To think one good thing may be, more people working from home in the future?

[bingbangbing]

Lots of workplaces are being forced to consider this option now. Hopefully this might lead to more people working from home long term?

Let commuting, pollution, pressure to look good, opportunity to eat proper food, time to do other stuff as opposed to commuting.

We don’t know if it’s successful yet-
How productive are people being?

I don’t see this as a positive.

I've worked from home on and off for years. As have a lot of my colleagues.

People do generally get the work done. They just don't do the futile, 'looking busy' thing.

I'm public sector, and while there's a long history of managers wanting staff in the office, pressure on space at our local government sites has meant there's a long term policy of moving to wfh where possible,and appropriate.

Problem is, there isn't enough IT sorted right now, most of us still have desktop pcs. But once this is over, and we can slow down, I reckon the plan will be speeded up.

As long as I have access to emails and files, and perhaps phones via VoIP, I can work anywhere.

Yes definitely. It will lead to more remote working, which could even lead to more people leaving London and buying houses in cheaper parts of the country. That's what we would do if my husband was able to work anywhere instead of us being tied to the city.

I agree. I think WFH can be very productive.
Another positive: fewer flights, car, bus and train journeys = less C02.

I strongly suspect that at the end of this my work will change to more WFH (good) and hotdesking (not so good). I work for a university with an absolute crisis of physical space so I think they'll realise that they could turn some of our offices into classrooms if they did this.

I think you may be right. Obviously I’d rather this whole situation wasn’t happening but the fact is huge world events like wars and pandemics force social change, it’s something we’ve seen through history.

The company I work for have always been very reluctant to allow WFH despite the fact we all work on web based systems. They’re just very conservative and focused on presenteeism which isn’t the same as productivity. As a result they’ve had a lot of work to do in a short space of time to get IT and telephone systems up to speed because realistically we’re going to have to WFH. Having done it (and hopefully staff make it work) it will be hard for them to row back down the line!

I wish it wasn’t being forced by a pandemic but in the near future we just might see more flexibility in work practices as a result which should have a positive impact on the environment, family life and people’s mental and physical health.

I do hope so. I’ve been a home worker for over 15 years, and I wouldn’t go back to a daily commute for anything. Managers need to get over this ridiculous idea that people skive if they’re out of sight - it’s patently obvious if someone’s not producing the work expected of them, so actually not hard to monitor performance. I’ve been a manager working at home and managing homeworkers, and I’ve never had problems spotting someone in difficulties. I find I work more hours when I’m at home because I often use the hours when someone else would be going to and from the office. It would be such a positive change for the environment, if nothing else, to have fewer people commuting each day.

I imagine swanky office owners will need a bailout.
And all that commuting - train companies too (they've already asked).
Then the poor car manufacturers....

The roads would be deserted too - so we'll probably need less police fire and ambulance for RTAs.

Shame about HS2, too

100%. The government should cut corporate tax for companies where the majority of the staff wfh. It’s just unnecessary to turn up every single day for a lot of jobs.

I`d like to think there would be a shift in society and WFH becomes much more common. This is a great time to test it out in a way, a bit like WW1/2 when women showed society how useful they were in a male dominated society.

I also think there may be a shift to home education via laptop and that maybe more common? DS is online schooled via live stream classes, so I could see that taking off potentially??
I like the idea of less traffic, less pollution etc.
who knows!

We do need to look for the positive in everything and there will obviously be less pollution while people are working from home. I think we do need to make radical changes in order to protect our planet but it remains to be seen whether people will change their behaviour permanently.

My DH works from home one day per week and gets far more done at home as he does treat it as a working day. A colleague of his does far less work at home and treats it an opportunity to look after his DGC.

If it did mean more WFH in future there are advantages and disadvantages to that. Isolation can contribute to loneliness and mental ill-health.

I think it might show that millions of jobs are pointless leading to mass redundancies. Or automation. AI doesn’t need to be qurantined.

I work from home a lot in my current job and absolutely hate it. Teams that are spread out all over the place are far less effective and it's so isolating and dull.

My employer is extremely flexible and we are already encouraged to wfh two days a week so it hasn’t made mass changes for us. My major worry is that they will see how little some people actually do when there isn’t the pretence of busy rushing around the office with a folder under one arm and staying late (to read the daily mail and shop). It will make employers rethink their numbers and ultimately lead to redundancies

AI doesn’t need to be quarantined.

I'd worry about getting it working first ....

"My major worry is that they will see how little some people actually do when there isn’t the pretence of busy rushing around the office with a folder under one arm and staying late (to read the daily mail and shop). It will make employers rethink their numbers and ultimately lead to redundancies"
That is surely a good thing? If people aren't actually needed then a company can reduce its costs accordingly, charge less to clients and increase demand leading to an increase in staff again.

Losing lazy workers is good IMO.

My office enabled working from home within 48 hours last week- buying new equipment etc to facilitate. People had been asking if they could WFH for 2 years....

Social isolation? Poor mental health? Less friendship groups?

At my old company, their most productive staff worked from home (remote freelancers who were taken on). Nobody else was allowed as they openly didn't trust wfh. Ironically, it was the three directors who skived on an Olympic style basis - could rarely be found and we were always apologising for them when they missed client meetings. Golf, cycling, swimming, tennis, weekends away, Pilates.... always took priority. Poacher turned gamekeeper syndrome.

Is working from home always a good thing?

It has been encouraged for a long time where I work (mainly because there isn't enough desk space for the size of the workforce) and always made out to be a positive thing.

It isn't always. People who live on their own don't like it as they feel isolated, it is much more different to work collaboratively and it puts pressure on those who are in the workplace regarding seeing customers/dealing with deliveries.

My work has always had people doing the odd day from home but now there's loads of us & I can't do anything. Nothing opens on my laptop, even my emails are v slow so I assume we don't have the bandwidth/capacity/servers/whatever to be able to do it effectively for a long period of time.

So we'll all be back in the office coughing all over each other & in my case planning pointless shit that won't happen anyway.

I'm looking forward to more teaching online so pupils in primary and secondary don't need need teachers in front of them.

Not.

difficult to work collaboratively

My company is great for letting people work from home, and it’s helped in this situation that it’s already the norm. I get so much more work done at home than I ever would in the office, plus lack of a commute means on those days I have a lot to do, I grab a quick breakfast and then am at my desk working long before I would have been if I’d had to get ready and commute there.