Another corona virus & working from home thread...

[Invisimamma]

I work for a medium sized charity. They don't allow working from home as a regular arrangement although do sometimes permit a half day from home around a doctors appointment, home emergency or to finish a specific report without office distractions. I have a feeling we might be asked to work from home more in the coming weeks, which in theory I'm all for (it will save me fortune I commuting for one thing!). But a few things issues and wondering if people can help with solutions or their own expierences...

1. We don't have remote access to our server so anything you want to work on you have to save to a laptop or USB before you leave the office and then upload it again when you're back at work. Makes things quite tricky when working across numerous projects and files.

2. I don't own a laptop, just a smart phone, obviously I can't work on that. We have 3 office laptops that can borrowed but 20+ members of staff. Are my work obliged to provide a laptop if I need to work from home? I imagine most other people do have a laptop but I can't assume so!

3. We're not allowed to work from home if caring for children (fair enough!). So what if schools are closed. Then I can't work from home, so I won't get paid? This is my biggest fear.

If the laptops are only for people who “need” to work from home, why would your need be any greater than anyone else’s? That will surely be a management decision based on which roles are more crucial to the day to day running of the operation. You will need to present a string case for home working to the management, I imagine.

No remote access to the server or even to remote control your PC at the office is strange. I wonder why they don’t just let you log onto the VPN? What are they afraid you will do?

Not being paid is how it is here right now. For context, I live in Washington state. Our office is in King County which currently has had 20 (I believe?) deaths. Almost all of the deaths in the USA have been in one county in Washington. I am a full-time home worker as I live almost 200 miles from the office. But the office building is on lockdown for 21 days. Those who have the space and bandwidth to work from home have been given computers to do so. Those who don’t have been laid off unpaid. Our company also doesn’t allow you to work from home with a child under 12 in the house because you are expected to work, not watch your children.

It may be different in the UK but that’s how it’s being done here in this state. Most companies in King County have closed down for 21 days.

You're stuffed, OP, if the "Shut everything down now" brigade get their way. My employer is supposed to have VPN but it rarely works reliably. I can't get much done at home, either. Luckily we are kind of feral & no one will track how much I (don't) get done. The advantages of a fixed term contract...

I imagine OP's charity employer in no way shape or form has money to buy everyone laptops. Much less get them all configured with firewall software etc. in next few days. Making the servers work reliably (to be accessible to everyone) could be something that requires physically visiting the servers daily, or the option to do so, anyway. What a giant mess.

Do they have a carers leave policy? From what I can see with the large charity I work for, this will apply if schools close, but it’s only 5 days, I don’t know what they plan beyond that. We do have laptops and are being advised to take them home every night.

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not saying my need for a laptop to work from home is greater than anyone else's. I can see a situation soon where management/government say, 'okay everyone should work from home where they can'. If this is the case, I shouldn't be disadvantaged because I don't own a computer?

The server issue is because we have physical server, it's not cloud based, nobody can access remotely, its not a management decision. Is just not possible with the technology we have. I'm not sure what you mean by access to the VPN? We can access email etc from any device but no access to any of our files outside of the office. I think this is common for organisations of our size.

I don't think you can make comparisons for paid leave with the US. I'm just wondering what will happen on a large scale if lots of workers are suddenly unable to work as schools are off and no other care available. I don't get paid carers leave, ironically my dp who works in the NHS does, so he'll have to take time off from his essential role to allow me to work (which is by no means time or life critical) as he's the one that will be paid either way.

In both DH and my jobs (one public sector, one private, different sectors, professional roles) we are usually allowed to wfh some of the time. Following chats with other parents, and looking at the usual approach when DC are ill, the approach seems to be wfh, and once we end up with DC at home too, do your work as far as you can.

Obviously a pre-schooler will be a lot harder to keep an eye on whilst working, than over 5s. Mine will need to be occupied but at 6+ can hopefully, with a little planning, be left with some workbooks, educational videos etc... I know even the 6 year old has been told that if the school closes, the class teacher will be telling parents what they would have been covering.

Can you possibly afford to get yourself a really cheap laptop? Some are

Hopefully this is all 'what if' and it doesn't come to this.

I don't think my employer has even considered that some of us don't have the facilities to work from home.

The server issue I'm sure we can work around in the short term by working on other projects and taking copies of things home.

It's always good to be proactive, so have a think about what you could manage to do from home, even if you have to think outside the box. Is there anything that's not your main line of work, but you've always thought would be really useful? If they turn out not to have the equipment available, then you can give them a proposal that states what you could work on and how, and you may find they're happy to take your lead.