Quote Originally Posted by The Lone Gunman View Post
I don't have a firm opinion either way as the evidence is unclear.

One thing I will say, though - at the behest of the Tory government, the work of the entire civil service has become increasingly digitalised in recent years and a far greater percentage of civil servants are now working at home either mostly or entirely. There was a very clear drive towards this situation long before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, and in some respects the pandemic has actually slowed the move towards remote working for various departments, including the one I work for.
Quote Originally Posted by Dorcus View Post
I think this is a cracker!

At the end of the day there are only two groups of people who constantly worry about the increasing number of people working from home.

1) Supervisors and Middle Managers whose only purpose in life is to regard themselves as superior to the Hoi polloi. They make limited money out of it but more than the people who accomplish real work. They are the unquestioning slaves of the money men who drive their performance. Their object in life is to accede and command and WFH has seriously eroded their significance. They feel emasculated and have to find other methods to snoop remotely; not easy.

2) Old Fashioned business owners who believe in old fashioned concepts of work effort and time constraints rather than having the nous to evaluate data.

Fortunately both groups are likely to wither in time.
Completely disagree. There are potentially very serious long term consequences of permanent home working, the loss of sharing of information, mental wellbeing impacts, new staff training, business cultures, isolation, the impact on younger staff, the impact on poorer staff, establishing contacts with new clients, ensuring work is understood properly etc. It definitely has the potential to lead to greater isolation and impacts on some much worse than others, and it's typically those who are younger or with less happy home lives

Not to mention the impact on business, sustainable transport and the like.

I know people who have been to a very very dark place through WFH so I have to speak up when you try to charactise it as something simple or wholly positive which it absolutely isn't. It's a very complex topic