The working from home thread
- Thread starter BoatieBird
- Start date
miss direct
misfungled
The excitement of being in a place where I can set up an office, rather than working in the corner of the bedroom.
Good point, I’ll shut my noise
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
Despite that thousands of managers will demand staff come back to the office
miss direct
misfungled
Ooh no, I didnt mean it like that. So where are you working?
Cloo
Approved by toads
One thing that came out today was, unsurprisingly, there is a significantly higher degree of satisfaction with WFH for those who could work in a room where they could shut the door to anyone else.
mx wcfc
Well-Known Member
Certainly some big companies are doing that. Goldman Sachs: Bank boss rejects work from home as the 'new normal'
But there are a lot of big companies eyeing the rent savings and soft staff retention and moving to a more flexible way of working.
PwC announces new flexible work deal for employees
Following extensive consultation with employees, PwC has announced to its 22,000 people changes to allow greater flexibility for post-pandemic working.
At my place (medium sized business) today we have been told clearly that, post covid, managers absolutely must not pressurise staff to go into work unless there was a genuine need to be in the office. It is not just bullshit.
My guess is that most employers are eyeing up the rent savings and loving it, and businesses that try to buck the trend will find staff recruitment and retention difficult and will adapt to that in the medium term.
miss direct
misfungled
Oh, the difference it made for me personally was incredible. This time last year I had a whole office set up. Then when my work day was over, I'd do my paperwork and prep for the next day, then close the door and go to another room. Massive psychological difference akin to leaving the workplace.
An open plan office in a large public sector organisation. It’s only a 10 minute drive from home and I might be odd but I like getting up, showering, wearing work clothes and going to work. So when I leave the office, it’s all over, and the work clothes come off when I get home.
I also quite like overhearing the conversations from Finance and purchasing etc, they’re not exactly interesting but it gives me some knowledge of the wider organisation.
mx wcfc
Well-Known Member
I have that advantage at the moment. I can close the door on the boxroom/my office and forget it.
I am conflicted because I want to come downstairs again, (basically so I can pop outside for a skive sometimes) over summer and that means changing furniture. It also means I will share "my room" downstairs with work, but I am disciplined enough to turn everything off.
Hollis
bloody furious
I figure a dynamic will emerge where organisations that don't offer alot more flexible working will find it difficult to recruit and retain over time, so flexible and home working will become more common.. Who is going to want to work somewhere where you have to be in 9am every day...etc
josef1878 2.0
Well-Known Member
Been back in a couple of weeks and I feel human again. Pointless conversations, other people's work I have no interest in, the noisy cunts that annoy, I love it. Very strange what you miss so much but don't realise it. It's life and how we live it, or we did. Just had a few outside pints with a few mates I haven't sat with for 6 months and I feel almost human again, bit cold but I don't care.
mx wcfc
Well-Known Member
and each to their own and that is exactly what (some/many) employers are offering. At my place it is very much "if you want to come in every day, do, but if not, wfh and pop in when you need to"People like me who need some semblance of structure
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
They might see the advantage of a smaller office
Winot
I wholeheartedley agree with your viewpoint
This is the direction we are heading. Will be looking for an office a third of the size when our lease is up.
BoatieBird
Well-Known Member
It looks like my employer (large distance-learning Uni) will be adopting a flexible approach when we're finally allowed back in the office.
I'd like to go in a couple of days a week and most of my colleagues seem to be thinking on similar lines, so inevitably that'll lead to a scaling down of office space, there is talk of having bookable spaces.
I heard the other day that between March-Sept last year they saved £2k + on toilet roll alone
I'd like to go in a couple of days a week and most of my colleagues seem to be thinking on similar lines, so inevitably that'll lead to a scaling down of office space, there is talk of having bookable spaces.
I heard the other day that between March-Sept last year they saved £2k + on toilet roll alone
Cloo
Approved by toads
Well that's exactly what's being discussed in my field right now - by different surveys, businessed are expected to drop their floorspace by 15-40% (depending who you ask) and people are wondering what the alternatives are. There's some talk of 'grey space', people subletting their office space to others, and various consultancies already arrange this for occupiers as middlemen, but are really touting it now. Some have suggested a 'hub and spoke' model of a central office a smaller hub ones in suburbs/commuter areas but it's looking increasingly likely that's not going to fly - people aren't likely to have an even spread of workers from different areas, it could end up race/class stratified and is not likely to be add up economically. Perhaps more common might be employers having membership or voucher schemes for local 'third spaces', for people who want to/need to get out of the house, but HQ is some way away.
My employer is still not at all pushing the office, though they have opened about a dozen desks in each of our London and Birmingham offices - we already had a lot of WFH and I don't think my whole team was in the office for more than 2 or 3 days a week, for example. Fascinated to see what we do with London HQ as, unusually, we do own it - I know they have had Knight Frank in consulting about space use. I have actually long thought, seeing as we are a professional membership organisation, it would be smart for us to have some sort of co-working hub for members (we already had a lounge space many used for meetings when in London) and I wouldn't be wholly surprised if they do institute something like that and/or sublet some of the space to related professionals.
The implications for my employer -- one of the biggest CS employers anywhere, certainly in Wales -- are already getting our 'leadership board' (= boss-class gang!) highly exercised.
There's been loose early talk of a higher proportion of us working from home than are aleady doing so, but there'd be big complications for those of us whose work is still so paper-based.
Delivering and collecting big volumes of customer-confidential paperwork to and from employees' homes, has all sorts of possible nightmares. Not least logistically.
And can devolved laptop and printers be kept truly secure at distance?
So some employers will keep going with offices because they have to.
There's been loose early talk of a higher proportion of us working from home than are aleady doing so, but there'd be big complications for those of us whose work is still so paper-based.
Delivering and collecting big volumes of customer-confidential paperwork to and from employees' homes, has all sorts of possible nightmares. Not least logistically.
And can devolved laptop and printers be kept truly secure at distance?
So some employers will keep going with offices because they have to.
BoatieBird
Well-Known Member
It looks like my employer (large distance-learning Uni) will be adopting a flexible approach when we're finally allowed back in the office.
I'd like to go in a couple of days a week and most of my colleagues seem to be thinking on similar lines, so inevitably that'll lead to a scaling down of office space, there is talk of having bookable spaces.
I heard the other day that between March-Sept last year they saved £2k + on toilet roll alone
Oops, I typed that wrong, it's actually £200K + on toilet roll!
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
Don't they scan stuff in when it arrives?
That's a hell of a lot on bog roll - are your colleagues spending all their time shitting while on the clock? Spending something around £400k a year on it seems pretty high.
Leafster
.
There are solutions out there. I'm not sure how "joined-up" they are though. I deal with a lot of private and confidential data. My main software provider is heavily pushing an online portal solution as a secure interface between me and my clients. Both the clients and I can upload digital documents to it securely and communicate through it. It comes at a cost though.
However, that solution would only cover some of the work I do. I already use two other solutions for other aspects. They are both supposedly secure but even so, some clients are reluctant to use them.
BoatieBird
Well-Known Member
It does seem a lot of money, but there are a few thousand employees
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
They could save money by buying that awful shiny toilet roll we used to get at school. Deter people from using the facilities at work.
It's very much resolvable. My company has vast call centres and deals with huge amounts of personal data daily but still managed to shift it's entire operations to WFH pretty much overnight last year, with no breaches. I don't actually know how they managed to resolve the call centre problems (e.g. the call centres themselves are highly secured against people doing things like duplicating credit card numbers, including things like not allowing staff to have their own phones in the call room, for example), but it's somehow been done. The data issues are way simpler, though -- every single staff member has a virtual desktop that we access via a thin client, which means no data exists on any hard drives except for the central servers and all virtual desktops only use the predetermined secure installed set ups appropriate for that user. WFH is no less secure than working in the office, because it's the identical system either way. It's a two-key encryption to be able to access the virtual desktop too. My company has to deal with literally hundreds of thousands of half-decent cyber attacks per day, so it long since abandoned the idea of relying on the security of each individual user hardware set-up.
William of Walworth said:
If only our scanning department could!!!!!
But the volumes of incoming mail are literally insane, and there'd be a beyond-bonkers amount of rubbish, rejected applications scanned on to no purpose, if stuff wasn't assessed and sorted by us workers first.
All accepted stuff IS scanned on afterwards -- the stuff that is actually processed, and doesn't need to be sent back, that is!!
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
spotted something that you need to re-claim the tax relief on working from home for the new tax year that started a few weeks ago
it's only £ 1.20 a week but that's better than a kick up the tail...
www.gov.uk
it's only £ 1.20 a week but that's better than a kick up the tail...
Claim tax relief for your job expenses
Claiming tax relief on expenses you have to pay for your work, like uniforms, tools, travel and working from home costs.
65% of remote workers do not want to return to the office - here's why
Although working from home was significantly preferred, the survey also highlighted some disadvantages such as overworking and technology problems.
www.weforum.org
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