If you can do your job from home then it can be done from India...

[Bewareoftheblob]

This is what my brother has been told by his employers. He works in a small office in a city centre and can work remotely. He admits that their efficiency, especially in terms of the quality of customer service, has been compromised by the team working from home.

They've all been told to go back to the office from mid September, which he is reluctant to do, mainly because he dislikes the commute and has enjoyed being at home with his wife and toddler.

When he (and, I think, some other team members) requested an extension to working from home, they were told in no uncertain terms to get back in to the office, and that they should be wary because 'if you can do your job from home, it can probably be done from India', which my brother has taken as a threat of redundancy.

They were also asked if they didn't feel guilty about the impact they were having on the economy and other people's livelihood - I assume they meant transport/Costa/Pret etc. They were asked to have more of a community spirit. It's a pretty informal place, not very 'corporate' which is why I assume it's been worded in this way!

What do you think? I'm torn to be honest, I totally understand why my brother wants to work from home, but whilst I don't think his company expressed themselves very well, I can see their point too.

So I suppose it's more are they being unreasonable rather than am I being unreasonable!

the latest research is showing nine tenths of those now wfh want to continue

WTAF?!

I hope that is incorrect and / or misreported

@Aridane

the latest research is showing nine tenths of those now wfh want to continue

WTAF?!

I hope that is incorrect and / or misreported

That may include those who were doing so already by choice, for at least some people of the time, and who are set up for it.

Working from home used to be the norm for women, and quite a lot of men, pre the industrial revolution.

‘India is not the problem. There are plenty of places in the UK where people will do the same job for less.’

‘Good. Let’s spread the wealth and opportunities round the country a bit.’

If an employer can easily spread the opportunity around the country say from Surrey to Glasgow because they can find someone to do the job for £20k less. What’s to stop them from moving that job to The Netherlands where most people speak English very well or New Zealand where wages are lower and people speak English?

I would be very wary of working for an employer who has already made the decision, just 6 months into this crisis, to close their office and mandate everyone working from home. It sounds good now but take it to it’s potentially logical conclusion. It’s not only call centre rule jobs that can be outsourced. Any job which is mainly computer based and non physical can be outsourced including highly skilled roles.

My role is specialised and technical and I also have to be creative, I’m not easy to replace but that doesn’t mean I’m the only person in the world who can do my job. The advantage I have at the moment is that I have the unique skills AND can go to their office. That was part of my original contract. If I lose the advantage of being available to go into the office then suddenly a fuck ton more people worldwide can do my job, I’m not so unique anymore. The only remaining ace I have left is that the majority of the potential pool of rivals is based in Silicon Valley so cost more than me and I guess I could take one of their jobs WFH more cheaply because U.K. doesn’t pay Silicon Valley money.

However, if you’re an accountant, recruitment consultant, HR operations support, PA and diary organiser, even a lawyer, Nicky in Aukland or Rebecca in Amsterdam is just as qualified as you (they can study for U.K. qualifications abroad), can speak English just as well as you, understand UK culture, fits in with your company company culture and is ready to work for less.

Again , if the tech works, you don’t have a physical office and you never see your team physically anyway, why move a job from Surrey to Hull to save £10k when you can move it even further and save £20k? Nobody is special and most companies have learned lessons from the failures of Call centres who moved to India. They won’t replicate them, the jobs will move to countries who are cheaper who speak English well and it won’t be the low skilled jobs, it will be the highly skilled ones.

Leaving aside the India thing, which may well have been a factual statement btw, the fact that productivity has been impacted is quite serious and would call fr action in anyone's job . I would also like to stay at home with my family ... this is a viable excuse for him?? Tell him to move his arse or change his job .

A lot of employees have become quite entitled whilst living in a bubble WFH. Some think a company exists to support their preferred lifestyle and think their jobs are bulletproof. They can’t see the risks. Employers will be looking closely at those who will use every excuse not to go back to the office.

IT is already in India (and doesn't work).

Can’t see them lasting very long then.

That was my comment, and yes it will. The company doesn't care, it saves millions a year because the IT for the whole company is in India. The issues are raised constantly, it's in every staff survery but we were told to become better at fixing our own issues.
The same with the recent off shoring of all the HR and admin jobs. The people in manila have to work 5pm to midnight to be available for the UK staff. The UK based people like myself regularly worked outside of core hours - evenings, weekends etc, and whilst the company realise there will be a fundamental change in how they operate - again it saves them millions on the payroll alone so they don't care. With all those jobs gone, they can dramatically reduce the office space, especially in London. It's all about money unfortunately.

Employers will be looking closely at those who will use every excuse not to go back to the office.

Or, as in my job, where we have all been told to work from home forever and the offices have been closed, they are looking closely at those who want to go back to the office. Those staff will be pushed out if they don’t accept the new work from home contract.

Daisy can you say what sector you are in?

There is also a myriad of countries where English is spoken. It’s not just UK or India. I know people in a whole office-based industry where the jobs (creative, need perfect English) were outsourced to South Africa. (India was tried but rejected). And another where some jobs went to the United States (low workers’ rights, little holiday).

But the Netherlands is not cheaper and the time difference for NZ makes it difficult for any customer-"facing" role.

Honestly, if it were so easy to outsource jobs it would have been done by now. It's not like it hasn't been an option or known about for a while.

the time difference for NZ makes it difficult for any customer-"facing" role.

But the time difference is a plus point! It means companies don’t need to pay staff in the UK extra to work irregular hours, or during the night. It means they can be customer facing 24/7, or that urgent job can be done before staff in the UK have woken up.

If anyone has completely closed their office what is it you do?

I can’t imagine how it works long term if you have clients that you need to meet.

‘Honestly, if it were so easy to outsource jobs it would have been done by now. It's not like it hasn't been an option or known about for a while.’

This is untrue. Companies were reluctant because they saw barriers especially around tech. They had no real reason to try it out. Covid meant that they were forced to change their models and upgrade their IT. They can now see that outsourcing isn’t that hard. The use of Teams and Zoom has been shown to be effective. Some companies have bought software which can basically spy on employees WFH. Some people are almost chained to their desks and taking less breaks etc because of the spyware.

Some companies are now as keen on WFH as some employees but they have different motivations. Your job can be done by someone in America, Canada, NZ, Australia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Nigeria etc etc. It really just isn’t call centre jobs at risk now we can see how good the tech to allow WFH is.

@MarshaBradyo depends on the business. There are places near us that exist to rent out rooms for meetings or seminars. We do have a building but sometimes use them if our meeting space is busy. But actually the most common place (in our line) to meet clients is on site.

I can’t imagine how it works long term if you have clients that you need to meet.

But I don’t need to meet them actually in person. That’s why I can have colleagues in Europe, Australia, the US, etc. I meet them all online.

We do still have expectations from clients about meeting in person in our sector. It’ll stop many companies completely closing. They’ll be more flexible though about wfh.

For me the biggest problem of wfh is developing and supporting new staff.

I was talking to an old colleague last night. He now works for a fairly new organisation with lots of young staff, he has about 30 years experience in the industry.

He has loved wfh, it gives him 3 hours per day extra spare time, so you can understand that and he says he is far more productive because he's not constantly interrupted by colleagues who need help....or dealing with the complaints caused by the inexperienced staff....

I think a lot of peole who think they are more productive at home are living in their own bubble, looking only at their narrow part of the business and not seeing the bigger picture as we used to say

@Aridane

the latest research is showing nine tenths of those now wfh want to continue

WTAF?!

I hope that is incorrect and / or misreported

It was in The Guardian and while the 9 out of 10 figure is sort of true, if you look at the figures more closely that just means that 9 out of 10 would like to WFH in some capacity - maybe 1 or 2 days a week. It didn't mean they wanted to never return to the worplace at all. The figure who wanted to WFH exclusively was a lot smaller. Can't remember the exact figures but you can look up the Guardian article.

he's not constantly interrupted by colleagues who need help....

But why isn’t he interrupted? I’m interrupted in the same way as before with colleagues needing help, and indeed I will ask others too. It’s no different to how it was before. It’s all done via Skype, phone calls, screen shares, Teams etc.

I work in software and half our team are in India

It’s less cheaper but less productive, I always suspect the developers I work with do 2 or 3 jobs simultaneously, making good money. It means that if I slack them a question/request, it can take anything from 1 minute to 1 hour (1 day) to get a reply. This means our workflow is very slow, as things bottleneck on them uploading a fix or responding.

It means I (and my colleagues here) am a lot less productive than I could be as well.

It is a false gain, in my situation.

The MD is recruiting to get more U.K. based staff to replace the Indian developers.

That’s just anecdotal

But in software it is very hard to control/oversee how much time someone is actually working on a project.

Outsourcing to India has its disadvantages

They can still ask but they don't, they struggle on and/or guess leading to issues for customers, or what they have actually seen is that productivity for the inexperienced staff is next to nothing. They doubt know what to do, so they do nothing.

Also a lot of the stuff he picks up to support others (having worked with him in the past and benefited from his support) with be where he has overheard someone struggling, rather than where someone has specifically asked for help, the way that you do when you're working as a team, but only if you know about it.

If course that's not how it should be and the company will need to find a way to deal with it, but for them atm, the most straightforward answer is to have everyone back in.

"But in software it is very hard to control/oversee how much time someone is actually working on a project."

But surely that's the same for developers wfh (or indeed in an office) in UK?

I've not read the full thread.

But it sounds like your brother is being a bit mard (unless he has health issues that mean he needs to shield? In which case that's different and should be considered by work)

He took that job knowing the commute, and working in an office. Not working at home.

Working from was the law for most places during the worst of covid. Now covid is being controlled his employer has every right to expect staff to return to the office as long as it meets standards for protecting staff from covid.

If staff are resisting going back they need to consider whether they would be happy with losing their job and someone desperate for employment and happy to get off their arse filling their shoes.

Nobody should feel pressured into spending money to support the economy but they should expect to go return to their normal work setting if that's what the business needs.

Your job can be done by someone in America, Canada, NZ, Australia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Nigeria etc etc. It really just isn’t call centre jobs at risk now we can see how good the tech to allow WFH is.

If this is really the case then nothing will stop it. Us wanting to continue to wfh or not isn’t going to make any difference. If companies want to do this, reduce their costs and outsource, then they will.

The genie is out the bottle. We now know the technology works and we can work from home. If bosses are going to realise it would be better to outsource all these jobs - well then they just have.

I would run the entire economy differently. No outsourcing. More local and ultra local. A different model of capitalism with socialist elements integrated.

@daisypond

he's not constantly interrupted by colleagues who need help....

But why isn’t he interrupted? I’m interrupted in the same way as before with colleagues needing help, and indeed I will ask others too. It’s no different to how it was before. It’s all done via Skype, phone calls, screen shares, Teams etc.

I was relatively new in position when lockdown started, and also got shifted to work that was totally new to me as part of our response to Covid. I find that in practice it's much harder to ask via these ways if it's people that you don't already know well, and that most people would set the threshold much higher before they decided they 'need' to ask. Some of my colleagues talk about how brilliant it is not being interrupted so they can really concentrate without thinking about what the impact on my productivity is if they take a full working day, because they're concentrating on something else, to answer a query on Teams that I would have previously asked and got an immediate response. I made one major fuck-up that I wouldn't have done if I had been able to ask someone else to just glance over it for me, as I would have in the office but I think most people find it much harder to ask those 'can I just double-check...' questions when it requires booking in a Zoom call than when the person is a desk away.