SERIOUSLY??? People may quit if forced to work from home, Rishi Sunak warns ?

[R2221]

No Mr Sunak. Working from home saves me 2 FUCKING HOURS of daily commute + rush hour stress + travel costs.

I work from home now. I am more productive, less stressed and happier.

I just quit! I'm lucky enough to be able to have the option due to advancing years but I kept working because I loved my job and the buzz in the office. Being incarcerated in my spare room for a year, with no prospect of that changing any time soon, just became too much. So far I'm loving it but it's only been a week!

I'm jealous @Chilledchablis! DH has told me to do quit if I can't cope and really I'm waiting to see what happens about going back. We can manage if I leave but it would involve a lot of cutting back.

@Chilledchablis

I just quit! I'm lucky enough to be able to have the option due to advancing years but I kept working because I loved my job and the buzz in the office. Being incarcerated in my spare room for a year, with no prospect of that changing any time soon, just became too much. So far I'm loving it but it's only been a week!

Love this, fab news! Enjoy your new found freedom :)

I'd love to continue to work from home. My 90 minute commute is not a happy one. I'm stressed and not definitely not happy standing all the way to london and paying dearly for the pleasure.

@Sansaplans
Thank you so much - I'll do my best! x

I bet the people so keen on going back to go to the office will be the ones jumping at the choice of "working from home" on Fridays and Mondays... and will expect others to cover for them then.

@whetherpigshavewings

I bet the people so keen on going back to go to the office will be the ones jumping at the choice of "working from home" on Fridays and Mondays... and will expect others to cover for them then.

Why do you think that?

It's fine for companies to ask employees to come back one or 2 days in the office, as long as it's not on Mondays and Fridays..

Why do you think that? confused
because it's the days piss-takers tend to be "off sick" in general? It's not new....

I would prefer a Friday as the roads are much quieter.

I live in Norfolk. All the commercial co-working hubs seem to be in Norwich city centre area. My workplaces have been 3 miles out from Norwich, which I commuted to from rural home.

If someone in my position wanted to use a hub -- they'd have commuter costs AND have to pay for £90-£150/month for semi-public office space. Not cheaper at all.

@lljkk

I live in Norfolk. All the commercial co-working hubs seem to be in Norwich city centre area. My workplaces have been 3 miles out from Norwich, which I commuted to from rural home.

If someone in my position wanted to use a hub -- they'd have commuter costs AND have to pay for £90-£150/month for semi-public office space. Not cheaper at all.

If your place of work is the office you could claim the expenses of travelling from there to the hub. For now at least if your employer isn't opening the office.

Sunak doesn’t care that if you do or don’t want to go back to the office. He doesn’t give two hoots that you don’t miss the commute, have time to exercise and whether you think you work more efficiently from home. He is the chancellor. He needs tax. He needs our pension funds to thrive. He will do his level best to get people back to work in offices and workplaces because of the impact on transport (HS2, anyone?), commercial property rent, childcare and yes, the Pret effect. It might be that there is some wiggle room now as they watch to see how it evens out (some love working from home; some hate it) but if it has a negative effect on what pours into the coffers, you will all be back into work. There are all sorts of clever schemes he can use to make it happen. I reckon there will be a year’s grace whilst the government watch to see if the local economy is pumped up enough by home workers to fund the country’s needs.

@whetherpigshavewings

Why do you think that? confused because it's the days piss-takers tend to be "off sick" in general? It's not new....

But I don't get it, you're judging those who want to be back in the office for wanting to be at home Monday and Friday to work, but seemingly nothing against those who want to all the time, which would also include Mondays and Fridays?

Not sure about that, DGR. When I worked for NHS, we could only claim for travel distances that was in excess of our commute distance. So 3 miles from usual workplace would be irrelevancy for me.

For instance, I live at A, B was my usual office, C was a place we had many meetings. Occasional meetings at site D.

Distance B-C = 5 miles.
Distance A-B = 17 miles.
Distance A-C = 17 miles.
Distance B-C < 17 miles
Distance A-D = 34 miles.
Therefore, any travel between B & C -- could not claim this mileage. But I could claim for the excess for driving (34 extra miles round trip) to get to site D.

@whetherpigshavewings

I bet the people so keen on going back to go to the office will be the ones jumping at the choice of "working from home" on Fridays and Mondays... and will expect others to cover for them then.

Actually I think it's the people advocating for a blended model that will be keen to wfh on Mondays and Fridays. People who want to be back in the office (I am one of them) are quite happy to go back to their previous working arrangements. And, if you working from home requires someone to "cover for you", by definition, your job is not actually suitable for wfh.

I understand the issues around the rail service needing commuters to survive but the rail companies only have themselves to blame for people wanting to avoid commuting in future as they made it so damned unpleasant for their customers, for their own benefit. Season tickets costing thousands, with no 'part-time' or flexible options, trains rammed with no chance of the seat you've paid for (I do realise that a ticket is no guarantee of a seat but it's not an unreasonable expectation), off-peak periods quietly extended to pull those working a bit flexibly back into peak time fares, and that's before the inevitable delays/cancellations/replacement bus service. I get that the rail service needs customers to survive but I don't blame anyone who says "Fuck that for a game of soldiers - I'm not going back to commuting five days a week".

I wouldn't want to stay working from home 100% - I like a lot of my colleagues and I genuinely miss their company - so I, like a lot of people, will move onto a hybrid system. I'm planning to WFH 2 or 3 days a week, and my employer is creating co-working spaces as well as traditional desk systems, so when I am at work I will be in different places rather than just at my desk unless I'm in a meeting. But that hybrid system is going to cause a big shift - even if only 50% have WFH capacity and they work from home 40% of the time (2 days a week) that's still a big knock-on effect to the commuter economy, be it transport or the service economy that exists for commuters. I used to work in the City a lot and it was only after lockdown that I realised how much of the space around the offices was devoted to serving the people who worked in them - not just coffee shops, sandwich joints and restaurants but dry cleaners, cobblers, tailors, places to collect a parcel, mobile phone repair shops. All those closed when there was no-one left in the offices and they might not be needed to the same extent in future.

However, I'd be interested what measures Mr Sunak supposedly has at his disposal to force us back to our Pret habits, @BustopherPonsonbyJones Cattle-prods?

@GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin
Don’t give them ideas! I think it will be done via the companies so they are ‘rewarded’ if they have workers in their workplaces and expected to have levels of safety for those at home which will cost them money to provide - hence, they will ‘encourage’ workers to return . I think those working from home will lose the tax breaks they have at the moment and will find they are paying more, perhaps on the basis their homes have become commercial properties. Just my thoughts though.

I have no love of the train companies who kept charging more and more for commuter tickets whilst operating a substandard service but they provide jobs, associated jobs and tax. We are going to need money from tax like never before.

Not sure about that, DGR. When I worked for NHS, we could only claim for travel distances that was in excess of our commute distance. So 3 miles from usual workplace would be irrelevancy for me.

I'm not au fait with the intricacies of travel expenses, I admit. But I when I was last researching the issues around WFH I remember noting that expenses are only allowed for journeys from the "workplace" to site. And it was interesting how many "WFH" contracts actually made the office the workplace, not the employees home. Which means (a) your employer can reverse a WFH policy without too much friction and (b) you don't get paid to go in to the office.

Last job I had my place of work was actually home - so I got paid to go into the office. Or indeed any office, since we had offices from Bournemouth to Belfast.

Of course these are things Sunny Sunak could change at the stroke of a pen.

Some people will quit if they have to work from home, some people will quit if they have to go back into the office, and it'll probably all shake out in a balenced way in the end though people might have to change jobs to find a workplace that suits their preferred style. It shouldn't be a big fuss though.

It's pretty obvious that the article is less about the workers preferences though and more about making sure businesses keep giving landowners rent money for office space and commuters keep paying for public transport and spending at businesses selling convinience foods.

It's pretty obvious that the article is less about the workers preferences though and more about making sure businesses keep giving landowners rent money for office space and commuters keep paying for public transport and spending at businesses selling convenience foods.

You mean keep the bubble growing so we can have an even bigger bang later ?

I think those working from home will lose the tax breaks they have at the moment and will find they are paying more

I definitely don't get any tax breaks, unless you count the £1.20 a week tax rebate, which definitely wouldn't be enough to influence things one way or the other! I know some companies give allowances, but you certainly don't get things like that in academia ;)

The government can encourage, or even lean on employers all they like but those employers are going to find that the benefits of WFHers outweigh almost anything the government can do. For example, fewer bums on seats = fewer seats = smaller offices = smaller rent bill. I think it was the boss of Barclays who said the idea of having all staff in the office at all times, and paying for the office space to make that possible, seems insane now. Having staff working remotely also means you can draw from a greater talent pool in terms of recruitment. If you're based in Bournemouth your offered roles would probably only have been of interest to those nearby. Now someone from Blackpool might be interested if they knew they'd only have to commute a couple of days a week.

The economy would be better off rolling with the changes rather than trying to force the genie back in the bottle. If people are WFH, have your coffee shops in the suburbs and residential areas. People might not be doing the Monday to Friday commute but they might be doing longer, less frequent journeys instead because their job is based further away - capitalise on that instead and make it worth their while to use the train instead of a car.

The shift has been too seismic and Rishi's just going to have to suck it up.

@GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin
The problem is WILL those working from home transfer the money to the local economy? More likely, they will have lunch in their kitchen, made from cheese and bread brought at Sainsbury’s. And all those ‘service’ people: cobblers, barbers etc are unlikely to be needed (as much) if people are sitting in their pyjamas all day. I would give it a year or two for Sunak to assess the impact but if it isn’t what he needs, he will find a way, regardless of how seismic the change is. Sunak won’t be the one who has to ‘suck up’ anything. That will be the British workforce as usual. The government will do their best Havelock Vetinari 🙂.

The economy would be better off rolling with the changes rather than trying to force the genie back in the bottle.

Well that was certainly the 1980s Tory anthem wasn't it ? Or so they claimed as coal mines shut, steelworks shut and generations were told to "train for the future".

Well they did. And this is what it looks like.

I don’t think closing the pits and privatising steelworks was “rolling with the changes”. It was quite deliberate government policy. Nobody held a gun to Thatcher’s head.