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I agree. - but who is "they" here? Govt? I think employers themselves need to think too. An office now has to provide more than just a work space. It has to offer something extra- collaboration being the obvious one. It costs me about £30 and 2 hours of my day every time I go in, so I only do it about twice a week and I choose those days carefully.
Re. your 3 replies to my post, I think you're completely missing the point. Anyway. Change doesn't bother me, I've lived a full life so far, and apart from the occasional daily 15 minutes on CCMB etc., I've done things that nowadays admittedly seem 'outdated'. Like shopping for food and clothing etc., in real places, meeting real people. Talking to real people face-to-face, seeing what they look like below their shoulders. Meeting work. business colleagues, nights out, actually going out each and every day having different experiences, the same with the Missus, swapping notes. Of course, I could now do all that looking a screen no bigger than a fag packet, without leaving my bedroom - maybe my bed.
You post rude aggressive replies to a perfectly reasonable opinion, and assume that you are correct, better able to judge, and I am some sort of dinosaur. The irony is lost on you, no doubt.
I only replied twice and you were the one labelling productive people like myself slackers for being able to work from home without adult supervision. Something you obviously require.
Yes, everyone who works from home does nothing but stay at home all day. We crave a life of meeting old Mrs. Muggles in the pasta aisle in Tesco.
My opinion is perfectly reasonable, clogging roads up with cars is so last year.
There's a difference with being 'somewhere' and being available within certain stipulated hours and completing tasks that one's job entails, of course.
And you said
I do wonder what your job is/was. I suspect it wasn't managerial but, if it was, I suspect you were one of those managers that micro-managed everyone and treated them like kids and then felt justified when they were worn down enough to start taking the piss.Well, there must be an element of truth in that, however from what little I've gleaned from people who are WFH is that they're 'monitored' on their daily activity - not exactly my idea of fun. The extrapolation from that is my main point, ie, these are jobs that could in many cases be easily moved overseas.
You made a supposition that jobs would move abroad because people can do the jobs anywhere. You then backed up your lack of logical thought with a claim that was equally illogical. That if people went from back to the office, somehow these jobs would become protected. These people have been doing these jobs at home for 18 months. Do you really think that people going back to the office (extra real estate costs for the companies) now is going to make it less likely for companies to outsource?
Do you think that companies who have moved production to China, South East Asia and East Europe over the last 10-20 years did so because all the factory workers were working from home.
You are talking out of your arse, an habit it seems you are incapable of kicking. Clueless.
Little wonder the UK's productivity is far below some countries. British managers are far more concerned about the hours staff put in rather than their output. If people can meet their targets in as short a time as possible, do we really need snoopers to insist the full quota of hours are completed?
I'm perfectly calm, dad, and am enjoying life. I don't need to spend 10-15 hours traveling to work a week, I don't need to spend £50 on fuel every week, I can start work when I like, and finish when I like. I am not constantly monitored (last time I experienced this was actually in an office), I don't get to hear people's boring life/love/health stories.
Your suggestion is that people should throw all this away because one day our jobs will be gone. It's based on nothing but being an old twat, and is probably based on no experience of management at all. I know a few people who can only function by having people telling them what to do every single hour. As a manager, I know who is slacking because it becomes pretty obvious. I don't need to be sat in an office with them to manage them, and they don't need to sit with me to be managed.
Needless to say, you probably wouldn't last very long in any team I managed because you aren't exactly innovative or forward thinking are you?
When I first started work as a data entry clerk, I used to get my daily work done by 1pm. The result was, I would then have to do the work others hadn't finished because they'd been gossiping, doing quizzes, smoking while I'd been working. After a few weeks of that, I decided to slow my pace down so that I finished and did the same amount of work as everyone else. Had managers sent me home after I finished as a reward, I guarantee the others would have matched my efforts.
I was perfectly calm until I saw your apostrophe.
In all seriousness though, about 20% of my work life has been spent trying to drag people like the OP forward. All these "We can't, we shouldn't" excuses are helping to achieve one thing. Lower productivity. Change is good. Less time wasted on roads is good. Less opportunities for people to slack by
1) Chatting at the desk
2) Chatting at the coffee machine
3) Chatting about what time to go for lunch
4) Chatting after coming back from lunch
5) Popping out for a fag to have a chat
6) Christmas/Easter/Valentine quizzes
7) The entire office congregating because someone they never spoke to is leaving, wasting another half an hour for each person.
8) The entire office congregating because someone they never spoke to has a birthday, wasting another half hour for each person.
9) Groups of people gathering photos of someone who has a birthday coming up, then spending an afternoon putting them in strategically hilarious places like the bogs
10) People surfing the net pretending to work
11) Calling meetings of 1 hour where the first 10 minutes is spent waiting for others to arrive, the next 20 minutes are spent laughing and joking between people who despise each other, 10 minutes talking about work, 15 minutes talking about the next meeting, and then the leader of the meeting saying "Good, we finished early, you all get 5 minutes back in your day".
is good.
The office is nothing more than a distraction. It is noisy, it is full of interruptions, it is full of banality, it is full of people who are only capable of forming relationships with people they work with, it is full of excuses to not do any work which results in lots of last minute rushes. That the OP thinks people should have to endure 12-15 hours of travel a week just to waste time is hilarious. Personally, I was getting more done and spending less time working once I went to wfh. It also means I can apply for jobs in London with higher wages, without having to endure the joke that is the London property market.
But, yes, none of this ever happens and people working from home is the cause of lower productivity.