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Got told yesterday could looking at a 2021 return, not surprised, but not happy. I understand why and would probably make the same call myself but am aware if companies make the move to more WFH there will be a duty to ensure the employee has the same level of setup as in the office, adjustable chair, appropriate work surface, separate monitor, keyboard, mouse etc., gonna get costly and not everyone has the space.
Work has said they wont pay for furniture etc., ironically it's those coming back from furlough asking rather than people who have worked all the way through.
5 days a week is dead .
But in an engineering colab world where hands need to be on things and workshop frequently calls on us to look at things to provide opinions /options /solutions/calculations on tangible things in a workshop. Being available nearby is invaluable.
Working from home while office was shut has been difficult. I’ve tried to schedule my required workshop time to cover it all in 1 day … I’d be happy 3 days at home 2 in office or similar but working from home full time isn’t going to work.
Similarly in a war room situation on time critical (frequently million dollar a day penalties) then sitting round the table has always proven it’s self to be more productive for us (maybe not in studies of some youths in a start up ) but for us where our experiance is largely in the older generation . Getting round the table is also invaluable.
+1. This is 100% my current situation.
When all this blows over i don't want to go back to the office 5 days per week - i'll be looking for a 2 days at home 3 days at the office split.
In a my previous job our computers had “normal” harddrive and confidential ones which were removed and locked away overnight. Even though it was an office environment there is no way
That's an absolutely idiotic way of securing data.
I’m convinced Boris’s desire to have us back at the office it’s because too many donors face having lots of unoccupied office space and banks wanting their money repaying
There's large swathes of the economy based on people being in offices.
Bars and restaurants in business districts are all on the brink.
Same for cafes, sandwich shops and coffee houses.
Then you have travel, railways, car parks, buses, all now have a huge drop in income.
Office space and the associated industries, cleaners, caters, security, etc. all hit.
Clothing retailers as well, I spent 15 years in a suit and tie, and whilst the tie has now been dropped, I'd wear "work clothes" if I was in the office and I'd need to replace those from time to time. But now I wear a pair of shorts and a t-shirt all day, and as no-one sees me, they won't get replaced anytime soon!
Retail in general as well, if you're not in Town you won't make the impromptu purchase from the shop you walk past.
All of these things existing then attract people to the Cities at the weekends, without them people won't come at the weekend either.
If WFH home continues it will change the whole make-up of city centres and in large parts, not in a good way. That's why Boris et al want us back in the office, there's a whole economy to support.
That’s an absolutely idiotic way of securing data.
Very standard if your work on Classified work. All hard drives are locked in MOD approved safe over night and a 100% clean desk policy, all documents, paper, notes etc also in the safe. One safe per employee with only them knowing the combination. Restricted access to the office, all staff (inc cleaners) vetted by HMG. All bin contents secured and destroyed. For super secret stuff eg Eyes A etc you have totally isolated LANs, very restricted access, faraday cages on the walls / windows, no USB drives allowed, no internet access etc etc.
When they decommissioned the place I worked in years back we had a dozen MOD safes where no one knew the combinations nor what was in them. We had a security vetted safe cracker come in and drill all the safes out whilst being watched so everything could be whisked away and destroyed....
If WFH home continues it will change the whole make-up of city centres and in large parts, not in a good way.
What will happen that's bad, in your view?
That’s an absolutely idiotic way of securing data.
Very standard if your work on Classified work. All hard drives are locked in MOD approved safe over night and a 100% clean desk policy, all documents, paper, notes etc also in the safe.
Standard or no, I stand by my initial assessment. That sort of data should have been properly encrypted and arguably never have been on local storage in the first place.
We had a security vetted safe cracker come in and drill all the safes out
If it was secure storage this would not have been possible.
For occasional access to classified docs that's perfectly sensible vs what it takes to secure a network to the level required to store anything above Official.
Even if it does make Cougar's head explode.
Yep the secret squirrel stuff was on separate network in what was effectively a vault.
What will happen that’s bad, in your view?
I was wondering this, although some existing industries will see a decline in that space due to footfall it doesn’t mean that money can’t be spent elsewhere. A decentralised high street where money is spent locally reinvigorating community economies. With an increase in localised demand it will also drive increased local social/leisure facilities.
Also, declining office space usage in city centres seems like an excellent redevelopment opportunity, convert that space into a low traffic residential area and reduce the demand for building on productive agricultural land.
Things don’t have to stay the same for them to work.
Anyway, I’m in the Office won’t die camp, just change and reduce.
If WFH home continues it will change the whole make-up of city centres and in large parts, not in a good way.
Lots of discussion of this on the coronanomics thread so won’t repeat here. In summary though yes, city centres are screwed. Whether that is a good or bad thing is debatable. In the long run I think good, but it’ll come with huge amounts of pain in the short-medium term.
What will happen that’s bad, in your view?
I guess I like cities, I like people around them and the buzz they have. I like how a busy city can sustains retailers and hospitality options that a small town can't. I like that a city has real people living and working in it and not just tourists. I like how it's a central hub to meet people.
I love the little town I live in, but it's got nothing on the nearest city.
In summary though yes, city centres are screwed. Whether that is a good or bad thing is debatable. In the long run I think good, but it’ll come with huge amounts of pain in the short-medium term.
Depends on the city, the demographic and the split between business and residential.
You see this to a certain extent in tourist hotspots like Ambleside / Windermere where residents need to drive off to out of town places to do basic shopping because the centre is a mass of outdoors shops and cafes / restaurants / bars.
You get similar in some city centres (again, depends a bit on what the residency figures are like, how much the city has apartment style central living vs people travelling in) and while the centre is great for nightlife and cafes, it's rubbish for basic food shopping and day-to-day essentials.
Places like Canary Wharf are probably screwed for a fair while - the only realistic way there is via public transport (there's extremely limited parking there) and the entire shopping experience of the place is aimed at business types, people on lunchbreaks and then evening drinks.
The transition from a work place economy with a non-resident population to a residential economy is a long term and extremely expensive one which will require lots of planning. A task which is almost certainly beyond the existing resources and budgets of city authorities. The gap will be filled with economic collapse and rapid urban decay.
Offices can just repurpose, my old office on the strand was converted into luxury flats about 5 years ago. I suspect the changes were already in place. Sadly the knock on effects are that say 200 staff are replaced by 10 homeowners, so the local cafes, shops and bars will miss the employee type trade.
Problem with London is the above flats were massively expensive, so likely overseas investors not resident full time.
Canary wharf could repurpose into anything, I m pretty sure each floor is open plan. In fact all new London offices are the open footprint style so can be changed into anything, subject to planning.
declining office space usage in city centres
I'm not so sure that office space will remain empty. Several companies I have worked for say they are based in Edinburgh but in reality aren't. Their offices are out of the centre, or even actually in another town, where transport links are very poor. The reason they are out of town is that they need a lot of desk spaces. Reducing that need would mean they could move into town to smaller, better located premises. Offices will still be needed for collaboration but having a 'in office' day focused on and compartmentalising planning or other similar tasks would be far more productive than being dragged away from actual work to go to such meetings.
Offices can just repurpose, my old office on the strand was converted into luxury flats about 5 years ago. I suspect the changes were already in place. Sadly the knock on effects are that say 200 staff are replaced by 10 homeowners, so the local cafes, shops and bars will miss the employee type trade.
You can indeed change offices into residential, but the reason most people live in the city as their work and play is there. If no-one is working in the city and the bars are closed as you have no passing trade, then you have no need to live in a city.
Cities need people living and working in them, you'll struggle to have one without the other. And that's why Johnson wants/needs people back at work and in the office.
dazh - your two posts above beat me to it.
Interesting that Jez Staley seems to have changed his tune; few weeks ago he was questioning the future of the office but now is saying he wants his staff to return.
Has someone had a word in his ear?
poolman - infrastructure at Canary Wharf was not developed for resi; your comment
Sadly the knock on effects are that say 200 staff are replaced by 10 homeowners, so the local cafes, shops and bars will miss the employee type trade
in part explains why; if leisure/retail don't have the footfall they were designed for they'll close which will suck life out of the area.
I spent some time working there and it's buzzing through day and early evening; have also been there on a weekend when it's dead and that's how it would be if converted to resi.
It definitely couldn't '...re-purpose into anything' in a viable, economically meaningful way.
Would you prefer to live in purpose built resi or a converted office?
Cities need people, people don't need cities. They made sense pre-internet, they make a lot less sense these days.Cities need people living and working in them
One thing that I am hearing a lot of here in Sweden is the talking of smaller, localised co-working spaces in the villages around where people have their second homes/cabins.
People have been working from them as the bigger offices have enabled remote working and realised, like me, that they miss people but not necessarily the larger office environments. We, generally, have very good internet in the villages around the bigger towns (I got 250Mb down into my house before I got running water), so there is no bar to me working from my house, apart from the insanity of the quiet and the total lack of people to talk to.
If someone has the money to invest in a small co-working space, I can see a lot of locals using it to either extend their weekend, cut out their commutes or go full time WFH. If it doesn't work out, the space could be sold on as a house.
It definitely couldn’t ‘…re-purpose into anything’ in a viable, economically meaningful way.
Would you prefer to live in purpose built resi or a converted office?
Modern, purpose built offices are absolutely dreadful to convert into houses. Usually designed around open-plan with glass-walled conference rooms, partition walls, floors and ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows and stuff designed to be ripped out and moved around. I mean, you can re-model anything if money is no object but I'd bet it's cheaper to knock the whole lot down and build some proper apartments from scratch.
You'd have to built appropriate fire rating walls between the flats - not a simple task within an existing building I'm sure.
Cities need people, people don’t need cities. They made sense pre-internet, they make a lot less sense these days.
Correct. Without people then cities die, and as mentioned above, that may be positive long-term, but there's a hell of a lot of pain short to mid term pain before then.
That's why any government on a fixed term would want to get people back to work.
Without people then cities die, and as mentioned above, that may be positive long-term, but there’s a hell of a lot of pain short to mid term pain before then.
All very cyclical, City Centres have gone through boom and bust before..
eg https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44482291
Cities need people, people don’t need cities. They made sense pre-internet, they make a lot less sense these days.
I totally agree with this. The problem is that we’d need to rethink the way we live, how the economy works etc. I think it would be great to rid the world of cities, associated traffic and needlessly repeated retail outlets. Have no idea how that would work in the real world though.
My firm seemed to love the idea of people WFH initially. That seems to be changing quite quickly now though and traffic seems to be getting closer to pre-lockdown levels each day.
I think it would be great to rid the world of cities, associated traffic and needlessly repeated retail outlets. Have no idea how that would work in the real world though.
small question of seven and a half billion people though...
A certain number of them will have to voluntarily live in cramped, close quarters accomodation, that is eithre walking distance from everything they need, or with good public transport, or we aren't all going to fit.
It definitely couldn’t ‘…re-purpose into anything’ in a viable, economically meaningful way.
Would you prefer to live in purpose built resi or a converted office?
You want to see some of the barn conversions round my way.
Cities need people, people don’t need cities. They made sense pre-internet, they make a lot less sense these days.
You've just eloquently summarised something I've been trying to straighten in my head for weeks.
Villages, towns and cities exist out of necessity at the time. As industries change they must adapt or die. I live in a once-prosperous old cotton town in East Lancashire. When the mills closed it decimated the town's economy and it's never really recovered. Then supermarkets happened; the Internet Revolution happened; we had / are having a recession; austerity; brexit; and now this.
The world has changed. It's just that we've not really noticed yet. Cities exist because trade needed to be in one place. People needed to be in one place. To get your weekly shop you needed a butcher, a greengrocer, a baker, now you need a phone line. People like my mum who go into town to potter round M&S every Thursday are literally a dying breed.
Which rather begs the question, if you can work from home then social life aside why would you live in a shoebox in London when you can get a big house somewhere nice for the same price?
I think in the medium to long term we're going to see a massive shift towards decentralisation of power.
You want to see some of the barn conversions round my way.
Bit of pedantry there, mod.
I've both converted a barn and lived in it.
It's fundamentally different to converting an office into resi.
Currently business property costs are prohibitive for many little businesses and start ups. maybe a collapse in commercial property prices could be a boom for independent businesses. Maybe that local IT shop with the personal touch competing with the faceless megacorp can become a reality, if 3/4 of your turnover doesn't have to be handed over to a landlord.
If WFH takes off it is going to shift the cost of housing a workforce from the employer to the employee.
Will wages rise to accommodate the increase in house sizes needed?
Answer drowned out by the noise of the flapping wings of passing aerial porcines....
.
.
(Disgruntled spouse of a WFH solicitor who's pushed me out of my office... 🙂 )
Bit of pedantry there, mod.
It was supposed to be irreverent humour and I'm not sure what me being a moderator has to do with anything when I'm posting as a user.
Will wages rise to accommodate the increase in house sizes needed?
Did they rise to accommodate hours' commute plus parking? There's various posts on here saying how people are saving several hundred quid a month on travel, that's an extra room on a mortgage surely?
Will wages rise to accommodate the increase in house sizes needed
I think it is a lot cheaper to WFH than commute, unless you are a 5 minute walk from the office.
For a long time I worked from home in a fairly small house and I had a fold down desk in our bedroom. It wasn't ideal but the bedroom doesn't get used during the day and it meant I was out the way for my wife and kids during the day.
Did they rise to accommodate hours’ commute plus parking? There’s various posts on here saying how people are saving several hundred quid a month on travel, that’s an extra room on a mortgage surely?
Will house prices not rise accordingly due to demand? I think the biggest saving will be on not needing two vehicles-with all the associated costs. However if everyone does this I'm sure it will have a knock on effect somewhere else.
It was supposed to be irreverent humour and I’m not sure what me being a moderator has to do with anything when I’m posting as a user.
My comment was also an attempt at irreverent humour.
My comment was also an attempt at irreverent humour.
They obviously cancelled each other out 🙂
Haha!
Guardian editorial column:
Places like Canary Wharf are probably screwed for a fair while – the only realistic way there is via public transport (there’s extremely limited parking there)
I occasionally labour under the misapprehension that this is a cycling forum. Good to be reminded otherwise.
There wasn’t much bike parking at Canary Wharf when i was working there either if that helps you.
There wasn’t much bike parking at Canary Wharf when i was working there either if that helps you.
Good point. Installing some more bike racks probably would be a bit too much of a stretch.
Also, I cycled into London (albeit Westminster) for work for several years, I managed somehow...
I worked in one of the big towers at CW for a bit, no bike racks outside, bike parking on site only for a couple of bikes, no changing facilities about one shower for the whole place, just an area not geared for cycling. Iirc it was all technically private land and the landlords were very anti. May change now. And it was a really crappy place to cycle to in terms of roads and traffic.
Can you imagine turning one of the Canary Wharf towers into an indoor bike park?
Loads of space of different tracks, use the high ceiling areas for jumps obviously and just think about the 45 floor DH run!
Interesting trends from Morgan Stanley, the UK is lagging Europe in returning to the office..
barn conversions round my way
I've always thought of barn conversions as a bit of a "I live in ye olde countryside don't you know" well off middle class bling. Barns make good barns, presumably. But not measurably very good houses *.
Maybe one day some city centre office flats will be viewed the same way. "I like in this old antique office space which was turned into a flat
just last year don't you know".
* I fully expect someone to come along and tell me just how efficient an old drafty oak beam and brick barn for storing grain turned into a house can be.
I’m not sure what me being a moderator has to do with anything when I’m posting as a user.
That's exactly what the stasi would have said.... 😁
I like my barn conversion.
It used to be a three bedroom semi before I converted it
Maybe one day some city centre office flats will be viewed the same way. “I like in this old antique office space which was turned into a flat
just last year don’t you know”.
I thought it was already supposed to be very trendy to live in flats converted from 100 year old industrial buildings like warehouses etc. - all that exposed brickwork and canal side views don't come cheap.
Just give it a 100 years and the hipsters of 2120 will be living in ultra cool flats converted out of massive Tescos Distribution centres, B&Q warehouses or the HSBC call centre.
As long as they had tall ceilings, I would be down for that! The bane of my life is low ceilings... I want to be able to at the very least not have to duck through doorways and, ideally, be able to put weights above my head for training.
Also, barns can make for good places to live, but it's always a compromise and it costs a fortune.
He gets some of it, some of it is bobbins tho..
Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they can hire the best person in the world for every role
No they can’t, they can hire the best person they CAN get, not THE best person.
The burnout thing is interesting, that’s something we are worried about imminently.
Not just those that slogged out long hours with poor productivity like we had prior to WFH either. Thanks for sharing that btw, shared at work too now.
This guy gets it
For a (presumably very small) subset of office workers that have roles where they effectively work alone with little to no interaction with colleagues, clients or customers.
Re company resorts
I wonder if the big companies will buy say a hotel resort in Tenerife, ie. somewhere with winter sun, convert to office working and send their workforce over for 7-10 day breaks – working in brightly lit workspaces near a sea view for 7 working hours then ‘team building/down time’ around that.
They could do a time share with another big company and then even buy the resort and rent it out to smaller companies over the course of the year.
The working holiday would be tied in with holiday entitlement so it uses up so every day uses up 0.5 of their holiday entitlement.
The company could pat itself on its back that its a great employer. Some employees would love a free holiday – albeit working.
This guy gets it
He sells remote working. So that's his pitch. I have been working from home for nearly a decade in an organisation which hasn't had an HQ building so I can see much of how it works, but he's over-egging quite a lot of it.
For a (presumably very small) subset of office workers that have roles where they effectively work alone with little to no interaction with colleagues, clients or customers.
I work in tech in a large organisation (~10,000 people in tech here). The measurable productivity has increased (slightly) since march last year. There's definitely downsides to the lack of facetime, but the overall net effect is not negative, and as none of us are client-facing I could easily see a future where we're only in a couple of days a month (which is then commutable from pretty much anywhere in the world)
He sells remote working. So that’s his pitch.
And his data comes mainly from self-selecting customers who want to talk to someone selling remote working solutions. That's not to say he doesn't raise some interesting points, but they're hidden amongst the waffle and oversell.
i went in for one day in January.
I've been in one day so far this month, I might do 2/3 total this month.
even when things are normal, I don't anticipate more than 1-2 days a week at most.
This guy gets it
I would say he really doesn't. Everything he talks about is the benefit to the business. while businesses (mine included) would save thousands on physical buildings will that be passed down to the staff who are now spending more running their homes... i very much doubt it. If you hate the office vibe such has chatting to colleagues / friends, don't enjoy your commute or have a very long one I can see the upside. For me, I enjoy cycling to work, I enjoy being in an office and the perks it has such as free coffee and that, and I like the physical and mental separation of work and my home. The office isn't dead it's just changing people like me will still be in 9-5 mon-fri some might not. Its not a binary decision it should be a choice.
We're going through this process at our organisation. Medium sized organisation with a handful of sites within the UK. Prior to COVID we were struggling for space and looking to increase office size. Now we're looking at downsizing office space after asking employees how they want to work. Most want 3-4 days at home and 1-2 days in the office.
Edit: We already had a number of remote workers but they were a tiny subset of the workforce. The only stipulation is that we must be UK based. But one of my colleagues has already moved from the Midlands down to Oxford as there were better job opportunities down there for her partner.
I went to the "office" (well actually a site visit), a few days at the start of January, and one day at the end of January. After the second visit, i had to spend 10 days isolating.
Its not a binary decision it should be a choice.
I'm not sure how that can work in practice, though. I work closely with the members of my team, depending on who you include there are about 10 of us. If I go in on Monday, and the other 9 head in on Tuesday, what's the point? Likewise if I decide I only want to WFH, and the rest decide to head into the office, what then?
I can see my office setting up spaces for teams to come in once or twice a week, but those days will be obligatory. I find it hard to imagine other places (with project teams) will be that different.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/04/uk-cities-suburban-covid-iwg-home-working/blockquote >
Interesting but ends up suiting the middle aged lives in suburbia doesn't want to change jobs. The trouble with suburban offices is they are easier to get to it you live in said suburbs but frequently worse to get to if you don't as transport links round a city are always harder to manage than into a city. Also you can bet these offices will be in the nice suburbs where the upper management live near but not where thoes in lower jobs live but instead of commuting into the city centre with good links they will be battling across town.
yup, perfectly illustrates the point about not taking anything you read on SM (or anywhere really) at face value, without checking up first. It's just an advert, basically!I would say he really doesn’t. Everything he talks about is the benefit to the business.
I’m not sure how that can work in practice, though. I work closely with the members of my team, depending on who you include there are about 10 of us. If I go in on Monday, and the other 9 head in on Tuesday, what’s the point? Likewise if I decide I only want to WFH, and the rest decide to head into the office, what then?
I think it will and will have to. My employer is talking about a "blended work environment" where we will get the option come to work X days a week or just be remote full time. My previous employer Expedia took the same stance (and the office is already back open - well outside of lockdowns) come in when you want / need to.
Collaborative work is just better face to face waiting for someone to mute / unmute on zoom is just painful and doesn't foster a natural communication. I totally get some are happy with it but sociable people struggle I know I do. I miss the pub after work when everyone gets to talk rubbish and moan about stuff its cathartic. My partner doesn't understand why im moaning about a dev who has built something wrong.
This guy gets it
In fairness Chris Head is in the business of selling remote working IT Solutions, and he's US based, the US tends to be the quickest to take on new ideas and practices.
I also, in part, sell remote working IT solutions, but admittedly to smaller businesses.
The picture with our clients is no where near 70%, a lot are talking about making WFH permanent post-Covid, but few are actually making firm plans, it's probably not helped by a Government who have until recently only really planned a few weeks ahead at a time.
The whole IT thing was initially the big issue and there are a lot of challenges in regards to cyber security and accessibility, but there are plenty of industry standard solutions and practices for that now.
WFH could be great for a lot of people, but beware it does offer considerable risks to employees, I'm sure we've all at some point watched a promo video of the latest new Super Jumbo aircraft and been told it's 40% bigger than the last one, 40% more fuel efficient and with 40% greater air quality, meaning airlines will give us all First Class like legroom and refinement, only to discover in actual fact all they do is cram in more seats and circulate less air. Technology advances in work are often like that, they're put in place to improve productivity, not to make employees lives easier.
There are some considerable risks ahead for any office worker, sometimes it's a slow process, in the UK (at least at the moment) employers can't really just impose new working conditions on us, but as staff leave and are replaced they can.
That 1hr a day you save not commuting, maybe they'll ask new staff to work it, or maybe they'll meet you half way, because "you'd only be sat in the car/train/bus anyway?"
All that money you save not commuting, well if an employer is offering WFH, they can offer a lower salary then yeah?
So you can leave your horribly expensive city centre flat and move to the Country, again, the employment market may also allow that to come with a lower salary, you certainly won't get a London weighting to live in rural Gloucestershire.
There's also a H&S issue, I'm sure plenty of people have realised that working 8 hours a day on a 14" laptop sat on the sofa or at the dinning room table isn't the best for your eye-sight or back. A WFH contact might come with the requirement to at least have enough space for a company supplied Chair and Desk.
That's just the things I've actually discussed with employers, issues I've read about on industry platforms include:
Increase off-shoring, It took about half a second after someone said "oh great, I can finally move to France and keep my Job in the UK" (Brexit notwithstanding) before another thought "France, what if staff lived in Eastern Europe, or Asia etc when the average salary is £4.50 a week". My Dell rep used to be based in Ireland, then it was a Guy in Singapore, now India.
The trouble with suburban offices is they are easier to get to it you live in said suburbs but frequently worse to get to if you don’t as transport links round a city are always harder to manage than into a city. Also you can bet these offices will be in the nice suburbs where the upper management live near but not where thoes in lower jobs live but instead of commuting into the city centre with good links they will be battling across town.
found this with my first graduate job.
I lived at my parents in an affluent home counties commuter town, office was in a separate affluent home counties commuter town.
Had I wanted to commute by public transport it would have been 1.5hrs+ each way, and as it involved going into london and back out, the ticket carried london pricing.
Nice surrey mansions or west London townhouses for the directors though.
We've been doing a fair bit of research into future office strategies both for ourselves and for others.
It's quite clear that creative businesses do suffer from a total wfh strategy as it really slows down design, and there's also a loss of team cohesion.
I was in a seminar earlier this week and someone said there's a balance between working from home and sleeping at work, which I thought was good.
New trends that are emerging include Working From Near Home which I explored last summer in a project, and also the wfh/wfo balance.
CBDs aren't dead, they're just sleeping at the moment.
Over the last couple of months when I have been speaking to our internal sales and admin staff on the phone, most of them are fed up working at home. They want to return to the office and interact with people. However, they would like the flexibility. I think that is where it will be for our company. Mixed between office and home. Many of the internal staff are fairly local to the office. All the external sales engineers like myself are based at home anyway. My girlfriend has been working from home since March last year and she wants a balance too. Would like to be back in the office 1-2 days a week, but at home the other times. But she needs a better working space.
Fortunately my GF is in the office.
She had the option of working from home, but she enjoys the 20 minute bike ride to work, seeing/discussing things with her colleagues and having that separation from work and home.
It also means we're not having to have the heating on full blast all day long.
I'm also glad she's not at home. If she were she would know how ****less I am for six hours of the day and then suddenly spring into action at around 5ish when it dawns on me that I've done sweet FA all day and need to hang the washing/do the dishes/shopping.
Which reminds me.... Another 18 minutes of procrastination and then I best get my arse in gear.
I'm a director of a company that employs 30 people in Manchester City Centre. It's a premium office space so higher business rates, IIRC £60k per annum. I answered a questionnaire a few months back specifically about WFH, the impact of downsizing offices or a business going permanently to all staff WFH. The questions centered around the impact and loss of business rates to local council and government funding.
The line of questing led me to believe that they're already thinking about the loss of business rates and how the money will be replaced. From the line of questioning, I came to the conclusion that there will be 3 directions this will go in. 1. A tax on the employee. 2 a tax on their home working environment. 3 the employer would be taxed per employee working from home.
The last thing we need is option 2, the leeches will start to mandate all sorts of taxes, fire regulations, health and safety, home working insurance cover etc. £2k will turn into £5k per annum a whole new industry will come in.
As I'm writing this, a at the top of a large building I can see pretty much all the office blocks. There are 40+ story buildings with only one or two floors with lights on, usually in the corners where the bosses sit. There's been no change in this since March last year, regardless of full lockdown or the eased versions. I come in regularly to check the place over and it genuinely takes my breath away as to how much it's changed in 12 months.
It gets worse, can you see Old Trafford full of 76k people again in the next two years. Ditto Cheltenham, Aintree, music festivals, concerts, nightclubs, busy Friday/Saturday night City Centre pubs where you stand around 3 deep at the bar. Not a chance. Permanent shop closing and less business rates - probably piling it onto office worker tax. Even less footfall / reasons to go into cities. The previous advantage of working in a city was it was on your door step at lunchtime or after work to shop, dine or go to events. None of this is happening so why go in at all. Provincial City Centre's will revert back to ghost towns post 6pm like they were in the 70s and 80s. The tower block cladding nightmare will put people off moving to the city this is likely to take 10 years to solve + there's nothing to do....
These decisions need political will power which is none existent from any party. Who is going to say it's over and it's back to normal. Not one because if there's a single death, the media will be all over them as callous bar-stewards playing to the baying twitterati.
can you see Old Trafford full of 76k people again in the next two years. Ditto Cheltenham, Aintree, music festivals, concerts, nightclubs, busy Friday/Saturday night City Centre pubs where you stand around 3 deep at the bar.
I can see all of them, except the last. Costa and Pret and a lot of 'Spoons and other pubs are all going to close.
Our company is downsizing the office space, from about 50 desks to 20, with the same headcount. The plan is everyone will work in the office 1-2 days a week. It seems a bit of a drop to me, but we'll size. All happens end of Feb.
New pay and conditions offer for HMRC includes an expectation that most staff will be able to work at least 1 day a week at home.
The move to regional centres has lost loads of experienced staff who were previously told WFH would not be an option. Our own move to the regional centre is about to start prepping and there's a definite impression that those wanting to WFH and go in once a week or once a fortnight rather than take redundancy may well get what they want
As my ‘office’ is a 2.5Ha expanse of bare concrete with 1000+ cars parked on it, WFH isn’t an option. Which, considering the weather over the last week, is a bit of a shame...🥶
It gets worse, can you see Old Trafford full of 76k people again in the next two years. Ditto Cheltenham, Aintree, music festivals, concerts, nightclubs, busy Friday/Saturday night City Centre pubs where you stand around 3 deep at the bar. Not a chance.
Eh? Absolutely I can - current evidence suggests there would be enough people willing to do that now if they were allowed let alone in a year or two (when hopefully we'll have Covid much more under control with just the odd annual flare up with a new strain).
As someone who has worked/stayed away from home for the last 20 years to be sat in an office in or around London, Working from home this last year has been a dream for me!! i do not miss the office or people one bit but i am starting to wish i could get out of the house a day or 2 of the week on site visits or something... but im not complaining. i shudder at the thought of going back to 'normal'
Costa and Pret and a lot of ‘Spoons and other pubs are all going to close.
Don't know anything about Spoons, but all our local coffee shops have queues outside them all day with people getting their fix and having it outside rather than inside. I walk to Pret every lunchtime for a baguette (mainly for the exercise / break from WFH), always people in there doing the same.
As someone who has worked/stayed away from home for the last 20 years to be sat in an office in or around London, Working from home this last year has been a dream for me!! i do not miss the office or people one bit but i am starting to wish i could get out of the house a day or 2 of the week on site visits or something… but im not complaining. i shudder at the thought of going back to ‘normal’
I think this is exactly why we need a flexible solution going forwards. Im pretty much totally the opposite. I live about a 40 min cycle from work, miss the office, miss the people in it, miss working as a team not online, I miss extended bike rides home with the people i work with for chat laps. Im that odd person who would be more than happy to go back to "normal" in the office 9-5 mon-fri. Just because a few people don't want it why shouldn't my needs / wants be catered for too. I know this isn't what your but people seem to talk about it as if it's one of the other when its not its both. If my company went 100% remote I would likely leave for a company that isn't.