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Herman

Working From Home.

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The government and its press seem to be going after people WFH. I understand why they are doing this, good and bad, but from my limited knowledge it looks as if it is one of the only good results of the pandemic. It seems to work reasonably well, doesn't lead to lower productivity and can help with people's mental health to name a few positives.

I can't work from home but I know a lot have and have got on well with it. Anybody on here doing it and what are your views, positive and negative?!

Edited by Herman

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37 minutes ago, Herman said:

The government and its press seem to be going after people WFH. I understand why they are doing this, good and bad, but from my limited knowledge it looks as if it is one of the only good results of the pandemic. It seems to work reasonably well, doesn't lead to lower productivity and can help with people's mental health to name a few positives.

I can't work from home but I know a lot have and have got on well with it. Anybody on here doing it and what are your views, positive and negative?!

I WFH, don't have a problem with neither do my employers.

It probably works for me as I don't eat cheese.

I expect that's why Ben Gunn was stuck on Treasure Island.

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I have a friend who lives a few doors away who lives with her 15 year old son. We walk our dogs together for a couple of hours every weekend. 

Since Covid and lockdown she has been working from home and it's very noticeable that she now talks for almost the entire 2 hours. I can't help thinking she is missing human interaction on a daily basis. 

The other downside I can see is that people used to meet life partners at work. 

The huge positive is that it's got a lot of cars off the road. It's now much quicker and less polluting for me to get into Norwich. 

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I am retired from Home.

I think for the overall good, including economy, personal health and interaction, that people really ought to go back to work.

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“Working” from home

everyone on the office or wherever resents you, doesn’t believe you are working at all and when redundancies come around, you’re first on the list. Real Talk.

If you want to work at home forever you’ll end up as messed up as those home school kids 🤣

Edited by The Real Buh

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Just more dog-whistle, culture war bollox...add Rwanda, mix in some EU trade war rage, and a dash of flegs...did anything else happen this week? 🤔🤪🤣

Apples

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Politically it feels a bit self defeating and it seems to go against the supposed economic principles a Conservative government are supposed to have- basically trying to tell business how to manage their own staff.

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Wife works from home, is nothing to do with covid though as her company is based 200 miles away. When she was approached about the job she was unsure about leaving an office and the interaction that goes with that, but she loves it and I doubt she would be tempted back to an office job easily 

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Impossible to run a business in the long-term with just WFH. Microsoft used to order their canteens to create a queue because so many unplanned dialogues took place while people were taking their lunch, which was good for business. Obviously, the solution is a mixture that allows flexibility where those who want to work from home can, while time is also spent together in the office.

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5 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Impossible to run a business in the long-term with just WFH. Microsoft used to order their canteens to create a queue because so many unplanned dialogues took place while people were taking their lunch, which was good for business. Obviously, the solution is a mixture that allows flexibility where those who want to work from home can, while time is also spent together in the office.

While I agree with your conclusion, the Microsoft anecdote seems rather odd: if they used to do it then it clearly wasn't particularly successful.

I've never heard of a facility run in this way, and I've got a number of years in the sector.

Employees tend to view their break times being wasted on queuing as wholly negative - and the impact on general morale if they worked out they were artificially extended (would take maybe a week, tops) would be significantly more damaging than the chance encounter in the sandwich line that miraculously spawned Azure.

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Been a lot more posts on here by the Lefty’s since people started working from home, according to JRM 😁

I only work part time but have been doing a lot more from home which has been brilliant, we have been trying to get more done electronically for a number of years and the Pandemic moved the whole program forward at lightening speed, and saved a lot of trees in the process!

Edited by Van wink

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In the last two years the working environment has adapted to WFH better than anything I've seen in the workplace. Teams & Zoom have been a big player but I've also seen people embrace collaborative working via Linkedin, Yammer etc.

What I've also noticed is that when people do go to the office they feel that they are there for a more specific reason than BAU, meetings have gained a greater sense of purpose and there is less inclination to put things off until the next meeting.

The people who haven't experienced this seem to be in the anti camp. 

 

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I'll be happy to accept Rees-Bogg's demand that people return to the workplace when he and his fellow MPs are required by law to fill in work time sheets detailing the places and times they were at work in the previous week (including their second/third/fourth ... jobs). I guess this might make the feckless regular Lords attendee a little less enthusiastic about his demands on others.

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9 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Impossible to run a business in the long-term with just WFH.

Perhaps that explains why the utterly incompetent Dido Harding spaffed £37 billion of tax payer's money on an entirely useless test and trace system. Or perhaps not. Always a good idea to apply Occam's Razor in the case of this useless government.

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Been doing it for 2 years now, would say it’s been well worth it for me. I work harder, have all my home comforts there, get to spend time with the dog and walk him at lunch.

It would be good for some of my meetings to be face to face on one of the projects I’m working on but I doubt the company want to pay me to fly over to US where most of my colleagues are based so we can do a perfectly good job using shared spaces like Teams, Miro, WebEx etc.

Turns out Football manager is the perfect accompaniment as well, manage to get through plenty of games a day while I wait for my work to load etc.

My office is there if I need it 5 mins drive away but I don’t see the need for it tbh. Obviously it depends on your job but for me WFH works fine.

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It's brilliant and things are never going back to business as usual, which is great news. People who don't like it are mainly the Brexit-voting pensioners who don't understand it and don't like progress. Been the best thing that's happened to me in my career.

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A few years ago when the young son of an acquaintance of mine requested my financial help in the form of an investment in the 'internet office' he planned to set up I was, at first, sceptical, pointing out that internet cafés already existed.

Nevertheless, I went along with the idea, knowing him to be quite savvy, whilst also thinking that he had probably noticed such an enterprise succeeding elsewhere. He pointed out that "office" was the key word and that it would be not be a place for social media, game playing or for one-off form filling etc.

The project involved renting an office space with good heating then equipping it with desks and chairs, personal lighting, space and a few PCs and printers, along with a premium Wi-Fi connexion. A fridge and kettle were also purchased.  

The basic idea was to rent out desk-space on a time-sharing basis, and it worked, being fully booked within weeks by certain self-employed individuals who found such a provision cheaper or even more amenable (some had bad  access to the internet or an intrusive home environment for example) than working from where they lived. Sharing energy costs has since become even more necessary.

Only lockdown looked as if it might threaten the venture, but my young entrepreneur survived. After restrictions were lifted, demand exploded, and immediate expansion was needed. The reason for this upturn can be encapsulated by the experiences of one individual who, prior to pandemic times, had travelled to his office in Canterbury some twenty miles away on a daily basis, had got used to spending stressful portions of his time in peak period traffic jams each week-day and habitually filling up his petrol tank as a weekly routine.

Lockdown and working from home had been a revelation for him, with such a new "relaxed lifestyle," as he put it. However, with the heating bill soaring, his waistline expanding and with him getting somewhat "bored with my own company and with the distractions of my flat mate,"  he wasn't totally averse to returning to the daily drudge when it became possible.

Discovering the availability of the "internet office" nearby provided a compromise, and one that his company were happy with. For the foreseeable future, and for three days a week, he now cycles (laptop in saddlebag) for five minutes to his new work-place rather than drive for an hour to his old one. He breathes in more fresh air and less car fumes. A colleague from Sandwich joins him for two of those days, another local for one. It has, in effect, become a bit of a  hub for the company to the extent that it has now enabled it to consider the possibility of cutting back on overheads, even when funding some of the rental involved. It seems win-win all-round, and whilst the sandwich shops in Canterbury might sell less, those in Ramsgate sell a bit more. 

Good things can even arise from such a bad thing as a pandemic. Work from home is one of them, another is the balance proved when a conveniently situated 'internet office' offers a useful niche for certain individuals. It would, of course,  be up to each and every relevant business to tailor its needs accordingly. 

The proliferation of work from home, Zoom meetings etc. since lockdowns were first applied has finally and fully increased awareness of the way the internet can be utilised  in order to change some ways of old for the better.

 

Edited by BroadstairsR
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On 14/05/2022 at 21:59, Mr Apples said:

Just more dog-whistle, culture war bollox...add Rwanda, mix in some EU trade war rage, and a dash of flegs...did anything else happen this week? 🤔🤪🤣

Apples

I'm not sure what you could possibly mean.😉

 

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My experience is different as I've been working from home as a self-employed translator for close to ten years. I will not go back into an office again under another employer if I can remotely help it. I also have no intention of retiring either, and save into a pension fund simply for a wealthier old age as I am perfectly happy with the notion of keeping working until I cark it.

It does help that translation is an industry that lends itself superbly to Skype (or similar technologies), in fact I am in contact with several project managers from my main client using that. It would be impossible for jobs involving production of tangible goods, but in translation files are either sent to be used on CAT tools either on laptops or indeed, in some cases, even in the Cloud.

I absolutely love the fact that I am not necessarily chained to my desk. I habitually start earlier than I would at work, and will often work in the evening depending on project deadlines. I basically find myself working at a far more comfortable pace to the extent that work often doesn't feel like work. And if I get a little unfocused, or I waver a bit, then I'll simply walk away from my desk and do something else. Can't do that in an office.

It just dawned on me that micromanagement in an office is what I find most unreasonable, and I'm delighted working from home enables me to escape it.

If an employer wants people to work in the office when the same job can be done just as well from home, it is a control tactic, pure and simple.

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On 14/05/2022 at 06:25, Herman said:

The government and its press seem to be going after people WFH. I understand why they are doing this, good and bad, but from my limited knowledge it looks as if it is one of the only good results of the pandemic. It seems to work reasonably well, doesn't lead to lower productivity and can help with people's mental health to name a few positives.

I've worked from home for the last 7 or 8 years so completely unrelated to the pandemic in my case but as far as I can see there is only a good side.

I do sometimes miss the office environment a bit but purely from a social perspective - from a work perspective it is all benefits - it certainly doesn't lead to lower productivity in fact I'm pretty sure there have been several studies done already which have concluded the opposite. It lowers cost for most employees (viz travel & meals), companies (for most service/professional companies the cost of offices is second only to the staff themselves) and of course its very good for the environment to cut out such a massive amount of completely unnecessary travel.

Of course there are still times when face to face is better and I'm happy to travel wherever on those occassions but it still means that the amount of work related travel I do nowadays is a tiny fraction of what I was doing 10 years ago.

Johnson has always had it in for WFH partly, I suspect, because its all part of his head in the sand approach throughout the pandemic and partly because he is just plain thick and knows nothing whatsoever about running a business.

But since he professes to believe that the everything is best left (or handed over to) the private sector you'd think that maybe one of his advisors would have the commonsense to tell him to keep his stupid, uninformed opinions about how companies run their businesses to himself.

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We've gone hybrid since things started reopening- so two days in the office, three at home. I manage a sales team so there is a benefit to having people in as it can help create more of a 'buzz' and we find people benefit from the social element and being able to hold any meetings/catch ups f2f. However we also have to recognise that the game has changed and if we started demanding everyone in 5 days a week, we'd lose some good people.

WFH definitley works better for the older, more middle class types though- people who own their own house, have spare rooms to work from etc etc. There are some in my team who want to be in 5 days because they are living in one bed rented flats in London and don't want to spend 24 hours in their bedroom. So flexibility has largely been key but overall it works.

I do enjoy the extra flexibility and as a parent of young kids it has been great to be able to spend the time I would spent in the car/on the train with them. It also allows me to head to the gym with a bit more ease on lunchbreaks, do nursery drop-offs, meet friends for drinks etc without so much pre planning and stress.

Overall the three days WFH has had a clear positive affect on my quality of life. Don't want any government taking that away for absolutely **** all reason.

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5 minutes ago, king canary said:

We've gone hybrid since things started reopening- so two days in the office, three at home. I manage a sales team so there is a benefit to having people in as it can help create more of a 'buzz' and we find people benefit from the social element and being able to hold any meetings/catch ups f2f. However we also have to recognise that the game has changed and if we started demanding everyone in 5 days a week, we'd lose some good people.

WFH definitley works better for the older, more middle class types though- people who own their own house, have spare rooms to work from etc etc. There are some in my team who want to be in 5 days because they are living in one bed rented flats in London and don't want to spend 24 hours in their bedroom. So flexibility has largely been key but overall it works.

I do enjoy the extra flexibility and as a parent of young kids it has been great to be able to spend the time I would spent in the car/on the train with them. It also allows me to head to the gym with a bit more ease on lunchbreaks, do nursery drop-offs, meet friends for drinks etc without so much pre planning and stress.

Overall the three days WFH has had a clear positive affect on my quality of life. Don't want any government taking that away for absolutely **** all reason.

The bit in bold might be more of a matter of personal preference. My office is basically in my open-plan living area, but I know from personal experience that as long as it's not in my bedroom, I sleep soundly. Used to have a bit of a problem as a teenager getting to sleep as I had mentally disassociated the idea of a bedroom with sleeping simply by spending a lot of time on the computer!

Although the social element would probably **** me off. I was always one of the grumpier ones in meetings, and this song sums up stuff perfectly....
 

 

Edited by TheGunnShow

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I had a trivial tax issue that needed sorting - they had missed some historical NI contributions.

Literally I was told the backlog was 6 months.

I do believe WFH is not as efficient generally as being in the office and focused although it may have other benefits.

By the way - if you are WFH that should immediately disqualify you from London 'waiting'. No expensive commute. 

Edited by Yellow Fever
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6 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

The bit in bold might be more of a matter of personal preference. My office is basically in my open-plan living area, but I know from personal experience that as long as it's not in my bedroom, I sleep soundly. Used to have a bit of a problem as a teenager getting to sleep as I had mentally disassociated the idea of a bedroom with sleeping simply by spending a lot of time on the computer!

Although the social element would probably **** me off. I was always one of the grumpier ones in meetings, and this song sums up stuff perfectly....
 

 

On the social element- that is probably more relevant to a field like sales rather than your area- most sales people do need the social element and to bounce off each other to help create a bit of momentum and buzz. 

It is of course down to personal preference but I did notice in my organisation the people (including myself) who adapted best to working from home were generally people who didn't live in London and had bigger living spaces. Some people were of course fine with working from their flats but others (particularly those in couples) found it tough and claustrophobic at times.

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19 minutes ago, king canary said:

On the social element- that is probably more relevant to a field like sales rather than your area- most sales people do need the social element and to bounce off each other to help create a bit of momentum and buzz. 

It is of course down to personal preference but I did notice in my organisation the people (including myself) who adapted best to working from home were generally people who didn't live in London and had bigger living spaces. Some people were of course fine with working from their flats but others (particularly those in couples) found it tough and claustrophobic at times.

Very possible re. the bit in bold. The regional translators association I am a member of does have monthly meet-ups, usually in Manchester, and they're not bad for working amongst fellows - it can sometimes be great working with a fellow translator in the same field and language combination, pinging ideas off.

But I suspect most of us are happier researching on the Internet. It is probably a serious oversimplification, but suspect there is a correlation between introversion and extraversion there.

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2 hours ago, Creative Midfielder said:

Johnson has always had it in for WFH partly, I suspect, because its all part of his head in the sand approach throughout the pandemic and partly because he is just plain thick and knows nothing whatsoever about running a business.

But since he professes to believe that the everything is best left (or handed over to) the private sector you'd think that maybe one of his advisors would have the commonsense to tell him to keep his stupid, uninformed opinions about how companies run their businesses to himself.

I would suspect that Conservative donors or even Conservative Party members themselves have a property portfolio of  London establishments, especially offices, and the whole "don't work from home" tubthumping is purely to protect their interests. Even when Cameron and Osborne were Prime Minister and Chancellor respectively, and declared their income, they were taking a significant sum from rental income.

Given Johnson's general disdain for the little people it's the only way it would make sense to me. 

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Sure, some jobs don't work great from home, but most office jobs do, assuming people have an appropriate space to work in, and staff are sufficiently self-motivated. 

I work for a global tech company and we're 95% WFH still, from nearly 100% during pandemic. We've been incredibly successful during that period. We're distributed over the world anyway and so a lot of communication was remote even pre-pandemic. The team I manage are US and Canada based anyway. 

People have their own preferences of course, and that's fine. Some people prefer the buzz of an office, other people find it more of a distraction. Whatever works. But personally, if my workplace forced me to go back to the office full time, I'd jump ship immediately (as would many others). 

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doesn't matter what the gov or papers say...

market pressure (the market being employer needs/employee demands) and economics only count on this.

I can tell you - "you must work from the office" is done for any professional work.. had some very interesting conversations on this at a conference in the US last week.

 

 

 

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