Who is looking at increased wfh long term?

[jorgeous]

Hello all,

The plan at both mine & DHs company was to go in on a rota basis from September. This is still going to happen but far less frequently than we anticipated eg 4 days a month in the office. Plus it's completely voluntary. Companies are making noises about this becoming the norm, reducing HQ space & competitors are acting similar & some have made the switch.
There are lots of benefits to wfh although I do like the social aspect of the office. However because we are not allowed meetings of more than 2 people, gyms, canteens, coffee stations etc are all closed very few are coming back so there is little social aspect.
If this is the norm we really need to rethink our home environment & have a proper office for both of us.
I feel a little sad tbh, anyone else in the same boat?

I'm torn on this. I have a long commute and wfh has been an absolute revelation in work-life balance. I'm getting more sleep and more hours in the evening to be "me".

On the other hand, I'm painfully aware that many aspects of my job are not being done as effectively from home. I'm also suffering from regular headaches which I guess is down to 7-9 hours starting at a screen every day whereas, when we were physically in the office, the face-to-face and boardroom meetings broke up the screen-time.

I don't have proper workspace at home, which is also a factor. I'm working from the dining room which means that we're eating dinner on the sofa every evening which is something I swore I'd never do. Plus the office set-up is a constant reminder of looming work. I'm starting to feel a bit claustrophobic too and expect this to get worse as winter progresses. It was fine when the weather was better, to go out for a walk in the evening but now it is cold, dark, wet and windy (Scotland), it's not so appealing. I'm also concerned about increased heating bills.

So, for me, there are far more reasons to be in the office than at home but the commute is still such a big issue that I feel it equals all the others put together. I don't think I'll need to make any decisions for a while though. We were told from the very beginning that we wouldn't return until January at the earliest and now talking about March.

I had just taken an employed role in late Feb after being freelance for a bit and was mainly working from home anyway and just going into the office one day a week but DH worked more or less FT in the office, which was about 2 hours commute each way, and cost around £4K a year. He always took a packed lunch to work so didn’t really contribute to the London economy.

He will be going back one day a fortnight from mid-late September. I don’t have to go back until at least January.

We now have a garden office which I can use, so like others on this thread we realise that we are quite privileged (though now people can go back to using libraries to work (free) or co-working hubs if they can afford the desk rent). I actually just use a dining room chair as I find it much more comfortable than an office chair. DH uses the kitchen table and DS has a quiet room to study in and do virtual lessons (which will continue early this term after a very short initial face to face phase, he’s at a sixth form college in Hampshire, no going back full-time until October at the earliest).

There are no downsides of working from home for me. However, DH used to have a 25 minute walk to the railway station plus all the walking in London and there’s no getting away from the fact that he has put some weight on. There are aspects to his job that he can do better in the office but once a week or fortnight will probably be sufficient.

One downside will be coming though – we started this in March and had had a mild winter. People will need to invest in fingerless gloves and gilets and be prepared for much increased energy bills! As I write this it is not overly warm in my garden office and it’s still August!

.there's so much more to a city that an office

I agree but I think with London it's quite complex because of such high housing costs. Many people may prefer the opportunity to own their own home a bit further out if they are wfh part of the time as opposed to renting a house share.

Surely we will see lots of office space repurposed as residential and then house prices can come down because there will be increased supply?

@ThighthighOfthigh I don't think restaurants would go, i live in z3 london but would happily go to bayswater for a good Chinese. For our anniversary this year, DH and I went to bayswater for greek food even though it was nearly a hour on the tube. People still have the desire to break bread and share good food with friends and family without the hassle of clearing up and if the food is good enough, we would travel.

when I was in the Giggling Squid in Stratford upon Avon, the contact list included Leicester postcodes. However, what is going to end is substandard takeaway food in city centres. When I work in moorgate, there were times i felt sad and thought it was perfectly reasonable to spend £5 on banana bread and hot chocolate from the museum cafe as a pick me up. Ditto DH and his twice daily coffees from Nero. We used to meet up for lunch at Wasabi and complain about how dreadful it tasted while handing over £7 for the privilege simply because Wasabi was mid way between our offices (and when the weather was bad, we couldn't eat packed lunches in the park).

Now if restaurants want customers, the food has to be good enough to necessitate the travel.

@daisypond

Seriously? I don't live in London for work..it's theatre, concerts, great restaurants, museums, galleries etc. I know a lot of those are closed right now, but it won't be forever.

But those things cost money. Not just for the visitor but to run. There is going to be mass unemployment. Theatres will close permanently, and some already are. Restaurants will close permanently. Etc. Entertainment and the arts are one of the biggest areas that are suffering. They rely on people earning money and giving them money to survive. Even massive venues like the Royal Albert Hall and the Opera House.

Yes but because of the impact of COVID and of course Brexit, not as a result of an increase in wfh. WFH is not what’s going to destroy the economy and cause mass unemployment. For a start it’s just not an option for lots of jobs but also many of those businesses announcing redundancies over the last few months were already in trouble pre Covid and the redundancies would likely have followed the end of the Brexit transition period.

I can completely understand the difficulties that wfh causes for some people but I also think on this and similar threads, posters are putting all the problems they’re experiencing down to wfh rather than wfh in very restricted circumstances. None of us would choose to juggle a ft job with trying to corral toddlers or get dc to do their school work but that’s very different to wfh when schools, activities and childcare are available.

The fact is our own personal preferences are largely irrelevant in the greater scheme. A shift towards more flexible working does appear to be taking place. In the longer term, as employees have greater clarity on their employers intentions (as opposed to “we’ll see how things are in Oct/Jan/April”) people will be able to make longer term decisions to alleviate the difficulties wfh is currently causing.

For some that will mean looking for an office based job of course as that’s their preference but for example all those young people working from cramped bedrooms in shared houses are only living there in the first place because they needed to be within travelling distance of their job and that’s what they can afford. If they don’t need to be close to work then they have more options about where they live.

I think the uncertainty is going to continue for a lot of us unfortunately and that’s really hard but hopefully down the line what we end up with is greater flexibility in how, where and when we work which has the potential to really improve the day to day lives of so many people.

How do people queue for lifts to get into a lift ar a Canary Wharf Office? Only one person per lift. Surely it would take an hour to actually get in and out of the office!

Companies will offshore whether or not people WFH. They will do whatever saves them the most money.

I agree. I'm not convinced on the argument that because people are wfh more their jobs will be outsourced. Companies already offshore & in some cases it hasn't worked well. Plus some people have always wfh so why were their jobs not offshored. If your doing 2 days in the office & 3 at home how do you offshore that? And if all jobs are offshored where do we get tax revenues from?

@FluffyKittensinabasket not CW but city, no more than 2 in a lift. There seems little point to returning tbh.

If there are no jobs left in the U.K. there will be no taxpayers. No public services. The companies that have offshored will have no customers left in the UK either as nobody could afford to use their services!

So I guess India would be the only country making money if all the jobs get offshored there.

[quote jorgeous]@FluffyKittensinabasket not CW but city, no more than 2 in a lift. There seems little point to returning tbh. [/quote]
Done lifts have taped grids, so numbers depend on size

I’m playing it be ear for now.
My staff have the choice. But if most people choose to work from home, I might sell my building.

Yes, vulnerable husband in fortunate position to work extremely effectively from home with full office set up provided by organisation. Once there is a vaccine/effective treatment he will continue and only attend board meetings and audits in person.
His organisation has been encouraging people to work from home part time for some years now as it has found it produces excellent results. This situation has cemented that and probably 60/70% will continue.

I am interested to see how this affects the job markets in the future. I mean you could realistically have the scope for work for many more organisations than you could before as restricted by commute.

I do think this will be harder to induct and integrate new staff though.

[quote MothAndRabbit]@polnm no it's isn't Durham but thanks for making my point about assumptions around what academics do all day so beautifully for me [/quote]
I need to talk to the course leader as I want to go research in a very specialist area and need to know they have the right staff to support.

Yes but because of the impact of COVID and of course Brexit, not as a result of an increase in wfh. WFH is not what’s going to destroy the economy and cause mass unemployment. For a start it’s just not an option for lots of jobs but also many of those businesses announcing redundancies over the last few months were already in trouble pre Covid and the redundancies would likely have followed the end of the Brexit transition period.

I agree that businesses that struggling were struggling pre Covid but a big & fast switch to more remote working will impact the economy because there is less footfall. Look at the TFL black hole.

I agree with @Desiringonlychild that you will need to be good or unique to survive. I do have spent many a pound on overpriced food that wasn't very nice. I'm in Z3 too & travel all over to eat & would do the same if I lived further out.

All these business waiting to sell their buildings though. Who is going to buy them?

I guess they will need to be turned into housing but there may be opposition as that could suppress prices

JP Morgan have announced a shift to a mix of remote working permanently & they tend to be trendsetters.

Theforest

All these business waiting to sell their buildings though. Who is going to buy them?

Could release desperately needed land for housing?
Not necessarily appealing to average families but we, for example, live in pleasant small NW town in large family house with sizeable gardens. In 5 years or so we would love to downsize to a city centre flat but atm there’s a huge gap in that market for us, everything we see with 2 beds comes with a tiny sitting room, a kitchen our cooker wouldn’t even fit into and a balcony the size of a rabbit hutch.
Conversion to housing or demolishing and rebuilding decent sized apartments that retireE, for example, or young couples with no or one child actually want to live in could solve a few problems.

People can take the ££ they spent on a commute and spend it on heating and home office set up.

I've found my supermarket shop has gone up a lot.

Maybe less stress re commuting will mean less spend by the NHS.

As a line manager, I’d also side eye any of my team who were a little too keen to WFH full time permanently

Why? Because you don't trust them, presumably. So why do you want to employ them at all.

Either you trust your staff or you don't. But even if they're in the office FT you can't see what they are doing every second of every day.

If you are working remote and other similarly skilled employees in different parts of the world are competing for the same job and they want a lower salary they’ll get it. You do not want to be in a global recruitment pool

Don't you think employers would already have outsourced all their work if they thought it was cheaper and easier to do so? Not wanting to be in the office FT doesn't mean never being in the office, and being an hour from the office is much easier for say weekly or monthly face to face meetings than being in New Zealand is.

Also, I am an English qualified lawyer. It wouldn't be that easy for someone overseas to take my job - it takes a while to qualify, even if you are eg qualified in New Zealand and want to cross-qualify. Also, why is everyone assuming those based overseas will be better and cheaper. Isn't the whole point of Brexit that WE will be better and cheaper?

Desiring I agree with you. So restaurants which are for special occasions rather than filling a gap might survive.

Might people choose to spend their restaurant money on artisan local food though and not out out?

As that could suppress prices
You say 'suppress prices' I say 'allow prices to find their natural and sustainable level'

well I agree @Heffalooomia but the powers that be may see it as suppression! 😆