What if you work from home and have no Wifi?

[Honeysucklelane]

We both work from home, DH’s work has an office he goes to once or twice a week. My work has no office and we’re all remote.

Our Wifi has gone down, DH is provided with a work mobile so he’s been able to hotspot to it to do work today. We can’t both use his hotspot.

I haven’t got a work mobile or any way of connecting to Wifi for work tomorrow - unless I go out and spend money sitting in a cafe or somewhere with Wifi.

Just curious to know what other home based workers do in this situation? Do your employers expect you to find alternative Wifi? Do they accept you can’t work through no fault of your own? Does your employer provide or pay for Wifi for you?

I would just connect to my personal phone hotspot or go the library.

We all have unlimited phone data. So we connect the work laptop via our phones.

This didn't work when the phone mast also went down in a storm two years ago, we had no WiFi for a week.

As others have said, I'd use my personal phone (I don't have a work phone) and hotspot off that. I also have work outlook and teams on my phone so I can keep up. The rest of the time, I just get on with offline stuff.

We get up to two hours and then we need to either find alternative WiFi (go into the office if necessary, for those who can) or else it’s deducted from our annual leave/we make up the time if appropriate once we are back online.

I either pay to access a BT hotspot, or I use my MiFi connection (when I can find the tiny router thing).

My mobile is £10 pm through Giff Gaff, but if I used it for work it would eat up my data very quickly and the signal probably isn’t good enough either.

I have a work phone so would hot spot. If I didn't, I'd be expected to find an alternative or take leave/make hours up.

An alternative for me would be working at my parents, sisters or a friends. If not, library/cafe/pub.

Actually, probably the gym as we have a club room!

I like the sound of your work! My work don’t pay me anything towards Wifi, I’m just expected to use my home Wifi. It shouldn’t be down too long.🙏

You need to check your contract and company policies. If as you say in the OP your employer has no office you can work from, I expect they have thought of this eventuality. If the work you do is not confidential then I think that you would either be expected to take Annual Leave or find a work around such as using a Library. I had a colleague who made a similar query and it was pointed out that NO job is ever entirely online with NOTHING that could be achieved in the absence of wifi. Don't make yourself a candidate for the redundancy pool by looking like you are unable or unwilling to use your initiative to be able to meet your work commitments.

In this situation I borrowed a new neighbour's WiFi. I'm still incredibly grateful for their generosity. It helped save my sanity.

My job is entirely online and, yes, nothing could be done without internet.

I'd hotspot off my phone, being frugal with how I used data, and top up my contract by a fiver/tenner if necessary. I think it's a bit feeble not to even try.

My work would take a very dim view of working from a random public cafe: a library might be OK.

Not even thinking? Mentally planning your day's schedule?

My monthly goodybag with Giffgaff (£10) gets me 20gigs a month which is plenty for logging in and working online and doing a few calls without my video on - I could definitely do a day or three without killing my data.

I'd expect to do that and go to a library or similar if not, or for my work to pay for an extra top up if they wouldn't let me go to a library.

During lockdown I used my phone to hotspot, I was salaried. Now I’m zero hours I’d use my phone to hotspot or not be paid.

If I couldn’t find a workaround, I would have to take leave. My hours are flexible though so If I could make up the time over the next few days that would be acceptable.

my full vpn won’t work over most public networks or with my phone WiFi so while I have logged in using my phone as a hotspot, I can’t do my full job that way.

I have checked into a local hotel known for its good wired business internet during an outage. I’m kind of in the middle of nowhere so the nearest co-working spaces are all far away and traveling to an office would require a plane.

I've used my personal phone as a hotspot before. Wi-Fi has never been down more than a day. I live 20 minutes from the office and have hotdesks I can book in the office so I have no excuse really not to work if no Wi-Fi, work would just say come in to the office.

Create a hot-spot from your mobile, buying extra data if needed. Or work in a cafe.

Don’t work from home, but we have 4G back up for if wifi connection is lost.

I normally use my phone. But in a pinch, I have parked outside of Starbucks and used theirs, working from my car to maintain a degree of privacy.

It would depend if you had an office to go to. I wfh 4 days a week but the office is open 3 days a week. If my wifi goes down I sit in Costa/other cafe of your choice. If it were still down by the next day I would go into the office.

No, schedule planning isn’t part of my job. And for those for whom it is, they wouldn’t be able to work either if there’s no internet and access to the servers and software. Thinking is done while doing the job - you cannot do the thinking beforehand.

When 2 of my local WFH friends had no electricity and their broadband went off, they messaged me to check if I had electricity (I did) and ask if they could come and work from my dining room. I, of course, said yes, made them a cup of tea and left them to it.
Can't you ask a local friend/relative if you can work from their house whilst you've got no Internet?

That would be impossible for me. I need a PC and at least two monitors and am only contractually allowed to work from home.

I have to go into the office
None of my job can be done offline