WFH - a new model
Discussion
Kermit power said:
Johnnytheboy said:
The other thing is the whole "ha ha my cat has jumped on the laptop" thing while a customer-facing worker is on a video call may be tolerated during a global pandemic, less so when we return to normality.
I'm not convinced about that. Yes if you had a dog barking endlessly whilst you were on a call, but even before lockdown, I'd have customers asking how my dog was, wanting to see him on camera and bringing their dogs in to say hello too.Obviously I wouldn't force him on non dog people, but I do find that most people's pets in the background are a lot less distracting than people's colleagues in an office environment!
And i dont think we will "return to normality". I think we're heading to a new normal.
Deep Thought said:
JQ said:
I can't speak for other people but advantages of working in our office :
Meetings are more efficient
Meetings are more inclusive
Discussions with colleagues are quicker
Sharing information is quicker
More collaboration between colleagues
More cross-selling within the office
Development of a team spirit
Friendships are developed (met my wife at work)
Beers after work
Meeting clients over a coffee or a beer
Training new staff
Nurturing talent
Developing that talent
Younger staff living in town
Whist everyone in my team has worked their socks off during lockdown, we are definitely not more efficient or profitable working from home in the long term. I guess if your job is to sit in front of a computer 8 hrs per day completing set tasks, then I guess WFH may be more efficient, but any job where you have to add value through meetings, relationships, discussions, etc, the office environment is a very efficient way of doing so.
It does vary by company and team yes. Personally for me, of your list...Meetings are more efficient
Meetings are more inclusive
Discussions with colleagues are quicker
Sharing information is quicker
More collaboration between colleagues
More cross-selling within the office
Development of a team spirit
Friendships are developed (met my wife at work)
Beers after work
Meeting clients over a coffee or a beer
Training new staff
Nurturing talent
Developing that talent
Younger staff living in town
Whist everyone in my team has worked their socks off during lockdown, we are definitely not more efficient or profitable working from home in the long term. I guess if your job is to sit in front of a computer 8 hrs per day completing set tasks, then I guess WFH may be more efficient, but any job where you have to add value through meetings, relationships, discussions, etc, the office environment is a very efficient way of doing so.
Is as easy if not easier with WFH
Meetings are more efficient
Meetings are more inclusive
Discussions with colleagues are quicker
Sharing information is quicker
More collaboration between colleagues
Training new staff
No notable difference or simple changes can mitigate
More cross-selling within the office
Development of a team spirit
Friendships are developed (met my wife at work)
Nurturing talent
Developing that talent
Things i'm not so bothered about
Beers after work
Meeting clients over a coffee or a beer
Younger staff living in town
We use MicroSoft Teams, so easy to set up meetings, chat, collaboration on docs. We've onboarded new team members remotely with no issues.
I think a hybrid model is the way forward - some people will WFH full or part time, others will need / want to be in the office.
I think theres a real opportunity to get away from the daily commuting drudge every day all for the sake of us all sitting at a desk in an office so we can all go sit in a meeting room.
I work for a large media insights company currently and they are definitely looking at ways to ensure people can keep working from home, rather than ways to make them all come back to the office.
Likewise in my wifes company they definitely want to embrace WFH - not to enforce it but definitely to offer it as an option and as an aid to recruitment, staff retention and cost reduction.
I think the cost savings comes from smaller / less office space requirements and perhaps the ability to recruit people more cheaply - eg, not having to pay London rates to get staff as they wont need to be living in London.
I work for a US company, and my clients are in mainland Europe, so whilst there are some benefits to seeing my UK colleagues face to face from time to time, for the vast majority of my day, being in the UK office is either neutral or a disadvantage.
I've had a global email from our CEO today saying we're aiming to work from home at least a few days a week and hopefully permanently where possible. This is fantastic news for me as I bought a house near the office, I will now sell/ rent it and buy a house back up North where I want to be.
I've loved every minute of working from home and some of the stuff like "workplace relationships" etc just sounds like management b
ks to me. No more health and safety guff, no more office politics, no more pretending to do work when I don't need to be, no more boring small talk conversations at the coffee machine, I can roll out of bed and work in my underpants, I can work when I want. Bliss!
I've loved every minute of working from home and some of the stuff like "workplace relationships" etc just sounds like management b
ks to me. No more health and safety guff, no more office politics, no more pretending to do work when I don't need to be, no more boring small talk conversations at the coffee machine, I can roll out of bed and work in my underpants, I can work when I want. Bliss! Kermit power said:
I think all of JQ's points are also largely based on an assumption of everyone being in the same office!
I work for a US company, and my clients are in mainland Europe, so whilst there are some benefits to seeing my UK colleagues face to face from time to time, for the vast majority of my day, being in the UK office is either neutral or a disadvantage.
Good point. Thats definitely quite common now.I work for a US company, and my clients are in mainland Europe, so whilst there are some benefits to seeing my UK colleagues face to face from time to time, for the vast majority of my day, being in the UK office is either neutral or a disadvantage.
Drezza said:
I've had a global email from our CEO today saying we're aiming to work from home at least a few days a week and hopefully permanently where possible. This is fantastic news for me as I bought a house near the office, I will now sell/ rent it and buy a house back up North where I want to be.
I've loved every minute of working from home and some of the stuff like "workplace relationships" etc just sounds like management bks to me. No more health and safety guff, no more office politics, no more pretending to do work when I don't need to be, no more boring small talk conversations at the coffee machine, I can roll out of bed and work in my underpants, I can work when I want. Bliss!
Amen to all of that! I'm in introvert anyway so prefer to just get on with the job rather than socialising.I've loved every minute of working from home and some of the stuff like "workplace relationships" etc just sounds like management b
ks to me. No more health and safety guff, no more office politics, no more pretending to do work when I don't need to be, no more boring small talk conversations at the coffee machine, I can roll out of bed and work in my underpants, I can work when I want. Bliss! Sounds like you work for a great company, hope more will follow suit.
anxious_ant said:
Perhaps it’s just the culture here. If a role is suitable for WFH it would’ve started as a WFH role. I do see some traditional office roles transitioning to WFH roles but I don’t foresee a major shift. Once the virus blows over things will more or less return to normal.
I've worked in similar roles and similar industries for 25 years. When I started, there was absolutely no question of me being anywhere other than working in the office or visiting a customer or business partner. That was the culture of the last century, and it made sense, since for the first few years, remote access consisted of a modem (woohoo when I first got a 56K PCMCIA modem card!!!) and it was utterly dreadful!Over the past 15 years or so, that culture has completely changed, and the driver of that change has been the ability to work just as effectively, if not more so, remotely. I spent most of that time in one very large blue chip company, and whilst there was never any formal communication on the matter from management, people just started doing it!
Initially it was just Fridays with the tacit consent of managers at every level who also had no desire to be in the office on a Friday, but then, crucially, they introduced a ban on claiming travel expenses for any travel that wasn't directly for a customer meeting or a few other very specific scenarios, so pretty much everyone promptly stopped travelling to anywhere other than their local office, then realised that the rest of their team were in other local offices, so there was no point them leaving the house, and hey presto, lots of people were working from home 90% of the time! The main exceptions were the Grads and others who'd recently left the grad scheme, who were mostly in the London office anyway and lived in town.
anxious_ant said:
Also as mentioned earlier the H&S concerns wouldn’t work for bigger corps. Might end up shelling more money to ensure workers have adequate equipment at home. It’s also a mine field to draft contracts where WFH is conditional based on someone’s home suitability.
That's all only relevant if people are specifically listed as home based in their employment contract. I've always been listed as mobile, meaning I could work anywhere. The biggest difference for me was that I still officially had an office location on my profile, so when travelling within the UK, I could only claim mileage over the length of my theoretical commute from home to office. I've not had a fixed desk in an office location for 15 years, and if everyone had turned up in the office on the same day, they would only have enough desks for 35% of us, so they'd have been stuffed without people working from home a lot of the time! anxious_ant said:
Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see a revolution myself but don’t think it will happen here.
All I can say is that for me, that revolution has already happened. Interestingly, it seems to have happened a lot less for our colleagues in the States, despite the fact that you might think it would happen more, given how spread out the country is!Imagine the savings ff Public Sector staff were allowed to work from home.
My old workplace used to rent a 3 storey city centre building for a few hundred grand.
Proper ropey building, single pane rotten windows, cold, damp, central heating yet loads of the women have 2 or 3kw heaters under their desk because it’s cold.
Landlord does a good deal where maintenance is done by the in-house team so they just literally sit in a goldmine.
Add up all those ropey old buildings and the maintenance and heating bills across the country yet nothing is ever mentioned when it comes to public sector spending.
My old workplace used to rent a 3 storey city centre building for a few hundred grand.
Proper ropey building, single pane rotten windows, cold, damp, central heating yet loads of the women have 2 or 3kw heaters under their desk because it’s cold.
Landlord does a good deal where maintenance is done by the in-house team so they just literally sit in a goldmine.
Add up all those ropey old buildings and the maintenance and heating bills across the country yet nothing is ever mentioned when it comes to public sector spending.
Johnnytheboy said:
It is funny isn't it? All this time WFH has been offered as a panacea to congestion, now everyone is doing it, it is tanking the economies of towns and cities.
Thing is though, I’m not buying a butty from the supermarket next to my office but going to my local supermarket instead, my spend has shifted to be more local. My total spend has increased as I’ll buy a bottle of wine for the evening as I’m not driving in the morning.Johnnytheboy said:
It is funny isn't it? All this time WFH has been offered as a panacea to congestion, now everyone is doing it, it is tanking the economies of towns and cities.
What's tanking the economy is all the restrictions! Without those, if anything everyone working from home would have more money to spend on going out, as they'd not be having to spend it on commuting.London and some of the other big cities might have issues in areas where lots of people work and very few live, but most places would be absolutely fine.
Speaking about the office staff at businesses that I go into.
For some staff it's good, they can be trusted to get the work done and it suits them personally.
Some staff just don't like working from home for whatever reason - no banter, don't like being in the house all day, house has small children in it, whatever.
Some staff can't be trusted to work from home.
Some bosses don't like not being able to see everyone.
I think WFH is going to be more of an option than previously for some people in a many businesses. Will it be an apocalypse for office space, no I don't see that so far. Every single business that hasn't got everyone back in yet is because they can't comply with social distancing whilst doing so.
For some staff it's good, they can be trusted to get the work done and it suits them personally.
Some staff just don't like working from home for whatever reason - no banter, don't like being in the house all day, house has small children in it, whatever.
Some staff can't be trusted to work from home.
Some bosses don't like not being able to see everyone.
I think WFH is going to be more of an option than previously for some people in a many businesses. Will it be an apocalypse for office space, no I don't see that so far. Every single business that hasn't got everyone back in yet is because they can't comply with social distancing whilst doing so.
Kermit power said:
I think all of JQ's points are also largely based on an assumption of everyone being in the same office!
I work for a US company, and my clients are in mainland Europe, so whilst there are some benefits to seeing my UK colleagues face to face from time to time, for the vast majority of my day, being in the UK office is either neutral or a disadvantage.
Correct. And our whole office has been agile working for the last 2 years, so WFH is nothing new to us. Anyone, including the most junior members of the office, can come and go as they please. It's great, I can come in at 11am and leave at 3pm if i need to do stuff with the kids or I can just work from home all day. So my comments come from first hand experience when not under the cloud of a pandemic.I work for a US company, and my clients are in mainland Europe, so whilst there are some benefits to seeing my UK colleagues face to face from time to time, for the vast majority of my day, being in the UK office is either neutral or a disadvantage.
Teams works great for having a meeting with someone from another city due to the time saved, but real life interactions are better, relationships are built better in person and developing young talent is done better face to face. Our younger members of the office (the future of the company) definitely don't want to WFH, when we opened the office up a couple of weeks ago it was they who'd demanded it be opened, they hated WFH on a permanent basis.
What we discovered following the introduction of the ability to WFH 2 years ago :
The grad's and junior workers prefer being in the office
The older experienced staff (not management and usually have kids) preferred working from home
Senior management prefer being in the office, some of the time
The older experienced staff then realised that the grad's weren't getting the levels of development previously experienced. They picked up lots of things just sitting in the office over-hearing conversations, witnessing interactions, volunteering to help, etc. This then impacted their productivity levels as it was taking longer to train them up to previous levels. They also found interactions with clients, business development opportunities, cross-selling, etc more challenging. Yes is can be done remotely, it's just not as successful.
The result is that most of us pre-Covid worked from home 1-2 days per week, although at least 75% of the junior staff were still 5 days a week. This was not presenteeism, they just felt they got more out of the office experience.
Teams works great if you're in Aberdeen and your colleagues are in Paris and London, but then I'd question why you were in an office at all pre-Covid. We have a chap who solely handles a North American client, we see him in the office once every 2 years. There are people like this who will work from home post Covid, but I'd suggest that the vast majority of people who work in an office, do most of their interactions with people in that same office.
My prediction -
Some companies will maintain their office existing space and introduce agile working
Some companies will reduce their office space / remove it all together
They'll then find it more difficult to recruit junior staff
Staff retention will be more difficult
The negative impact to the business will be greater than the cost saving
They'll then take more office space and introduce agile working
Some companies will maintain their total office space and introduce agile working, whilst moving backroom staff out of London into cheaper office locations to reduce costs.
In all of the above density levels in offices will reduce post Covid and the office market won't see the Armageddon most are predicting.
All of the above will result in the average office worker working from home 1-2 days per week.
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