Work from home if you can should stay in place, surely?

[Ninefeettall]

Just thinking about June 21st and Boris said as recently as yesterday or the day before that 'Work from home if you can' will be scrapped from 21 June. Surely if the Indian variant is a problem (which we don't know for sure yet) then this is a really, really, really easy win? 'If you can' doesn't have to include people who need to be in the office for mental health reasons or who can't work properly from home, but there are vast numbers of young, unvaccinated or partially vaccinated office workers who have now been working from home for a year, doing their jobs perfectly well if not better who could just keep doing that and not add to the commuters or office workers spreading the variant about.

@Missfelipe

I manage a team of people and we are currently consulting on return to the office. They all tell me they are more productive at home but I see their work and no that that isn’t actually the case. I’m pretty flummoxed that they seem to believe that. They tell me they do longer hrs but I don’t see an increase in output and quality isn’t as great. I think the greater flexibility has resulted in some people thinking they have all the time in the world to do things, so easy to pick it up later but it’s detrimental to our business.

I’m also facing a barrage of people telling me they are simply too anxious about COVID to return. The same people who have/will be out every night/weekend in pubs, restaurants, people’s homes...I’d much rather they were honest instead of this fake anxiety excuse which does a disservice to those actually struggling.

Yeah, there's going to be people trying it on.

I was straight with my manager and said I don't want to return to the office but when i'm asked back i'll go back. He's the same, he prefers WFH but is answerable to senior management and we always knew WFH was temporary. Hopefully not back to the office 5 days a week for eternity though.

Gosh these laptop computers could wipe out the typewriter industry. We must stop them immediately!! Ever heard of progress? Commercial property may have to become residential, in part for a time. Pension funds will have to adjust their investments, as they do all the time. In the long term cities will bounce back of course, because people enjoy them, but some mature, experienced and trustworthy employees will be allowed to permanently WFH rather than being lost to rivals who have already moved to 100% home working!

Personally I don’t think it is progress, apart from for a particular cohort of well settled types with great WFH conditions, commutes they hate and kids/home responsibilities.

Very well represented on here, but very far from typical of all those wfh.

In my team it’s the ‘mature and experienced’ ones who seem to be the ones slacking....experienced does not equal hardworking unfortunately.

I don’t think it’s going to be the great WFH revolution that everyone expects...we will be a hybrid type model I suspect (we had wfh days before COVID but looking life we will do more now) but that doesn’t seem to be going far enough for some despite it giving everyone a little of what they want.

The PM isn't telling everyone to go back to work. He is lifting the WFH order so that employers and businesses can make the right decisions fit them and their employees.

He's giving the freedom back to the businesses. If you don't want to work in the office that is a conversation you need to have with your employer, surely!

@Missfelipe

In my team it’s the ‘mature and experienced’ ones who seem to be the ones slacking....experienced does not equal hardworking unfortunately.

I don’t think it’s going to be the great WFH revolution that everyone expects...we will be a hybrid type model I suspect (we had wfh days before COVID but looking life we will do more now) but that doesn’t seem to be going far enough for some despite it giving everyone a little of what they want.

Once you're over a certain age you realise that working hard gets you nowhere (depending what you do of course). Some people close to retirement also just don't care and won't be sacked.

@TheKeatingFive

Personally I don’t think it is progress, apart from for a particular cohort of well settled types with great WFH conditions, commutes they hate and kids/home responsibilities.

Very well represented on here, but very far from typical of all those wfh.

I agree. I don't know anyone who wants to wfh every day.

In normal times I work in a small but spacious ground floor office with outdoor space, patio doors and large windows that open.

But my brother works in a tower block with thousands of people all streaming through the doors and up the stair wells between 8 and 9 five days a week. And at lunchtime. And again in the evening.

Our WFH arrangements will be reviewed in March 2022. My brother has already gone back.

My brother isn't vaccinated at all. He thinks there are about 3 people in his company older than him who probably are. No idea about the other floors.

I mean, it's just a recipe for disaster isn't it?

How can vaccines stop covid in office blocks when so many people haven't had one yet?

This article is a couple of weeks old but the "Work from home if you can" advice still seems to be in place.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52567567.amp

@midgedude

Given the overcrowding problems London commuters used to face , more wfh will make commuting nicer not worse

Not if there are fewer train services.

That ended really well - we spent November-May mostly in lockdown for the sake of a few weeks of 'freedom' and a lot of coercion to 'go back to the office'.

The more transmissible Kent variant had nothing to do with it then?

The Kent strain developed because of more mixing. The virus will keep mutating as long as unvaccinated people mix.

I agree OP. However quite a lot of firms where people work with people remotely in other offices still want bums on seats. My partner and all his office have been in since schools went back. It is nuts.

I see a lot of jobs advertised as remote, then when you look closer at the advert it says "travel required" or "meetings in office when required" but no details on how often that would be.

Remote jobs should be just that - working from home, with meetings done online too. Otherwise call it 'home based' as that makes it much clearer than 'remote'.

@ScotlandUnited I think the issue is a lot of companies are still figuring out how hybrid working will work operationally for them. My place is talking about a period of testing with office 2 days a week. But I’m not sure we’d be committing to that in job advertisements at the moment as we don’t know how it will work in practice, or how much flexibility people will have on which particular days they go to the office (we have about 9,000 who are London based, it would be carnage if we let everyone pick and chose at their own free will).

As I keep reminding my team, the last 12 months has not been hybrid working, it’s been enforced home working and the two are very different.