To hope this completely changes the way society works? (working from home/non-essential travel)

[MoonBabysMagicalKalimba]

Disclaimer: Obviously this does not apply to those professions for which WFH will never be an option such as healthcare, retail, tourism & hospitality, and teaching/childcare

In the last few weeks, hundreds of organisations have had to devise and implement full WFH procedures. Many of these organisations had previously told employees that WFH was not possible or permissible, yet when the need arises, it clearly is.

If companies were to continue to allow this going forward, when this mess is all over, this could drastically change how we all work. No more ridiculous traffic in the mornings and evenings, no more hundreds and thousands of Londoners cramming themselves onto tubes and trains from 7-9am and 4-6pm simply to sit in offices all day. We are already seeing a huge reduction in pollution. The majority of the commuter traffic would be taken up by those aforementioned professions who physically need to go in to work, many of which work shifts anyway so we wouldn’t have these bottlenecks of ridiculous congestion morning and evening.

We also need to take a good, hard look at the hundreds of planes that fly around the world every week, of which probably a very decent proportion of passengers are business men and women travelling to other countries for meetings, interviews and conferences that they could most likely very easily attend via video link. Obviously this will not be the case for all business trips and some will be crucial to attend in person, but I think we could lose a decent chunk of them.

These changes would also drastically improve workers mental health and work/home life balance, I’m already seeing it with some colleagues who by losing their daily commute are having an extra 1-2 hours in bed and feeling the benefits to their health. There’d be more time to exercise, and catch up on home chores and admin during lunch breaks. This would also enable parents to drop off/pick their children up from school more often. Obviously this would be when things are more “normal” and children are back in nursery/school and not at home!

I’m not saying everyone with a desk/office job should WFH full time, as there will be those who prefer to go into the office. But a balance could definitely be met. Some could WFH FT, some go into the office FT, and the majority do a combination of both on a rota system. Even these small changes could have a huge impact on the environment and our health.

If this shit situation has taught us anything, it’s that there is absolutely no need for thousands of office workers to travel to and from work, creating or contributing to pollution and congestion, simply to sit at desks behind a screen all day.

Thoughts?

And, as a couple of pp have pointed out, if your employer can see that you working from home is ok for business than so would someone else, doing your job, working from a different, cheaper country be ok for business? Reduced office space costs and a reduced salary bill, win/win.

WFH reduces costs massively for employers.

My DH employer already was trying to get as many people as possible to WFH and hot desking.

100% agree. Everyone for who this is possible (and that's proved to be a lot more than employers liked to admit to) should have it as an option. There will always be those who don't take it upastgey will miss the office interaction. Personally I would be more than happy to work from home 100% of the time. I like my colleagues but have in my view the same quality of interaction over the phone and much prefer not to have to travel and have the balance.

Agree, but I think most things will go back to how they were. Re international business trips, it's been possible to do most of this by conference call etc for a good few years now, yet it's continued. Working from home, not sure, I should think for every one who wants to, there's another who'd prefer to be at their place of work for various reasons. Also I think there are a number of employees who might not have the, how can I put it, focus/motivation to do their 8 hours if at home with no-one monitoring, so productivity would suffer. I'd like to think that there will be less foreign travel, perhaps if the smaller airlines don't survive it will put an end to the crazy cheap airfares of recent years.

I said exactly that to DH

I'm an academic and the annual conference for our discipline this year was in Hawaii. Hawaii! Thousands of people forced to fly thousands of miles, at great cost. It was controversial to begin with and then it was cancelled due to CV. Now there is talk of having several regional conferences instead of one big global one, to reduce travel.

I'm an academic too and I have been cutting down on transatlantic travel, partly for the DCs, though I do have to travel to another continent for fieldwork and that's really hard to do differently.
I think I will be sticking to UK/EU conferences and as much as possible on the train.

Exactly worst, I hear this a lot from colleagues -- UK/EU conferences only from now on.

I agree to some extent but am worried about the implications for low-paid workers who will then be expected to provide working space and internet at home.

For me, sharing a space with an adult who has nothing to do with my fields, who uses up a lot of the internet connection, and who is constantly on the phone, is quite difficult. And I am wasting so much time because I can't simply pop my head round the corner and ask a colleague to demonstrate things.

Wasting time every evening having to pack my "office" away because it is also our eating and living space and every morning setting up again. All of which is work invisible to my boss.

My back is already playing up: we simply don't have the space for a proper ergonomic chair and writing desk in the living room.

UK/EU conferences only from now on

I was having a long discussion about events last week. Most of the big conferences we attend are all going online and I think once they make that leap, it's going to be very hard to go back. For one thing, it will be cheaper, easier and faster to host an event, and companies like mine aren't going to want to pay more when they've seen it work.

Second, the footfall won't easily return. All of us on the call agreed we wouldn't be willing to go to busy conference halls anytime soon, for work or pleasure, so even if there was an event still taking place physically, there would be no staff to man our booth.

I'm sure there will be some events that have to remain in-person, but the majority of b2b events won't.

I think it's more likely to prove that human beings are social animals and need to meet others faces to face. The large corporate I was working for early 2000s when wfh technology was first becoming available thought it was the answer to their prayers in terms of the savings they could make on city real estate. It was a disaster for the workforce's mental health.

I agree with what @BuzzShitbagBobbly said, it's not as simple as "oh we'll all WFH now won't life be better" - if we do that then all of the cafes/restaurants/shops in the City of London will essentially have to close.

It will also mean that finding a good property in London will become even harder because everyone will be looking for a house with a study (which is a aughable concept when many shared houses in London don't even have a living room).

*a laughable concept

We put on a conference every year for our clients and we always get really good feedback. The really like meeting up in person.

I also find that meeting in person means you get to know each other better, quicker. Meetings online stick very much to agenda esp with externals. When you meet IRL there is more personal chat, you find out a bit more about people and they about you, and this makes often for smoother working relationships, give and take.

To strip all this human in person interaction away would be a big loss.

Then there's stuff like agile where the philosophy is that people work together in person as much as possible to share knowledge ease communication etc. It's recognised that a lot of the time talking to someone esp in real life is the most efficient way to communicate.

I've had teams located in different countries and it is a very very different way of working to never meet anyone. We got them all over for a conference and after that it was much easier, because we knew each other, rather than just a name and a voice on the phone.

As someone who is really struggling, and it's only a week in, while I understand the desire of more introverted people to maintain some of the current conditions, for others the mental health impact will not be great. I'm not convinced it will be entirely beneficial from a number of angles tbh

* And, as a couple of pp have pointed out, if your employer can see that you working from home is ok for business than so would someone else, doing your job, working from a different, cheaper country be ok for business? Reduced office space costs and a reduced salary bill, win/win.*

This is the pit many large banks fell into not realising that staff in different locations have different levels of productivity. For example it often takes 3 people in Asia to do a technical role in the UK - one for the technical parts, one for the management bit, and the third to cover all the unpaid overtime we do. India is probably the only place to offshore these roles to due to English but now that inflation and salaries are increasing there - the most highly qualified people there are paid more than we are in the UK. This means you are stuck with 3 extra junior staff who aren’t as productive as 1 UK staff member.

This is why a lot of offshored jobs are either returning or are being automated.

Agree totally.

I understand the supposed mental health benefits of working with others in an office, but to be honest I'd much rather take the extra 2 hours of commuting time and invest that into meeting up with people I actually like (and not spending 37.5 hours a week being tormented by people who I'd like to staple things to) instead.

Am very much hoping my manager changes their attitude to WFH so that I can do at least 1 or 2 days a week from home and cut out my commute altogether.

We'll see what happens to the mental health of the nation over the next few weeks and months.

I suppose maybe people who go into a slump when there's nothing to get up and out for might be reasonable collateral damage to implement this.

'supposed' mental health benefits yeah that says it all.

More than one person on the thread has said it benefits their mental health.

Are they making it up or are they just weak.

The hardening of attitudes towards those with MH probs at the moment is concerning, as is the hardening of attitudes towards other groups as well.

I suppose there are winners and losers always with change.

We'll see what happens to the mental health of the nation over the next few weeks and months.

If/when the mental health of the nation declines over the next few weeks and months, it’ll be mainly due to a) the stress and anxiety of the situation we find ourselves in, and b) the fact that socialising with friends and family outside of our households isn’t permitted.

In “normal” times, working from home more would free up much more of our time to see friends socially and get out and about for meals, drinks, trips to the theatre and other fun things. people could also utilise the time saved before and after work and during their lunch breaks to do housework, exercise or food shopping, freeing up their weekend time for purely social things and relaxation.

As a PP said, socialising at work is lovely if you have great colleagues you get on well with and count as friends. This isn’t the case for the majority of people.

@BeetrootRocks I'm not saying it's made up, but it's more likely that people who enjoy working at the office like the company they have within that office - in which case it's the people they are spending time with, not the office, which is benefitting them.

Under normal circumstances, people who work from home could go for a morning/lunch/evening walk to break up their day if they wish. They could choose to work in a more social setting (e.g. one of those cooperative hubs), or a cafe, or the park - wherever!

For many people, the daily commute and presenteeism is a negative mental health factor.

I'm eating healthier, sleeping better, and able to keep on top of my work a lot better working from home. Not saying this is the case for everyone.

We're living under strange circumstances where a lot of people are being forced to work from home without the tools, technology, setup, or childcare to accommodate it.

Unfortunately, the more affluent are in a better position to enjoy working from home due to space and resources, however hopefully more companies can invest in working from home opportunities in the future for those who would like to take advantage of it.

this also may mean a lot of companies realising they don't need an office in the UK at all, and their work could be off shored to someone much cheaper elsewhere in the world

Yes, this is a good point and one of the reasons my husband has always shied away from working from home because he doesn't want to be outsourced (he needs to be in the office at least some of the time anyway). However, his firm did outsource quite a bit of work to India, and they've been left very exposed because the place they outsourced the work to has been closed (and presumably their staff can't WFH). So it's shown how dangerous it can be to rely on outsourcing anyway. They've lost around 70% of one of their support functions.

As with everything there is a balance. Some people like to be in the office, others at home, others just like flexibility to be at home eg if they need to wait in for a parcel to be delivered or a leaky radiator fixed.

@MoonBabysMagicalKalimba crosspost - ended up saying the same thing as you!

I agree but I still think thousands of companies will claim they can’t trust their employees to get the work done without supervision, which is a pathetic excuse. I work much more effectively from home as does DH (two completely different sectors).

There's better performance measures than physical presence though - based on actual work-related output, revenue generated, and quality of work. Am hoping that companies start to appreciate these more than someone sitting at their desk 9am-5pm and not producing much at all.

my friend's newbuild the other week - just streets and streets of houses crammed together, commuting distance to the city, and a gigantic Asda. No GP, no corner shops, no communal village space. Can't see how older people could move there, or why they would

This is a valid point, I've just had a think about friends and family in new builds... E.g. My in laws don't have a dining room or study so they're working (uncomfortably) crammed on the sofa and bedroom respectively, it's miserable, and there aren't any local places to go even if lockdown wasn't in place, it's just row after row of "luxury" housing in their estate. No GP. No library. No dentist. No post office. Nothing but too small houses that you can't easily work from home in.

And yet they're mortgaged up to the hilt!