The future of working from home

[Maighdeann]

Before the virus there were campaigns pushing towards flex working/working from home. Do you think now where it's shown it can be done (for certain jobs) companies will allow it to continue and is that a good thing?

[luckylavender]

I don't think it's good for everyone & it's very bad for the economy.

[Reginabambina]

Working from home was really normal in my workplace before the outbreak. I’ve not been working (on leave thank god!) but colleagues have found daily WFH generally pretty effective (a few issues with IT stuff but very minor). Sone have struggle with having the space for WFH though. I wonder whether they’ll encourage us to remotely more often if we choose to move out of the city and commute to increase our living space. One thing that’s been highlighted though was that we were really well prepared already because of our flexible working policies. I’m sure that whoever brought them in is feeling very vindicated just now. If this had happened ten years ago it would have been very different.

[Reginabambina]

@luckylavenderwny do you think it’s bad for the economy?

[Greengrassgravy]

@StCharlotte Dh has had a virtual PA for about 3 years now - it works really well - for the most part she spends her time co-ordinating diaries with other PAs and booking rooms. Pulling documents together/typing and sending them to the printers was never really a thing the PA did anyway - much too clunky. Staff just pick up prints on their commute.

[thecatsthecats]

I don't think it's good for everyone & it's very bad for the economy.

I don't think it's good for everyone, in spite of my comments upthread.

But then neither was working in office good for everyone, and it was treated as the default. Now bosses are being forced to it, many are finding that their default assumptions aren't right. One would hope that the future is more balanced in its approach.

As for the economy? Well, yeah, this is an economic shock, and sometimes those change the paradigm of the world. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad.

But justifying keeping a bad situation on economic grounds is incredibly short sighted. And stressed out humans sitting in their tubes of metal for a couple of hours a day emitting toxic waste into the environment to do work they can perfectly well do at home is definitively a bad thing.

[thecatsthecats]

P.S. - my office landlord is an absolute money-grubbing arsehole, and if that's a part of the economy that suffers - good riddance!

[readingismycardio]

I think so...

Both DH and I love it! We've been together, had meals together, no petrol, no crappy meals at work, no coffee...

We've been extremely productive too.

[pointythings]

Going forward I'd like to see a 50/50 approach with rotational office working. Would reduce commuting/pollution/traffic but still allow social interaction - and some things do work better face to face. But if COVID ends the culture of 'presenteeism' in the UK, that will be a massive silver lining.

[LemonBreeland]

Seeing the polarity in responses, I hope that companies allow it to be up to the individual. I have surprised myself by how much I enjoy working from home, but would happily be in the office 1 or 2 days a week. I do have colleagues who really want to be in the office and I think that should be their choice too.

My company is currently rewriting their flexible working policy. It wasn't very flexible previously.

[foggybits]

It's bad for the economy because potentially the shift has happened in a very short time. How will TFL function with 30% footfall? What about train services & cost? All the food businesses that support city working both on site & off site etc

[luckylavender]

@Reginabambina - because travel costs money. Because you may buy a coffee / paper on your way to work. At lunchtime you may buy lunch or browse shops, buy toiletries, flowers, books etc etc

[Backtoreality1]

I can work from home, but hate it. Much prefer to have my work life and home life separate. Its useful occasionally for a project where I really need to focus, but otherwise I would be much happier in the office!

[thecatsthecats]

@foggybits

It's impossible not to sound blase, but here goes:

It's natural. It's entirely natural that these things happen. Yes, they suck. Yes, it's bad for the economy in its present state. Yes, it would be amazing if we lived in a state of perfect preparedness for every event.

But history is littered with the casualties of shit happens, as well as those of systems and people being crap. We can't avoid the former - earthquakes, plagues, weather events etc. We can and should avoid the latter.

And we typically revolutionise the latter when the former happens - these crisis events often precipitate change, and it's often change that was badly needed before, which no one was able or willing to change.

[thecatsthecats]

@luckylavender

I am buying all those things online, and what's more, someone is paid to bring them to my door.

Even the coffee - I'm drinking one that was just freshly brewed for me on my driveway at a social distance.

When I WFH under normal circumstances, I nip out for lunch on my own suburban high street rather than in the one near my work.

It is different, but it isn't necessarily less. I come from a rural area in fact where the local goods and services have faced a slow death of people moving away or commuting away for work. There would be a fighting chance for local services if the residents weren't being dragged to some dreary office somewhere all day every week day!

[StCharlotte]

Greengrassgravy

One of my best friends is an EA in the City and has been wfh for weeks successfully and is not expecting to go back into the office any time soon.

The tech has come into its own but for now it wouldn't really work for me to wfh long term. We're a very "traditional" set up. Sure, I can answer the phones, set up meetings and meeting rooms etc. send everything to print at the office etc but I can't file correspondence, copy or scan documents that have to go out in the post and there's a LOT of that still. Interestingly many of the Govt Departments we deal with are moving to even more electronic forms and electronic signatures etc which I've been impressed with.

I can see the future though (assuming the willingness of the powers that be). All the secretaries could wfh and probably double up on bosses (we're 1 to 1 here) with a junior in the office to do the physical stuff.

I'm at the back end of my career with retirement on the horizon and I suspect my final day at work will take place in an office which is fine by me

[foggybits]

@thecatsthecats I don't understand your point ?

[unchienandalusia]

Yes. DHs company have stopped leasing 2/3 of their head office it's gone so well. People will be wfh in rotation.

[EBearhug]

A lot of it depends on the job role. I work for a large multinational and plenty of us already worked from home either permanently or sometimes. This means once or twice a year when there are big meetings because some exec is visiting or similar, there aren't actually enough desks, but those of us who are in at least 3 days a week get a permanent desk. Many meetings were already online, because they often involve people in other locations and countries. (We're asked not to use video if we have people in India on the call - their network connections can't handle it, which isn't an issue when we connect to the office there.)

I really appreciate having the flexibility of being able to work from home. I was already WFH one day a week anyway, and I have been able to work from home for about 20 years, because of covering 24/7 on-call.

I don't want to do it all the time. I lke the social interaction. We have quite a few social things going on at lunchtime - I am also missing chatting in the canteen. I miss talking to people in other departments and the random conversations where you discover X is working on a similar project to Y and they should get together to make sure there's not too much duplication, things like that. I talk to people in my own department every day, but I am not really networking with others outside of the department in the same way. And I like most of my colleagues (there are a few I am glad not to be seeing currently!)

Overall, I think it's good that this has proved that for many people, working from home really is possible, after being told for years it absolutely wasn't. I think more flexible working benefits everyone - even when we are in the office, people arrive at various points between 7am and 10 am, so it's easy to avoid the worst of the traffic, and when I have had to get in for a 9am meeting, I need to allow double the time of my usual commute. I am missing the commute - most of it is through countryside and I am missing seeing the change of flowers and seasons and so on. I am also missing being able to pop to shops or swimming pool after work, but apart from the supermarket and pharmacy, none is open anyway, whether or not I were driving to the office.

Not all roles are suitable for flexibility but this is forcing a review of which those roles are - or which tasks, and I think that is a good thing. Not everyone's homes are suitable for home working either, and I wonder if we will look at an increase in postural injuries because of unsuitable seating and so on.

[pointythings]

I think a massive increase in home working will mean that some businesses will have to revolutionise the way they do things. Coffee chains may move out of large towns and cities and find it worthwhile to set up in smaller places if there are enough customers working there. I suspect online ordering and deliveries will increase massively - people will still want their posh coffees and sandwiches, they'll just get them in different ways.

And the idea of subsidised broadband doesn't look so stupid now, does it?

[StCharlotte]

And I like most of my colleagues (there are a few I am glad not to be seeing currently!)

Ha ha! Absolutely! I'm not missing my boss at ALL!

[foggybits]

I'm someone that has always spent far too much on lunches when at work for a number of reasons mainly laziness, waiting to get out of the office & I like variety. One aspect Ive enjoyed at home is being able to make different lunches and not spend a £10 at a time.

[hanahsaunt]

I am loving WFH and have the space to make it happen. I am more intrigued that my very extrovert, life and soul of the party, most sociable colleague who is single and lives alone, who was dreading wfh, has said that she is loving it mainly for the more relaxed approach, and a better work/life balance. Her commute is 20-30 minutes so not massive but even that is making a difference. It gives me hope that we will find a way to make this a long-term solution.

[FinallyHere]

possible to start work in a new place entirely remotely

I would like to think that new ways of working will be adopted more widely as part of official WFH. For example, when one large consultancy adopted hit dealing in the '90s , they set aside some of the cost savings for each team to have quarterly meetings

In our team, we alternated day events with overnights. Each one always included some updates on major projects, also internal matters and some tools and techniques to help people work better together.

Not everyone really welcomed the idea of the socialising but it was particularly helpful for new joiners to get to everyone else and start building their network.

Building your network becomes something it is important to do. I've never had a role where my work was entirely separate from everyone else (though of course I'm sure they do exist) so for me, the more people who I know and whose role I have some understanding of the better in a new organisation.

It's so helpful to have contacts in different parts of any business. It's not the same as finding friends though of course some friends can of course arise too.

[FinallyHere]

@StCharlotte

Sorry to read that you have more challenges to deal with but glad that you have someone picking up the tasks that can't be done remotely.

Is it possible that with so much remote working, there will be less and less need for printed/bound copies of things and more use of extra screens to view documents ?

That has certainly been so for me and is very welcome indeed.

[thecatsthecats]

@foggybits:

My point is that society generally operates in a way that is sub-optimal for something. Most people can see that, and understand it, and many would like it to change.

Then something big happens. A natural event or a plague. Circumstances are dramatically and rapidly changed, because it has to.

And afterwards, sometimes changes stick. Or there are subsequent changes one things are settled down.

Human beings are, on the whole, very good at adapting to seismic, forced changes, and very bad at coming up with coherent and sustained plans to achieve those changes (see: the appalling rate of legal and social change).

An example would be women's labour and suffrage.

Almost a hundred years were spent arguing about it, and it wasn't achieved.

WW1 happened - and boom, massive influx of women into the labour force, vote granted in 1918.

Subsequently, society still hasn't nailed the dynamics of women entering the workforce, and the pace of change has been slow.

Essentially, society is a very laborious vehicle for achieving change, whereas major events get humans adapting very quickly and often successfully (n.b. there are drawbacks to this, up to and including genocide - but that's for another essay!).

To bring it back to your point - footfall of the TFL is a consequence of trying to achieve a particular goal (for the rail unions, those disorderly passengers getting in the way of the smooth operation of their services) - getting people to work. But not all of those people needed to be physically present at their work, getting there was costing them time and money, causing pollution, and having them sit in offices that cost them money to run, increasing the costs of service provision.

So 'improving footfall of TFL' is not a systemic issue we need to solve.