When will the work from home advice change?

[TabbyTat]

I hate working from home. I genuinely can’t do it and I know for as long as the advice is “anyone who can work from home should work from home” the office will stay closed. Do you think there is any sign of things changing this summer?

It may be a while before the advice changes but more and more offices are opening to allow people to go in where working from home is tricky. WFH is fine if you've got a proper office and a nice quiet working environment. It is not a long term solution for people who are working on a laptop at the dining room table with 2 kids running around - as most of my friends are attempting to.

WFH is fine if you've got a proper office and a nice quiet working environment. It is not a long term solution for people who are working on a laptop at the dining room table with 2 kids running around - as most of my friends are attempting to.

In my opinion the hardest part about that is the kids running around, and just offices reopening won't help that. If offices open, people with kids won't be able to go if schools/wraparound care/holiday clubs aren't open

I have been working FT since the start but in the office but lots of administrators are working from home and I'm loving it, more room in the car park, not so many in the canteen and rush hour is no longer.

Long may it continue.

Any university staff? How will confirmation and clearing work this year ?

but there are an awful lot of incompetent managers in business who reach their positions by connections or the Peter principle.

Trouble is most become managers simply by climbing the ladder in their chosen career, not because they have the skills set for it.

Fed up too. Can't see why can't go in a couple days a week

As pp said you can ask to go in but would the office be what you had hoped for? Our offices are open for a few people only, no canteen, no breakout areas, very few people in so socialising with colleagues is limited to nonexistent and a majority would have to take public transport to get there which is a risk in itself.

My company seem to be operating a do what suits policy until September,and then back to normal as possible

I work in a university, and they are planning for a phased return. I'm not student facing, so our dept will be one of the last to go back.

For Clearing in August the uni have taken on an external call centre, instead of setting up their own temp call centre, but Admissions staff will be available remotely to support. I don't work in that area but have helped out with Clearing calls in the past, and some time ago the whole place replaced most of it's traditional phones with an internet phone system, so we can take calls from home. So I'm guessing the call centre will take all the details using on-screen guidance and either put callers through, or academics and admissions staff will call the students back to make offers.

I quite like WFH, but have mixed feelings and miss work friends, so if we have a blend of WFH and office 50/50, that would be the perfect compromise for me. Could be that we're all split into two teams, and Team 1 go in 50% and TEam 2 the other half of the time - either half the week each, or on different weeks.

I don't miss getting up earlier, commuting, rushing to get ready, as well as checking the teenagers have everything. Much prefer making lunch at lunchtime and having more varied lunches at home. It's also handy to be able to pop to local shops - butcher, baker, greengrocer, that are only open till 5pm (not a fan of spending all food budget with supermarkets).

I do miss work friends from the old teams, as I changed jobs in Feb, so although the new team are lovely, I haven't known them for long and miss bumping into people, although I keep in touch privately with a couple of people.

I'm concerned about the uni toilets, as many are in public areas and accessible to anyone, and there will be queues as one person will be allowed in at a time. I wish they would convert the cubicle ones to separate enclosed room toilets with washbasin, like disabled toilets, but that would be £££.

Meant to add, probably back in phases by end Sept 2020, and I'm also concerned about large numbers of people moving around, especially at that time of year - hence comment on queuing for the loo!

I'm furloughed indefinitely. My job role is mainly reception and arranging travel. Whilst no one is working from the office and no one is travelling for work I have no job. Possible redundancy looming?

Our work has done a few surveys and a risk assessment and have opened the office for those that want to/have to. I imagine there are plenty of the younger people in flatshares unsuitable for WFH. Apparently there can be no more than 23% capacity so I'm gladly remaining part of the the 77%.

I love working from home - no annoying 'tap tap tap' Slack notifications, no whistling, no long and incredibly expensive commute, no being stuck in someones armpit on a jam packed tube. But I'm fortunate in that we have a decent sized house with a study and I'm past the age where I loved going out after work and socialising. I'd struggle if this had happened in my early 20's in a flatshare in London.

Has the work from home if you can rule been scrapped with the latest government announcement? The 1 meter thing will apply to offices right?

WFH seems to be very common on Mumsnet.

What type of jobs do you all have?

I’m self employed and work over internet, creative, so even though I also WFH I’m puzzled as to how everyone else is doing it?

I work in financial services. It’s quite easy to work from home in terms of doing the actual work.

@Beatrixpotterspencil

WFH seems to be very common on Mumsnet.

What type of jobs do you all have?

I’m self employed and work over internet, creative, so even though I also WFH I’m puzzled as to how everyone else is doing it?

Most office based roles can be done remotely.

Share drives,. SharePoint, Teams, it's really easy.

I'm an in-house recruiter and have WFH 2-3 days a week for 10 years.

We remote onto our office desktops and so have access to the network and all our documents etc. Email and zoom instead of letters or face to face. It's easy mostly.

WFH seems to be very common on Mumsnet.

What type of jobs do you all have?

I work in financial services, all staff members have laptops, there are no desktops in the office at all. People frequently wfh before coronavirus.

So does this mean that if WFH becomes the new normal, that the only people who will be travelling to work will be in jobs of a low income?

Are any non-professional, non-creative jobs able to WFH?

I wonder if it will create a new kind of ‘class divide’.
I’m always interested in how society adapts to new things so apologies for endless questions 😁

I have no idea what share drive or share point means?

I think I live a sheltered life (that’s 15 yrs of WFH for you!)😁

If I was in my 20s I would want to get back into the office. That was my social life when I was 20ish - going fir a drink straight from work etc. I also met most of my boyfriends via work, Now I’m a lot lot older and I work locally and no one goes for a drink straight from work And I’m not looking for a new partner or friends I’m happy working from home.

that the only people who will be travelling to work will be in jobs of a low income?

Doctors, pilots, university professors and many other highly paid people cannot work from home.

Are any non-professional, non-creative jobs able to WFH?

Of course. Low-level admin jobs can often be easily done from home.

And I think people are being a bit too quick to make predictions. It's only been a few months. Most people can't WFH at all, and even those who are - or think they are - doing it succesfully now, may not be able to do so long-term. Let's have this discussion in 5 years to see how much will really change.

I managed to do my low paid admin job from home before I retired, so not all high paid jobs just mainly office type jobs are wfh.

I rung EDF yesterday to enquire about my gas bill and it was clearly a guy working from home, he sounded properly pissed off. His PC wasn't working properly and I could hear kids screeching in the back ground.
I felt quite sorry for him.

Obviously we need to see how the opening of non-essential shops, the re-opening on 4th July of a lot of places and the schools re-opening fully in September impacts on infection rates.

HMRC are working from home until at least September so I think it highly improbable that there will be an announcement for all to stop working from home before HMRC are back in their offices.

MeredithGrey I also work in finance, and like you we were fully set up to go remote anyway. In fact by total coincidence we had a business continuity/disaster recovery simulation in January for the FCA, where we all had to take our laptops home and work for a day, and made some helpful operational changes as a result of that which felt amazingly prescient when we closed the office in March.