Work from home again in England?

[Jourdain11]

I missed the news today and I'm wondering... was much said about work from home guidelines in England? I cannot see that anything has been said specifically but wondering if there was any "laying of the ground".

No

I wish! I miss working from home.

Nothing announced but dh's company has retracted the 1 day a week in the office thing, for now. I give it less than a week before any official escalation.

I think now we've seen the light (that most jobs are possible to WFH) we should offer people an alternative to all showing up every day, especially with rising cases and new variants.

See, I kind of disagree with that! 10/12 of my team decided they needed to work from home today and that meant that I had to answer literally every query and deal with every issue that came to the door. I should have finished at 5.30 and ended up staying till past 7 just to catch up on myself. And no doubt my colleagues did work from home and felt they were doing their whole job from home - but this was not the whole picture.

@Jourdain11 why don't you make a rota? We did that to stop everyone coming in on Tuesday-Thursday and it being like a ghost town on Fridays.

@Jourdain11

See, I kind of disagree with that! 10/12 of my team decided they needed to work from home today and that meant that I had to answer literally every query and deal with every issue that came to the door. I should have finished at 5.30 and ended up staying till past 7 just to catch up on myself. And no doubt my colleagues did work from home and felt they were doing their whole job from home - but this was not the whole picture.

If the nature of the job is that customers / clients are coming in site then clearly they need to ensure there's enough staff in. That isn't the case for lots of people who aren't "customer" facing

[quote HousethatChunkbuilt]@Jourdain11 why don't you make a rota? We did that to stop everyone coming in on Tuesday-Thursday and it being like a ghost town on Fridays.[/quote]
We have a rota. Today we also had cold weather, "colds" and an upcoming strike 😃

@Jourdain11

See, I kind of disagree with that! 10/12 of my team decided they needed to work from home today and that meant that I had to answer literally every query and deal with every issue that came to the door. I should have finished at 5.30 and ended up staying till past 7 just to catch up on myself. And no doubt my colleagues did work from home and felt they were doing their whole job from home - but this was not the whole picture.

Could you have passed on any of the queries and issues to the people working at home?

If it's a desk job physical location shouldn't be a barrier. We've had some fairly major client issues over the past few weeks and we've dealt with them as seamlessly remotely as it would be in person as we've done it all on Teams. In fact, it's probably easier to get hold of people that way than it is to go find them in an office at the other end of the same building.

One day, I even looked at the CCTV monitoring the process at a large industrial site via Teams - my client could get it on his desktop, which he then shared, because they've always done it this way, otherwise he would spend hours a day wandering around an industrial site the size of a small town.

Today we also had cold weather, "colds" and an upcoming strike

So people phoned in sick, couldn't get in or were worried they wouldn't get home?

Surely that would happen if people were wfh or office?

You need to find a way of having queries directed to people working at home.

Its not wfh that's the issue. Its the set up, which should be sorted incase wfh does come back.

I think the govt will be reluctant to advise WFH, given that it's been so hard to persuade people to go back to the office after the previous lockdown.

Oh god I hope not 😭.

My husband never stopped working from home. I don't think he's alone.

I think the most adapting has to be done by the employees. In our place (hospital) some of the admin team don't need to go into the hospital building at all, so why should they? I work on an acute ward, with very poor signal and patients who it is very hard to engage with on TEAMs. I actually can't hear what's happening if I'm not physically in the room.
It would be terrible for me to say no working from home because my job can't be done from home. However that seems to be what my trust are saying, they want us all in as much as possible.
However some (the minority) other work colleagues don't seem to see the bigger picture. There's times when you really need to be in there, a large portion of the job is to assist the nursing and medical team and they don't see those problems (which someone else is solving) as they're not there. Stuff like running laptops around, getting the meds charts to the on call doctor, supporting with IT when someone is locked out.

I don’t understand why we are not WFH yet to be honest.

Nearly everyone I know is still wfh or doing a hybrid.

Our company has not gone back to the office yet and no plans to until at least March 2022 (but that dates keeps being pushed back).

They have made arrangements for some people who find working from home a particular hardship, but for now the expectation is that everyone remains at home anyway.

We've never stopped. The office has had a total refit to make it hybrid and if you needed or wanted to go in you could. But that's not the case again any more and you're only allowed in if it is deemed urgent enough. That's quite alright with me! I love WFH.

Most decent companies are offering WFH if it suits the job. I am now and work much better. Also means l have taken off zero sick days or looking after sick/isolating kids days as been here.

It makes no sense to prevent one group of workers working at home because others either have to go to a workplace or their work significantly benefits from being there.

Because if those who can WFH do so, it makes public transport and workplaces less crowded, which reduces the risk of covid being spread due to fewer and less contacts with others so benefits everyone.

Could you have passed on any of the queries and issues to the people working at home?

I am sure OP did but that still means a big chunk if OPs day was spent cting as secretary to the other staff. I'd that's not their job role, that isn't fair and means they are taking on more work than those WFH.

The government doesn't want to but it would be the single best change they could make to limit spread.

Obviously if you have customers coming to your door you can't be expected to handle that all alone, but many of us have jobs where we never have in-person customer contact anyway - I effectively worked alone in an office with others also working alone. Now we do that at home most of the time. being in the office or home does not change our jobs at all. The one negative is the systems connect better in the office but it is a pretty marginal thing.

I have been going into the office voluntarily because I like the change of scenery and the contact but will not before Christmas now as it seems unnecessary.

WFH for over 12 months broke me to be honest
The return to something resembling normality and office days literally saved my sanity

Jennie Harries (?) was just on radio 4. She said it could happen if there are "significant surges"

Jourdain11 When DH's department were working from home, they still had to have two people in each day to man the phones. Ideally they'd still be doing some of their own workload, but that's essentially what they were their for. If something urgent came along they didn't have time to deal with, colleagues at home had to takeover.

His workplace don't want to risk staff being off, so if anyone has had contact (despite vaccination) they have to stay at home. 3/8 were out the other week and they immediately put it in place who had to be in just in case.