Genuine question for those still working from home

[HeritageQuay]

I'm a manager in a company that employs about 100 employees across several locations in the south of England. We are in an industry that stayed open throughout Covid but apart from that we think we are a fairly normal business, i.e. we sell things, and then we deliver those things to our customers.

However, we have always been puzzled by the concept of people being able to "work from home". We think that our employees perform a full range of business functions and but none us have ever been able to work from home, even at the height of the pandemic, because our jobs mean that we have to be in the workplace.

So my question to those currently working from home is "what do you do" and "what industry are you in"?

Conveyancing solicitor. We’re hybrid now but really people only need to be in our office to scan post and print out anything the clients need to sign.

DH is an actuary doing contract jobs. Entirely WFH.

I work from home 3 days and in the office for 2 days although I think they're going to try and increase that from September.

I work as a Mental Health Advisor at a university so a lot of meetings which can be done online and face to face.

I worked from home solid during the lockdowns and now about 50%. That was dependent on the sort of computer system that could be securely logged in from anywhere and a rapid roll out of MS Teams. A smaller business might not have had that infrastructure.

I'm a design engineer and most of my work is desk based or meetings. Colleagues who were involved in projects under construction were still based on site where essential. That's not to say I don't miss the in person collaboration but it was possible.

I can see it varies hugely by sector and people who work with things or people rather than information don't get to sit at home the same way.

Tech sales. Now officially remote employee. I did use to have an older boss who thought everyone should be in office, which was a pain.

I work in an admin kind of role at a university. I can access all my work files and systems remotely so technically don't need to be in the office to do my job. Although I work 3 days in the office and 2 at home.

Sounds very similar to my company. Work in finance, this week we have data engineers. Last week it was data managers

I'm a countryside estate manager. Obviously half my job is out on site and was all through the pandemic . But the paperwork side can equally well happen at home via a remote connection so I really only go into the office on days I have non- zoom meetings, or just yo catch up w colleagues.

Regardless of the pandemic I have worked from home for nearly 20 years. However, I used to visit clients maybe 1-2 days a week and go into the office periodically for meetings etc. This is due to working in a very niche software industry and most companies I worked for have had offices miles away from where I and other consultants live but need people based all over the UK. I now do a role (project manager) which means I don't have to go on site (although I could if I wanted) and in reality all I need is a decent internet connection and my laptop.

Occasionally I still meet the odd dinosaur who doesn't believe or understand working from home believing a physical presence is needed. Of course for some jobs this is the case but the type of job my business does we can effectively pretty much all work from home. I think now with modern technology, an outlook calendar and performance related checks it is quite easy to check who is skiving and who isn't. I can sniff a shirker from miles away, regardless of whether they are at home or not.

But a lot of that could be changed if you really wanted it to.

Just go digital.

I've had two hybrid roles in the last 3 years, both data/reports/analysis related. Granted I don't interact with many people but teams and OneDrive just make everything so smooth. I will add it's a culture thing too. Whilst I ended up in a hybrid role in my previous job it took Covid tiers for them to open their mind to the fact it could work. My current role is great - it focuses on productivity rather than hours.

Valuer. I have to visit places I value once in a while and we're expected in the office twice a week which I think is too much. A lot of my job is research and number crunching on spreadsheets. It's pointless going in to the office just to do that. It's good to have meetings face to face once in a while and if I was training someone I'd go in more often but normal day to day work is best done at home.

Work in insurance. We are still coming in for the odd collaborative session and meetings with business partners, but largely are now home based. For I and my team we can judge how hard someone is working by the targets and workloads they are hitting and WFH at the moment appears to have boosted productivity. That being said, we are still monitoring to see what the longer term impact is.

Proofreading and copyediting. Have always worked from home.

Tech for an airline. One day a week in office. But pointless. All of it can be done at home.

But why aren't they digital? I deal with invoices, I haven't seen a paper one in years. Maybe 10 years? I'm not sure we even accept them now.

I'm self-employed and do about a dozen ad-hoc and sessional jobs. Only 2 or 3 required me to leave the house. Lots of regular committee meetings and people are generally going back to 1 out of 3 or 4 being face to face just to help us feel part of the team.

I honestly can't believe your company is wasting money keeping all their office space when so many jobs can be done WFH, at least part of the time.

@Hardbackwriter

"When you say no one worked from home even at the height of the pandemic - did you really have all 100 employees in every day? Or did you shut down?"

We kept open every day. We furloughed about 20% of our staff who had family members who were CEV.

I struggle with this idea too OP, I don’t know anyone who works in an office, despite working from home myself for a fair few years it wasn’t an office based job that involved computers. The people I know now who do some work at home are only doing the admin part of their work at home, occasionally and not in a structured way, like I do really, on a kind of ad hoc basis when it’s needed.

i guess I struggle to visualise what type of work is done in an office full stop as it’s just outside of my experience. I think of maybe insurance and finance type roles but don’t really know what they entail.

Tax consultant, have WFH for years. Probably go in the office once a year, if that. If I need anything from the office my colleague handles for me.

DH is a graphic designer for a postgrad/CPD education company. He was working 3 out of 4 days from home for a year pre lockdown, since march 2020 he is been completely WFH. Occasionally (3 times a year) he goes to their education centre to take photos but never back to the office.

The only thing that delayed him being able to WFH was that we were on super slow rural broadband, then when they put the new cables in we had a delay getting connected as our address wasn't on the system, even though we were paying for and using the existing internet! Once we had decent internet there was absolutely no reason for him to be in the office, but as he was the first employee to work from home they decided they wanted him there once a week, lockdown ended that and now several other colleagues have never returned to the office.

The company he works for has grown over the last 2 years, so it's definitely not having a negative impact.

I work for a charity. I'm not 100% WFH as I do go into the office now and then, and occasionally attend in-person events.

I got the job during Covid, though, and for quite a while I was exclusively WFH.

My job involves training (mostly via Zoom or Teams), 1:1s with service users (again often over video call, or normal phone call), answering emails, writing content for our website and social media, and facilitating various consultations and groups (again, mostly online).

Work for a manufacturing firm. I believe about 50% of staff globally are wfh either full time or in the office 1/2 days a week. There are a LOT of jobs that do not require a person to be in the office 5 days a week. Even jobs where they need to be in an office at times e.g. engineers have days at home as they dont need to be in the office 5 days

Large corporate pension company,I work in corporate due diligence

Research. Been working from home for ten years, before that the job was office based. Home working has massively increased productivity and sick days have reduced. I've taken one sick day in ten years.

Environmental Services for local Council.

Still have to go out and about on visits if necessary but wfh mostly.