to think WFH is going to permanent for most who have switched?

[elmouno]

I was chatting with someone earlier and I said that most people currently working from home will be working from home now permanently. There will be no switch back to the offices in the city.

The other person disagreed and said people will have to go back. If they don't too much of the city economies will collapse which will affect the overall economy (i.e. no coffee, lunch, rail tickets, cleaners etc) that it would be catastrophic.

I'm guessing that businesses will be forced to change, but maybe not? Am I being unreasonable to assume that all the people now working from home will be doing so permanently?

Are people really using Zoom that often? For us it's mostly Slack.

@RoseTintedAtuin

The economy will adjust... reports suggest it’s already started it will just move from being so city focused to being more spread out. The problem is the rich don’t want this as they invest in city’s.

The rich will be fine. They'll adjust (as advised by many here). They'll still have their nice comfy spacious homes in the shires to WFH in.

It's the poor who'll suffer. Those who work in (rather than own) city centre coffee shops, cafes, shops, bars, restaurants, shoe repairers, dry cleaners, postroom staff, taxi drivers, bus drivers, train drivers, office cleaners, etc.

What will people here prefer btw. Tax increase to pay the huge unemployment benefit bill or leaving the poor people to starve to death? For those who happily choose the latter, set aside some money for the private security you might need when desperate and destitute people turn to crime to survive.

@SheepandCow

That's what we were discussing. Other person thinks that there will be more "work from home" tax just to stop this.

@FinnyStory interesting to hear you say this. I all but feel I've lost my line manager. We had a much better relationship in the office.

Now I barely hear from her. I finally grabbed her for an online catch up where she apologised for being absent but nothing has changed. When I ask for her input/help with things I now get it about 25% of the time. I'm still in a fairly junior position

My work is bringing everyone back, it is really annoying

I've had the same problem @Nanny0gg.
Service is really down with many companies.

We're facing a miserable future if we have permanent full-time WFH. People will lose the vital source of support and social interaction that work so often provides (Domestic abuse victims, for example), and we'll become an increasingly insular and isolated society.

The ideal balance for the economy and work/life balance is 50/50 home/office. Unfortunately some of the rich referred to by pp want to put short-term greed (skimping on office space) above what's best long-term for employees and clients alike.

I'm in Australia and where I work it is a huge rigmarole to get approval for people to work from home 1 day per week. 2 days WFH are only in exceptional circumstances. I think it is rather ridiculous. Other places are much more flexible and some haven't returned 100% to the office.

I really fucking hope so, or even just half and half.

Unfortunately I think the majority will end up back in their offices eventually

People might not be so keen once winter sets in and they realise they're heating their homes all day to save their bosses' overheads.

@katy1213

People might not be so keen once winter sets in and they realise they're heating their homes all day to save their bosses' overheads.

Haha I'm saving about £50 a month in train fare, I'd much rather pay the increased fuel bill. Also avoiding lunches, fuel costs when I'm on training days etc. Some people have low commuting costs, most don't.

It's generally not much more expensive to keep the heating on low all day as well.

In the short term (next 2 years?) I think a lot of companies will take the short term saving - and its a huge saving - of closing / reducing offices.

I have spent years WFH on and off, with a lot of travel though, and am used to working in virtual teams. They all work better where strong relationships have been built up. Yes, I might do some work with the Lisbon office and people I’ve never met - but the majority of people on that project will have met in person. Right now, I think WFH works really well because the relationships are in place to carry it through. In two years time:

• existing relationships may have weakened
• turnover will have taken many away

In one of my European head offices, there is so much WFH (pre-Covid) that one department has, “hey - please try to make it into the office on Mon & Tue, so we are a great team” notices. As a team, they voted that they’re happier having (some) real interaction, that supporting new or inexperience staff is better, that mentoring at all levels is better, understanding and contributing to each other’s projects is better...

I think there’ll be a move back to part time office time.

I can see a new industry in large serviced offices - like Regis, but much bigger - to get people together in larger groups regularly.

I think companies will find that their innovation accelerates with more in-person time.

Since we’re only six months into this I think it will take another year for things to settle down. The big question is how will people feel once there’s a vaccine available?

I think it will be a mixture. We’re in Sydney and the city is deserted but the surrounding suburbs have a pleasant busyness to them in the week, when it used to just be mums and kids and older people.
My husband says he will go into the office 1-2 days per week but not the 5 days he did before. It will save him 6-8 hours a week in commuting time.
He’s playing golf early one day a week and heads out on his kayak at dawn once a week, plus gets to be there when the kids come home from school. He can’t see why anyone would want to go back to commuting at his level.
Amongst the younger ones it’s a bit different - we have a study and a house, it’s different if you’re in a shared house or a flat with children. Plus when I was in my 20’s I worked probably 40% for the social life and also needed to be in an office to learn from the more senior people.

@Toilenstripes

Since we’re only six months into this I think it will take another year for things to settle down. The big question is how will people feel once there’s a vaccine available?

I don’t think the vaccine will make a significant difference to how people feel about WFH. Everyone I speak to - or see online - is saying they like WFH because they save money and time. Sometimes huge amounts of both. I don’t see people saying they like WFH because they feel safer, protected from Covid.

Many people travel an hour each way (paying for that) for really quite “ordinary” jobs, not big money. WFH is like a massive payrise - and 2 hours of your life back PER DAY. No early morning, long evenings... give that up because of a vaccine? No way!

It’s likely to be a mixture of WFH and WFO for many for the next year at least, or until there is a vaccine. It won’t be WFH forever in my view. I’m going in 2-3 days a week (huge company employing 40k) but my boss is itching to have us back to get the best out of us.

It's going to vary hugely, depending on the job mostly, but also depending on people's preferences and home circumstances, but I think that it will become very normal to do a mix of home and office. Wfh permanently becomes very isolating after a while. wfh makes it very difficult to integrate new people into the Team. wfh makes it very difficult for new people to learn from more experienced folk.
Much as 'Zoom' (using it to cover all the different platforms) is useful for those 'information giving' type meetings, it isn't the same as a real collaboration when you are all in the same room. OTOH, employees will have a) seen the advantages and b) proved it can work, and employers will see they need to own or rent FAR less expensive City Centre office space.
Yes, the coffee and sandwich shops in the City Centre will suffer, but I think there are likely to be far more coffee shop / work places where people can meet up, outside of the City centre. Business models evolve.
Traffic on the roads and numbers on the trains / buses will likely be reduced - which has to be good for the environment and good for those who still have to travel.

[quote elmouno]@SheepandCow

That's what we were discussing. Other person thinks that there will be more "work from home" tax just to stop this.[/quote]
There are already massive tax implications for the employer and, if you turn a room over to an office at home, capital gains implications for the employee.

Not to mention the employer liability for working environment of home workers and duty of care for their mental health and it’s a ticking time bomb.

(I’ve been going to work 2-3 days a week throughout as have my whole team and anticipate that continuing long term)

I think it may swing back round at least a bit. More research needs to be done, but a couple of recent studies have suggested that communication is fine between people whi work together a lot but drops off a cliff between people who have less functional reason to communicate. I also think that strong team bonds have seen a lot of people through, but we don't know what'll happen over time with new starters etc.

I have been permanently home-based for several years because I live 150 miles from the office. I used to be based at the office but we moved and the company agreed to let me WFH on a permanent basis because of the specialist skills and qualifications that I gave. The rest of the office had been at home since March although they are gradually going back. Our company wants people back as soon as possible because they believe that we work better that way. Also, the Company currently had expensive equipment sitting in people’s homes and insurance and liability is a concern. Our job requires more than just the standard PC and printer. And not everyone has an environment suitable for home working. When I was given the opportunity to work from home full-time it was on the condition that I had a separate room in the house to use exclusively for work, that there are no children in the house whilst I’m working and that I use a camera for conference call-type meetings. It’s not the kind of job you can do on a laptop sitting on a sofa in a dressing gown or at the kitchen table. I do miss the office and sometimes regret moving so far away. Sometimes I travel back there and stay overnight in a hotel and spend a few days working at the office and I notice a subtle difference in how I work. The people I work with are anxious to get back to the office.

We have already been told we will be working with a hybrid model, a mixture of WFT and being in the office. We had been hotdesking in 'neighbourhoods'. Now we have the option to be allocated a desk if in the office more than three days a week or to book an occasional 'touchdown' space.

For any reason, from it making your life easier to your home space not being suitable. So far, the people who have been in have reported that the 'fun' parts of being on campus like having coffee together are still missing.

We have good technology support and work in teams based in different countries so WFH is not very different to being in the office.

Lots of focus on effective information sharing, especially when setting up a new project. It's got to be a good way forward

I certainly hope WFH is less frowned upon than it was

Yes, the coffee and sandwich shops in the City Centre will suffer, but I think there are likely to be far more coffee shop / work places where people can meet up, outside of the City centre

^

Yup. Cafes near me are now packed, everyone on a laptop, working. Way forward. In the suburbs

@MrsMcMuffins

I think people will go back. Remote working all the time is quite lonely, I am fed up with my house also being my place of work and I think it would be difficult to start a new job remotely.

I've started two roles remotely this year.

With a bit of thought, it's actually fine preferable

I certainly hope so.

I’m currently saving 7 hours of commuting time and at least £70 in costs every week by WFH. This makes a significant positive contribution to both my work-life balance and my bank balance. I'm happier and more productive, too

I also think that strong team bonds have seen a lot of people through, but we don't know what'll happen over time with new starters etc.

This ^ 100%