There are pro’s and cons to both though, and there will be long-term downsides to working from home.
Many people say they are mor productive, but an awful lot most definitely are not. Customer service has seriously taken a hit during the pandemic, and I’m not talking public sector who may have had funding cuts.
For companies in the city i.e. the civil service the London weighting is being removed for many jobs where people work from home, so while they may not be commuting, they will be financially Worse off.
WFH will most definitely disadvantage women in the future. While it is already the case that most women pick up the childcare, employers will have far more justification to say to men that they cannot have the time off for childcare because “your wife works from home,” whether we like to admit it or not, working from home isn’t viewed as seriously as someone going into the office, even if it should be.
and there are jobs which will suffer. Those in hospitality, coffee shops, sandwich shops etc. Their jobs are no less important than those who are working from home.
And the younger generation who are living in e.g. flats or their parents’ houses will be thrown into a workforce where they have no personal. Interaction with their colleagues any more because they work from home, and no escape from work because they can’t afford to convert a room into an office or they simply don’t have the space.
There was a lot of talk that wfh would benefit people with disabilities gaining employment because e.g. people in wheelchairs requiring adaptations to work in other buildings etc could now more easily be employed from home, or those who might struggle to get to work for other reasons i.e. jobs which aren’t on decent public transport routes etc, but this simply hasn’t happened.
I have been looking for work and ideally I would like a job where I could work from home. But the truth is that very few companies are advertising jobs which are wfh any more, and even interviews have gone back from remote to face-to-face.
There will be some companies who will stick with it, Nationwide for instance have sold off a lot of their property and have declared working from home to be their latest move. But on the whole companies are looking to bring their employees back into the office, at least or some of the time.
Also there is a consideration for people WFH re things like insurance. You need specific insurance if one of your rooms is adapted for work/business purposes. So that could also cost individuals.
And then there are jobs which could easily be outsourced elsewhere. It wasn’t that long ago that call centre work was outsourced abroad, this could potentially increase if call centre employees or IT professionals are remote hence able to work from anywhere, including a different country where pay rates are less.