| Non-motoring > Home working | Miscellaneous |
| Thread Author: legacylad | Replies: 22 |
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New Fri 14 May 21 09:16
Home working - legacylad
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Here to stay ? I’ve had conversations with friends whose off spring still have to go out and earn a crust. Or stay in and earn a crust. It would appear that their employers are moving to smaller offices once their lease periods are up, Zoom seems to be the thing, and daily site visits, working in portacabins is a thing of the past. Maybe 2 days a week on site, or a full week once a month. Stories I hear are that certain large companies are saving a small fortune in overheads by adapting to this new way of working. And the folks I know personally, now working from home most of the time, think very favourably of it. No more commutes. And they still meet their colleagues, albeit more infrequently. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 09:40
Home working - sherlock47
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The interesting spin off will be when the oversupply of office property starts driving down rents and commercial values. How many pension funds are dependent on commercial property? Local authority income may also be hit? Driving up the amount of council tax payable by private owners to maintain service levels? |
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New Fri 14 May 21 09:48
Home working - smokie
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Wfh isn't really new, I was the first (non-salesy) person officially working from home (i.e. in letter of appt) for my main employer in about 1999 (though I was away on projects for maybe 5 months of the year). I'm sure I've said this before but when I stopped work about 6 years ago (for one of the major banks) our team was about 100 but only had 30 desks allocated. Others could hot desk but there was no requirement to do so - they liked to see us in the flesh once a fortnight or thereabouts, or to any critical meetings, otherwise nearly all work was on conference calls (usually not video). The problem used to be people not taking it seriously - there were one or two in that team who were persistently hard to get hold of in a hurry, and seemed to take longer than others to get through their workloads. That's not necessarily confined to home workers though. Also, as a manager, my close buddy was totally against wfh as he felt his staff wouldn't perform adequately. Maybe he was right - but as a small sales office doing mainly telephone sales anyway I'd have thought it would be come apparent if someone wasn't pulling their weight. There isn't much to not like about it, except you do miss the social side, and my daughter started a job where she never met her manager or colleagues other than by Zoom and it went horribly wrong for her, which I am pretty sure wouldn't have happened if she'd struck up a personal face-to-face relationship with people, and people understood her better (and she them). |
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New Fri 14 May 21 09:57
Home working - martin aston
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The company I worked for encouraged home working years ago. I did it myself on and off in the last three years before I retired. It was OK as an old hand who knew my way around the company and and lots of contacts. It was much harder for newcomers to adapt and develop a sense of belonging. I shudder at the idea of a society of people huddled at home never seeing anyone or building real working relationships. A mixture is probably best. It was very popular with people with school age kids who could do the school run and childmind. This is not a cheap shot, these people still put in the work effort required, working early/late instead. The unexpected issue I saw was several people sold their expensive commuter homes and moved out to the sticks where houses were bigger and cheaper. Sometimes these were major moves of many miles. Our office was in Wiltshire and several people moved to Devon and Cornwall. If you did call them in for a meeting there was sometimes a bit of resistance but when you boiled it down most face to face meetings are not strictly necessary and we used video even then. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 11:00
Home working - Runfer D'Hills
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I've worked from home, or otherwise remotely, pretty much all my life. All my jobs, whatever fancy titles some of them may have had, involved going and finding things to sell, buying them, or overseeing their design, having them made, and then finding ways of selling them and businesses to sell them to. On the odd occasions I've been office based for a day or two, I find that my productivity drops significantly. Especially in open plan office environments. People can't help it of course, but the constant background distractions just rob time. On the other hand, I've never been a clock watcher either. I'll start and finish when I choose, with some days extending to 18 hours of work when others might only require a couple. The industry I work in is highly cyclical, with feast and famine periods in the year. At times there are simply not enough hours in the day, week or month, while at others it's all on tick over. The people who report to me are measured, and largely paid on results rather than hours worked. I couldn't care less how they manage their time, or where they are while doing so, as long as they achieve or exceed their agreed objectives within the confines of the current strategy. What I do seem to see in offices and other workplaces, is a lot of coffee, fag breaks, lunch breaks and countless usually pointless "meetings" punctuated by a lot of trying to look busy. ;-) |
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New Fri 14 May 21 11:28
Home working - smokie
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That echoes my experience and my views but the social side of working is more important to some people and therefore to their business. I suspect we are all different though - for instance SWMBO doesn't seem able to function without "background noise", usually the telly, yet I know she isn't really watching it. However if I have something on (more likely to be music or some radio programme) I am distracted by it, so I am used to working in peace and quiet. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 11:36
Home working - zippy
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My employer recently announced a huge cut in its HQ property portfolio. The cost saving is going to be several £m a year. Staff will save on commuting costs but electricity bills will be higher. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 11:43
Home working - sooty123
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I've not really had a job that I could do from home, so wfh is a bit of a novelty. I've got a laptop but not really used it. I'm trying wfh next month for a couple of days but if I'm honest I probably won't get that much done. Although I do know people that haven't set foot in work for over a year and are reluctant to go back. Last edited by: sooty123 on Fri 14 May 21 at 11:45
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New Fri 14 May 21 11:52
Home working - smokie
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Savings are also to be had on the work clothes wardrobe and the £10+ rounds of Costa (or other, more expensive!) coffee which were a near-daily event. And of course many will save on lunch costs. Electricity costs will be on their way up soon anyway but that's for a different thread!! :-) |
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New Fri 14 May 21 13:29
Home working - No FM2R
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Why have companies then wasted huge sums of money on team building over the years? How will anybody learn the jobs of those around them in the course of their career? How will ideas propogate, grow or improve? How will managers learn how to manage? How will marriages work 24x7 together? How will people cope 24x7 in the home? How will people development work? etc. etc. Working from home will grow and then fall. There are some areas where it is applicable, but mostly it is not. Those areas where people have had to unnecessarily go into the office as the default will change but mostly little else. If home-based staffing was really workable then the various large computer companies wouldn't have failed at it, despite trying very very hard to make it work in the 80s and 90s.. However, I do expect workforces to fall in size which will noticeably impact commercial property I think. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 13:39
Home working - sooty123
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I think there's a fair bit of flex in people wfh, there's probably plenty of room for people to do more wfh than they have in the past. I don't think wfh 24/7 for many will be a thing, but there's probably plenty of room for say one or two days wfh, where as before it was always frowned on and they ended up doing none at all. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 13:48
Home working - Bromptonaut
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>> How will anybody learn the jobs of those around them in the course of their >> career? We've just recruited a new team member. Those of us in at the beginning learned a huge amount by discussing our cases/problems with each other. Thinking back nearly 30 years I developed my technique for dealing with folks on the phone by observing what worked (and what did not!!) for colleagues seated around me. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 14:01
Home working - Manatee
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>>I developed my technique for dealing with folks on the phone by observing what worked (and what did not!!) for colleagues seated around me. "Sitting with Nellie" is a time honoured and proven method of training for large parts of many jobs, and a lot easier for some to take in. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 13:57
Home working - Manatee
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>> Why have companies then wasted huge sums of money on team building over the years? >> >> How will anybody learn the jobs of those around them in the course of their >> career? >> >> How will ideas propogate, grow or improve? >> >> How will managers learn how to manage? etc. I agree with all of that, but it might take a while to figure out and even then it will be difficult accurately to attribute any change in company performance to WFH. Some managements might be able to kid themselves that it's working fine when it isn't, especially if they have burnt their boats by cutting the office space. My pension board-related meetings have all been done online for over a year now and for the most part it has worked well, although apart from one change we all know each other anyway. We don't really have any personal conflicts. In typical work situation I can't imagine getting to know people will be easy, and working out conflicts that would normally happen one-to-one, maybe with a visit to someone's desk or at the coffee machine will be much more difficult. I do miss the opportunity to speak to my colleagues and our advisers individually when all the meetings are online and we have already become more distant, partly because we tend to be more formal when everybody has to mute unless speaking to control background noise. It's also a big assumption that it's easy for people to WFH. Not everybody has the physical space or peace and quiet. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 14:07
Home working - sooty123
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It's also a big assumption that it's easy for people to WFH. Not everybody has >> the physical space or peace and quiet. >> > Or the bb speed for things like video calls. Some people like the structure of being at work as well. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 14:14
Home working - No FM2R
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>>I agree with all of that, but it might take a while to figure out and even then it will be difficult accurately to attribute any change in company performance to WFH. Some managements might be able to kid themselves that it's working fine when it isn't, especially if they have burnt their boats by cutting the office space. Spot on, I should think. Huge opportunity for inadequate managers to do what they do best and blindly follow trends without any idea about either how to do it or how to measure it. Also likely to be abused by cynical and less ambitious staff. Yet one more thing that will represent easy targets for consultants. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 15:11
Home working - Terry
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What the last year has shown is that it is possible to WFH for extended periods effectively. But it is not without problems - developing relationships, social interaction, exchanging ideas, integrating new staff etc etc. The future needs to be more flexible and involve significant WFH, some meetings/interaction in an office environment, etc. The mix will vary depending on nature of job and role. The benefits can be immense for both staff and employers - reduced overhead costs, reduced time and cost of commuting, better more flexible work/life balance. Employers wanting access to the best staff will need to (a) ensure they are flexible to attract all staff - for some WFH will be as important as pay, and (b) accomodate those who are unable to work from home - space, family etc. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 17:38
Home working - Kevin
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I wonder how many employers have taken the time/trouble to ensure that employees wfh have a suitable working environment. For example, suitable desk/chair etc. Would an employer be liable if an employee developed RSI from working 8hrs a day at the kitchen table? My employer paid for approved desks and chairs and offered a survey of the home environment to anyone who requested it but I doubt that is widespread practice. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 17:50
Home working - Zero
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City centre business property is expensive, and was seen as a prestigeous and client eye catching essential. That idea has gone out the window. All the business and property portfolio pundits agree its changed, and will never be the same. We will end up with a kind of hybrid state, where a company or corporation will rent smaller space, or utilise serviced space from suppliers and staff /clients will attend as and when required, but not full time. There is going to be a lot of empty office space in London, to be repurposed. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 17:51
Home working - sooty123
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| We're about to be given work stations for laptop use along, although only one so you have to cart it about from home to work. Things like desks and chairs are up to the individual. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 21:06
Home working - Bromptonaut
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>> My employer paid for approved desks and chairs and offered a survey of the home >> environment to anyone who requested it but I doubt that is widespread practice. Mine sent us an assessment tool for home workstations. I was fine as we'd set what was then the spare bedroom up properly 20 years ago when Mrs B was doing her Masters. I'm using a midi tower and large screen with full size keyboard and mouse. Laptop keyboards will never pass a Display Screen (etc) Assessment and a supplementary keyboard and mouse should be, and in my outfit are, provided. In case of RSI from days in the kitchen or balanced on the dressing table in a bedsit then an employer would almost certainly be liable. |
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New Fri 14 May 21 19:03
Home working - Manatee
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I was chucked out of my last proper job in 2012, but I will say that that by then I had got very fed up with just having to be appear somewhere every day, when I could have been more productive at home without all the interruptions and peurile 'banter' in the, by then, obligatory open plan. I think it probably showed! |
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New Fri 14 May 21 20:45
Home working - smokie
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The employer I mentioned where I was home-based in 1999 onwards offered to build me a desk and supply furniture. I tool the equipment but not the furniture. A mate who took it had them persistently wanting to come round and remove the desk, which had been built-in, when they laid him off. I think I preferred wfh, and it suited my job, but I would agree with many of Mark's points above about why it won't work for everyone. |
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