[Closed] CORONA VIRUS, Hows your company/workplace doing

I'm a teacher, so work will survive, but we're all stressing out about exam season.

If they close schools for 3-4 weeks then we'll be alright, though I suspect most of our lazy Yr11s won't do a bit of revision.
But if schools close for 12+ weeks as seems to have been suggested (see what Northern Ireland have just announced) then do schools reopen for exams, or do they just get their predicted grade, or are exams put off until July/August, or even later?
How do colleges and universities accept students onto courses if exams haven't run?
Added to all that I teach DT, so we've got coursework deadlines at Easter, and that's 50% of the grade.
Doing my head in isn't the half of it!

I'm a cop. A huge amount of contingency work has been done last week in preparation for staff shortages as well as the potential for increased demand. Most specialist units have been split up into small teams working from separate sites to try to limit the chances of the virus wiping out whole policing units. We're expecting it to be a tough few months and working from home isn't an option in my current role so child care is going to be problematic when the schools shut, but having once been self employed I do feel fortunate that at least I'll have a job to go to once the dust has settled.

This is our company line

Subject: Coronavirus - notes from yesterdays call
Importance: High

Let’s ensure we are as well prepared as possible for any escalation. Any questions please call

Am nurse.

Work in nhs hospitals but no longer for nhs becuase of stagnant pay and poor work life balance.

Talking of binning us off in favour for third year students as they are more malleable.

Fine. Currently taking charge of shifts with 15 years experience but if you want to hand the reigns to people who are still in training then go wild.

All about numbers when it comes down to it.

I've got a lot of super Mario odyssey to play and a garden to do.

I work for a law firm, which will be fine - strenuous efforts now to enable lawyers to do their thing from home (I'm a trainer but next week I start a new (and temporary!) career manning the phones for lawyers struggling to log on from home). Client-related travel ok if essential, office-to-office travel only by executive authorisation, wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispensers on all floors, many spray dispensers on many desks, laptops aplenty and bandwidth upgraded.

Arrivesd at work yesterday afternoon, town hall had slapped a Closed until further notice letter on the front door. It's an English academy so was expected after they closed the schools and unis at lunchtime.

I'm self employed so hoping for a bit of a break from the Hacienda as tax is due soon, not to mention NI contributions, rent of the premises.

Might be able to retain some students using Skype or something but I'll be leaning on my other job for more work in the meantime. Not ideal but there are some poor sods about to be shafted by this.

Large corporate selling fmcg goods so likely ok form a job security POV, Brexit is another matter long term.

Social distancing in the office, home working encouraged. I've heard the same "two weeks home working then swap" from Us management. My outsourced HR operations team are in India, Mumbai and I've been pushing them to be able to work from home (they have desk tops and not everyone had internet access or even continuous power supply...). Think about that next time you outsource to India eh.....

I've been wfh for two weeks and loving it. Hated it in the past but moved the desk next to a window and OMFG what difference that made. Also bought a Bean to cup machine which.....is just lovely.

Oh and our VPN is overloaded due to all the home working .

My area (I work in a bank), have opted for a 2 week period of all of us working from home.

Other areas have been split up, and buildings brought into use for call centre operations to move away from relying on a single site.

We are considered medically critical, so will be going in on a rota basis, wfh all the rest of the time. Will have pairs of analysts going in to perform essential testing and apart from that wfh.
Our dept will be sealed off from the rest of the site with separate access etc.
not in place yet but am expecting all non critical attendance at site to be stopped sometime this week

Work for a company who sell surplus/redundant medical equipment (mostly from the NHS). Two things have happened last week- demand has soared worldwide and supply has been pretty much stopped as hospitals cling onto everything they have in case it’s needed.

We now have NHS trusts calling asking to buy back equipment they didn’t want a month ago- some of it quite critical which is very rare indeed.

If this goes on for more than a couple of months I will be pretty twitchy as I’ve been there less than 2 years and we’ve just had outside investment who are very keen to see profit not losses!

We've been conducting continuity tests with various UK offices closing at short notice to test home-working and resiliience. Been unofficially told to expect a full shutdown next week some time. Long term who knows? We can work from home but it's going to disupt things massively still when people start falling ill. I'm sure the mental health aspect won't help either. As for the long terrm outlook regarding job losses etc I guess that depends on whether the govt gives the proper support to the economy. Doesn't look like it so far.

Network Rail Electrical Control Room Operator.  We cannot work from home and we a very safety critical.  No unnecessary site visits for tours/training and some additional cleaning going on.

NR are a bit exposed as once CV hits a Signalbox or ECR then it’ll do the rounds rapidly and I can see manning issues arising despite they’re best efforts.

Online company, so will prob be fine.

No changes at work yet, just lots of preparation for work from home.
Big issue is we are dependent on South Africa staff. No laptops, no stable electricity at the moment, bad health care system.

I’m a planner and manager for local authority social care.

Mrs S is a GP. We’ve told the kids they might not see much of us for the next few months.

We’ve both cancelled all leave up until summer. At the moment it’s nervous anticipation about what is to come.

I advise on Income Protection and Life/Critical Illness cover.

Have been very busy the last few weeks and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Can’t see us closing if anyone has any questions on covid 19 you can **** right off as 2 days solid of it I’ve had enough. 😂

Big IT company here. We've all been sent WFH unless absolutely impossible. We have people coding, and people travelling to clients and selling - travel is now banned both domestic and international, but most of it can be done remotely anyway since most of our clients are big enough to already be set up. I'm starting a gig for a US company next week, it'll be remote. So for me personally it's nearly BAU.

I work in finance in London for a large bank. I'm now working from home indefinitely. Company will survive, but it's more about what the company can do for others than itself right now.

Big respect to the public services guys trying to support the massive challenge. If we all survive I'll happily buy you a drink at any point afterwards.

We have been doing a bit of planning. Struggling to get equipment we need, expect demand to exceed supply, income to be up.

20% of key staff to be off sick.

Can you tell which business I’m in?

Porn?

My company provides an online platform to corporate clients, govt depts, NHS trusts etc.

Mostly WFH from next week I think, although comms have been terrible.

We're close to completing a major update, but WFH shouldn't slow us substantially. It will make me (writer) and some of the developers more productive I am sure.

Mental health social worker here.

1. Will company survive?

Yes - luckily no chance of needing to look for another job.

2. What risks/challenges are your work place facing?

As secondary MH service we typically respond to people at crisis. Our referrals for assessments are almost always at high risk of suicide, or ongoing involvement with people with serious mental health disorders. We need to meet face to face with the clients ... we may be able to write up the assessments etc at home, but thats not even half the job.
We all have very high case loads - if even 1 person from team is off its puts huge pressure on rest of us - so if there are a few people forced to be off then it will be difficult to see us managing.

3. How are they dealing with the current problems/staffing/office/depot closures etc?

Nothing has been said as yet. A form went around yesterday asking us to write down potential child care issues and individual skills; the rumour was that the CPNs would get moved to general hospitals if they were medically trained at phlebotomy or any other general nursing skills.

Civil service. No facilities to home work. No obvious plan been made discussed with us so far 🤷‍♂️

We are preparing to work from home ...

I'm self employed.
Took the day off with my wife yesterday and went sailing to prepare.. we might be doing alot more sailing soon if we can't work.

Motorsport based company, so looking a little daunting at the moment with various events being cancelled/postponed.

Self employed Decorator, I'll be right aslong as I dont get ill or get forced to stay home via lockdown. The bigger jobs I've got on seem adamant they'll still be going whatever but we'll see.

Can’t see us closing if anyone has any questions on covid 19 you can **** right off as 2 days solid of it I’ve had enough.

Amen brother. 7am can’t come soon enough...

Civil Service. Trying to hastily organise part time working from home. Work with lots of people but sadly many just don't get the catch it and kill it or hand washing.

Mrs S is a school principal. She expects work to close before Easter for about 4 - 6 months.

Newspaper. Advertisers pulling. Two weak ones collapsed owing us money. We may survive but in a very reduced form until things kind of normalise.

We use lots of Cloud services and Google for email/phone/teleconferencing etc and have all worked remotely before so quite confident we can keep working as we have zero reliance on being in the office to do our jobs (and we have told all staff to take laptops home each evening for the last week just in case we have to tell them not to come in).

My worry is whether all our clients will still be in their offices, keeping our workflow going and paying their bills.

scientific services and research; some is safety critical such as providing calibrations for medical critical applications, others are going to be a pain if not delivered to schedule but nowhere near as immediate concern. Where critical departments are already starting to split workforce to prevent them all falling ill at once.

What do the teachers on here reckon about the exam situation - if as NI schools go into a 4 month shutdown shortly, that will go well into and past exam season? Rescheduled, but how does that fit with the start of A level courses, Uni, etc? Graded based on coursework / indicative grades? My eldest is 16 and is working her butt off currently for exams to start in a little over 6 weeks and while I keep telling her she'll be rewarded for her work now and in future and also that it isn't that important..... to her it's massive.

Brilliant thanks for asking.

Supplied 21234 laptops and provisioned all of them in 6 days, and distributed them to all users allocated. We’ve got a few been refused (looks like those thinking WFH means no work 💁)

Full support from employer and clients.

Boom!

Bring it on.

Amen brother. 7am can’t come soon enough…

It bloody can I’m back in then. 😂

Corporate events/ Funnily enough the contents of the order book evaporated last week.

I normally WFH 3 days a week/2 in the office or on site. As of Friday, the (avoidance of) decision was to follow government guidelines, so I'm still expected to do the 5hr return train journey next week to sit in the office with my thumb up my hoop...

My work provides online training/CPD for people in the brewing industry. As they probably get sent home from the plants, I'm hoping they might take the time to get some new learning/qualifications.

My work hired me to implement systems to make work from home the default option so they could get rid of a valuable central London office.
They're in place (O365) and we just dished out new latops and mobiles to staff this week (was planned before the virus malarkey) as I've set up all the access/security/data policies etc

I wish the guy who works for me well while he deals with all the teething problems as I am on leave this week and am going to canoe and kayak down the Spey for the rest of the week with my phone turned off. God bless.

Luckily, both myself and my other half work in the NHS so job security won't be an issue for us!

As for whether we're coping, as a service? Not even close!

Personally though, we're coping well as we both have a week off work from tomorrow so won't be giving too much of a shit about work until at least Thursday 😀

Difficult to say, we’re a company who repairs and refurbishes ex-Motability cars, and stores ex-Enterprise vehicles, with two more major repair contracts in the offing, which is clearly not a work from home line of work! We have cars and drivers coming in from all parts of the country, so it’s possible we could be affected. Especially when you consider the dreadful state many Motab cars are in when they arrive, the desire to immediately go for a change of clothing and a hot shower can be overwhelming! I’m not kidding, either, the one defining feature of Motab cars is the unique smell attached to them, a weird mix of gone-off milk, wet dog, cigarettes and other things best not enquired into.
I often think we should be issued with biohazard suits, and stickers to put on the cars...

Adjusted shift rota to 12hr working to increase available pool for cover, scenarios planned all the way to half the operational workforce down and the remnants forming 2 shifts living on site.

Army will probably arrive soon to free up police resources.

We'll still be here for the forseeable.

Construction company in the water industry. Latest chat is fair chance all construction work to be put on hold and as and when staff shortages kick in at the water company we will be redeployed to help run the water supply and sewage treatment works. Needs doing so fine with me although WFH bike riding would be OK too.....
Wife is a teacher so if the schools close we're OK for childcare, we're in a relatively good position compared to many (extremely vulnerable parents notwithstanding)

Police again. Company and job perfectly safe. There’s a poster about washing your hands on the work toilet door, and the rufty tufty boys and girls have had to shave their beards off so their face masks fit properly. Beyond that it’ll have to be business as usual.

Engineer in pharma, looking like wfh next week, Mrs is a nurse, really worried about what's coming her way. 😞

I run a private tutoring school/ language training Centre. The local government has closed all schools until after the Easter holidays so I expect we are going to be very quiet in the coming weeks. I can envisage a complete lock down if things get out of control which will naturally be very damaging for us. Fortunately we have cashed in one of my life insurance policies so we have enough to pay the bills. Currently our city has 16 confirmed cases though I found out on Friday that one of the local secondary schools was closed immediately because one of the teachers had tested positive and all the pupils were supposed to go into quarantine. Didn’t stop one of our clients sending their child to us though on Friday afternoon.🥺

Work for a private civil engineering company but seconded to a Government project. Feeling slightly peeved that my stricter parent company guidance seems to be over ruled by less rigorous government guidance. Go figure. At least they seem to accept that I may have stricter requirements given my wife has reduced resistance due to cancer treatment. Scary times in that respect.

Both of us work for the local authority. We have to be prepared to WFH and make sure laptops are connecting etc. Obviously self isolate if unwell.

I'm an outdoor access officer so life will go on without much drama. My wife's an occupational therapist so they will struggle as they have pretty infirm people who need one to one assistance.

The fly in the ointment here (Shetland) is that the schools are shut from Monday so there will be big numbers of people having to be home to look after kids. Pretty much all clubs and events are cancelled too. We had 11 confirmed cases in a population of 22,000 on Friday, but as they're not testing the numbers will be much higher.

National Arts Company - Our season was already weighted towards the end of the year, just in time for CVirus wave 2... Community projects, Tours, International Travel eeek! Continuing as normal for the moment, but I predict a quiet year for us, a terrible year for all the freelancers and probably we write off and reschedule everything and just do a lot of maintenance and internet pod casting.

My eldest is 16 and is working her butt off currently for exams to start in a little over 6 weeks and while I keep telling her she’ll be rewarded for her work now and in future and also that it isn’t that important….. to her it’s massive.

She will be rewarded...

1st scenario is schools stay open and exams run as normal. She'll do well and get good grades.
2nd scenario is schools shut short term, she carries on revising, but many lazy students don't, she gets good grades and potentially higher than expected as grades are worked out in in relation to overall achievement.
3rd scenario is that schools shut longterm and exams are postponed until later in the year. Result same as scenario 2.
4th Scenario is that schools shut longterm and students get their predicted grades. Again if she's worked hard then her PDs should be good and she comes out on top again.

Senior outdoor instructor employed by a (very) large national charity.
If schools stop sending us kids then we’ll spend a few weeks fixing kit, riding bikes and drinking tea I guess. After that I would think we’d be redeployed to other duties on the estate I work on. Plenty of footpaths to fix.
Weird times, can’t work from home but I have fairly high hopes that I have a good and fair employer. Very happy with my direct line management up to regional level so I think I’ll be ok.

Air traffic control. Very worried. Downturn in traffic even before CV. Regional airlines going bust is going to have massive implications on the smaller airfields. Belfast City, Southampton etc very concerned about colleagues’ futures there.
I imagine some bigger airfields-Glasgow for example are going to suffer massively due to Jet2 stopping flying to Spain. En-route traffic still holding up but way down on this time last year. Next few weeks could see some vast changes in my industry.

Construction here lots of self employed subbies on site so poss not going to self isolate unless forced nothing from office ! I’m feeling a bit rough atm may need to SI mrs g teaches she’s been off 2days this week cough /flu like achy is it a coincidence that some kids she teaches were skiing at half term ...north Italy and were back in schools after hols
More worried about new contracts due to the other big thing B..

Working in holidays it’s all going to rat poo. Continental bookings to Italy not happening, Spain looks like its next, France shortly afterwards and Austria/Germany who knows. We guess that it will be flat for 2 or 3 months and then we may see a domestic rush. We may have nowhere to place them if the hotels are all shut/bust.

Environmental & process chemist on a major gas project for Israel. Job security looks better here than other oil & gas projects as we're keeping the lights on in Israel as well as at least part of Jordan and Egypt, and gas hasn't taken quite the hammering that crude has over the last couple of weeks. Life is fairly normal here though there are small concessions such as catering crew serving food rather than everyone helping themselves, random temperature tests, etc. Will be changing soon enough though, all relief crews have to go through 2 weeks quarantine on arrival in Israel and that quarantine has to be at a residential address at the moment - hotels not allowed - so that's proving a headache. That and the ever-dwindling number of flights entering/leaving Israel means those of us here might be here for a while longer. I'd be surprised if I get home before May. Should be home last week of March.
My wife is a social worker. Job had slowly turned to shit over the last few months so last week she applied for and was granted a 2 year career break, due to finish up at the beginning of May. I think she should just knock it on the head now because a) her work have never been particular good at looking after their staff even at the best of times, and b) I can see schools closed by the end of next week so she'll need to be at home for the kids.

Gigolo catering for the elderly. Work’s really dried up

Gigolo catering for the elderly. Work’s really dried up

Can't imagine it was ever really that moist

I'm a "freelance" tv cameraman working mainly on sport......so I'm F......ed basically. We were all cacking ourselves with IR35 just around the corner, but this could be the end of a lot of individuals, and worst, some of the big facility companies we work for too. I've got my last job tomorrow, then I haven't got a single days work full stop. If HMRC are kind, I can last a good few months, but if they start banging on the door demanding payment, its a couple of months and then I'm in big trouble.

I work in the aviation industry... it's not good at all! we're looking at redundancies, unpaid leave, wage and pension cuts and new working hours... It's going to be a long 3-6 months and even beyond that, my employers are predicting that it could take a number of years for it to return to pre virus levels of passenger numbers.

Micro Brewery
we are screwed in reality
looking to use the downturn to re--locate and shoot for a rent holiday, smalle runit, full SBR relief etc

I work in large format print if all the events etc are cancelled I could possibly end up homeless. Statutory sick pay is not going to cover my rent and bills so something will have to give. Beyond concerned.

Research chemist. I'm high enough up that I do t spend much time at the bench. Everyone who can has been asked to WFH where possible to thin out people on site.

It would all be fine but my last day is Friday and I start a new job in April.

Feeling vulnerable. No notice/redundancy or real benefits during probation. Engineering and coatings based so more affected by a recession than the virus. I'm nervous.

Can live off one wage and no kids so we can easily get by cutting back a bit. Will probably be saving a bit of money on holidays in the next 6-12 months anyway. Going to reign in non essential spending till I have more certainty.

I’m in aviation (pilot). I hope I’ll be okay in terms of job retention, due to a combination of skills and other factors, but I know many who are very concerned indeed. It’ll be a tough year with lots of adjustments and disruption however. There might be unpaid leave or pay cuts and voluntary redundancies across the board.

No idea. Our senior management insist we're cut to the bone and barely making money, and if that's true then this is going to be trouble, because there's no way it doesn't hit our revenues for the next 4 years- this year's recruitment is in tatters. We were already seriously worried about brexit.

It's just, I really don't believe them, because they're the sort of management that say "we need to cut costs and it's up to you do to it" and also "we're spending millions of quid on a new building which will probably lose us money but will look amazing". And also "we need to be more efficient" and "we're cutting resource at the early and more important stages of proceeses, and then we will throw twice as much at the next stage in a panic when it turns out cutting resources has an effect". So who knows.

Manufacturing here, production team. Office staff have been told to be prepared to WFH where possible so take laptops home every night as a precaution. Business travel stopped, which is a problem as we sell, install and service a pretty unique product worldwide and Pharma is a big market for us.
Production staff have been issued with "hospital grade" anti-bac, anti-viral gel and been told to wash our hands more and not touch our faces. Attempts to keep delivery drivers away from the workforce aren't working as all the regulars assume it doesn't apply to them and several have got stroppy that they can't use our toilets any more.
Suspected exposed to a sufferer or travel to a hot spot results in a 14 period of self isolation on full pay, WFH where possible.

Self employed in the film and TV industry. Jobs are getting cancelled almost as soon as they are announced. My bread and butter is ads and theres several factors in the cancellations - one being the practicalities of filming as they tend to be international affairs in terms of crew and clients so travel restrictions in other countries are as much of a factor as they might be here.

Another is companies aren't going to be able to get insurance for shooting - you have to insure against factors that would delay or extend a shoot - such as bad weather - and to be able to guarantee that you can finish what you started. Nobody is going to offer to insure that in the face of a pandemic and changing government polices.

On top of short term practicalities like that the knock on effect of the cancelation of big sporting events etc is the advertising slots that the ads would be made for vanish with them.

For bigger film projects the discouragement and restrictions on things like 'going to the cinema' is going to stifle production and also leave companies that have just invested millions in the production of a film with their arse in their hands because the route to sales in distribution will vanish.

It comes right in the middle of a boom in production in the UK - 6 weeks ago I was on a course intended to encourage crew to step up into new roles (or across from other sectors into film) because the crisis facing the industry was there were about 30,000 too few crew to service the sector at the level of production we've been seeing in the last year or so.

Suddenly theres going to be far too many crew - elbows are going to get a bit sharp.

Personally I have other strings to my bow and also have always endeavoured to keep my overheads low so I can live pretty leanly when I need to. But I can expect some pretty fundamental shifts in the dynamics of the sector I work in and probably a bit of a re-focus of my work back towards the public sector / public realm work I used to do before the Tories ****ed it.

I work in maintenance of a large supemrket chain, I can't work from home, wotks carrying on as normal for now.

Work at a college, initally yay 2 weeks WFH but...
We are going to be weeks behind with lessons, can you see 16 year olds bothering to work at home? (Most wont).
But all work needs to be assessed by july.
We have English and Maths exams comming up.
If exams are delayed/ cancelled how will we manage the applicants at enrollment.
I've got some side work validating qualifictions for schools and colleges, cant do that if no one at school which will mean they cant claim certificates, see earlier note about applicants.

And thats if we only have two weeks off (i've heard two weeks added to easter break giving 4 in total) any longer things just get worse, i can see lessons upto august.

I've been WFH for quite a few years now, so no change for me. The muscles in my right arm are quite impressive hence my username.

Quite harrowing reading the replies so far.

Bus development/management for local leisure/cultural trust. Already equipped to WFH and spent most of last week forward planning inc a pecking order for the redistribution of laptops to those deemed most vital. But a large number of roles in the organisation are frontline service provision - lifeguards, gym instructors, librarians, etc - where WFH isn’t an option.

However, wife is a NHS A&E consultant hence my WFH will be limited by bored 5yr and 7yr olds once schools shut.

High probability of whole family getting CV via wife’s work (she expects) 🙁

UK branch of a big US bank. The bank will definitely survive.

Many teams who need to be onsite are splitting 2 weeks on 2 off.

My small team (application development and 2nd line support) can all work from home. I was supposed to be in office all week next week for some conferences on future projects, but we’re doing it over the phone now.

Not ideal, but we’ll get over it.

Mrs Dubs is a secondary teacher. She’s looking forward to an extended Easter Holiday...

I work from home, just not my own home, as a self employed stove fitter.
I'm inundated with work, but I'm expecting supply of goods to interfere with that as time goes on.
Schools shutting and a nurse wife might also mean cutting days anyway.
Thankfully my overheads are minimal, and there's money in the bank. I really worry about the effects of the virus on several people close to me, both physically and financially though.

Actuarial pricing person for big private health insurer.

Interesting times. I'll leave it at that

Teacher, currently no change but it's panic stations for exam classes. Been told they need another exam next week in case. I'll be writing an exam on Monday then.

OH police officer has to do home visits.

There's no current plan for any changes to work for either of us.

@eat_more_cheese

Me too. I’m on leave at the moment so haven’t seen the reality of the lower traffic levels first hand yet but expect it to be painfully quiet at times. Which will obviously ultimately mean less of us.

Losing Flybe had already made a very noticeable difference, I just hope the likes of TUI & Jet2 can survive.

Freelance press photographer selling images regionally, across the UK and internationally. Very, very busy at the moment (this is a perfect storm for the media) . I don't cover sport only news, but many other photographers who shoot football for a living are very worried.

Being based in Hong Kong I guess we are a little ahead of what most of you are experiencing on the work front.
I work for an international finance company as a project manager in the technology side, mostly the delivery of new office spaces or relocation's for India, Japan, Australia and China.
For Hong Kong we have had some serious social disruption for the 2nd half of 2019 which meant we were for some period forced to work from from home plus most of my projects are in other countries were I do not usually get to travel to so remote working, whether office or home, is very well ingrained and we are provided the tools to manage.
The company have also segregated teams to minimize the chances of any cross-infection with certain teams having access to certain floors only and some members just not allowed into the workplace at all. It is expected that people in separate teams do not mix even socially and that seems to be being adhered to.
There is of course a complete travel ban and even if I did need to travel I would now be subject to 14 days isolation on return to HK.
For the work itself, projects directly affected are just on hold with shifting restart dates there is some confusion, in China especially, on what restrictions are in place and what regulations need to be met (both national and local government plus landlords) to enable workers access to site. We expect projects in other countries to be similarly affected as the virus takes hold, in my case I am expecting this to be the case for both India and Australia.
In China I expect everything to be back to, as close as possible, normal by mid-April but I suspect the downturn in the financial markets will have a greater affect on my long term employment than this 'blip' caused by COVID-19.

Specialist courier here, no chance in hell of working from home. If we stop doing our job it will be headline news and I'm genuinely not joking when I say that the general public will panic.

I'm on holiday this next week and my bosses were begging me to cancel it, same with my week off in April. We have very little capacity for mass absenteeism at the best of times plus an ageing workforce due to driving license requirements ruling out a lot of people who passed their test after 1998 (C1, removal of grandfather rights) so we could be hit incredibly badly.

I run/own a food business with my wife. We have about 20 staff.

We are expecting a very difficult time ahead. We have already seen a drop in footfall which is only going to get worse.

For now we are open, with lots of extra hygiene measures in place. We don't know how bad it's going to get, or for how long. We'll do whatever it takes to keep the business going, and hopefully not have to go as far as redundancies.

Many independent food/drink businesses are going to go under, no doubt about it.

Those hit hardest will be those that have no daytime or takeaway trade, or who aren't able to diversify.

I implore everyone here to spend money with their favourite businesses if they want them to still be there in 2 months time.

On top of all this we are having a baby on Tuesday. Timing is not good!!

Commercial solicitor. I can work from home fine but after the initial rush of people asking what their contracts say about this situation I suspect that a lot of projects will be put on hold meaning that they don't need anyone to advise on them.

More interestingly my firm was acquired about 10 days ago and we're currently going through tupe/redundancy consultations and face to face meetings about integration. That process will become rather more challenging if people aren't in the office - a lot of the support staff being made redundant don't have remote access/laptops and need to finish/hand over work before they leave.

Work as a software developer for one of the big tech companies.

Everyone been told to WFH (if they can do their job remote) until further notice, April at earliest. I've been 3-days-a-week remote for 2 years so not much different for me.

Feel like it won't really effect me too much but it's really worrying reading the replies to this thread. Good luck to everyone