Pressured to return to office but cases rising locally. Where is their duty of care?

[Nutsoh]

Despite WFH successfully since last March we’ve been told over the past few weeks that our offices now have to be manned to 50% in a bid to transition back to full occupancy.

Some managers have turned the thumbscrews on their teams to —force— encourage part of their departments back, they’ve pushed the teams that have a lot of static equipment back in FT and allowed those with laptops the benefit of coming and going when they please with their laptops.

Despite the 2m rule we are allowed to sit in the office, anything up to 10 of us without masks, just needing to put masks on to walk around. There is a one way system but the kitchen is a free for all and you can go into the toilet right after someone else has just used it even though ventilation is poor.

So, I didnt have too much of an issue with this but cases are now rising locally and I feel it’s only a matter of time that it’s going to go through the office. We’ve all had at least one jab but I’m starting to feel a little anxious about someone getting it and it running through the whole building.

So, from a duty of care POV, if someone gets Covid through work and it leaves them seriously I’ll or with long Covid where does that leave the company legally seeing as they’ve more or less forced people back in despite the guidance still being to WFH if you can.

Can people take action against their company if this happens?

@Ladylokidoki

Its not even get back to work, because they are working. It's 'get back to one particular building that I, personally, think you should be in.'

Exactly this!

It really depends on the company, but we’ve renegotiated remote working contracts permanently, keeping our London wage (my partner and I both work for different multinational software companies). We will be expected to go to an office of sorts or new working space once a quarter. We held into European passports too so we plan to move around. We’ve already worked from Egypt and Spain and we love our new life. I thought we’d be tied to big cities forever.

@IsabellesMissingSock

I wonder if a lot of the "go back to work!" brigade are confusing wfh with furlough. That would explain why they are apparently so strident about people they don't know carrying out their work from a dedicated office space rather than a living room, I suppose....

I think it is a mixture of jealousy and lack of understanding that some people have the self disipline to get the job done whereever they are based (probably because they don't have much self discipline themselves). Having worked at home for many years I find the attitude quite irritating.

I have been a little bit humpy about furlough, where employees have had months off and still get to cram their entire holiday entitlement in, while colleagues have had to work extra hard to cover their absence.
I think there is an element of jealousy and not differentiating between wfh and furlough - even though neither are caused by or necessarily even wanted by the individual!

Ladilokidokie

You edited my post to leave out a comment I made about employers perhaps realising that they can pay people in India a much lower rate of pay to work from their homes. Dont think it wont happen to you, it happened to my friend who works for a high street bank. You have been warned.

Exactly! People on here saying the OP thinks she is more important than teachers , doctors etc. Are talking nonsense. It's actually the opposite. Those who can , should work from home, to protect those who can't wfh. If she gets covid in the office then gives it to her kid, who then gives it to their teacher , who is wrong? The teacher had to go to work, the kid had to go to school, she was not supposed to go to the office. Simple.

@MrsHastingslikethebattle

Exactly. It's all a bit "I'm not allowed to wfh therefore no one should be able to" really. Very childish

Not from everyone's stand point. It certainly isn't mine. Key workers have worked throughout this pandemic, front line workers who have kept the country going, where the vast majority haven't been vaccinated, who have to put their health and familys health at risk.

And yet now, 18 months later the working from home crew need to get out of their pyjamas and commute, their worlds crashing down.

Its precious and quite ridiculous.

You have essentially just repeated exactly the sentiments you're claiming to refute here though...

The fact that some people have to work face to face has absolutely no bearing on whether other people do. I've no specific axe to grind here, because I was fully remote long before covid and don't actually have a physical workplace that could accommodate me, but it's very striking the way some people seem to adopt a you must work in one specific place approach apparently on principle. I've sympathy with arguments about some roles just not being doable remotely, and I think it's fair to say that some people who have been wfh completely fail to understand the situation for people who do have to be face to face. But the fact that some jobs can't be done remotely is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether other jobs should be. If that's your argument, you haven't got an argument.

@auntnellie

Ladilokidokie

You edited my post to leave out a comment I made about employers perhaps realising that they can pay people in India a much lower rate of pay to work from their homes. Dont think it wont happen to you, it happened to my friend who works for a high street bank. You have been warned.

There's always a risk of that. For me, I consider the risk pretty small as I work in a very specialised field, with jurisdiction-specific parameters. But there's always a risk of being replaced by someone else. I don't consider the fact that I am wfh increases that risk.

Also, just because it happened to your friend who worked in a high street bank (which couldn't be further from what I do 🤷🏻‍♀️) doesn't mean it will automatically happen to every single person who currently is wfh. People's inability to see beyond their own small circles astounds me sometimes.

The thing with outsourcing is that clearly in some jobs that's a potential risk, but others of us know that it isn't. It's pretty daft to be telling someone it could happen to them when you've really no idea whether it's a realistic possibility or not.

You edited my post to leave out a comment I made about employers perhaps realising that they can pay people in India a much lower rate of pay to work from their homes. Dont think it wont happen to you, it happened to my friend who works for a high street bank. You have been warned.

I didn't edit anything. I copied and pasted the part that I was addressing. I don't have an obligation, to address all your post. So why would I include the parts I am not.

Thankfully, I don't take my career advice from people whose mate works for a bank (so completely unrelated to my work), got made redundant.

And if you think that the jobs going abroad are going are solely based on people wfh, you don't really understand the whole situation.

Even without the pandemic, your friends job would likely have gone abroad. Because its cheaper. Its that simple. But the pandemic gives companies a better reason to do, from a PR point of view.

And unless you are part of the team that makes the decision, you don't know all the reasons. There will be alot of factors. You know the reasons your friend has been told. And I would bet money she wasn't told 'you are being made redundant because people have to wfh and that might become more permanent'

@BoaCunstrictor

The thing with outsourcing is that clearly in some jobs that's a potential risk, but others of us know that it isn't. It's pretty daft to be telling someone it could happen to them when you've really no idea whether it's a realistic possibility or not.

Well.... quite. Clearly that poster knows more about my future career development than I do. She/he should buy a lottery ticket

There's always a risk of that. For me, I consider the risk pretty small as I work in a very specialised field, with jurisdiction-specific parameters. But there's always a risk of being replaced by someone else. I don't consider the fact that I am wfh increases that risk.

Exactly. It's not something I think about alot because, it's extremely unlikely. Given my job includes things that need to be done face to face.

Bank staff have always had this as a fairly sizable risk. And wfh and the pandemic is not the only reason this happens.

Banks are even closing high street branches. Their staff aren't wfh.

I do sort of wonder if the cat isn't out of the bag now anyway. If the last 15 months has made an employer think, correctly or otherwise, that because a job is being done from home in the UK it can be done from India just as effectively, has that ball not already begun rolling?

@BoaCunstrictor

I do sort of wonder if the cat isn't out of the bag now anyway. If the last 15 months has made an employer think, correctly or otherwise, that because a job is being done from home in the UK it can be done from India just as effectively, has that ball not already begun rolling?

Maybe in some places of work. In my place, we have just recruited two U.K.-based employees for my team though. Perhaps we are missing a trick!

Yeah I don't mean across the board, because clearly some jobs just aren't suitable for offshoring. I just mean, if they are or the employer wrongly thinks they are, surely 15 months is enough time for them to have made that call? And if they're going to do it, getting back into the physical workplace now isn't going to close Pandoras box. The jobs are either going or they aren't.

Ah yes I see what you mean. They have had 15 months to decide and implement moving jobs offshore. If they haven't done it by now, then perhaps they actually consider that our jobs don't need moving offshore, regardless of what happened to a PP's mate at a high street bank.

Two basic issues

First, UK as with several overseas nations are possibly on the foothills of the next third Indian Delta wave despite good rates of vaccination. Indian Delta variants themselves have further been recently sequenced to new Indian Delta Plus more challenging and possibly dominant variants.

Second, many multinational corporates as requesting full vaccination of staff and clients for a complete more medically sustainable return to 2019 times and ability to opt out of basic risk mitigation management measures especially as Covid fatigue has meant consensus mass unmasking in recent weeks despite data trending in the wrong and worrying direction.

I'm perfectly capable of distinguishing furlough and wfh. My OH works from home full time, and did pre covid too. For those who can and want to wfh post pandemic that's great. What frustrates me is examples such as one I read on a post recently where a poster commented that HR/new starter documents in her company were taking longer than usual to process as staff were wfh and therefore didn't have the documents. This was in the context of explaining why a (different) poster's daughter might not yet have been paid.

I don't know where the fault lies there - perhaps the staff want to go back in and are not permitted, perhaps the employer wants them back and they're resisting because they see themselves as just as productive (or more productive, as is often mentioned). Perhaps the employer needs to be put in place different/better processes. Whatever, to me that seems to be a clear case of wfh not being appropriate and 15 months on it's unacceptable that that might be a reason people are not being paid when promised. It is this disconnect between the number of people claiming they can wfh just as effectively, and the reality of trying to use normal services and finding them limited/affected by wfh.

Well yes. @furstivetreats things should be assessed on a case by case basis as wfh might mean a lack of productivity for certain individuals. What I struggle to understand is the blanket "go back to work!" from many on here, with no knowledge as to whether the people being issued that demand are actually doing a perfectly decent job of wfh (or perhaps being even better/more productive than they were in the office pre-Covid).

@IsabellesMissingSock

Well yes. *@furstivetreats* things should be assessed on a case by case basis as wfh might mean a lack of productivity for certain individuals. What I struggle to understand is the blanket "go back to work!" from many on here, with no knowledge as to whether the people being issued that demand are actually doing a perfectly decent job of wfh (or perhaps being even better/more productive than they were in the office pre-Covid).

Yes, exactly.

I imagine it's often a knee jerk reaction from frustration at being unable to access routine services because 'our staff are wfh'. I also imagine, as others have alluded to, that it also exasperation with the reasons given for not wanting to return to the office. Much better if people just state they wfh successfully and don't want to return to the office. The 'anxiety' around returning to work is incredibly irritating for those who have not had the option to wfh throughout.

For me personally, of the roles I interact with daily in my own job, the majority are not being successfully performed from home so my frustration is that this case by case assessment is not happening and there appears to be a real lack of introspection over what is falling through the gaps and how expendable those things are, and that does prompt me to say things like just get the lot of them back in the office when talking to my frontline colleagues. I can easily imagine after a day of being frustrated at work, only to come home and find that I still can't speak to the people I need to at the council and that some documents I'm waiting on related to a property are delayed because people are wfh I could make a comment on here about wanting everyone back in work (today is pretty much that day!).

I think on both sides there are sweeping statements being made (on the one hand about jealousy, inability to understand the difference between furlough and wfh, lack of self discipline etc and on the other people not being productive, jobs being outsourced).

I think a big issue it that many companies are using 'we are busier than usual, because wfh'.

When actually, that not the problem or only a small part of it. Contact centres aren't replacing staff (or took a big break from recruiting) to replace leavers. They didn't increase their numbers, even though they knew they would have high levels of sickness. So we're prepared to take the hot on customer service.

Alot of these services already had 'we are busier than usual' message on already. Covid has just given them excuses to reduce their SLAs and say its not their fault.

And alot of these companies are ones that haven't taken huge financial hits during the pandemic.

There's teams within our company who wfh hasn't worked for and they wanted to be back and are spread out in the office. Personally, I think their director could have improved processes but they are happy in the office so that's up to them.

Wfh has been in place long enough to make alternative arrangements (hybrid or return to office work) or make improvements if wfh isn't working. It really should be on a case by case basis.

Although the team above has a larger team and took one of my teams desks, so not sure where we are going when we are in in hybrid working

And honestly, if HR are so behind (like in the example above) people aren't getting paid week after week, in my opinion, they wouldn't be part of the 'If you can work from home, work from home'. They should be in category of 'Can't work from home' if they have no way of Improving their processes.

That should have been solved a long time ago.

@furstivetreats

I'm perfectly capable of distinguishing furlough and wfh. My OH works from home full time, and did pre covid too. For those who can and want to wfh post pandemic that's great. What frustrates me is examples such as one I read on a post recently where a poster commented that HR/new starter documents in her company were taking longer than usual to process as staff were wfh and therefore didn't have the documents. This was in the context of explaining why a (different) poster's daughter might not yet have been paid.

I don't know where the fault lies there - perhaps the staff want to go back in and are not permitted, perhaps the employer wants them back and they're resisting because they see themselves as just as productive (or more productive, as is often mentioned). Perhaps the employer needs to be put in place different/better processes. Whatever, to me that seems to be a clear case of wfh not being appropriate and 15 months on it's unacceptable that that might be a reason people are not being paid when promised. It is this disconnect between the number of people claiming they can wfh just as effectively, and the reality of trying to use normal services and finding them limited/affected by wfh.

Why would HR not have the documents because they were wfh though?. Everything is online nowadays. More likely things if things are taking longer than usual there is another reason for it.

@Belladonna12 I've no idea, I'm reporting what another poster said and have to take her at her word, I don't see that she has any reason to make it up though. If I had to take a guess I would imagine they've been posted by snail mail to a central location which is ordinarily staffed and isn't during covid. But to reiterate, I don't know anything about the situation beyond what the poster said as I've relayed above.

@Ladylokidoki you're right, a lot of companies are taking the piss by using covid as an excuse for all their shortcomings and even their deliberate decisions. It's really shitty behaviour and just heaps pressure on their remaining staff.