Will your companies let you work from home after lockdown has ended

[Makinitrain]

I mean it's great being able to work from home, great for the planet, I suspect good for mental health.
However I imagine that many companies, including mine, will be quick to take it away as soon as they can. Is this because of productivity concerns? Any other reason?

I also imagine WFH isn't great for other businesses which rely on people commuting and meeting after work/ lunchtime.
Thoughts?

No. I won't. I cannot work from home, and am self employed. So won't be arguing about it.

I would be very surprised if they did, one of the SMT is very much against it, so this period has been testing.

@TheGreatWave on what grounds? Just to be curious

Not a chance.

Likes to know exactly what is happening all the time.

(I'm not working today before anyone takes me posting as to prove the point. )

@PicsInRed but why? Is it for a valid reason, have people been taking the piss?

Just to clarify I'm NHS so not working from home but I am very hopeful that we could make big changes for the health of the planet if we stop this pointless culture of people commuting into a big office to send emails to other people.

Yes, our company has always been good about it.
Today we had a survey on how we are doing WFH.
I think the trend will be is to reduce office space, introduce hot desking and more working from home.
I normally do 2 days a week from home and will push to be permanently from home unless I need to go to the office. Will save me 3 hours a day and £7k a year!
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I am based from home anyway so there’s been no change in that respect. My company however have been fantastic in enabling other people who are normally based in big admin sites to work from home. They have been sending out laptops and enabling the technology for this at great speed. The long term view is that this will continue, for most (not all) it has been well received and it has allowed for a much more flexible workforce with no commuting requirements and in theory now we can recruit from anywhere in the country.

Yes, wfh will continue for as long as required - even as normal for a few days a week.
Productivity has not been hit at all - in fact it's gone up a little.

I hope so. I love WFH and would quite happily do it 5 days a week (with the kids in school!!)

I couldn't do all my job from home, because I am out and about and live a fair distance from the office, but days of just paperwork I could and my colleagues who live in the local area could easily work from home more.

I will. But considering the technical problems many of my colleagues have had, because we really weren't ready for this, I expect people will be wanted back in the office.

Yes, we’ve been told no one has to go back into the office until they feel comfortable doing so. Individual choice. But then the entire company had been running pretty much as normal from home so it’s not such a big deal for us.

I've WFH for decades, many of my colleagues do a bit of it either for family reasons or to avoid the worst of the traffic (they're mostly in San Diego which has awful rush hours).

It's software, our systems all work well remotely, and we have good managers.

It depends on if schools go back, if childcare is open and whay public transport looks like

Where I am buses are Sunday service , they'd be rammed if everyone goes back and they don't put more buses on

Secondary sch kids round here will need buses again too if they go back

We all just need to wait until Boris announces his big plan Sunday and take it from there

We will. In local govt and they’re talking about maybe 1/4 of the staff being able to be in the office allowing for social distancing so most of us will be wfh.

My employers have said they will be continuing to wfh for quite a while, however I find it far from good for my mental health I need an escape from the house

I worked for over 30 years at home (50% out with clients, rest of the time based from home) for a FTSE 100 company. There are many reasons why it sometimes doesnt work

1. Trust. Some employees just cannot be trusted to work properly. People thinking that they dont need childcare, people who are never at their desk and others need to pick up their work especially when they are customer facing and queries cannot wait.

1. Environment. Not everyone can work from home. Ideally you need a room that you can work from. Children shouldnt be wandering in, and you cannot have exessive noise. You certainly cannot easily work from your kitchen table with people coming into to cook, teenagers making a late breakfast etc.

1. Security. If you are working on confidential data it is open to everyone in your house, partner, kids, cleaners, workmen etc. If you dont lock your PC everytime you leave your desk, table it is open for others to log on and do all sorts!

1. Letting others pick up your work. My old company trialled a service whereby a call centre took calls where workers were at home. Some people put themselves on busy/unavailable resulting in others picking up their calls

1. Social interaction. If you work at home all of the time you will not be getting a chance to meet your colleagues. I spoke to someone for a number of months almost every day and only met them after 6 months. Needless to say they didnt look anything like I imagined!

There of course some jobs that you cannot never do at home, police officer, driving instructor, plumber etc.

I am working at present with a very large council who have move their staff to home working. They are the most difficult people to get hold of and I dont think its because of the workload.

It really isnt for everyone.

Yes, they actually sent an email this week saying they were in no rush to have people back in the office. We are allowed to work from home 2 days a week anyway, so we already have the equipment.

I won’t be able to go back to my office until my kids are in school and have wraparound school care . They do let us work from home on a flexible basis anyway so I don’t think they will force us all to come back in .

No. I'm a university lecturer so I'm working from home at the moment as all face to face teaching has been cancelled, but I'll return as soon as the students do. Online teaching isn't as effective IMO.

I think that people who CAN work from home are being advised to stay WFH in the short term so that means that companies shouldn't be asking people to return to offices at first easing.

To enable us to WFH we have had to modify how we work meaning that the outcome is not so effective. I imagine we will remain working this way for a few months yet though.

Yes, they've been very encouraging about wfh, and are likely to support it even if it's no longer required.

All our work can be easily done from home, so their only concern would be making sure people stay focussed. In fairness, a lot of people's productivity seems to have gone up hugely, with no distractions like colleagues faffing around, phones ringing etc.

Our workload has gone up since we've been working from home and everything has worked really well. We moved our entire workforce to home working in 4 days (over 100 people, many who didn't already have laptops). We've all been asked about what we'd like to do moving forward. However as it currently works very well, we won't be back in the office for months. I'd like to split my time once this is all over and we have lots of people who commute so it will save them money and time.