I run a pub and my girlfriend is a manager in a coffee shop. Given the new advice to avoid, with an enforced closure surely on the cards, I'm bloody worried about all of the people we work with who simply don't have the means to get through this unscathed.
Niche business insurance for me and we’ve been very very quiet. Luckily we have plenty of reserves and can easily work remotely so can sit it for months if we have to.
Many of pur policyholders though won’t be ok though so we’ll take a hit one way or the other but should be ok longer term.
Mrs D has symptoms though so that’s us all in lockdown now.
large engineering company, on campus with a couple thousand other people. business as usual so far.
Same here, multi million/billion dollar projects, IT system can't cope with the managers working from home, let alone the grunts!
My managers off sick (not likely corona) and my job today was to e-mail him stuff he couldn't access on the network. There's talk of asking us to physically carry our desktop PC's home with us 🤣
Well the UK government advice given just now will effectively shut the majority of my customers very quickly. Some will mothball/hibernate and survive, but I fear there will be some bankruptcies, many redundancies and a huge number of zero hour staff with no work/income for weeks.
The knock-on effects will eventually land on our doorstep and cause pain or worse.
I have not seen my industry sector in this state since 9/11 and I am starting to worry about my future.
Had a conference call with our middle management this afternoon (I’m one of two directors). The first question I got on the call when I started outlining my expectations on increased home working was if the company would foot the bill for the additional gas and electricity bills employees would face. I despair.
Exactly the same today - question about remote working was would the company buy monitors if people were long-term WFH (we all work off at least 2 screens, docking station for laptop plus a monitor - some of the guys in modelling and analytical work off 3 screens).
Admittedly, working off one is incredibly time consuming and annoying but I can't see every member of staff getting away with a home office refit on public money...
Mrs Anagallus runs a theatre company, its a bit ****ed!!! Boris just ****ed it to protect insurance companies.
Perhaps the thread for it. My tenants are hospitality industry and one of them is stuck in another country. Fortunately we have a lot of room to give them a reduced rent if they run into trouble both still being paid this week but who knows what will happen! I don't look forward tho to losing hundreds a month !
Exactly the same today – question about remote working was would the company buy monitors if people were long-term WFH (we all work off at least 2 screens, docking station for laptop plus a monitor – some of the guys in modelling and analytical work off 3 screens).
Admittedly, working off one is incredibly time consuming and annoying but I can’t see every member of staff getting away with a home office refit on public money…
I fully expect productivity to take a nose dive (not that it’s great in the public sector to start with) and some roles as you say which are easier on multiple monitors will make work more difficult, but the simple facts are we are putting the measures in place to protect them, their families and more elderly relatives.
I’m also unfortunately expecting a spike in previously undisclosed medical conditions to come out the woodwork too, some of which I’m sure are legitimate but some will at best be borderline; unfortunately never underestimate people’s ability to get creative when there is an opportunity to avoid doing work when you get six months full pay.
Today Vauxhall cars Ellesmere port have shut down for two weeks, all filming of new Batman Movie and Peaky Blinders cancelled today in Liverpool indefinitely, all employ lots of locals ,security, catering logistics etc, going to be a nightmare for all.
Someone I know had cause to speak to his trades union today regarding turning up at depot for work tasking when it could easily be done on conference call, turns out a lot of managers are working from home or doing half days but expecting staff to turn up and work all hours, interfacing with a lot of staff and public. Said Really Militant Transport workers union are not at all happy about this...........
Said Really Militant Transport workers union are not at all happy about this………..
When have the RMT ever been happy?!
That's not their job.
But back to the original Q...
My company still hasn't issued an official line on WFH. Others were in the office today and some probably will be tomorrow.
In some cases I think it's insecurity and hubris, wanting to think the company can't survive without their incessant meetings and coffee fuelled BS.
Anyway, I've got a cough so will be WFH.
My company still hasn’t issued an official line on WFH. Others were in the office today and some probably will be tomorrow.
We had an email update this evening. Full remote working effective immediately. The office will be open for people to collect essential equipment (which apparently doesn't mean the entire docking station and dual monitor...) and then go home again. After Wednesday it's closed until further notice.
Before yesterday, I thought we were doing ok considering we're a scaffolding firm however after yesterdays debacle i'm fuming
To cut a long story short: Someone at work recieves a phonecall from there wife in the morning to say shes been sent home with a fever and cough, he phones the office and is told to go home to self isolate for 7 days.
When he gets home he looks at the ACAS website and sees that their guidace says if you're sent home with no symptoms you "should" be fully paid (no idea on the full legalities of this one) so he phones the office and gets no response as the Director in charge of tht part is off for the day
It gets kicked down the line to a Supervisor who doesn't care about his job anymore and isn't taking the whole thing seriously, with the result being he can comeback into work today (as the pay thing is up in the air). Then the Govt advice changes and hes still being allowed back, so this morning I've got to sit in a van with someone whose possibly infected
My Mum falls into the 12 week category as she has respiratory problems (amongst other things) and my Dad has just been sent home from hospital as they need the beds and he has terminal cancer (he's coming home for Palliative care)
I know I'll probably get it but, to forced into a scenario where I probably will get it esp with my parents situation has got me raging
What say you STW
Edit for reasons I can't say on here, the guy and his wife are a pair of weirdos who I wouldn't trust in anyway when it comes to the truth, he would also still come into work if he had Ebola
So far okay, work in the Aerospace industy, last week we had a number of customers asking if we could continue to work through all this, making the most of planes being grounded they can repair anything and everything they can so were trying to get their parts back to them as soon as we can.
Longer term, not sure, i think worst case we would all be sent home on reduced pay.
National trust is closing all buildings by the end of the week, we'll be closing today. Staff to work from home wherever possible, we'll be paid "for the time being", whatever that means. With income ceasing we'll see how much the organisation can deal with. As the facilities coordinator I'll be doing a lot of sweeping and catching up with compliance. Feel for all folk who are self employed or in small businesses.
Son-in-law and daughter run a pub, comprehensively thrown under the bus yesterday by Joris. I expect a flip at the next daily briefing as big-beer are not going to be happy with the voluntary ban taking away their continuity insurance cover.
I'm effectively unemployed by the end of this week, zero hours contract and no work. I'm cancelling rooms for previous bookings and trying to negotiate no penalty holiday postponements with the partners for our clients. I may get a few hours next week as the boss has the virus at home in one of his sons and he can't man the phone from there.
I'm setting up WFH for him and the rest of the team (mostly sticking files into onedrive from a poor rural broadband connection). Hope the weather is good as I have a new bike to ride, as long as we aren't confined to barracks. Fortunately I have a partner who earns enough to support us both and I know we can do this as I was unemployed for all of 2009 in the last crash. Domestic god mode will be engaged to keep herself in cake and dinners.
We are all now working from home, all meetings and trainings with schools and nurseries cancelled until May. As a national charity we have some resources to see us through.
We are moving to provide free training and ideas online for the next few months.
I expect the wife to come home today with her Mac under her arm to start WFH although she only has a couple if weeks left in that job.
I work in critical infrastructure so there will be no change for me until I get ill. We don't have enough staff to do everything that needs doing. Maybe a drop in customer led work might actually give us time to gain some ground back. Having said that, I expect We're going to have a lot of people off sick or self isolating at any one time so it's anyone's guess.
This morning, we're telling our self employed dog walkers that we will still pay them if they have to self isolate and even if the wife has to WFH, we will continue to employ them. People in jobs like that are really going to struggle I think.
MK station is absolutely dead this morning but the roads into town didn't feel particularly quiet on the bike. I'm still waiting to be told not to come into the office.
I'm in the print trade working as a one-man-band. 5 orders cancelled this morning. Not sure I'll be working from home as at this rate there'll be no work to do. 🙁
Good luck all!
Work for a large boarding school (bursary side) we're trying to operate a BAU approach, but the big question is when will schools be cancelled. Originally we expected them to close this Friday (so 1 week early for the independent sector) with possibly 2 days notice. Lots of staff working from home (fine for office staff, teachers are teaching via teams / remotley if they cant get into school).
We've lost our Easter international business as overseas arent allowed to travel / dont want to travel, and now the big question is what will happen to the term dates after the Easter break.
If school doesnt restart at the end of April then it'll be lots of teaching from home for the academic staff and a massive effort in deep cleaning / maintenance / what ever other jobs are possible. Summer income can pretty much be halved, and I reckon that'll be a write off also.
Current party line is no redundancies, but so-much depends on things we cant predict.
Stay safe everyone.
ah well here we go - 62 people fired from our USA parent company yesterday - that about 30 something %... i'm hoping French employment laws are as tough as they are supposed to be!
crap.
minor vent, but thanks all you out there for reading/listening - a slightly weird community of people I don't actually know, but who help.
Steve.
I’ve got what will probably be my last client facing meeting for a while this morning, looking at work scheduling for coming year. I expect we will be spread quite widely around the big conference room table rather than sat in the cafe as usual!
Hoping that we can sort the contingency plans out for potential lockdown of places we work on and also that they aren’t going to be diverting PPM funds to other avenues (client is a city council.)
If we lose their work it will basically shut us down and potentially break the company.
I work for a large financial institution in IT and have an agreed working pattern of working from home every Monday. My whole team are able to WFH but bizarrely company line is that we need to split into blue/green teams. Luckily, there's also advice that at risk groups should WFH where possible with their line manager's permission so all my team are WFH for the duration.
I'm not going in as government advice in my view trumps company policy.
I work for a national commercial decorating company and we're all in a kind of weird limbo, waiting to see which way the wind will blow*
The part of the business I work for is as a Tier 1 maintenance contractor for the MOD and we might get put off the camps or we might see an explosion of work as the armed forces become part of the response to this crisis and require therapid refurbishment of previously unused facilities
The rest of the business might also see a complete dry up of business ( probably the case with hotels etc ) or we might get a sudden explosion of business to carry out works which normally can only be done during shutdown periods.
*Obscure movie reference of the day....
Bank here and now working from home in line with the guidance from the Swedish goverment which is, "if you can WFH, do WFH".
Sadly, no office space in the apartment, but I do have my old home office setup in the basement, so will be digging out a second monitor this afternoon.
I'm a bit unsure what to do- I work in a company of two people. My boss is working from home for the forseeable future.
So, I'm alone at the office. I have to cycle 5 miles to get here (often longer if I can but we'll see how things go). Is it worth me working from home? It feels like I'm effectively isolating just with a small bike ride each day.
I've just earned myself a week off unpaid sick after waking up with a cough and a fever, really pissed off about this because a girl at work came back from the Czech Republic full of lurgy, but wouldn't stay away from work, came into the canteen coughing badly whilst I was eating.
In a way I'm quite relieved as I work at Aldi and its been chaos to say the least.
BankFinancial services here and now working from home in line with the guidance from theSwedishgoverment which is, “if you can WFH, do WFH”.
This. We've got MS Teams and it's all hanging together pretty well.
Different story in the more critical and customer-facing parts of the organisation though, now have split-team working between sites and no travel between sites. The Business Continuity and internal comms folks are earning their money at the moment, wouldn't fancy being in their shoes.
Work in R&D for a global Pharma. We got sent home globally last week and told to work there till told otherwise. Already pretty well setup for it anyway - distributed team, contractors etc. so we're already wfh several days a week. Main issue is I'm new in role, managing the contracting team, and learning what they do is considerably harder over Skype than sitting next to them. Think my bedding in period is going to be longer than would would be expected, but as we're regulated it was months long anyway... no current prospect of a challenge to remain employed, but if our share prices drops enough there might be some interesting times.
Really feeling for the self employed and small businesses, and can't understand why schools are still open - yeah I heard the spiel, but it's really only an economic measre, that many people in proximity will pass this on even if they don't really feel it themselves.
can’t understand why schools are still open
Schools are still open so there's somewhere for the kids to be so the parent can, you know, run the NHS
we have had the memo, if you can work from home - please work from home.
cant understand why there hasnt been a mass exodus! its not noticeably any quieter! good old contractors!
i am stuck in a meeting but will be on my way afterwards!
can’t understand why schools are still open
1. Child welfare - already many children's only decent meal and support is in school. Add in many losing jobs and income, the lowest income families are going to be hit hard. School is a way of alleviating some of the pressure.
2. Evidence from Asia and Italy is that kids off school mix with the more vulnerable in the population, compounding the pressure on health and spreading faster than 'just' the families and teachers who are mainly not the vulnerable groups.
3. Childcare for parents with vital job functions.
4. For a key couple of yeargroups exams loom, and unless we are prepared to add a year of school (which brings real issues of capacity in buildings and teacher numbers) then we have to get this year's cohort through.
Etc
5. Daddy needs peace and quiet to work from home. Netflix helps me concentrate.
You know what, I apologise for my earlier reply. MOAB has explained the schools thing well, at times like this we don't need people like me being unnecessarily pissy.
Large UK Uni: most of us sent home now indefinitely. Weird leaving the office being like 'well, cya again some day'. Now scrambling to get some sort of online course ironed out. Will be mostly trial and error - many international students will be leaving to return home, some of them acting on government advice.
[s] Netflix [/s] Pornhub helps me concentrate.
FTFY
retailer but we've seen a huge surge in demand (obvs).
All been told to wfh, whilst I'm not directly supporting operations we have people that still need to go in.
The issue we have in my school, is following the governments advice quite a few staff are required to self isolate (I have two vulnerable staff in my department). Across the school we are getting close to the point where we will have to close because we just don't have the staff present to teach all of the classes. We can combine classes but then you get other issues.
Add to that the snowball effect of families having to isolate if one person shows any symptoms and its all a bit of a mess!
Current discussion from exam board is to use PPE data as extenuating circumstances if exams can't be sat.
My civil service agency has just issued guidelines - if you can, then work from home.
The managers are stampeding to the door clutching their laptops. Us drones, who actually need to have person to person contact with the outside world to do our jobs, will be here again tomorrow 🤷♂️
I'm a multinational aviation contractor employee, they're following gov advice, I'm about to WFH for foreseeable future, as I'm a desk jockey. Skype skype skype.
The physical production side of affairs will stay here and keep on cracking on.
We are now at no work at all and no prospect of any for months. This was a really good business, minimal borrowing, just mortgages on the premises but we are now at the stage where it might just have to shut down. We won't be the only ones in the conference and events industry doing the same. There is simply no work to be done. Could be good for those that do survive as someone will have to pick up the work of those who've gone.
Only real hope for us is effectively a bridging loan to keep us going until this passes.
There will be a Coronavirus Business Interruption Scheme hopefully offering loans soon. Of course it will only be any use if the scheme starts fairly soon, and if businesses are able to start working (and earning) again at some point before all the money runs out!! Also talk of £3k grants for small businesses which will help a lot (again, with the caveat that they can begin trading again at some point!)
I'm self employed, and heavily reliant on people buying and selling houses.
Doubt that's going to be happening for the next 6 months at least.
So probably gubbed tbh.
I'm about 4 months away from destitution if it grinds to a halt. Ie my money runs out.
Which I think is happening. Was busy yesterday. I think with people basically clearing their desks. Not much happening today.
So I think I'll be onto the bru sooner rather than later. Take what pennies they are offering to stretch it as much as possible.
Doubt prospects of finding a job are going to be looking great for the foreseeable either.
Grim times ahead.
