To agree that colleagues moving out of London are doing the right thing

[disorganisedsecretsquirrel]

'Base office' is in South London. I have WFH for years so this is not about me...

Colleagues have been WFH since lockdown.. most had done at least one day a week at home for years ( because we have a sane boss ) .. then Covid happened and it became apparent to all that we had never 'needed' to be there..

Now our department (Civil Service) has closed our office. to us - to make room for those who have to see the public/ need to be in the office. So my colleagues have started to make moves.. we are a team of 16. So far, 2 have made offers on properties in Devon and Cornwall, 2 in Norfolk /Suffolk , 1 in the lakes (lucky bugger) and one to Sussex. (All previously in South London.

Our contracts have been changed to WFH (if we chose this) ..

AIBU to say that the government push to get 'everyone back in the office' does not reflect the reality of what people want.. mostly to do with the commute.. (cost of) and quality of life.. my lovely colleague going to Wales is swapping a 1 bed in Streatham for a 3 bed small holding for half the cost of her current mortgage . She has 2 kids that share a room and her and DH sleep on a sofa bed !

There's been quite a bit on the news in the last few days about the increase in people looking at properties in the Highlands and Islands. Not just people from the UK, but people from Hong Kong, Singapore, China etc. I'm assuming they will not be selling their main homes, just looking for a rural bolthole. These areas and others in the UK (Cornwall, Lake District, North Wales) are rapidly becoming places where locals are being priced out of property and they are ghost towns outside tourist season.

I would be taxing them up the wazoo......

If the job is 100% remote, then yes usually the weighting would go, when there is a formal London weighting element to the salary.

No, that can’t be right. London weighting is designed to cover the increased cost of living, particularly housing, in London. If someone already lives in London, is then told their job will now be WFH, it would be wrong for them to lose a chunk of their salary. It would be a huge cut in pay.

It may be good for some but I personally have realised that I hate WFH. To have the choice yes. My exDH loves it. Good to have a choice though.

I have been working from home for a day or 2 a week for years.

But I think you need to be in the office at least 2 days a week.

This is an interesting experiment, and I think it will work out if you just basically want to do the same job for years. But I think if you want to climb the career ladder you will need to be putting some face time in at the head office.

Also as previously stated, if you move to an inexpensive location, you won't be getting to many pay rises. Your pay will just stagnant to the point where you are getting the norm for that job in that area.

But I think if you want to climb the career ladder you will need to be putting some face time in at the head office.

And what if there isn’t a head office any more, because all the offices have been shut?

I think your colleagues are being very reasonable, & it's in no way unique. The areas of London that aren't all that great, apart from being 'near to London', are going to see a mass exodus by those who can.

It made sense paying £600-£700k for a 3 bed semi in a medium crime area, when you had to be in central London 5 days a week at 8AM.

If you only have to be in 1 day a week, WFH all other days, have flexi time etc, why on earth would you stay there? Move a couple of hours out, have a large 5 bed detached house with big garden for the kids & his/hers home offices, still be able to get into the office when needed.

I predict the 'nice' commuter towns outside the M25 are going to be in particular demand, even more so than now - Guildford, Hertford, Winchester etc.

Flip side of the coin - the 'London weighting' for salaries that currently exists is definitely going to be put under pressure in the near future...

I live in north west Wales and house prices have shot up. Quite a few areas were out of reach of local incomes before COVID, it seems to have worsened significantly.

I'm worried that my children will never be able to buy a house in this area and I'm also very worried about the threat to the Welsh language.

I love London ( grew up in a much smaller semi rural town) . I also love looking at beautiful country houses we could afford if we moved.
However I can't WFH in my current job,so not much decision making there, but in reality the thought of a remote small holding in Wales for more than a week would fill me with horror.
The kids will have to be driven everywhere, its a trek for a pint of milk etc etc
Totally agree with each to his/her own though

Anyone who is in a settled family environment will be happier working from home than a young graduate who relies on the workplace for socializing - not necessarily outside of work hours, but also during them. I loved my coffee breaks and lunches with colleagues when I was a graduate - usually enjoying seeing people who weren't in my team.

This is really pertinent - all this WFH is fine for people who are the settled stage of life - but it must be shit for anyone starting in their careers. I LOVED going into work when I was in my 20s, socialising with colleagues after work, making friends and contacts, and I learned a HUGE amount from just observing my more experienced colleagues - how they interacted with one another, helped one another out, asked favours and returned them, etc. Work etiquette is something that isn't taught, it has to be learned and I'd never have learned all that if I'd been sitting at the dining table in my shared house with my two housemates, all of us trying to do different jobs in different companies. As usual, it will be the young who get shafted.

This Covid pandemic won't go on forever, yet it seems a lot of business leaders are assuming it will and making plans accordingly - jettisoning office space, telling workers they can work from home permanently, etc. I think it's really short-sighted. This IS indeed a 'six-month experiment' and I suspect that 12 months from now this crisis will larger be over.

@MintyCedric

Do you or your daughter's place of work have any vacancies?!

I'd bloody love to work from home f/t.

Massive recruitment in the civil service at the moment across loads of departments.. I have always found CS a very flexible employer as a working mother. I have variously worked Full time . 9-5. /Flexi hours (and hours I liked as long as averaged 37 over 6 weeks. / Flexi term time only with wages averaged throughout the year.. all in all - despite being on my own with them between the ages of 3-9 .. I only needed a child minder of youngest for about 18 months..

Now I am older and hate the commute - not to mention the cost.. I am loving the WFH. I can't do the entire job from home bit with the exception of a couple of days every couple of months when I need to use a police station... I am completely self contained at home ..

Daughter works for large international internet advertising corporate. This pay strategy has been implemented internationally.. not just London.. sadly I can't see the CS doing that! .. no matter how much we save them in building lease costs ..

People who think they will retain the London weighting of their salary while working from home are going to have a painful surprise, I think.

@GnomeDePlume and @nicebreeze absolutely not intending to be spiteful / overly doom mongering, this is just my expectation of what my work will do! I can’t see them amending people’s contracts to ‘home based’. Rather, they will just permit home working. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised and then opportunities will open up.

I still think we need to wait until at least spring 2021 to see how things settle. Others will disagree, and that’s fine. I just think making permanent shifts in working pattens because of how we had to rapidly adapt in an emergency situation is a little knee jerk.

I admit I am worried about Londoners with high wages will start to move to our local towns and drive up our house prices.

WFH is great but I can't see it in the future being a permeant fixture. I love to have 50-50 style of WFH and office. You still need to socialise at work and how would you progress in your career if your not networking.

[quote Motheroftwofeline]**@GnomeDePlume* and @nicebreeze* absolutely not intending to be spiteful / overly doom mongering, this is just my expectation of what my work will do! I can’t see them amending people’s contracts to ‘home based’. Rather, they will just permit home working. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised and then opportunities will open up.

I still think we need to wait until at least spring 2021 to see how things settle. Others will disagree, and that’s fine. I just think making permanent shifts in working pattens because of how we had to rapidly adapt in an emergency situation is a little knee jerk.[/quote]
It may be unrealistic in the short term as people are likely to be less bold when it comes to making decisions about their careers in an uncertain economic climate, but the hope has always been that employers who don't trust employees and offer some flexibility will not attract the best people who will opt to work for more progressive, agile employers

I think that’s the key though - will they just be ‘progressive and agile’ and permit employees to wfh as they wish (but also have offices open and available) or will they actually move to mandatory wfh. The two are quite different. I would actually prefer the first, even if that did mean I had to bear the costs of travel occasionally. However, I probably wouldn’t move too far away from London for that reason.

I work in the public sector, we're all still wfh with no date for even a partial return to the office, I'm expecting my base to close. The civil service people I meet with regularly are all wfh haven't seen a single one in an office setting so far, although a few have a photo of their office as their background.

I'm lucky that I have space at home but I'd I'm wfh permanently more than 50% of the time I'll make some changes, more sockets, bigger desk, different furniture, so I'm more comfortable. I've got colleagues who are thinking of moving (we're in the midlands) because they don't need to commute to the office and they can get a house with room for an office further away from the city office location, others are thinking they don't need two cars or they can save on wrap around childcare.

I'm not sure the extra few pounds tax relief will make up for the additional heating in winter, so financially not positive for me.

how would you progress in your career if your not networking.

You upskill, take courses, apply for jobs, ask for mentoring, shadowing etc. The demise of “networking” would be a good thing if it means people no longer can get jobs by making sure their face fits and sucking up to people.

As far as I understand the Civil Service.. (my department ) We are still being encouraged to WFH if we can by our bosses - yet the bosses -boss.. (BJ worked with strings by DC) is telling them we need to get back to work. So yet more in consistency from them for a change..

Meanwhile we have a massive recruitment going on. So there just isn't room for everyone.. without leasing more property or WFH...

My main concern is that this is going to end up as a big divide between people.

Those who can (WFH) and those who can't .. let's face it. WFH is a big financial saving .The commute round here is £500 pm add to that cheaper childcare costs, and the fact that in my departments lower paid jobs are mostly the people who have to be in the office. I can see quite a lot of unhappiness in the horizon. Which will need to be dealt with.

We are nominally back in the office two days per week but as those days are Monday & Friday I can see it working out as less frequent.

I am in the middle of my first WFH office move. It is quite exciting as I get to choose where to sit and what colour the walls are going to be!

@Bouncycastle12

People who think they will retain the London weighting of their salary while working from home are going to have a painful surprise, I think.

The way ours will work is that those who choose to move to anWFH contract will not receive pay increases until their national pay reaches their London weighted pay. - for example, our London weighting is £3200. So if salary is £45 k in London .. we go on mark-time of £45k until the national salary reaches that.. but as a commute round here is £500 a month WFH commuters are all ready saving £6k a year.. This is the part that is going to be very unfair on some.!

@daisypond

how would you progress in your career if your not networking.

You upskill, take courses, apply for jobs, ask for mentoring, shadowing etc. The demise of “networking” would be a good thing if it means people no longer can get jobs by making sure their face fits and sucking up to people.

Fully agree. Networking (aka nepotism) is wrong on so many levels. It should be the best person for the job, not who you know. It's exactly why so many people end up hopelessly out of their depth in jobs they're incapable of doing.

@Bouncycastle12

People who think they will retain the London weighting of their salary while working from home are going to have a painful surprise, I think.

Exactly. Short term, maybe, but 5-10 years down the line, wages will become more equal between London based and regional based workers. Why would a firm pay more when they could get cheaper workers in the regions?

@Pipandmum exactly this.
We moved back in Jan uary this year after living in the West Country for15/20 years.Now the kids are young adults much more fun to be here!

WFH is a big financial saving

Yes, for the company. For workers who already live in London, they aren’t saving much at all. They still have to pay for their housing, their childcare, their expensive cinema tickets etc. A short trip on the bus or tube to get to work is negligible in the scheme of things. Many will cycle. Many of my co-workers actually walk. London weighting is designed for the increased costs of London living, not for living outside and commuting in.

@Chicchicchicchiclana

You assume that everyone's dream is living in the countryside not London. I think you're quite wrong there.

Absolutely agree, even if I did work from home I wouldn’t move to the countryside, can’t think of anything worse!