Is your company not letting you work from home?

[Manchestermanchester]

My company won’t. Our team can work from home, if we had mobiles. They wouldn’t buy cheap mobiles. Yet management work from home.

Could you buy a very cheap mobile yourself? You need to stay safe

I've been using my own phone and diverting calls to it and making and paying for calls I need to make from my phone. I'd rather this than have to go into the office

Data protection risk..... so the manager won’t let us do it.

Your manager needs to look on the ICO website... that's terrible!

Yes. There were bugs in the system on Mon/Tues, but by wednesday most of the 500 employees were set up at home. We were allowed to take home the computer screens/towers/headsets etc. However, most of us were able to hook up to our own home computers.

What amazes me is that we were not allowed previously to work from home, even 1 day a week and even though our jobs don't need us to be onsite for 80% of the time. This was due to 'logistics' and it was said that if they allowed it for one they'd have to allow it for all. We pointed out we live in a country with terrible snowstorms and also there are lots of people in the company who'd love to be able to stay home for health reasons etc. My pregnant colleague who has a 50 minute commute begged to be allowed to work from home 1-2 days a week and this was denied.

In my country the social distancing has been enforced far more strongly than in the UK. It's amazing how suddenly it's perfectly fine to work from home (according to our company) rather than shut down.

It makes me wonder what the long term outcome will be for my company. Apparently we are still hitting our targets, work wise. So... maybe working from home should be allowed for some of the time.

And the security thing - well we work in a banking system which also has access to health records. We have a fancy system for logging in which needs 3 different types of access, precisely because data protection is so important. So I don't think that data protection is a good enough reason.

The organisation I work for allows flexible/home working but my boss limits it to one day a week as she wants everyone in the office as much as possible. She's just increased it to two days a week due to corona. We can work just as effectively at home so there's really no need for us to go into the office and potentially put others at risk. Does anyone know if I'd be at risk of a disciplinary if I refused to go to the office? I'd still work my usual hours, just from home.

My work are still wanting people to come in every other day if healthy. I can do my job from home but the management is so controlling! It’s making me so mad! We are not saving lives and shouldn’t add to others risks by travelling! My partner developed a cough so I am insisting on working from home now. The stupidity of my work is driving me crazy!

No my company have but a veto on it for now even though 90% could be done from home.

I feel disappointed they don’t trust us

In this time we aren’t going to slack as there will be a mass redundancy and we are saving lives working from home.... we are limiting the spread... majority of our office jobs are that important that we need to be at work.

I work for a big company, it’s annoying. Can’t bring my desktop home because other staff might need it. Other sites aren’t shut and they would only shut due to a confirmed out break, and people wouldn’t travel. Now they are saying systems may not work at home on the desktops.

Just to say that the UK seems to be about 2 weeks behind my country for clamping down on certain things.
A few days before my office went to full work from home status I asked my team leader if I could WFH because I am diabetic. She followed the govt guidelines at the time which was only to quarantine people who had travelled. The guideline changed about 2 days later, so I checked with HR and they flung me out of the building to WFH so fast.

Every day guidelines are changing. I'm learning that what is set in stone today as seeming excessively protective becomes normal a couple of days later.

The situation in the UK and the posts above seem ridiculous when you are further along in the pandemic. Your workplaces are being gits.

We aren't being allowed to work from home either although we absolutely could.

Funnily enough boss IS working from home. We are all on a reduced rota (and pay) and some have been laid off.

So basically we are in the office. At least 2 or 3 of us at a time and although we can sit apart, we use the same door handles, kettles, taps etc.

Boss is very controlling. Suspect he will take all the help and grants he can but not sure it'll trickle down to us.

And again, my workplace said that logistically it wouldn't work having people WFH. But suddenly a miracle! Once it was going to be WFH or shut down they made it happen.
And again, this is an industry that is really strong on confidentiality and involves millions of dollars of money transferring internationally. So it can be done.

Oh and if we DO get sick he's told us we only get stat sick pay.

Negotiate with your boss? Work weekends? I’m not sure