Paid Members garynysmon Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 10 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 47 minutes ago, Tommy! said: I'm the opposite, I'm more productive and getting loads more done without being stuck in an open plan office. My health is loads better too. I've never been doing better if I'm honest. Hopefully businesses will see that working from home in a lot of cases, can be incredibly beneficial. I haven't worked in an office for a few years, but I don't miss Karen's daily stories about her two Springer Spaniels, or the office bore droning on about football theories of theirs. I used to love working from home. A whole lot more productive as you say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Factotum Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 Yes I think it will be very hard for business' to suddenly try to go back to normal after this. There's been strong movements for 4 day weeks and alternate days in for a while, and this has proven that WFH can be done with minimal impact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Factotum Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 Me again. Just watched the Tony Blair interview on GMB. Fuck me, as a politician he's on another level from anyone we've had in the past 10 years (This is no opinion on him as a person btw, not the time for this argument) His points are constructive and his plans are sensible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members PunkStep Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 1 hour ago, SuperBacon said: Hopefully businesses will see that working from home in a lot of cases, can be incredibly beneficial. We were on the verge of a huge office move from City to Canary Wharf- which would've taken place in September. Days from signing the lease, this all kicks off so the move is off. During their weekly Broadcast via Teams, the board have alluded to widespread working from home instead in future if this period works out well for us. I can see them downsizing and leasing a much smaller office instead now, mainly for client meetings and post, with a certain number of hot desks available when needed. I think overall I'll be pleased with that, I've taken well to WFH. I'll miss the f2f interaction with my team though (we speak very regularly via Teams but it's not quite the same) and I'll definitely miss London. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members seph Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 After a week of annual leave (planned way in advance) and 2-1/2 days of work I've been told I'm furloughed as of Monday. Yaay (!). Withouth going through 150+ pages to check, who's going through this and how are you coping? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members seph Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 4 minutes ago, johnnyboy said: Productivity on what I should be doing is not great as I can't replicate my work setup in my living room. I couldn't even fit my work desk in my living room. The volume of work for my team is already through the roof and the backlog of stuff we can't do now is only going to build meaning we won't even be able to ease back in. For one thing most of our suppliers and vendors are also all working on their sofas. 99.999% SLAs don't mean a lot when the five people in the world who deal with your product can't travel to site. We're on the opposite end - there's virtually nothing coming in compared to our normal workload, however a backlog of nearly 1800 reports from head office branch just sitting there; if only someone had the nous to check if we could take them on while we still had 14 people instead of 1... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Bus Surfer Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 Both me and the misses are working from home as civil servants. She's been pulled onto the helplines to support employers trying to apply for the government grants whilst I have remained in my current role. I tend to be pretty unmotivated at the best of times and working from home has magnified that. I have work to be doing and we are expecting to be crazy busy when the other teams in our department are also redeployed shortly, but I just can't get into a routine. I spend too much time on here, making tea, hanging out the washing... Anything but work. The next few weeks are likely to be incredibly busy and I'm shit scared I won't be able to cope without the usual Office support around me. Teams calls aren't the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Divorced Dad Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 My wife works at our local hospital in a Covid-19 ward and has developed a cough over the last couple of days. She phoned her work who gave her the NHS advice line number for staff and she's been told to isolate for 7 days and anyone who lives with her has to isolate for 14 days. So that's her inside for 7 days now and me inside for 14 days. She's applied through her work for us both to get tested so hopefully we can get tested and it'll come back negative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CavemanLynn Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 1 hour ago, Factotum said: Me again. Just watched the Tony Blair interview on GMB. Fuck me, as a politician he's on another level from anyone we've had in the past 10 years (This is no opinion on him as a person btw, not the time for this argument) His points are constructive and his plans are sensible. That seems to be a pattern with politicians though, almost as if their mindset or goals change once they've had what they want from the parliamentary system and actually start demonstrating some perspective and creativity. I still wouldn't want Blair back though - we'd be on another Holy Crusade in months. Back OT: 34 minutes ago, PunkStep said: We were on the verge of a huge office move from City to Canary Wharf- which would've taken place in September. Days from signing the lease, this all kicks off so the move is off. During their weekly Broadcast via Teams, the board have alluded to widespread working from home instead in future if this period works out well for us. I can see them downsizing and leasing a much smaller office instead now, mainly for client meetings and post, with a certain number of hot desks available when needed. I think overall I'll be pleased with that, I've taken well to WFH. I'll miss the f2f interaction with my team though (we speak very regularly via Teams but it's not quite the same) and I'll definitely miss London. I think getting 'back to normal' is something companies right should absolutely NOT be trying for. This has forced onto a lot of firms the opportunity to test a new working model that better fits the current climate, that promotes better use of employees' time and value, and updates what are seen as the necessary overheads. There's no reason why you need staff permanently on site who can fulfil their roles to the full remotely. So much time and energy is lost day-to-day on menial ad hoc tasks and requests that allow short-term gains at the expense of the bigger business-critical projects, and this is partly fed by the physical availability of people - the 'oh could you just...' requests that add up. Speaking for myself, I've made more progress on my work projects over the three weeks I've been working from home than I could have on site. My time and mind are more focussed, the ad hoc requests I'm receiving from the wider business are more detailed and therefore easier to action, and I'm able to manage my own daily schedule to fit my workload and work goals. I have daily Skype check-ins with my line manager to discuss updates and the day's plans, followed by a quick progress email at the end of the day. I'm getting meeting invites with actual agendas rather than just a location and a heading (all in lower-case). Yes, I still get the odd forwarded email with "please advice" (sic) slapped on the top, but they are getting fewer, even as the business maintains its throughput. I can't see full-time WFH being adopted, but certainly a rota system of on-site staff and management of meetings made accordingly. Without being constantly on tap, the emphasis for the business should become defining its performance targets for each of its departments and assessing on those rather than 'hours served' (I tried to push this when I supervised a production environment, wanting to allow people the option to clock off early paid if the day's targets were met, but was overruled by the (understandable) 'more more more' approach of the production manager at the time). Of course, it won't happen, because it's Britain, and we have to reduce work to a relentless slog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 Fingers crossed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted April 22, 2020 Awards Moderator Share Posted April 22, 2020 1 hour ago, seph said: After a week of annual leave (planned way in advance) and 2-1/2 days of work I've been told I'm furloughed as of Monday. Yaay (!). Withouth going through 150+ pages to check, who's going through this and how are you coping? I have been for ... wow, nearly two weeks now. That’s gone far faster than I thought it would. I was worried about filling the time but seem to have coped better than I expected to, more often than not I haven’t had enough time! I adapted/stole an idea from @Frankie Crisp and wrote a whole pile of Things I Could Do on post-its, and stuck them to the side of the fridge, so if I feel at a loss at any point I’ve immediately got about 30 things I can pick from. There’s little stuff like “go for the daily walk”, up to medium things like “try cooking something new” to big stuff like “you’ve finally got time to give language learning a proper go now”. Build a structure or routine into that - say you usually go for exercise after lunch, or you always do the cleaning in the mornings - and get up at your usual time and you might find the days fill up fairly well. Still time for it to all go tits up for me, saying that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 @johnnyboy I bought a fold up 6ft picnic table. Not sure if that will be big enough, but I can fit my laptop, 2nd screen and room for food/drink comfortably and it just gets folded down and hidden at the end of the day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members quote the raven Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 My work sent an email saying they are looking at pay and decided a 1k a year rise is in order...........I replied asking why they have not responded to me regarding them not paying me a penny. As you can guess no answer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Tommy! Posted April 22, 2020 Paid Members Share Posted April 22, 2020 1 hour ago, johnnyboy said: I couldn't even fit my work desk in my living room *Sound the Middle-Class-Loki-Alarm™* Thankfully I'd got a comfortable office chair and a writing bureau, so just plopped my laptop and monitor on that and away I went. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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