The Covid19 WFH Thread

We’re not expecting to go back until 1 September at the earliest. Some have expressed a desire, we just had a company survey, that they wanted to return but to do so would mean temp checks, closed off kitchen areas, masks in the office. They swiftly changed their minds on that. The psychological effect of that is too much for me.

For me working with Bermuda, NY and, since Covid, SF means WFH has worked out fine. Although I’m working longer. Im more efficient as dont have the commute to handle.

Could I do it full time? Yes. Would I want to? No. Purely on the social aspect of seeing other people.

I’ll definitely be requesting an at least one day WFH arrangement as the joy of it means I spend some quality development time with the kids.

I’d take working from home all day. Things have been crazy busy for me since lockdown - probably the busiest I’ve ever been in terms of meetings and workload and even with the kids not at school and the childminder I’d still take this any day.

I am missing getting to go to the gym at lunch and listening to music on my commute but if things settled down I could find ways to do work out every day at home plus listen to some more music.

Office work as we knew it is dead. After staffing, premises costs have to be a business’s biggest outlay - once they realise they don’t need to pay the costs for the premises they will bin them off. I said this a few weeks ago on the other board- interesting to see Ed’s place considering this already. Viva la revolution.

That sounds like a great arrangement in my opinion Ed. I’d love that as an option but will never happen in the Higher Education sector.

Old-Dutch Office work as we knew it is dead. After staffing, premises costs have to be a business’s biggest outlay - once they realise they don’t need to pay the costs for the premises they will bin them off. I said this a few weeks ago on the other board-

1000% agree. They’ve now realized that they can squeeze people just as hard without having them under the magnifying glass.

when i was interviewing for jobs a dozen years ago, before i started my own business, this was exactly my problem. i’m looking at senior ba positions, no direct reports, stakeholders all over the map, and they still wanted me in the office everyday. asking why we couldn’t do the position from home was akin to blasphemy. that was the end for me, glad i haven’t had to go back to that short-sighted corporate nonsense.

Don’t worry there’s plenty of software solutions they can put on employees’ laptops to monitor their daily output.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/technology/employee-monitoring-work-from-home-virus.html?referringSource=articleShare

You either produce or you dont. My role is reliant on others to bring me the business to sort out and close. Once that’s done, theres a whole process where I can be waiting around for others to confirm their understanding.

There can be many dead periods in my year so its impossible to do time/motion type studies or snooping on productivity as this time of year is off the scale.

Smallman1 Hate working from home, this groundhog day existence isn’t for me, struggling a little actually.

Ed I imagine you love a bit of a float around the office, charming the dorises, mucking in with the lads. In at 9:30am, sitting down to work at 11am.

Been a home worker (minimum 4 days out of 5) for about 7 years, and my wife even longer. Monday to Friday is the most normal part of the week for us.

Hopeful that the enforced remote working arrangements of the past couple of months, and the likely much greater proportion of home working in future will mean that more of my colleagues will appreciate that it’s not a case of taking the piss, and taking it easy. Even though I’m always rated as one of the most productive high performing folks in my business, there are still the occasional snide remarks about how home working arrangements…

Along_the_Wire Why aren’t you a member now?

There’s only so many hours in the day Grant!

mjh

Once you get rid of / don’t need all that office space, you can create flats / homes for people. I’m sure the owners will do just fine whatever happens

Our office is due to reopen on 1st June (subject to what Boris says at his next update of course). Screens between desks, one person in the kitchen at a time etc. Staff are being reminded that they can remain at home if they wish though. I will go in to pick a few things up, but we will definitely be moving towards home working in the future.
The pros are that you can just log off and you’re home, but the con to that is that sometimes the drive home helps me de-stress a little bit. E-mail traffic has also gone through the roof, so I’m arguably busier than if I was in the office.
My home set up is ok, but not ideal, so I am getting back pains, mild RSI etc. Will definitely need to address that.

Old-Dutch Yep, I’m in the housing sector and we are already talking about that as an opportunity in the medium term.

vinnyt77 Here Here!

It annoys me that you still had this old school attitude towards shirking from home. Especially from people in companies that have an active policy of issuing WFH days. I had a run-in last year where one of my managers complained about not knowing when I was WFH, yet my other three managers were totally fine with my working arrangements as long as I was getting the work done. Ended up having to be hyper-anal for a period of time.

Along_the_Wire I know that feeling. I had a pig of a day earlier this week and just couldnt switch off at all for the evening, not good for mental health long term at all.

gcw Another good thing our company have been doing, other than the mental wellness check-ins and company surveys/calls, is they’ve been pretty much allowing us to expense essential equipment and now they are going to roll out work station checks for home offices due to the complaints of back pains etc.

Whether they agree to sign-off on a 2k floating desk or an anatomically perfect swivel chair I dont know.