park.
DH and I still wfh but I am due to go back to the office for two days a week in a week or so, just because I really like being in a office with my team. Many of my colleagues want to stay wfh and that's fine by me.
Since wfh and the lockdown easing, we go into central London most weekend, buy lunch, coffee, attend exhibitions, go to the cinema and take public transport, we aren't the only ones as cafes and restaurants were heaving in Soho/West End today.

I much prefer the 'outside in' approach from the R4 programme that egghead paraphrased (example given Cambridge), where we wfh (or work locally) and shop locally during the week, and go into the city for fun in the evenings and weekends.

I've always found the whole aspect of much of the way we (literally) work, ridiculous when so much of it can feasibly done from home. In fact I began a thread on it on mn years ago!

The travel time taken sitting doing nothing when people could be relaxing(sleeping!) Spending time with their children/families or doing whatever to enrich their life. The cost! The tiredness so many suffer. The stress. A lot of work can be done at home. Of course the knock on effect of a huge change can be felt,but in my personal opinion it was about time. I am not suffering financially but I'd be hard pressed to spend £5on a coffee or sandwich anyway, ludicrous!
It is a personal thing I realise,in fact most of my family think I am nuts but I would absolutely love to be able to do my job from home. Unfortunately impossible at the moment but I am hoping to switch things soon. Lockdown has only made me more determined. The high street has been dying off since long before covid too. Internet shopping has become too successful. And like a pp said,why do we all have to live 200 miles from where we work??
Utter madness. And the sooner it changes the better.

@Egghead68 I am sorry I think I misunderstood. I am a native Monégasque citizen, obtained Swiss citizenship in my late 20’s and have only held British citizenship for circa a decade.

What I was trying to understand not about your personal circumstances and private data, but rather if this governmental agency had some kind of tool or calculator on a website somewhere to do comparisons. I apologise if my message seemed intrusive.

I understand people hating the commute. It’s only since I had DS that I’ve adored my bus journeys to work because I get time to read. I miss that a lot.

I work for civil service department, and we were semi working from home even before COVID hit. we don't even have our own office base - we worked from a hub for a related department. I'm in no rush to start spending 2 hours of my day, plus a bus fare to sit on a stinky germ ridden bus to do exactly what I can do at home for free just so one of the six Prets, Megabucks and Costas in the city centre doesn't close. I'd rather take a packed lunch and a flask with me and eat at my booked hot-desk just out of principle to be honest - but then I am petty like that. There's nothing in my job I that I can't do from home except meetings - and that works perfectly fine remotely.

@cyclingmad

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!

But if people are WFH, there's more chance of them using local public transport to their nearest small towns - places that currently have poor public transport perhaps that now have increased demand which leads to a better service in the future?

Rather than looking at how it's going to detrimentally affect buoyant cities with lots of shops and public transport, how about we look at how it could benefit smaller towns when workers aren't sucked out to commute to the cities.

@Egghead68

Pay is the same all over the UK

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

When national rates don't apply (i.e. private sector), wages vary enormously between the cities and the regions. It's exactly why people move to the cities. In my region (run down North West town), there are jobs for experienced chartered accountants at £40k or less - you can easily double that for the same job in a big city. In fact, the other week I got an email from a recruitment consultancy giving me details of a mid 20's chartered accountant looking for a job with salary expectation of just £25k. The market rate hasn't gone up in the last 20 years in our region, whereas it's doubled or trebled in places like London, Manchester, etc.

Since wfh and the lockdown easing, we go into central London most weekend, buy lunch, coffee, attend exhibitions, go to the cinema and take public transport, we aren't the only ones as cafes and restaurants were heaving in Soho/West End today

This is similar to what we did most weekends except we would either take in a show or the theatre or a gig, not necessarily in the West End

I have only been in once since lockdown. It was just sad how many places are locked up and never going to open again.
Our favourite restaurant has closed. (Don’t know if it will open at a later date)
Apart from it being on a Eat out to help out day, looking around, yes those places that were open were busy but that could be because every other restaurant was closed

Even the town I visit regularly (outside of London) has lost so much and is a ghost town.

BBC news article on the Welsh approach:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54125620

I think coffee shops and cafes are missing a trick, they could do ice cream van style services.

I think coffee shops and cafes are missing a trick, they could do ice cream van style services

First buy an ice cream van, then re do the inside (if you can find someone who is working and can change the inside to house coffee machines and the paraphernalia)

Then deliver to where exactly.

If people are working from home why would they come out into the street to buy a coffee when they could make one without leaving their house?

@Oliversmumsarmy

I think coffee shops and cafes are missing a trick, they could do ice cream van style services

First buy an ice cream van, then re do the inside (if you can find someone who is working and can change the inside to house coffee machines and the paraphernalia)

Then deliver to where exactly.

If people are working from home why would they come out into the street to buy a coffee when they could make one without leaving their house?

I always laugh when I see people suggesting ice cream style coffee vans. Most people have tea and coffee making facilities in their house. Why would anyone pop out to the street to buy one when you have one inside on demand? Same comment for people who say they wfh and pop to local high street for lunch out... maybe a small minority do if you live near a naice high street with cafes but most people don’t. Also I don’t have time to swan off for lunch and it’s cheaper to make it at home. Wfh does mean people spending less in shops, that’s the result.

The problem with some WFH and outsourcing to India etc is that customer service suffers and that can't be sustained.

The problem with some WFH and outsourcing to India etc is that customer service suffers and that can't be sustained

Even with people working from home here, customer services has gone down hill.

I was waiting for a large payment that didn’t arrive in my bank on the day it was supposed to.

Ended up having to email the MD of the company because the people who make the payments were wfh and no one knew who was dealing with my account. Took 4 days of trying to sort out who was doing what and finding out where my money had gone.
Ended up costing me a lot of money.

Here our local phone booth has coveted over the pandemic to a mini local coffee station. Always people queuing for their coffee.

I've had such problems with various companies "because WFH because COVID". Don't get me started on Virgin or Simba....

I wish people would stop banging on about jobs being outsourced to India. My company have had a massive rethink on jobs from India. Many of these contractors were actually working in the UK in our offices, bringing their wives and families over. Now they've all been sent home. It costs twice as much to employ someone onshore so as it has now been proved they can work from home they've all been sent back to India as it's cheaper to employ them from there. So they have been affected too.

What WFH has exposed is the massive I equalities between WFH in the UK and WFH in India. I have many times had to cancel or postpone meetings due to WiFi going down, no phone signal or large scale power cuts in India. I don't think therefore that you can automatically replace all our jobs by moving them overseas. And I even touched on language barrier, accent and cultural differences.

Don't kid yourself that Indian staff are automatically much cheaper. They may get paid pennies but the companies that hire them out have jacked their charges massively in recent years. The staff turnover is also very high so constant retraining is required. Staff also get moved especially if the company that hires them need them for a more lucrative contract elsewhere. There's something to be said for a British person who has spent 20 years plus in a job. They are less likely to disappear at a moment's notice.

@Davros

I've had such problems with various companies "because WFH because COVID". Don't get me started on Virgin or Simba....

Yes. My local council has been particularly bad (also my water provider, who previously had excellent customer service). For my council, WFH appears to mean not working from home. The one person who answers the phone is apparently incapable of answering any queries but is also unable to put me through to anyone else, nor can they take a message for someone else to call me back. My friend lives in a different local authority area and has had no such problem. Tbf my council's customer service was poor before Covid, but it's definitely being used as an excuse by some organisations.

I should add that my council and the water company both use UK based staff.

Btw India isn't the only other country in the world. Loads of well-educated, highly skilled workers (with fluent English) closer to home in Europe.

Don't kid yourself that Indian staff are automatically much cheaper. They may get paid pennies but the companies that hire them out have jacked their charges massively in recent years. The staff turnover is also very high so constant retraining is required.

Yes, that's why some call centres have moved to the Philippines now.

But anyway, a lot of companies have found that when they move their call centres to India, they have a huge increase in customer complaints. Many companies have moved them back to the UK as it's so much easier to manage, even though it costs more.

Well I only went there when being forced to commute or when the office had no coffee anyway. Don't really care if they shut now I'm able to enjoy my coffee at home.

I resent that I may have to return to the office

I'm spending my money locally instead of with a tax avoiding people exploiting institution like Pret...

The one person who answers the phone is apparently incapable of answering any queries but is also unable to put me through to anyone else, nor can they take a message for someone else to call me back

This seems to be a running theme for many companies.

Not too sure why the person answers the phone in the first place. They can’t put you on to anyone and a recorded message to say they can’t do anything to help you because of Covid would have been cheaper

It sounds like lots of people here don't want to return to the office and want to stay WFH, while at the same time complaining about bad customer service caused by people working from home. You can't have it both ways.

I wfh and work away in my own business. If people want to talk to me they can call me direct.

I am finding it hard enough running a business when the people I need to talk to are not available and won’t it looks like ever be available