To wonder whether office work environment will change?

[Cam2020]

Once we are all back in offices and things are relatively 'normal', will anything really change?

I'm in two minds. On the one hand, people have got used to working from home and mangers may trust employees to get on with it where they might have had doubts before and allow some more flexible working; people will initially be more mindful of not coming into work when they're sick - but will these good intentions last? I have a feeling once we're back in the swing of things they'll fly out the window. What do people think?

I think this fantasy that everyone’s desperate to WFH forever in the countryside is just a fantasy for a subset of people.

If your commute isn’t long (mine is under 30 mins) and you work on a nice building then a combination of a day or a couple of days WFH and the rest in the office is nice. DH thinks the same.

I think some people are getting caught up in this ‘new normal’ thing but I think a lot of people can’t wait to get as close to the old normal as possible.

I am not looking forward to going back to the office now I know how it will be. Very restrictive measures and I think the health checks will disadvantage women who are more prone to temperature fluctuation.

Many at my work live in shared houses and flats and do not have suitable work spaces. Most rent. Many are unhappy about having to work from home permanently and will look for new jobs.

If firms decide everyone can work from home all the time, what is there to stop them outsourcing wfh jobs to cheaper labour overseas

This is why my husband has always resisted WFH. I think it could happen.

However, I don't think most people will work from home all the time, just some of the time, and firms will still want them in the office from time to time.

Also, a lot of companies are actually bringing work back to the UK.

And if companies save money on office space they won't, at least in the short term, be looking for other savings (eventually they will, they always do).

As for opportunities for developers - we may need fewer offices and more housing - so use offices for flats or knock them down and build houses. Depends where they are, you don't necessarily want to live on a business estate unless the whole thing is made over to housing.

Also companies don't necessarily need to outsource overseas, they can use consultants living in cheaper areas of the UK without high south east housing cost overheads. Quite a few law firms now have consultant arms where you can live anywhere and do work for them - you earn a decent hourly rate, they charge it out at a low cost and still make a decent profit.

I've worked from home one day a week on Wednesdays for a while, and last summer (a really quiet period at work), I did a bit of encouraging everyone to work from home on Fridays.

At first people were indifferent, then a couple of weeks ago, one of my staff tentatively raised the idea that they could work from home more in the future.

We're all cracking on, and some people have gained a LOT of time back with their families (too much, at the moment!).

It will affect some shops, but I personally be happy to nip out to shops near my house for lunch rather than chains near my office.

A mix of WFH and an office is surely the most inefficient setup. Expensive London staff at home working without proper equipment in their bedroom, and the costs of running an office.

I think those than can and have been happily working at home will continue to do so at least on a part time basis especially in London where most staff have to rely on public transport to get to work

Companies with very expensive office space in London and other cities will wonder why they are paying the rent for empty space

More city centre buildings will become available for conversion to much needed housing

@daisypond when I read a survey on wfh trends, it.was found that the boroughs with the highest wfh rate (this was pre covid) were Camden, Westminster and Kensington/Chelsea..doubtless a lot of these people are living in flats. I was surprised by this- I would have thought outer London boroughs had a higher wfh rate.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/working-from-home-the-london-areas-where-more-people-are-embracing-the-nontraditional-ninetofive-a133671.html%3famp

It’s not just a London issue. The company I work for has offices in cheaper parts of the country and all are being permanently closed, with all staff having to work from home. Part-time working in the office and at home is not feasible for us. It has to be one or the other. And why would a company keep an semi-empty office running? The London office is the first one to close completely.

also public transport
Blimey, you might even have a remote chance of getting a seat!

daisypond companies that retain a wfh/in the office mix can drastically decrease the amount of office space they have as they don't need to provide for all employees being in the office at the same time. That alone could bring considerable savings.

Companies will massively benefit if we work from home on rota? Which is what it's looking like in my sector.
They'll reduce their office sizes and have a hot desk policy.
They'll have smaller utilities bills, smaller cleaning bill.

Yes we'll be picking up the utilities hike, especially in winter but we're winning over less transport costs?

Environmentally it would be massive, and I'm all for it.

The only people who will lose out is the £££ landlords and companies who own these buildings and car parks and charge insane rent.

DHs work has recently reintroduced the morning 'coffee break'. So they all gather in the coffee room (spread out) and can circulate to get the minor stuff done. It's considered to be a very productive 20mins.
They are moving to a more flexible working system, but it's always going to be more in the Office than WFH. They've been in throughout due to security. (Essential service)

companies that retain a wfh/in the office mix can drastically decrease the amount of office space
I see that logic, but it depends on the job. We need specialist software and tech and equipment and we cannot keep carting it in and out of the office on public transport. We have to work either at home or in the office. Not both. And the decision has been made - all offices are closing.

@daisypond

We're considering three things in our company:

1. A much smaller office that can accommodate all of us for a meeting, and at desks, but a degree less comfortably than a larger space - 3 day a week attendance.
2. Use of co-working spaces where you pay for desk/wifi for as many days a week as the employee chooses. Separate hire of meeting rooms.
3. More or less full home-working, but with a retained budget for meetings, training spaces etc for when we do work together.

Any of those options will at least halve our office budget, so paying for extra screens etc for home would be drop in the ocean.

daisypond my office has reopened with social distancing so only a limited amount of people can go in, so we have to do part WFH/part office if we were previously office based. Surely this is the way forward.

But maybe it’s because we don’t always work at home or the office so no one sees the partially empty office as a bad thing.

daisypond Just seen your update with the specialist equipment. Yes, I can see them you’d have to do one or the other.

I’m interested to know about the responsibilities a company has to employees compelled to work from home when they don’t want to. It’s a change of workplace in your contract, so I suppose you can refuse to agree. And if you don’t, you’re made redundant? And what about health and safety at home, both physically and psychologically?

@daisypond:

I'm not au fait with the responsibilities, but we're actually recruiting for a job that may well be a WFH position when we advertised based on an office one - so we're checking that all applicants are ok with that.

I don't know what the future of our office will be, but I have been thinking in terms of a personal allowance for staff - which can either be used on an approved co-working space, or for expenses of wfh/a bonus.

(all still cheaper than what we pay our landlord, who frankly is getting what's coming to him!)

Increased flexibility to WFH is a good thing for work/ life balance which tends to be skewed more towards work than life.

Forcing people into WFH to cheapskate the costs of running the business is a false economy on productivity. Many people need a purposeful work environment to be efficient. Working in whatever space is avaliable in your home is not effective. Workplaces should be providing ergonomic furniture suitable for employees; bending over the kitchen table with dangly legs and no lumbar support is an excellent way to lead to long term pain; bad for long term productivity. Many people need that external human contact for building teams, training and just having a healthy social balance. Being at home full-time is bad for personal relationships when there is no personal space and time alone (Since typing, DH has come in to the room and is now generating an extrordinarily excessive amount of noise simply by turning the pages in a document- I have not been alone in my own home for 3 months now and it is frazzling) If DH was working from home indefinitely, he would still have the background noise of the DCs and I crashing around the house out of school hours. His presence inhibits my actions doing noisy household activities (vacuuming, washing machine spinning) as the sound reverberates and gets caught on calls/ conference calls that are going on all the time.

While an employer should not continue to impose 9-5 presenteeism unnecessarily, dumping their responsiblities into people's homes is not good practice either and often a false economy.

One thing that's been a great success with this hot weather has been shift work, our premises are on the small side for the number of people, and we've had to work throughout, some of us can do some stuff at home, and one person can pretty much do everything of theirs (accounts) at home, but the warehouse end they've been doing shifts in pairs, so rather than 4 working at once, 2 work from 5am to lunchtime, and 2 work lunchtime to 8pm. Luckily the early boys love finishing early (one's a keen gardener) and the late 2 are night owls and like a lie in - it was their mutual suggestion on how to work, as we are actually busier than usual it somehow has covered the work more efficiently too (manager also pleased as it's effectively meant no overtime), I do wonder if it is just less time wasted chatting . I can see the situation continuing long term (although rural office perhaps not as easy to get to if snowy/icy in midwinter)

Completely agree BogRoll

My ds works for an insurance company and when lockdown began he loved wfh, being able to get up later for work and not spending the money on fuel travelling. However 3 months in and he's fed up of working from his bedroom, not seeing anyone all day and is quickly loosing motivation.

@daisypond almost all contracts would include a 'reasonable relocation' type clause, so that you cannot claim redundancy if they require you to work at a new location that is not an onerous commute from the previous one (so, a relocation to a close-by London borough is reasonable, even if it adds 50 minutes to someone's daily commute, but a relocation to Leeds is not). A home office is unlikely to be an unreasonable relocation.

However, employers do have health and safety duty of care (which, to be fair, is a big part of the reason they've closed offices!), so if you're having issues with your home setup, or lugging equipment around, you should speak to your HR team.

Re the point it's most inefficient to have some WFH and some in office, it's really not. If you go from having 100 people in the office Monday to Friday to having 40 in Mon- weds, 40 Thursday to Friday (plus maybe another occasional day a week for meetings), 20 working fully from home (or some redundant, because they were there to serve the larger number of people in the office, or you realised during lockdown they were providing a service you can now get rid of) you can almost halve the space of your office as the maximum capacity is now 50, plus provide less in the way of kit, heating etc. That's a lot of savings.

(not saying it's the right outcome, but that it's likely to happen in many offices)