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!

it's happening and it's a very good thing.

That remains very much to be seen.

Plus what is a 'very good thing' for one person could be a disaster for another.

Plus what is a 'very good thing' for one person could be a disaster for another.

so is having to commute for 2 or 3 hours a day and have your mental health seriously suffering from working in an office

I have been working from home since March and being in a cramped space in the corner of my bedroom, sitting on a dining room chair and working from a 14" screen has led to a drop in efficiency. I'm working more hours than ever now and I feel I can't switch off from work.

I can't wait to get back to the office. Even if only for a couple of days a week, some structure would help. If I had a job that was just as easy to do from home then I think my productivity would be up. But as it stands, I think the responsible thing for myself and your brother is to get back.

Having said that, I resent the idea that we are somehow responsible for people losing their jobs in places that charge £3 for a tea.

I understand why you would want to ditch the commute, is there a half way house, wfh part of the week?
I think there is a danger that if companies remove the need to be in the office that they will widen the net when looking for employees in the future , not necessarily India but if you can do a " london" job from Hull why just employ people from the home counties

I put my hands up, I was (very pleasantly) surprised by the amount of people who have been recruited and started new jobs during the lockdown. I was expecting a completely empty months and it really hasn't been the case.

Businesses who had to stay close (entertainment, fitness etc..) have suffered, but others have kept working very efficiently.

Service offices with flexible and daily or hourly rentals will benefit hugely, but so are many office workers.

@FluffyKittensinabasket

I’m looking forward to universal basic income when there aren’t any jobs left. No more employer to be beholden to.

Who is going to pay for that if there's no jobs? If your work is something which can be replaced by automation or 'offshored', then you need to try to figure out what you can do which still needs a local human. There are many such roles. Some are highly skilled, requiring education/training/experience which not everyone can acquire, but there will always be service roles.

Cafes etc can always change to be delivery services instead. Lots did that during covid, the model hasn't changed. They managed, why can't Costa? Delivery service plus shops for takeaway. Everyone wins. There's places doing that here still. Restaurants with delivery and a restaurant.

Those who won't adapt won't survive.

As others have said, enjoying being at home with his wife and child is not a good enough reason to warrant not going back to the office.
Hopefully they can work out a compromise.

Thing is that Costa / Pret are all very expensive, and the first suggestion that comes up on any budgeting advice is bring lunch from home...

If office workers have enjoyed the extra ability to save for stuff they want they are more likely to stick with instant coffee and bring a sandwich even if back in the office!

I'd probably have lunch "out" no more than once a week as a treat if working in an office, and it wouldn't be pret (unless they had goulash soup), I'd be getting sushi or bento type food as that's not something I can make at home.

In the same way that I only go out for pizza for the company because the home cooked options are easy and not that much worse, I not interested in paying over the odds for a basic sandwich!

To an extent the economy has to evolve, all Covid has done is bring forward inevitable changes.

I also agree that universal basic income will arrive in the foreseeable future...

On the original question I think the company is pointing out that the job could be done "ok" from India so prove that you can do it better than someone in one of the outsourcing centres!

I think we should have tea vans, like ice cream vans, that come round with posh coffee and cake for the home workers :D

He has obviously become very removed from what’s going on in the real world, many many people won’t have jobs by next year. If I were him I’d be hopping on one leg and whistling the tune of their choice if it demonstrated I was the employee they needed to hold onto when the axe falls. He needs to pull his head out of the bubble it seems to have become stuck in and start getting back to normal, he had a nice summer at home, that’s over now. Now is when the real costs of all this will start to kick in, there is no magic money tree, no industry is immune.

@KeepingPlain

Cafes etc can always change to be delivery services instead. Lots did that during covid, the model hasn't changed. They managed, why can't Costa? Delivery service plus shops for takeaway. Everyone wins. There's places doing that here still. Restaurants with delivery and a restaurant.

Those who won't adapt won't survive.

Deliver to where? How can city centres run a business delivering a cold £4 latte to a house in the suburbs?

The point is that there is no longer the market for these cafes as there are much fewer people in town centres. Again, individuals aren't obliged to keep these cafes in business, but thousands of businesses going bankrupt is obviously not good for the economy.

If office workers have enjoyed the extra ability to save for stuff they want they are more likely to stick with instant coffee and bring a sandwich even if back in the office!

on the other hand, they can be so fed up of having to cook non-stop, they will be delighted to grab a sandwich on the school run or coming out of the gym before work.

That’s a stupid argument for a start. Don’t they care about the economy? Sending jobs to India and putting your brother and colleagues out of work doesn’t exactly boost our economy. Not everyone who works in a city centre spends extra money there either although obviously lots do.

The business sound awful phrasing things like that but it’s a bit of a funny one. Lockdown has eased now and presuming they have done risk assessments and have safety measures in place they are entitled to decide how the business is run. If productivity or customer service in this case is suffering and they don’t envisage large-scale home working as part of the future then staff will have to go back or try to negotiate.

I don’t blame your brother for not liking the commute, but if he wants the job he will have to suck it up.

However it irks that I'm losing so many personal and role related positives just to prop up Leon and Eat
I agree, and knowing it might be a reason why people will be asked to go back to the office I imagine a good number of people won't start spending there again but take their own lunch/coffee instead.

@LivingDeadGirlUK

I think we should have tea vans, like ice cream vans, that come round with posh coffee and cake for the home workers :D

YES!

They can start the day around schools and gyms instead of train stations, and drive around. They would do a roaring business, I am amazed that hasn't been done more - but a few pubs/sandwich shops and many cake shops are delivering around here now.

What is their reason for not working as well from home?

No clue. He doesn't actually like WORKING from home, just likes BEING at home. I get the impression that him and his team actually had a good time at work and that the dynamic of the office made sure things got done in a way that they don't get done remotely. It's not the actual job though, the job can be done just as well remotely as it can in an office.

Maybe they should sack them all and start again.

That is a point though, how are new starters going to be trained if every is at home? My job cannot be done from home so I've no real experience in this.

Cities can (over time) change their purpose. They used to be places people lived rather than just commuted to. I would love it for towns and cities to have a bigger, more mixed living community. That's more sustainable than expecting an influx of office/other workers to endure a long uncomfortable, expensive, polluting commute just to prop up some sandwich shops (which are also uncomfortable, expensive and polluting).

Agree that people with easily replicable jobs should be very worried about being outsourced. Similarly it opens up world opportunities if other companies are happy to draw on a global, WFH workforce.

@Mintychoc1

I find these attitudes so annoying. As someone who has worked (not at home) throughout, it’s really irritating hearing people whining about having to go back to work. Life isn’t all about baking banana bread and crocheting bloody rainbows.

This.

The employer says they are not as productive. If he doesn't like it, he needs to quit so he can stay home with his wife and toddler.

If you’re not able to do your job to the same standard then I agree, go back to the office.

But expecting people to endure an unpleasant commute and have a worse work/ life balance just to support McJobs is totally unreasonable.

You don’t deliberately make people ill just so they make use of the doctors. Similarly the service industry need to go where the people are, not the other way round. (I don’t mean this analogy related to Covid in any way, just a cart before the horse example).

Those businesses are there because people needed to be in city centre offices. If we don’t, then yes some of those businesses will no longer be required in those locations. The answer isn’t to force people to use them artificially by completely rearranging their lives inconveniently.

On the positive side loads of new little businesses are popping up already in the local area where I live.

If you want to work from home but your productivity is impaired because of lack of suitable equipment and/or an appropriate space (as the OP suggests applies to her DB) then those things need to be addressed. If in theory you should be able to work from home then your employer might be expected to help with the former - my company had everyone take their computer stuff inc peripherals home, and funded buying proper chairs or whatever as necessary. But housing is your responsibility. If he wants to wfh long term maybe he needs to find somewhere else - maybe somewhere less good for commuting.

Ultimately, maybe some of the solution will be to reinvent cities as places where people want to live and have their social life, regardless of where they work. I've noticed a nearby nice small city, the flow of traffic at peak times seems to be as much outwards as inwards. The concept of a city as a place where people work but few live was probably due for an upheaval anyway.

There is a column in The Times today which discusses some of these issues - the writer thinks office working isn't dead yet.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-bet-the-house-on-working-from-home-jvnzrfp5n?shareToken=f9877ae69833609154216b1e0efc7d29

I don't think his employer are being unreasonable.

I've been WFH since March, I too much prefer it and don't want to go back. Have been told I need to go back in September and will do so without a moan.

Maybe your brother should find a new job that he can do from home

@BrieAndChilli

There is an interwoven web of dependency across the whole of the economy. So no-one currently cares about the coffee shop workers, suit tailors who’s main business is London’s city business men, Uber drivers ferrying business people to meetings, sandwich caterers, newspaper stands, etc etc who are losing business and jobs left right and centre. But in a few months these jobless many will not be buying insurance or buying new houses and getting mortgages, won’t be investing money in pensions or shares or isa’s then all those bankers and lawyers will have much less work to do and there will be redundancies aplenty, wonder if they will be pushing for everyone to go back to offices then!’!?!

I absolutely understand that the economy is a network, but that's not a reason to force society to shape itself to preserve jobs that are no longer needed. What we should do is make sure we have good social safety nets (yes, potentially including universal basic income) and real, practical and financial support for people and the families of people who want to retrain or start a business, or to make gig-economy work a practical way to earn a reliable income.

I think furlough has been a missed opportunity. We could have used the money to enable a wide and diverse set of people to take 3 month full time online digital / coding / security bootcamps - not individual self-directed courses on Udemy etc but proper professional training including how to structure work in teams to deliver projects. It would have massively increased our tech skills base which we keep hearing is too low.

The number of you who think it's only the actual barista working at Costa who will be affected amazes me.

Also, the businesses which adapted during lockdown; yes, many did. I know a number of our local businesses only broke even doing so though. And maybe that will change but the numbers going to my local Tesco suggest many people have already forgotten how awesome their local greengrocer/butcher/bakery was during lockdown. Even if long term we see a redistribution of jobs away from city centres (hope your pension funds aren't too heavily invested in commercial property!) and new cafes etc spring up in the suburbs, cliff edge change like this is going to have a huge number of casualties. Same with wealth redistribution across the UK - a great thing, and something that has been a long time coming (if it comes) but still shit for all the people who have houses/flats in the South East that are no longer desirable and can't sell them due to lack of buyers/negative equity.