Return to office - your situation

[craigjm]

LostM135idriver said:

Joey Deacon said:

We received an email a couple of days ago stating that we were expected to return to the office from the 15th of November for two days a week. You also have to be double jabbed, not sure yet what people who have not had the jab are supposed to do?

Surely this goes against the anti discriminatory policy the company are so proud of, infact I had to do a 1 hour 20 online training course on this very subject yesterday?

Personally with the government press conference yesterday I think there is pretty much zero chance of us going back to the office this year anyway as I am sure they will recommend working from home again soon.

Discrimination is illegal if it is discrimination against something that people have no choice over - age, gender, race, disability, etc. The only odd example where we have made illegal discrimination on the basis of an opinion is religion. I think that’s a bit of a historical and legal oddity, to be honest, since it’s inconsistent with the other classes of discrimination. (You can control your opinion on religion).

Discrimination on the grounds of actions or opinions is perfectly allowable. e.g. the Tory party might not want to employ an avowed communist - fine. A healthcare services company might want its care staff to be vaccinated - fine. If your company has a policy, you can follow it and (presumably) stay employed to not follow it and see what’s happens. It’s not illegal for them to require certain actions or behaviour from employees (e.g. wearing a uniform).

This. Vaccination status is not a protected characteristic..... yet

[anonymous-user]

craigjm said:

This. Vaccination status is not a protected characteristic..... yet

Are they even allowed to ask your vaccination status as I thought any questions about your medical history were not allowed?

[craigjm]

Joey Deacon said:

craigjm said:

This. Vaccination status is not a protected characteristic..... yet

Are they even allowed to ask your vaccination status as I thought any questions about your medical history were not allowed?

Yes they can ask but must have a clear reason for doing so which they will have in the statement "we want to keep our work locations safe". The legitimacy of this request is stronger of course in certain industries like health of social care. If they ask and collect the data it must be controlled in the same way as any other sensitive data. If an employer says that you cannot work for them unless you are vaccinated then that would risk legal issues so they are unlikely to do that but they may restrict your presence in certain situations.

This is going to be a tough one for employers because I can see people using "im not vaccinated" even if they are, as an excuse not to return to the office by those comfortable and better off working from home,

[Countdown]

We've had staff asking for additional allowances to cover the costs of extra heating from home. Some people want to have their cake AND eat it.

[Captain Answer]

Countdown said:

We've had staff asking for additional allowances to cover the costs of extra heating from home. Some people want to have their cake AND eat it.

My father in law was banging on about this, he didn't seem best impressed when I asked if he'd given back the £200 a month he'd saved in not using his car + parking whilst being at home

[h0b0]

At a CEO level we have been told to not expect to come back to the office this year but it is up to the local managers to decide. My manager is all for 100% in the office even though we didn’t have that before Covid.

We have also been told we can work anywhere in the country for 4 weeks a year as long as we have internet. Being based in the US that gives me a lot of choice. My wife is full time work from home so going to the Carribean for a month is now possible. I suspect this has been brought in because of the number of people already doing remote-remote working so they want to cap it. I work with someone that moved into an Rv full time and parks up for meetings.

[craigjm]

h0b0 said:

At a CEO level we have been told to not expect to come back to the office this year but it is up to the local managers to decide. My manager is all for 100% in the office even though we didn’t have that before Covid.

We have also been told we can work anywhere in the country for 4 weeks a year as long as we have internet. Being based in the US that gives me a lot of choice. My wife is full time work from home so going to the Carribean for a month is now possible. I suspect this has been brought in because of the number of people already doing remote-remote working so they want to cap it. I work with someone that moved into an Rv full time and parks up for meetings.

How does being told you can work anywhere in the country for 4 weeks mean you can go to the Caribbean for a month if you are based in the USA?

[Captain Answer]

craigjm said:

How does being told you can work anywhere in the country for 4 weeks mean you can go to the Caribbean for a month if you are based in the USA?

Probably Virgin Islands & Puerto Rico being listed as US territories so can get away with it?

[h0b0]

Captain Answer said:

craigjm said:

How does being told you can work anywhere in the country for 4 weeks mean you can go to the Caribbean for a month if you are based in the USA?

Probably Virgin Islands & Puerto Rico being listed as US territories so can get away with it?

Yes, going to the US ones....

[skwdenyer]

Countdown said:

We've had staff asking for additional allowances to cover the costs of extra heating from home. Some people want to have their cake AND eat it.

Point them in the direction of how they can claim home expenses against their tax. That will make them happy, and deflect from them asking for the money from you.

[Flooble]

skwdenyer said:

Countdown said:

We've had staff asking for additional allowances to cover the costs of extra heating from home. Some people want to have their cake AND eat it.

Point them in the direction of how they can claim home expenses against their tax. That will make them happy, and deflect from them asking for the money from you.

Not sure if you're optimistic or just never encountered the sort of money-grabbing avaricious person that I suspect Countdown is handling (and I have also had the "pleasure" of working with)!

[Sporky]

Our new CEO (we have recently been bought, and our new corporate overlords are trying to assert themselves) keeps banging on about how my team (of pre-sales system designers) would be more effective if we all trouped up to the office in London to collaborate.

I keep pointing out that:

(a) the work we do is non-collaborative in nature
(b) the work we do requires quiet and a lack of interruptions
(c) they are all argumentative and unsociable and would spoil the office for everyone else

Thus far I'm winning. Hopefully I will continue to win, otherwise I'm going to have to hire a lot of new people.

[Bullett]

Yup, pre-sales is one of those roles that really doesn't require you to work with your team most of the time.
Occasionally we have a "has anyone done X before, its a new one on me" or some specific esoteric point but generally my team isn't the other pre-sales guys but the sales persons, delivery guys and quote desk which are all different depending on the deal/product.

[Sporky]

We have a weekly catch up call, and my bunch will randomly call or Zoom whenever we're stuck. We don't design by committee though.

[Flooble]

I think an awful lot of roles are not really very collaborative, despite lots of noise (in some cases from companies trying to flog "collaboration software" when what is really needed is "filing and version control software"!)

But I've also noticed that it seems really hard for those people who do genuinely need face-to-face interaction to do their jobs to grasp that they are not everyone.

[LostM135idriver]

I agree with Flooble, the pandemic and associated lockdown has really highlighted (at least, to me) just how few people seem to be capable of understanding that others might be different in how they think, work, or respond to the same stimuli.

Highlighted massively at the start of pandemic (‘oh we are all going mad without being able to socialise’) and now again with the return to work (‘oh well go course we all miss [X in-person work activity] and we’re desperate to get back to it).

[LostM135idriver]

Sporky said:

Our new CEO (we have recently been bought, and our new corporate overlords are trying to assert themselves) keeps banging on about how my team (of pre-sales system designers) would be more effective if we all trouped up to the office in London to collaborate.

I keep pointing out that:

(a) the work we do is non-collaborative in nature
(b) the work we do requires quiet and a lack of interruptions
(c) they are all argumentative and unsociable and would spoil the office for everyone else

Thus far I'm winning. Hopefully I will continue to win, otherwise I'm going to have to hire a lot of new people.

In the organisation in which I work our productivity in a major area of our work (research and, of course, getting the money for research) has gone up substantially since offices closed.

Given that this work is 30-40% of our core work (the other major bit being teaching… obviously affected badly) I really cannot think of a stronger indictment of the way that whole organisation is run than that one of the main things we do actually functioned better in a global pandemic than it does normally. I hope something gets learnt from this and we can realise that different kinds of work need different kinds of thing (i.e. I don’t want to be expected to reply to every email within 48 hours, I want you fk off and leave me alone for a month, and then I will do great stuff).

[nunpuncher]

Sporky said:

Our new CEO (we have recently been bought, and our new corporate overlords are trying to assert themselves) keeps banging on about how my team (of pre-sales system designers) would be more effective if we all trouped up to the office in London to collaborate.

I keep pointing out that:

(a) the work we do is non-collaborative in nature
(b) the work we do requires quiet and a lack of interruptions
(c) they are all argumentative and unsociable and would spoil the office for everyone else

Thus far I'm winning. Hopefully I will continue to win, otherwise I'm going to have to hire a lot of new people.

I also work in a technical design type of role. Our overlords seem to think all our best work comes from us wondering aimlessly around the office only to randomly bump in to a colleague who suggests "grabbing a room" so we can instantly ideate a revolutionary solution.

The reality of the office was that you sat struggling to focus on a solution due to the racket of so many folk on calls with their cross location colleagues. Any chance of "bumping into" someone who had any knowledge of your project was probably while frantically trying to locate a vacant toilet and even you did happen to meet the right person, the meeting rooms were so scarcely vacant that spontaneity didn't stand a chance.

[Cloudy147]

We are getting mixed messages where I work (IT in a large corporate). During covid we all went working from home, they sold off lots of offices - including mine - and moved us to another office (on paper). We were asked if we wanted an office desk (a choice) - my team all said no - so we are not given desks, but just share them and book only when we want and need to go in. This means we are largely home based, except the contracts state we are office based (and this won't change). Offices are starting to re open now and, whilst they are promoting the green agenda a lot, they are also telling us (as managers/leaders) to start going back into the office to 'show' our colleagues that we have presence there and encourage them to do the same to get back into the office.

They've never been good at coherence.

I'll continue to work from home unless specifically instructed otherwise. All my team want to do the same, so I'm not forcing people to be pissed off just for the sake of it. I've got a really productive team and I want to keep it that way. I ask a lot of them, and am willing to be flexible in the same way to make sure st gets done.

[Flooble]

Leaving your contract as officially office based will likely be so they don't have to pay you expenses when you do go into the office. I wouldn't read anything into that other than that companies have to protect themselves from the handful of people who will totally rip the backside out of any loophole they can find.