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?

They've been putting out a lot of feelers about how people are finding WFH so I think there will be a permanent shift in that direction. Once they cotton on that it can save them loads of money I think there'll be no stopping them.

Dh has been told it will be until at least 2021, they are like battery chickens in his city office

I was thinking about this, how will promotions work in terms of moving into management as often that is more about people skills & perceived performance which I think will be harder to do wfh.

I always had the ability to work from home and did so when I needed to work without disruption. My company are supportive of staying at home in the coming months and have sent out a survey to gain an understanding of employment interest in the longer term.

I normally commute into the City of London, and by my reckoning in order to run public transport in a social distanced way you’d need to revert to running a full service, for the majority of workers to come into the office no more than once a week, and also for a significant number of commuters to switch to bikes or foot. The loss to TfL and the train companies is going to be astronomical.

My employers understand that since the work can be done from home it would be impossible to insist on people coming in on public transport 5 days a week, and they’d probably find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit. We do have bike stores and showers but not everyone can walk or cycle in, for health or distance reasons.

Yes ! And not only my job WFH but there will be a massive WFH boom everywhere cos

1. Everyone’s now tried it
2. Proof to naysayers that it’s technically possible
3. This is 2020 not 1980s
4. Broadband and 4G and fibre optic worked ! Brilliantly ! The www showed itself to be astounding !
5. Enriching in many ways (culture, hobbies, chats...)
6. many multinationals, their people are working all round the world
7. People born 1970 onwards mostly love it and the naysayers (born pre 1970) are gradually retiring / being removed from top level management posts
8. Green environment - lots of top management travel alot ~ this is costly and bad for planet. From

Home can be done

1. Forward-thinking employers like Facebook and KPMG and bug charities do it already

10. Commuting from commuter belt into City etc looks very, very unappealing now 11. Great for women-men work balance when both can work from home

It won’t be everyone but clever employers will build on this for their benefit to attract and retain top talent, plus top management may have tried WFH for first time and seen the plusses. In many companies, people are talking more than ever.

Plus all the lawsuits risk for any employers who insist on WFO for people who can WFH

I was thinking about this, how will promotions work in terms of moving into management as often that is more about people skills & perceived performance which I think will be harder to do wfh.

I think a lot of people don't really see how much of a huge change this will cause. It's absolutely the right thing to do at the moment, every single person who can work from home should be accommodated in doing so, but I don't think every aspect of more people WFH will be positive.

Ending lockdown won’t happen overnight. Any bosses who think the PM will say on Sunday “right, we should all get back to the office” is in for a disappointment. Those that can wfh will still be expected to, at least for the time being. Maybe things will open up more in June.

@lljkk at work I have a full setup with two large screens. I can't imagine they will pay for two lots of that so who knows 🤷‍♀️

I couldn't take them as they are on poles rather than having their own stand meaning they aren't freestanding and I have nowhere suitable at home for them either.

I wfh four or five days per week normally.

We hot desk and none of my direct team are in my office location. We are encouraged to go in and touch base with colleagues but more for the social aspect so I align my days with a few colleagues. I love having the flexibility to decide where to work.

@sandybval I was looking to move companies next year but so much of my role involves liaising with different people & building relationships. Sometimes it takes time & that's face to face. I'm not sure how I would do this in a new company where I didn't know anyone.

3. 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!

Surely anyone who usually works in an office and is suddenly having to wfh is already in the habit of locking their PC when they leave their desk? I live alone so no danger of anyone seeing anything confidential, but locking my PC/laptop is so ingrained that I do it every time I get up from my dining table desk.

@marlboroughlemon you might think it's amazing but not all of us do and I was born post 1970! It takes me a couple of minutes to save a file from home as I have use the VPN. I'm nowhere near as productive as At work and it worries me that companies will expect more and more - 'you're at home so you'll be able to join this meeting at 8pm'.

I also hope companies take into account those of us without office space.

@pinksparkly - yes, you are totally right, companies will invest and tool up employees WFH
(especially when they see the savings it makes overall)

There will also be even quicker tech innovations to make virtual offices slicker

Yes, we'll be continuing to WfH for the foreseeable.

It's quite a turnaround for the leadership of my organisation as they all hate people WfH. However, having shifted almost 2,000 employees to WfH within the space of 3 days, they're in no hurry to reverse it all.

@marlboroughlemon,

I'm genuinely intrigued since you are such a fan of homeworking, what are the current solutions to these problems if not actually self-employed, how do Employers right now solve these problems:

Who provides all the home-working equipment? You know, chair, footrest, standing desk if required under disability legislation, desktop PC, multiple monitors (I need them for my work), desk itself, an actual room to work in isolated from distractions....
Who keeps the catalog of all these provided items, to get them back when employee leaves position.
Who does the fire risk assessment, checks the evacuation plan is adequate?
How should printing or photocopying be charged for -- do homeworkers get an allowance for printer supplies and a printer too?
Can a contract be set up to service this home equipment in the home what happens when the equipment needs upgrading or 'goes bluescreen' will the contractor come out to site?
Who is culpable if the equipment gets damaged or stolen?
If equipment (say a laptop) is posted back somewhere for servicing or whatever, does it need to be provided with some kind of damage-protection box for posting?
Who pays for insurance to work from home - will the provided eqiupment be insured by homeworker or the 'employer'?
What measures need to be taken to keep any confidential info confidential?

Who pays for Broadband if you live in a village with No Broadband?

I have one room that could possibly be set up. But what happens when two of us need it with different requirements? 2 chairs? Which company pays for the printer and the monitors and all the extras? Also how do we organise a timeshare on it? We don't have the room for two full set ups and I don't know anyone who does.

There are going to be some interesting dilemmas to resolve and having two of us placed on WFH is going to be extremely problematic to resolve. I'm open to suggestions, but the discussions so far have resulted in rows about "who's job is more important?"

We’ve been told that we’ll never go back to how we used to work. WFH has been a success and needs to be complementary to office based work. It also solves the issue of too small a building for all staff!

@marlboroughlemon so what about those of us that don't have space? Is anyone in a one bed flat (like me) going to be sacked as we don't have the space to work from home?

We've been told we'll be working from home for the rest of this year to make social distancing possible in the office for those frontline colleagues who need to be in.

My company is also piloting home working for some frontline staff with the aim of being 100% homeworking. There's some chat homeworking will continue even after this is all over

How much space do you need to WFH?

Me and DH are doing it now, we don't have an office so are using the dining room table, we've borrowed a couple of office chairs, risers, keyboard & mice from my workplace so the laptop screens are higher up.

Yes bigger monitors would be nice but we're not in the kind of roles that require CAD etc so can work fine on laptop screens. I have a visual impairment so use the win 10 accessibility features like magnifier where needed.

If we didn't have a table then we could have got the wall mounted pull down space saver desks or a secretary desk for the bedroom or living room.

Long term I do think that companies who can will encourage more WFH, it makes good commercial sense, it is significantly cheaper to provide every staff member with a laptop, monitor etc than to to pay for expensive real estate. In my are a very average city centre office space is around £20 per sq foot in rent, plus rates, electric.... plus initial fit out of at least £20,000 for a basic space and the requirement to spend it again when you leave to get the space back to how it started.

Risk assessments, DSEs and such can be done remotely via self serve assessment. IT support can be done via Remote Desktop 90% of the time and where there are hardware issues IT teams will courier a replacement temp machine to you, collect yours, fix it then courier it back and take away the temp machine at the same time.

There will always be some office based roles and the need for some communal/meeting/function room spaces, but I do think there will be a long term increase in WFH globally.

I imagine that there might be a boom in local shared office space businesses (similar to We Work) for people to hire a desk at a local venue if they can’t work from home and/or want to be around people, but without commuting to their company office. They could be designed with social distancing and privacy in mind.

DH and I are retiring soon so doesn't really affect us too much, DH is wfh and I am going into work, I work p/t, DH will probably have to wfh until he retires at end of year, he is working in spare bedroom so not too bad but if it was long term we would probably have to change the box room into an office space, so would lose storage space.

DS is wfh but is finding it more difficult as he only has a small flat and his work set up is 2 large computer screens so he is hoping he goes back to the office soon. Wfh works best if you have the space for it.

Maybe home with studies will come back into fashion, they used to be very popular in the late 90s when people had those PCs with huge towers and a big desk to accommodate it all and then they seemed to go out of favour as everyone switched to iPads, phones and small laptops you can sit on the sofa and use.