It was a great laugh for them the last time. Arthur bloody Scargill.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Because more WFH can help take the edge off the housing crisis which is a huge issue for the Irish government (where the majority of employment is centred around a single city) but not in the UK (where the inability of young people to afford property in London is old news)
If you’re keeping all the offices open long term, then of course money isn’t going to be saved. I would imagine that you might not need all of those offices in 10 years, even if only 30% want to WFH permanently.
But again, we’re talking long term visions. It’s clearly not a case of simply sending everyone home and closing an office.
On a side note, new employees working from home would have that written into their contract, meaning you might only need to provide basic IT equipment not desks/chairs etc.
It's complex to say the least and we are growing just to add to the complexity
This is the wider challenge for most normal businesses, leases prior to lockdown will determine the policy that business will follow. I feel we'll be back to a hybrid model but a full office on the key days of the week by September.
It is complex and the situation will vary a lot from company to company. The essential point remains true though. In general businesses will save money if they shift towards a model with more time spent WFH.
That's interesting and generally the opposite of what I've experienced in the two companies I worked with throughout Covid. Generally it's been older people with their own home, kids, to look after and drive places, dogs, prefer to cook for themselves, whatever who have been happiest at home and are more reluctant to go back to the office. A lot of younger people I've talked to are fed up working in a small room or in the same room as the people they rent with, and miss the craic of the city, work nights out, free lunches etc. and would much prefer to be back in town. That said I do work in IT which I respect as being a far higher earning profession than many others (including for our younger staff) so maybe that makes a big difference as savings aren't quite as important to them.
You’re right though @Massive Spanner young people are mussing out so much on the social aspect and the experience of getting it on with someone from the office
They'd have found the same if they logged people's working with software in offices too. There's an awful lot of pissing about chatting/making tea and coffee that goes on in an office.WFH will kill some jobs, once companies start actually logging the time of people working from home through software, they'll realise there's a good portion of office staff who spend half the day doing feck all anyway.
It'll be good for the hard workers, but those lazy buggers will get a shock.
Those wanting to go back to the office half the time are those who only do half the work their supposed to and think they can get it all done in those couple days in the office.
Hats off to those who get away with it though, I'm only jealous because I can't work from home
But management allow for that as those coffee machine chats increase well being, thus better output, but more importantly sharing of work information that may not have otherwise happened remotely. If you're constantly 'pissing about' then you will not last long. I know the hard way.
WFH allows you to get your laundry, cooking, post office runs, school runs, etc, done. Plus your constant Redcafe updates with no one watching. So when do you actually do your work? Past 6pm usually, that's when. And I'm beginning to hate it.
I'd agree with the bolded downsides too but from my POV at least that all becomes a lot more tolerable when you're just WFH rather than WFH in the middle of a pandemic. If my social life went fully back to normal in terms of going out, seeing friends, seeing family, travelling, playing sport, etc. then the extra money, free time in the evenings and later rises in the morning would outweigh the downsides, even just on the social side of things. Whereas in the context of being restricted in who you see and what you can do for 16 months, the craic of being in office looks more tempting than it normally would.
Yeah, I do think living situation plays a massive part, and in fairness I don't really know anyone who wants to go back full time. Most of the younger people I've talked to would still like at least a day or two at home, generally the 30-50 year olds then want pretty much all remote. I don't know many 50+ but I imagine they are a bit more of the old fashioned variety who want to be full time in the office as they've done it their whole lives and haven't adjusted as well. Probably their kids are grown up too and they miss the interaction?
As to why we're pushing it more in Ireland than the UK? Probably housing. The government are seeing house prices rise more rapidly outside of the cities (especially Dublin) and see it as an easy short term gain while they figure out how the hell to build more housing. The government are also spending a feck tonne on that rural broadband scheme which most people thought was ridiculous but could actually look like a great move if this continues. Still, the impact it could have on businesses in city centres is surely catastrophic?
I don't know, everyone works differently. If I've not done my work, then when the exhibition opens, people will notice. Because it won't open. So what I do with my work schedule is secondary, so long as the work is done when it needs to be. I'm sure a lot of people have different expectations, especially if they work in a sales environment rather than in a production environment.But management allow for that as those coffee machine chats increase well being, thus better output, but more importantly sharing of work information that may not have otherwise happened remotely. If you're constantly 'pissing about' then you will not last long. I know the hard way.
WFH allows you to get your laundry, cooking, post office runs, school runs, etc, done. Plus your constant Redcafe updates with no one watching. So when do you actually do your work? Past 6pm usually, that's when. And I'm beginning to hate it.
Yeah but if you're supposed to be working 8 hours and then cram all that work into 2 hours so you've got more free time, don't you think they'll then say "hold up, we will just pay for 2 hours work cos they've just fecked about for the other 6"
Because money.
imagine the hit London has taken from people purely not commuting. TfL, Rail companies and hospitality in particular. Imagine for example A city like London needs people spending. Spending on commuting, congestion charge, food, drink, tobacco etc.
I did chuckle at people thinking wfh was gonna become a majority long term thing. No fecking chance…
Even though I would never vote for FF/FG, to say they are anything near as bad as Boris & co. is pretty unfair.
You can’t discount the huge incentive for employers to not have to pay huge rentals on expensive city centre real estate. It’s in their interests in some instances to have their people wfh on a hybrid basis to reduce headcount in office at any one time.
Ah yeah it won’t be from the companies as long as the work is done. It’ll be government pressure. And even those huge rentals you talk about are part of it. All that tax benefitting you know who…..
Just on the topic of working from home, how many people on here have done it long term? I did it for about 10 years and to be honest it wasnt a healthy way to be for me. Mental health suffered a fair bit but that was just my experience and not indicative of most people.
They have never done that when people have spent 6 hours out of 8 fecking about in the office.
Anyway, this is best discussed in the WFH thread.
This rhetoric that commercial lease agreements suddenly have immediate break clauses due to covid, and therefore companies can decide to not pay huge rentals because the business model changes, is quite naive.
Nah it’s not. It’s not an overnight thing, but COVID has accelerated thinking toward remote/hybrid working that would have otherwise taken a decade.
Ive seen it with my employer and several other massive companies on the UK who are actively reviewing their offices and making decisions to consolidate / move people to wfh contracts or take on “weWork” space rather than fill dedicated offices
Not immediate break clauses but every business will think long and hard before renewing their current lease. The company I work for already decided not to renew. The lease expires next April and we’ll be downsizing because we will no longer expect everyone to spend 40 hours every week in the office. That’s going to happen at a hell of a lot of businesses over the next year or two.
I know several call centres that no longer have a centre because all their clients went full on wfh
Double-blind study shows ivermectin reduces disease’s duration and infectiousness • FDA and WHO caution against its use
https://www.jpost.com/health-scienc...vid-19-could-be-treated-for-under-1day-675612
https://www.jpost.com/health-scienc...vid-19-could-be-treated-for-under-1day-675612
Tiny trial. Not peer reviewed. Used only in mild cases who didn’t need any hospital treatment. So why give them any drugs at all? Completely pointless piece of “research”
I don't disagree in the shift, I disagree with the rhetoric that commercial leases is some sort of profit tap and businesses are walking away and suddenly making more money as people are WFH. The more normality that is coming back in (and what I'm seeing personally) is that WFH will get to the hybrid model, and the realisation that in roles where team collaboration is essential, it is pretty impossible to manage via a webcam when you have the ability to do it face to face.
FDA and WHO are out to hurt us. WAKE UP MAN.
Feck me, I've just read India have been moved to the amber list! Fecking India. Birth place of the Indian variant! Run by the Indian Donald Trump. Amber list.
Meanwhile, Imran Khan's sensibly run Pakistan remains on the red list. Because. Well. Sajid fecking Javid.
Meanwhile, Imran Khan's sensibly run Pakistan remains on the red list. Because. Well. Sajid fecking Javid.
This is in-depth/detailed but good. Goes deep on the big questions that remain unknown.
Amber list or not, even if someone offered me a free trip to India I wouldn’t take it right nowFeck me, I've just read India have been moved to the amber list! Fecking India. Birth place of the Indian variant! Run by the Indian Donald Trump. Amber list.
Meanwhile, Imran Khan's sensibly run Pakistan remains on the red list. Because. Well. Sajid fecking Javid.
Key point of difference is the sheer volume of corporate landlords within the Tory party. Back to work ensures the offices stay and the rent cheques keep coming.
For anyone travelling, do try and use these guys. Or at least give your money to a different not-for-profit testing company. Nobody should be getting rich off this.
Not-For-Profit Testing
Not-For-Profit Testing
It's a prophylactic, you give it before you get sick. It works by binding to the places SARS2 wants to bind to, iirc.
Have they been given the green light by governments? I thought the big issue with this was that only certain companies were permitted by government to handle tests for travelling?
As a prophylactic (which that study was not intended to test) it would be even more pointless. What’s the plan? Permanently dose the whole world?
It may be that dosing the world is impractical and thus this will never be pursued even if effective. I'd like to see the cost of doing that versus the cost of not doing it.
But you can start taking it at early onset of symptoms and get good results.
Yep. Accredited.
Nice!
I read that earlier. A history of the pandemic from the virus's perspective really. The thing that really struck me as I read it was the double edged nature of the advances in our understanding of viral mutations. We really didn't know much about this stuff at all until the past couple of decades, and now we're seeing it discussed in real-time.
On the one hand it lets you track virus introductions and to understand it well enough to tackle it with vaccines, tests etc. On the other hand, it can scare people - sometimes into despair, sometimes into a kind of directionless anger that would close all borders forever, and ban just about all socialising or fun activity.