Working from home - cameras on laptops?

[bbcessex]

I work from home at least two days a week, and regularly have conference calls etc.

In the past, it's not standard to have laptop cameras switched on for conf calls as we are a financial services company and it's not been common, but that's changing with teams about to regularly work more remotely due to corona policy.

I actually much prefer seeing the person / people I'm talking to and i think it helps with connecting / focus / communication. I've given my team notice that as we are all going to be working from home more (not formally told to yet but likely) I'd like to have work laptop cameras on during team calls wherever possible going forward.

Most people are fine - I've had the obvious comments 'oh no, I'll have to get dressed, ha ha', but a couple of people are really not happy about it (without being specific about why).

It's not mandatory of course, and i can't / won't enforce it, but I will encourage it.

Does anyone else have a view on this? Is it unreasonable to encourage?

I have no issue with people not wearing full work attire.... But would be meh if people were in their dressing gowns!

Why does wearing a dressing gown make them any less professional? It can be bloody cold sat in one spot all day and not everyone can afford to run the heating.

You can wear your dressing gowns and relax on the sofa when possible but when you’re having a work call/meeting via Skype/zoom/or whichever video chat system you use then you switch on your camera and you take part.
Having a meeting where you can’t see the faces of the people you are talking to, or someone putting their hand up to speak or someone looking unhappy at something being discussed is difficult as all of this is important to pick up the mood of the staff and seeing how a message has landed.

Well again we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't need to see a grainy video stream of someone in their living room to hold a meeting.

This thread really show the entitlement mindset that is spurring all over. Working from home was rarely an option 20 or even 10 years ago? Why? We had phone. It's because it wasn't considered a need and video conference wasn't much an option.

Now everybody wants to work from home. I can understand from the prospect of avoiding horrid traffic, hence reducing stress and time wasting, but everything else has no reason to be any different. Why is it ok for people to expect you to be dressed appropriately when in an office but not to be working from home? Working from home doesn't give anyone a right to decide how they want to conduct interviews. If you are not happy with putting the heating on or dressing appropriately, then don't work from home.

I'm very clear about allowing staff to work from home. I do it if I trust their work ethic and I believe they will be sat in front of their laptop for most of the day, instead of doing the strict minimum so not to be challenged but in reality spending most of the time cleaning, doing washing, their own paperwork, or worse, watching TV or coming on mn.

I make it a condition to agree to teleconference before I agree to some working from home. As a poster already said, I too have never had an issue with anyone refusing.

If people genuinely work as well on a sofa with a blanket, why are offices not set that way.... let me think, yes, because people don't work as effectively under these conditions, whatever they claim!

I think communication can be better when you can see the other person, but for work, things don't need to be so nuanced. You don't need that level of intimacy.

Stipulating it isn't nice. It's a bit like insisting someone has a meeting in their own house. It should be their decision who gets to see inside their house, not yours. I think if you don't stipulate, most will come round anyway, but I wouldn't force anyone.

Other than it being your preference, why do you think it's necessary?

And why do you deem the view of those who object to be invalid?

@dontdisturbmenow all you're saying is that you prefer to work in a certain way and don't understand how other people can prefer different things to you.

As long as someone is getting their work done effectively, why on earth does it matter where they're sitting or what they're wearing?

I genuinely don't understand what difference it makes to you. Unless you can't WFH for some reason and think everyone else should have to get up and dressed and sit at a desk because you have to?

The other issue with insisting people have their own dedicated office space and clothing for work is cost - or are the only people allowed to WFH those who have the money to buy a house with a spare room, and who can afford to run the heating at a warm temperature all day?

Surely those who struggle with money are the ones who would benefit most from home working as they'd save the cost of expensive suits, commuting and similar?

What is the lawful basis for processing this personal data, i.e the image? The video conferencing is not necessary to conduct the meeting there is an alternative method that is less intrusive that is the phone. Your suggestion is not compliant with data protection law as the law requires certain principles and individual rights to be upheld. The data minimisation principle means that you should not be processing more personal data than is necessary an in this case you would be as the personal data includes the image and the voice. In addition, employees have an expectation of privacy and even in a work setting that would apply to cameras not recording them in certain areas of the workplace.

If this is not contractural you are going to find it hard to overcome people's objections as what is your lawful basis for processing this data?

Also if your objective is optimal communication, I don't think you'll achieve it by forcing people to communicate in a way they don't like. You're not listening to them. That's not how communication goes.

"Now everybody wants to work from home. "

No, they don't. SOME people want to work from home, others would hate having to do it all the time, but some employers now force their staff to do it and it might happen to many of us with Coronavirus measures. As I mentioned, last time it snowed here, a few employers closed down and told staff they had to work from home even if those staff would have been able to come in.

The only times I've taken advantage of the option of working from home is when I've had a dr's appointment during the day because going to the office would mean spending half the day travelling around. Working from home on such a day means my employer gets much more out of me than if I'm spending hours on the bus, coming to work, then leaving then travelling back.

@adaline

Your definition of working effectively suits your job, and I respect that. I'm not asking you to video chat and if your current setup works for your role then great.

I take objection to "fannying around on videochat" though. The Asia head I speak to earns just under £100k. She is articulate, qualified and smart. Do you think she "fannys about" on a call? I think she herself would find that reductive and belittling.

Not everyone's meetings are the same. I've dialled into three way IT calls between Bangalore, Poland and the UK which had video involved that was completely pointless - everyone was reading the slides which filled the screen and no one spoke "on camera". Whole thing could have been provided in an email update anyway as no one was qualified to take questions. Yes that kind of thing doesn't need video. My world and work does. Is that so wrong to accept?

If people genuinely work as well on a sofa with a blanket, why are offices not set that way.... let me think, yes, because people don't work as effectively under these conditions, whatever they claim!

Surely it depends on the job. I've spent the last three days on a sofa with a blanket while marking uni assignments. I wouldn't have been any more productive sat bolt upright, dressed in a suit while sat at my desk at work.

I think there are a fair few people for whom WFH is a work day mixed with household stuff (washing, some kids and interaction with DH, some personal care or getting to relax a bit in PJs and not rush to get dressed).

That's fine in theory, but if work pay your salary and ask for a commitment on a video call, for me it seems a tad unreasonable that because someone has got used to all of the above, pottering around their house in their Pjs while occasionally answering an email with TV on in background and washing hanging up.... then it's no to any video calls.

I agree with this tbh. I don't wfh much because (and this will be a shock to some of you) some of my work involves physical work If I could wfh I'd blur my background so it wouldn't be intrusive at all, anyone can do this so that argument doesn't really work. And I don't understand the argument of needing to do makeup for a video call? You do know you don't need to do makeup at all, ever don't you?

In China or Singapore (again, outing) Sorry @GinDaddy but this made me laugh! How is it outing? Oh yeah because nobody has ever travelled or works with people in China ot Singapore do they 😂

Gosh - who knew that putting the video on whilst you’re working would be so controversial. I can see a difference between being forced to wfh and being given that option. There are probably some roles where the nature of any calls is so transactional that video is not required. There are many jobs where video calls significantly enhance the experience. We have a policy where people can wfh if they don’t need to be in the office but increasingly everyone uses video unless it’s an enormous conference call that makes that pointless. It’s a great way of maintaining relationships and having engagement on calls. Some people choose to sit against a wall but we’ve also been able to see the odd child/partner/ pet on occasion. For teams that aren’t co located it’s a great way to build relationships. I’d be very meh about a team member that thought they could work as effectively on a sofa under a blanket

Actually a bigger worry for me at the moment is whether work will expect me to give out my phone number to other offices if we have to work from home as we don't have company mobiles and make a lot of 'normal' telephone calls. I won't be doing it so I don't know how they'll get around it.

@WaterOffADucksCrack

Haha I know the "outing bit" sounds ridiculous but I've previously spoken about other aspects of my work including divisions and location.

Fair cop though I'll stop this "outing" business!

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

Search the App Store for "Hushed" - it's an app that provides unlimited "front" numbers that mask your real number. So someone dials the "front" number and then gets through to you.

Would that work for you?

GinDaddy in principle it would, providing there was a way to stop calls from work numbers after 5pm. If I had a work mobile it would go off at 5pm on the dot but that wouldn't be possible with my private one.

Worth looking into if it comes to it though, thanks.

People should just be thankful they have the option to work from home, the entitlement on here is astounding! I bet all the people complaining are the ones who loiter by the coffee machine all day, see it as their right to use the work office computers to do their personal admin in work time, constantly go for fag breaks etc etc

If I’m not in a face to face meeting then I don’t want to have to...feel like I have to be at attention all the time.

Wow @TerrorWig, so you don’t think that it’s necessary to pay attention when you are in meetings? You are being paid to do your job, paying attention is the least that should be expected of you. I have a colleague who constantly emailed and texted her way through (face-to-face) meetings, claiming she had other urgent work to do. Our Director had to have a word with her. It was incredibly rude and she was missing key issues from the meetings.

@argumentativeAadvarrk

Maybe this is different in different jobs/industries.

When I used to work in offices more, my boss and her boss would often come along to meetings I was running, have their laptops open and be clattering away paying zero attention to my meeting.

I thought it was a bit rude but obviously they didn't.

People should just be thankful they have the option to work from home, the entitlement on here is astounding! I bet all the people complaining are the ones who loiter by the coffee machine all day, see it as their right to use the work office computers to do their personal admin in work time, constantly go for fag breaks etc etc

I've got the Middle Ages on the phone (although they have turned the camera off) asking for their serfdom attitude to work back.

Grateful? Yeah sure, it's all altruistic on the part of employers isn't it?

@GinDaddy

It's sad to hear all those concerned about make up. What have we done to ourselves as a society when this is such a big issue

Look at teenage girls, it starts young. But doesn't help when stupid mothers (and it is the mothers) encourage it by taking their 12 year olds to get their brows threaded.

It's the modern way of working. If you were in an office you would be expected to do dace to face. This is just the technological version.