The Covid19 WFH Thread

zackster

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.

303abuser

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.

Old-Dutch

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

Along_the_Wire

Old-Dutch Measure the outcome, Dutchy - fuck that shit

FabiParas

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.

HopHead

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.

Heno

Smallman1 theirs a massive refit going on at the moment in it(shoreditch house)

Along_the_Wire

Heno The can improve Soho House by stopping it being crammed full of utter cunts. Much cheaper.

vinnyt77

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…

FabiParas

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.

mjh

My uncle works for the tech bit of the NHS (I forget what it’s called now). Apparently the bean counters have seen that 500 workers can remote work productively and so they’re now wondering why they’re paying for all the office space.

It’s not going to be a good time to own large office buildings over the next 5 years.

Old-Dutch

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

Smallman1

Along_the_Wire Why aren’t you a member now?

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

hugopal

Along_the_Wire The can improve Soho House by stopping it being crammed full of utter cunts. Much cheaper.

But then they’d lose their membership fees, which would actually be more costly.

gcw

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

gcw

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.

Along_the_Wire

gcw I’m training on my bike every morning, but am missing the evening commute home, which I actually enjoy and is good to de-stress. At the minute, I finish work about 7:30 and then a bit moody for an hour or so.

FabiParas

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.

303abuser

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

how much work is it to convert an office building to residential? i’d assume meeting code would require a lot of expensive retrofitting with plumbing and the like.

gcw

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

FabiParas We have done that also. Can’t fault my company who have been proactive since day 1. We’ve issued equipment to home addresses, organised quizzes, bingo, virtual pilates for staff to help with mental health, had coffee mornings etc

Smallman1

Am looking forward to the Soho House membership. I can ledge it up on the work front during the day and then ledge it up on the socialising front in the evening.

All under the same roof too.

Mustard.

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