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"?

I'm an Executive Assistant to a Chief Executive of a statutory body organisation, so public funded.

My CEO's role requires him to travel to London regularly, and all over the North as we cover the whole Northern region.

I can do my role from anywhere, so long as I have a laptop and a headset to make calls. The only time I really need to go into the office is when we're holding our public Board meetings and I need to prepare name plates and print copies of papers for the public.

I do go in if he happens to be in the office, just so we can catch up face to face, but it doesn't impact how we're able to work together if we don't see each other for a few weeks.

Retail banking, my role can all be done by phone

In-house graphic designer. Comfortably WFH with hardware set up at home and remote teams meetings. Far more productive at home tbh.

no pressure to return to the office, some of the dept are popping in 1 regular day a week - it would seem on the face of more for social reasons than much else.

HR in social work sector. My job is so much easier at home alone than sat in an office full of people. So much of it is confidential

In the old days, I used to answer the phone, but email has been taking over so much that I barely have to use the phone these days.

Same here. We have softphone software installed on our PCs, but I can't remember the last time I called someone using it. If I want to talk to any of my workmates we use Teams.

University, research scientist.
I don't teach or work in a lab at all, what I do is almost all digital. I'm good as long as I have support with hardware & software... and guess what, the support is a total pain to get sometimes. Hardware issues are starting to increase as the IT support team are utterly freaked out if you ask for them to do any physical task. I can't promise my home network great, either. I still talk to people regularly who are apologising for home network problems, I think this is very common.

Uni is enthusiastic about hybrid, trying to make everyone below a certain salary grade hot-desk.

That said, I'm super unusual. Most my office-mates do at least some daily lab work & some are managing quite hands-on experiments. They need that specialist equipment. One colleague only about 1/3 of his work is lab-based: but at home he has too many children distractions.

I do need to print some things out, sometimes my home printer isn't up to it. I still have an office phone but no idea why, lol.

Finance with system in the cloud so can work anywhere. I WFH full-time & go to office infrequently for meetings.

I work in PR/comms, mainly as a writer and editor. My employer has always been set up to allow remote working and our offices are split across various locations so we’ve always done lots of meetings by video link anyway.

I work in media. 60% of my job is writing, another 40% is management, sending emails, and meetings - all can be done from home - and the final 10% is travelling for events which obviously we didn't do during Covid.

I do go back in now 1 or 2 days a week depending on what goes on to see my team because I prefer in-person meetings for some stuff, but honestly even that could be done via video meeting.

Everyone in our business could WFH full time if needed, except the event team who would have to travel about 5 days a month.

I work from home. But choose to go in one day a week.

The only people who NEED to work in the building are the people operating the machinery on the factory floor. IT support have a rota for onsite presence. So whilst someone needs to be there they dont all. The cleaner i guess?

Sales, marketing, technology, customer services, finance, project management, architecture, planning and scheduling could all work from home full time if needed. Most are hybrid.

The problem seems to be that working practices such as paper docs being the norm are holding the company you describe in an era from the past. It also takes a bit of vision and drive and a want to wfh and digitise and offer flexible working and attract the best talent. Or a pandemic!

But if your business is booming, has a long
Term Strategy for growth and thats future proof. If you are keeping up with what your competition are doing And all your staff are happy, then dont worry about it!

Project manager. Don’t need to go into an office - spend most of my time on virtual calls and as long as I have the internet I have access to all documents etc. would never consider an in-office job again.

"An open plan busy office does not serve itself well for confidential calls and the need for tricky drafting!"

Yes, but there are more options than just open plan or wfh. Also, many people have family members or housemates also working from home so share an office even when wfh.

Seems that OP doesn't work in an office, or at least that most of her colleagues don't. It's pretty obious that it's mainly office workers who can work from home, with some exceptions like child minders and the woman I mentioned who assembled pens from home.

"The cleaner i guess?"

Yes, but with fewer people in, there is a bit less to clean I suppose.

Wow - does anyone in the UK actually go into a workplace any more? I live elsewhere and I read just the other day that the percentage of people WFH here is quite small and people actually wantedo get back to a workplace. WFH sounds like my idea of hell - but then my home is my sanctuary and I would hate for work to encroach on it.

Loads of jobs do not require a physical presence that's pretty obvious.
I'm an HR consultant and have been working partly from home prior to COVID.
Many legal professionals can work from home. Accountants. IT. Remote customer service roles. Etc

Husband is in pharmaceutical at a high enough level that he too can work from home most of the time as those he interacts with aren't based in the UK anyway.

I work in Legal Planning. Mainly admin and book keeping with some archiving and data work. Mostly computer based work.

I work in counter fraud, never in the office, everything is accessed online and every meeting is via teams.
I love my job and I feel I’m much more productive at home.

I'm a Strategy Officer, Local Government. Majority of our staff can still work from home (either partly or fully) if they want to, only those involving face to face services to the public have to be in the office.

Freelance translator. I've worked from home since 1995! 😁

I work for an online publisher. Pre Covid we were all in the office full time, but we have not gone back into the office at all. We’re actually not renewing our office lease (London) and now hire people all over which is nice!

Exec Assistent/ Personal assistant/ aka upgraded Secretary-
Working for global SW company - often have senior managers who are based in another country so everyone insisted to working remotely. We are all geared up for it. I can 'take over ' my bosses laptop via internet whenever needed.
Ive been WFH for years but mostly 90%. I frikking love WFH 100% It has definitely made me even more loyal to my company who have truly done their best to enable us to have everything we needed to work in comfort. I'm always being approached by headhunters and I also say that I'm paid so fairly and have such good conditions - and the company have full trust in me- that I will not consider a position elsewhere.

Jobs of people I know working from home -

Consultants (e.g. environmental consultants, engineers etc. Including giving evidence at Inquiry hearings remotely during the height of the pandemic),

analysts (data, financial, energy industry etc.),

help desk (phone and computer set up at home to take calls from a centralised number/system),

logistics company support, and

admin/secretarial.

Can also see HR for most places being successfully home based.

I've just thought about a few meetings (actually loads) of meetings I had to go to after lawyers & accountants got their first Nokias. The cumulative hours we would spend waiting for everybody to turn up (wondering how/whether we would bill) stood about comparing "snake" scores and ringtones.

Software, so 99% of all the work is done on a computer.