The world just changed
A vaccine is a year away, if ever.

Johnson is trying to turn back the clock to a time that no longer exists

In reality millions of office workers have been able to work from home for the last decade+

It’s cleaner, greener, cheaper, happier, more efficient.

BUT it means lots of things are no longer viable: The Tube, Trains, HS2, (transport funding needs to be rethought) city pubs, bars & cafes, Pret… dead
Suits ? Just for weddings now.
No more London weighting on your salary !

End London & inner cities distorting property prices?
Free broadband for all & nationalised rail is the way to Level Up (TM) (Corbyn must be spinning in his political grave!)

You don’t need a huge office now, everything can be scaled back, a PO box & a Zoom account, a server farm.

Millions of m² of office space ? That’s new housing now, BUT it’s guaranteed slum housing, no playgrounds, no sound insulation- hefty amount of legislation needed to make sure it’s converted to liveable spaces.

It’s a huge upheaval, but it’s simply never going to go back to how it was.

The government shouldn’t be trying to nudge us back onto unsafe transport into unsafe offices.

They need to get on top of it now, preparing to support the cafes & pubs that may never reopen & the staff who are about to be let go, get them in training for something else now.

And the WFH millions- they still need to socialise & buy lunch, snack wagons in the suburbs? More cafes in local highs streets ?

We’ve got a genuis big data crunching superforecaster telling the PM what to do, he should’ve predicted this (according to his blog anyway) & be pointing that super brain of his at this.

The office is dead, we ALL need to get our head round that & the government needs to be ahead of it.

Several people in the office hate working from home.

Difficult marriage. Teenagers being teenagers. House just not big enough or quiet enough or just gets too hot.

And it introduces some interesting challenges if you have to do any kind of management.

Yeah Mrs Weeksy prefers the office, i’d happily WFH forever.. It would also potentially change where we live as our house is close to work, because, well, i have to get to work.
If we’re never going back i can see me moving somewhere nearer some trails… Or maybe even Burgundy sooner than we ever thought.

Everyone WFH has made my commute to work much more pleasant. Every day that people start returning to work makes it that little bit worse. Please stay at home

As long as your dedicated, middle-class SOHO “space” is all feng shui, I’m sure it’s topping.
I grew to hate working from home.
I want a demarcation between “work” and “home” – imagine if you job is really ****. It’s now invaded your home – there is no respite.
Glorious, no doubt as they are, I think you’re assuming your circumstances are ubiquitous.

it’s simply never going to go back to how it was.

I think things will return to normal eventually. Corporates won’t want to be forced to sell real estate at below market rate prices.

I want a demarcation between “work” and “home” – imagine if you job is really ****. It’s now invaded your home – there is no respite.

MAybe for you…. maybe for some… not for all.

Please stay at home

This

Corporates won’t want to be forced to sell real estate at below market rate prices.

No, and a lot of pension fund money etc is invested in this type of property, another hit waiting to happen.

lol i see the prophets of doom are up early today 🙂

Yes and no. As ever, the solution lies in between the old and your new extremes.

And only applies to people working in offices. Anyone involved in actual production, research, practical physical roles can’t work from home.

The main issue is space to work at home. MrsMC and I both need privacy when working from home. So we’d need two separate offices/secure work spaces.

Plus some people work better around/with others. How do you properly train someone to do a new role remotely? Not going well for our new starters, to be honest.

The solution is to be in the office maybe 2 days a week. We could rotate working in one space at home then.

Yes, transport, retail, cafe culture, gyms etc will need to adapt. More continental evening culture than daytime office culture. Needs a lot of planning and support for society to make that switch, but it would be worth it.

It’ll be 90% back to how it was by October.
All the life changing things we did when movement was limited (we were never in lock down) will revert to as it was because “as it was” was easier.

Once schools go back and summer holiday season is over there will be overwhelming pressure which will override the covid potential. By November the only reminder will be a death toll deep in the news and the odd ball on public transport still wearing a mask.

You’ll never get 100% of staff WFH, due to working conditions (no separate office away from the screaming kids/partner/dogs), poor internet (not everyone has 100 down/20 up – there’s a lot of people out there with 5 down/1up), or just people who can’t be as productive WFH, or need micromanagement.

So, offices will still be needed – maybe smaller and in cheaper locations, but still needed.

I do think there’ll be a big change for a lot of companies (mine included – a floor of 200+ people and only 3 or 4 required to be in the office, and probably 90% WFH over 1600 staff) but most companies will still have an office presence.

Glorious, no doubt as they are, I think your assuming your circumstances are ubiquitous.

Ive done more than one zoom meeting hiding in a wardrobe so my kids dont find me, had to cut the video so my half naked 3 year old daughter doesnt crash it, Ive had to work through to midnight a lot because homeschooling has been a nightmare of arguing with kids/wife all day

Its not all perfect by any means,

But the world has changed, my point is the government/we need to accept that & adapt, encourage local wifi cafe spaces etc?

The office won’t die, but companies will reduce their estate.

We’d planned 18 months ago to go from five buildings at our HQ down to three – with a lot of that being meeting areas, customer demo and presentation suites. In my role I was in the office a couple of days each week and I don’t think that will change much but with more of our customers being comfortable with video calls we’ll almost certainly reduce the number of times we see them in person. I’ve heard that my customers are looking to reduce their offices too – these are companies with ~20,000 people.

Some interesting thoughts from Kimbers on how more home working and less office working will change the UK. Suits and ties as work wear will slowly die, they’ve been on their way out for years. I’ve not worn a tie for four years, or a suit for at least two.

Shared space/co-working areas will grow too – a lot of start-ups have said they’ll move away from expensive offices to home working/shared meeting suites.

Local cafes in housing areas will be a growth area, especially if they are OK to work in. Places catering to office areas and business parks will suffer. I’d love a local cafe I could walk to in 5-10 minutes for a break from being at home and some human contact!

Clearly not.

* most don’t have a suitable space to work in at home.
* many don’t have a suitable environment at home.
* many don’t have the right IT.
* many need the social interaction work offers.
* many need the separation of work and home.
* many don’t have fast enough or stable enough broadband.
* management is not easy.
* team dynamics are difficult.
* a Teams meeting is not the same as being around a table for a true working meeting.
* management by email is not an acceptable alternative to face to face interaction with your boss.

Yes clearly more people than expected can work from home and I think it will now be more accepted on an ad hoc or rota basis, becoming the norm, I don’t think so.

I am working from home and really find it difficult to cope with being in one room for work and relaxation. My partner has always done some of her work from home and has the home office. I am working in the corner of the lounge. The other end of the lounge has a hearing aid test system which I am using to write online practicals for next semester. I miss the people I work with. I miss the students and I miss commuting on my bike.
Please let me return to work!

It’ll be 90% back to how it was by October.

This, sadly.

I was talking to the owner of the local chinese takeaway on friday , he has lost a lot of trade supplying office lunches & is now looking at having to deliver same lunch to the same company on a big wfh zoom meeting, obviously this is a huge logistical challenge for him

Hmmm, realistically I can only do a proportion of my job from home, maybe 25%. But what it has meant is greater flexibility over core hours, I’ve been able to offset my day and spend mornings with the kids, which is nice for me and them and gives my missus more space/time…

imagine if you job is really ****. It’s now invaded your home – there is no respite.

Sadly this is the case for the SO, she isn’t very good at compartmentalising so ‘work stress’ created by what seems like poor management and a bad culture is intruding on home…

It’ll be 90% back to how it was by October.

Then 100% back to how it is now by the end of November…

One of our customers has a household of 7 people. 6 are working from home.
They are barristers .
She can’t do a bit of tidying or make any kind of noise. Very much a prisoner in her own home.

Office spaces will become cheaper and that will tempt many people back to communal work places.

That and wives/ mothers who are going absolutely ballistically mental.

Well bearing in mind nearly the whole of our semester 1 is online, I certainly won’t be returning to the office till Feb at the earliest. I agree that some middle ground will be found – if nothing else, the argument at many Unis for individual academic staff offices is rapidly going out the window…

Some people do like to find problems. Of course a lot people’s homes aren’t suitable, but that is because one of the main driving factors in choosing their home would be proximity to work and a reasonable commute. Take that out and add in a suitable home working space to your check list when buying a home and suddenly you can live somewhere much nicer. If you need separation then a garden office will do that pretty well. And surely with the extra free time from not commuting you can find a bit of time to socialise with people closer to home.

We have largely been able to do all our work from home without that much problem. I have started to struggle now mentally, living by myself, having virtually no face to face social interactions for the past few months (even regular social video chats isn’t anywhere near the same). It has been compounded with a knee injury which means at the same time my exercise has been limited.

We also have an established team who know each other well, we now have someone new joining us, and god knows how we will manage that while working offsite.

Personally I am looking forward to getting back into the office just for some normal everyday social interaction. And before this I always felt a bit of an antisocial lone wolf, quite happy to be on the periphery of any social event, love taking a tent into the middle of nowhere for a week or two and rarely meeting anyone else. I certainly don’t want or need to be constantly chatting and be the centre of attention, but I have learned that I do need to be around other people, I have very much not enjoyed this level of solitude for so long.

(even regular social video chats isn’t anywhere near the same)

Why not ?

I know someone who is co-managing 3 big projects in Cardiff, 2 of them are massive office blocks being built in the city centre. His clients are absolutely shitting themselves that they won’t be able to fill them when completed as they’ve been designed to work with most staff coming in on public transport (very little car parking on site) and to be full of office drones with the ground floor full of sandwich and coffee shops. They’re massively exposed to those projects collapsing as they are due to raise the 3rd round of funding in the next few weeks. The other one is a student block nearby and even that is under review due to the drop in foreign student applications.

I hope that companies look at the whole WFH thing objectively, even just giving people who can the option of 2/3/4 days a week to do so would massively help cut pollution, congestion and wasted time and money benefiting everyone.

The Gov dept I’m currently contracting at are looking at a WFH first model. The existing office estate will be designed for more collaborative spaces rather than banks of desks. Folk may visit an office once a week or less as required. At the same time, there will be reserved spaces for those who don’t want to or can’t practically WFH. There’s going to be a lot more personal discretion. Some of the less able middle managers are going to really struggle with giving up command and control.
It’s great, as a contractor, where there’s chaos, there’s cash!

I hated working from home and returned to the office as soon as I could. Luckily the office is only a couple of miles away. I live in a small, open plan house with two young kids. I also like work and life to be separate. It was never going to work for me. If I could afford to move to a bigger house (which we need to do but can’t) and had a job I enjoyed perhaps it would be different.

I should imagine I’m not alone in my situation.

Some people do like to find problems. Of course a lot people’s homes aren’t suitable, but that is because one of the main driving factors in choosing their home would be proximity to work and a reasonable commute. Take that out and add in a suitable home working space to your check list when buying a home and suddenly you can live somewhere much nicer. If you need separation then a garden office will do that pretty well. And surely with the extra free time from not commuting you can find a bit of time to socialise with people closer to home.

Sorry but that’s a bit of a “let them eat cake” attitude. People don’t just “choose” houses or jobs to suit their lifestyle and/or location or just bung on an upgrade to allow WFH. Budgets aren’t infinite and many circumstances are forced upon people.

This last 4 months has not been universally positive, it’s really only suited the middleclass office commuters (of which I am one), who aren’t actually the centre of the universe…

Some people do like to find problems. Of course a lot people’s homes aren’t suitable, but that is because one of the main driving factors in choosing their home would be proximity to work and a reasonable commute. Take that out and add in a suitable home working space to your check list when buying a home and suddenly you can live somewhere much nicer.

Must be lovely in your world. We bought our house on the grounds of it was one we could afford. That was the sole criteria. This place is brilliant at times and then I forget it is basically a middle class bubble of sorts. Bless you, thinking everybody has a check list when buying a home.

Interesting article in the WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397

Must be lovely in your world. We bought our house on the grounds of it was one we could afford. That was the sole criteria.

Is that really true though? You didn’t consider location at all? It was literally the only house you could afford and there wasn’t another cheaper house on the market anywhere else. I’m a little sceptical.

* a Teams meeting is not the same as being around a table for a true working meeting.

Quite right. A Teams meeting wastes far far less time.

I was talking to the owner of the local chinese takeaway on friday , he has lost a lot of trade supplying office lunches

There was a thing in the paper suggesting that footfall in town centres is back up to about 80% of normal, but the city centre remain way down, presumably as so many office workers are WFH.

Some people do like to find problems. Of course a lot people’s homes aren’t suitable, but that is because one of the main driving factors in choosing their home would be proximity to work and a reasonable commute. Take that out and add in a suitable home working space to your check list when buying a home and suddenly you can live somewhere much nicer. If you need separation then a garden office will do that pretty well. And surely with the extra free time from not commuting you can find a bit of time to socialise with people closer to home.

Most aren’t just going to move house now they can work from home though, and those that do it’ll be a long term thing. Plus you still have to consider if you move jobs from one with 100% WFH, will you be able to find something else with the same? If you’ve suddenly upped sticks to move to the highlands, you’ll be buggered if you can only find jobs that require 3 days week in the London office.

Long term, the change to a greater number of people WFH, and incorporating that into a house (separate office room, converted garden shed etc) will happen, but as above, it won’t be everyone.

It’s not all work from home for big companies, here in Ireland Amazon announced a new 170,000 square foot office campus in Dublin and the big multinational next to my work is looking for more office space to allow for social distancing of the 600 strong work force. Not all doom and gloom.

Is that really true though? You didn’t consider location at all? It was literally the only house you could afford and there wasn’t another cheaper house on the market anywhere else. I’m a little sceptical.

Be as sceptical as you like! It was the only house within our budget that we liked and could afford, that’s it. I grew up on a rather rough estate and that would’ve been the only cheaper option. Something I wasn’t keen to go back to.

Most aren’t just going to move house now they can work from home though, and those that do it’ll be a long term thing.

Absolutely. It will be a slow, long term change if it happens. Hopefully this forced recent change will help show people what can be done and give them a steer when making future decisions. We need to get away from all the commuting that normally happens. Its a massive waste of time and a blow to the environment. As I said, people like to look for the problems, find reasons why it can’t be done. It’ll be an effort and it’s not simple but change for the better is possible.

Corporates won’t want to be forced to sell real estate at below market rate prices.

Most just rent, owning property is very 1980s.

No, and a lot of pension fund money etc is invested in this type of property, another hit waiting to happen.

Pension funds are very diversified, so a knock to commerical property prices won’t be the end of the world.