'Go back to work if you can' - any idea what Boris means by this??

[labyrinthloafer]

So today the PM said people should go back to work if they can, rather than stay at home if they can.

But if people can do their jobs from home, why would this be a good idea in amongst all the other things opening up?

I feel so drained at the moment, have got into a very decent homeworking situation, now potentially disrupted, and then all winter it'll be 'oh Sue's coughing, has she had a test' and then people going home while they wait for results.

I suppose my question is - do you think this is just rhetoric or will the home working now start to change?

I agree with Zombie what people wish for might be to live somewhere less expensive and still work for London company

on the Eastern Europeans... given that big farm outbreak near Worcester, 200 people isolated & the supposed labour shortage... does anyone know, if the govt ever got enough agricultural workers this year? It seems like they must have done.

@ZombieLizzieBennet and @MarshaBradyo

I doubt very much that any London company looking to outsource their work to another area of the UK will do so in order to knock a couple of grand off the salary. You would look to Eastern Europe or India where you could save 2-3 times that amount plus you wouldn't have to pay employers national insurance contributions, etc on top.

My company of 30 people is already looking to Romania for its support staff needs. It's not hard to do either and will only get easier so it won't just be something that large corporations do, it will be just as easy for a small company to post a job advert on jobland.pl and have someone just as good do the job on half the salary. Sites such as Toptal are also being heavily used to hire freelancers from abroad and I can imagine will only be used more going forward.

Jian no maybe not but I was specifically countering pp on the Midlands point.

My company of 30 people is already looking to Romania for its support staff needs.

There will likely be changes, it is harder for support staff I agree. It is unlikely in my sector however, although people are impacted by having to remain in London for job quantity.

Joan rather

But outsourcing work doesn't have to involve physically moving an office. The point I was making is that companies previously requiring full or virtually full time attendance in a London office may now be much more willing to significantly reduce that, say a couple of meeting days a month. And not all of us are in fields where that expertise exists in cheaper markets. Mine barely exists in the UK!

So my point is, be careful what you wish for doesn't apply to all of us.

Not everything is open yet, so in regards to everyone as a whole from every industry, that's probably what he meant. Ie gyms are not yet open. some places won't open untill after summer so people who have the option as opposed to if it's still not yet possible

I think the government are motivated by concerns about the commercial property market
Their rich friends who own and control commercial property with vastly inflated values stand to lose a lot of money if these offices etc are no longer needed

Where's the innovation
you mean the billionaires and the tech giants, they've innovated themselves into their ivory towers very nicely thank you
I'm alright Jack pull up the ladder, let those peasants (upon whose backs we made our vast fortunes) fight amongst themselves

Some big law firms/banks have outsourced support staff to other parts of the UK already. I don't think all the lawyers, accountants, trader, analysts jobs etc are going to move to people outside of London or the UK though. I just think more workers will spend less time in the office.

Also I don't really know anyone in those jobs who doesn't already do some form of wfh.

I think I read some tech companies were looking at reducing salaries if San Fran staff relocated to cheaper areas.

@inglory

Also I don't really know anyone in those jobs who doesn't already do some form of wfh.

Well no, but there's wfh and wfh. There's a big difference between a wfh policy where you're allowed to do it when you have a load of paperwork, they have an 80% policy or any other variant where people are still primarily office based, and a setup where the staff are primarily home based and there's no expectation to come in except for the fortnightly client meeting.

@ZombieLizzieBennet Do lots of people in the city still have loads of paperwork? Most paperwork is on computers now days surely?

I've never said that people will switch to 100% wfh but people have been doing that for months now without trips to the office & many companies have found it fine.

I think we will see more of this

www.legalcheek.com/2020/05/personal-injury-giant-to-ditch-london-office-as-it-looks-to-embrace-permanent-remote-working/

www.legalcheek.com/2020/07/dentons-closes-two-uk-offices-and-moves-to-permanent-home-working/amp/

The law firm my DH works for has a large operation in Belfast where they have IT staff etc. It's not unusual and I can see a lot more firms doing it. There's really no need to be in London. In a previous job I had a work colleague was based in Northern Ireland (working from home rather than in a satellite office), she used to come over to the office once a month.

I doubt very much that any London company looking to outsource their work to another area of the UK will do so in order to knock a couple of grand off the salary. You would look to Eastern Europe or India where you could save 2-3 times that amount plus you wouldn't have to pay employers national insurance contributions, etc on top

but they will want people in the office for meetings etc - maybe once a week, maybe once a month. You can'd do that if people are in Poland, you can if they are an hour or two away from London.

[quote inglory]@ZombieLizzieBennet Do lots of people in the city still have loads of paperwork? Most paperwork is on computers now days surely?

I've never said that people will switch to 100% wfh but people have been doing that for months now without trips to the office & many companies have found it fine. [/quote]
I'm not in the City so couldn't say how they work, but I didn't mean paperwork as in physical
pieces of paper.

@ZombieLizzieBennet what did you mean?

The sort of thing people would used to have done on physical pieces of paper before everything went onto computers and is now done that way. So it might be an admin day, for example. Or I used to work at a place a few years ago where there was a policy that you could wfh now and then if you had a piece of work you needed peace and quiet for and that wasn't going to require you to be physically present in the office.

I work at a large University in Central London (administration building). Universities are going to be hit hard by the ramifications of CV and already proposals are being made to ask staff to take pay cuts to avoid redundancy. If we could continue to WFH I would be far more able to agree to a pay cut, as I would be making significant savings on travel and childcare. This is just another consideration for WFH.

Oops sorry wrong thread. I’ve reported it to be removed.