Somebody already mentioned if but I’m not sure why the need for so much video conferencing when voice works so well most of the time.

Video and the ability to share screens to point at things is better than audio alone. Of course you could all view the same doc on your own computers, but the ability to point and annotate is important.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insights-zoom/2017/10/30/5-reasons-why-your-company-needs-to-embrace-video-conferencing-now/#364c025947c4

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24587119

Achilles’ ear? Inferior human short-term and recognition memory in the auditory modality.
Bigelow J, Poremba A.

Abstract
Studies of the memory capabilities of nonhuman primates have consistently revealed a relative weakness for auditory compared to visual or tactile stimuli: extensive training is required to learn auditory memory tasks, and subjects are only capable of retaining acoustic information for a brief period of time. Whether a parallel deficit exists in human auditory memory remains an outstanding question. In the current study, a short-term memory paradigm was used to test human subjects’ retention of simple auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli that were carefully equated in terms of discriminability, stimulus exposure time, and temporal dynamics. Mean accuracy did not differ significantly among sensory modalities at very short retention intervals (1-4 s). However, at longer retention intervals (8-32 s), accuracy for auditory stimuli fell substantially below that observed for visual and tactile stimuli. In the interest of extending the ecological validity of these findings, a second experiment tested recognition memory for complex, naturalistic stimuli that would likely be encountered in everyday life. Subjects were able to identify all stimuli when retention was not required, however, recognition accuracy following a delay period was again inferior for auditory compared to visual and tactile stimuli. Thus, the outcomes of both experiments provide a human parallel to the pattern of results observed in nonhuman primates. The results are interpreted in light of neuropsychological data from nonhuman primates, which suggest a difference in the degree to which auditory, visual, and tactile memory are mediated by the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices.

I agree with all of the benefits but I met all of my friends at / through work when I moved here alone for a grad scheme – my life would be totally different if we hadn’t been going into the office. I really hope my employer recognises that we can be trusted after all but I would never give up the office completely.

20 odd years ago I was working for a huge US co who introduced WFH for a number of us so I only had to visit the office once a fortnight. It was ok but the tech was both clunky & unreliable at times.

For around a decade now, I’ve had an office base (or two) but the ability to work remotely as & when needed/convenient. The IT is spot on 99% of the time & with this lockdown it’s clear I really could do my job without any time actually in the office – client meetings are a harder nut to crack.

I’d quite happily go back to how things were in my last job but with current tech as that’d be the best of both for me personally.

That said, I have colleagues in the same role who really aren’t coping very well with WFH & cannot see how we could ever do it long term – despite the fact that there’s an ongoing pilot to do exactly that which is proving workable.

I believe the change is here and, like all change, it’ll sit well with some yet be hated by others. Those in the middle ground will just get used to it & carry on moaning about whatever they feels is the worst bit of their job anyway. Horses for courses & all that.

We’ve been doing OK WFH, it’s a bit slower at times due to working off a single screen but it’s generally fine. We’ve been doing some very good all-staff updates via video call, file sharing is good.

However it was commented on that the small scale general “fun” interactions in the office, the 30sec conversation, the banter just wasn’t possible any more. In that respect, I think many people would still prefer the office at least a couple of days a week.

Funnily enough, no, I can’t go see my friends in the evening.

Even after this Covid thing is all over?

You can then draw on paper the proposed solution or formulae

Catching up on this thread, work have a fancy wifi noteboard, where you can draw on it and people logging onto the meeting can see it on their screen. You can also save anything written on it as a document. We’re not a fancy tech co, just a smallish construction company. Not sure if it works for remote attendees to be able to write/share stuff.

On a group catch up, a friend said he enjoyed not having pointless distractions when people stop by your desk for no reason but missed out on those brief chat with someone in passing that may solve a work issue without the need for detailed discussions.

One issue for public transport commuters is the season ticket. If you commute 5 days a week and in future your company offers 2 days WFH, will it be a saving to drop an annual ticket for buying 3 a week? If not your commute cost doesn’t change.

Lots of people driving or taking public transport for hours every day to go and sit in front of a monitor they could sit in front of at home is crazy in lots of ways. The last few weeks have made it very clear that a lot of things are better if that doesn’t happen.

Like I said on another thread though I’m a bit surprised that so many people are so eager to be stuck at home all the time. Everyone’s situation is different but personally I don’t think it’s very good for my well-being. I don’t have kids and I had a nice bike commute rather than hours in the car so I can see the pros and cons might work out differently for others.

I also find the flexibility of WFH is a bit overblown if you work in a team that you need to be in contact with often – in practice that means everyone still does more or less 9-5, so I don’t think it’s as simple as replacing those workplace social interactions with ones in your local coffee shops. And as far as tools go they are pretty good (agree with people saying video is overused a lot) as far as they go but they are no substitute for standing round the whiteboard with your team.

I miss the change of scene and the social interaction with people that I count as friends from the office. It’s going to be interesting to see if my workplace decides to do anything differently after this.

EDIT: basically +1 for what hungry monkey said.

I have to be on site some of the time, but no question we will be doing split from now on. I suspect it will be 3 days on site and 2 at home.
Really liking being at home for work, took a world emergency for my boss to actually consider it though for a routine thing

I could see me only being in the office two days a week if I could keep the working from home flexibility.

Which would mean I would no longer need to be part time/term time to fit in with the kids.

I could be earning more money and cutting my travel costs!

Like I said on another thread though I’m a bit surprised that so many people are so eager to be stuck at home all the time.

I certainly don’t feel “stuck at home”. If the weather’s nice I can go out for a ride. I can take a long lunch. Take the day off then work at the weekend or in the evening to catch up. I can even go away on holiday and do a bit of staying in touch work. I’m pretty happy with my set-up here and the flexibility that goes with it. Some of the changes to my traditional work practices have happened by accident, some by design, but it is nice to try new things and see what works for you.

If the weather’s nice I can go out for a ride. I can take a long lunch. Take the day off then work at the weekend or in the evening to catch up. I can even go away on holiday and do a bit of staying in touch work.

Do you work as part of a team? I totally get what you’re saying but as I said in my post it’s still 9-5 for me so the flexibility you describe isn’t really there.

I’m not seeing why working from home is thought of as “stuck at home”

If anything it gives more room for going out to do stuff

I travel around 2 hours into/from work which is a lot of time. Now that I have an office set up at home, with full access into my work’s IT system, together with ms teams, I will be looking at cutting my days in the office once we get back to normal.

However I want to go in for that face to face interaction, but don’t need to every day. It will save me a bit of money in fuel, vehicle wear and tear and save me approximately 2hrs a day!

I’m an ideal candidate – programmer / manager. I’ve worked from home 2 or 3 days a week for 15 years. I have a dedicated office at home with the same chair as at work and a bigger monitor. The people I work with are mainly in Northampton, Knutsford and Pune, India so we’re never in the same place. Last year my employer more or less banned all travel so people had to get used to it. Probably once very 2 or 3 months it would be useful to be in the same room as a bunch of other people – design brainstorming, project inception but the rest of the time there’s no point.

We also have call centre staff working from home – it works, you can even have snoopy supervisors still, they can listen to you and see what you’re typing but not smell you!

Key to making it work if your job allows is having decent equipment, a routine and a dedicated space.

One of my friends works for Atlas Copco. A few years ago they banned all international travel. Everyone said it wouldn’t work, Atlas Copco looked at the figures and decided that even if it had a 5 to 10% impact it was worth it. The travel ban is still in place.

Murray
Subscriber

One of my friends works for Atlas Copco. A few years ago they banned all international travel. Everyone said it wouldn’t work, Atlas Copco looked at the figures and decided that even if it had a 5 to 10% impact it was worth it. The travel ban is still in place.

Same here, in fact travel within each country in our firm has been clamped down on.
TBH 90% of the travel costs were in the US as they seemed to fly business class all over the place for a 1 hr meeting!

On the WFH I have split my team up and we now work a sort of shift 1 in from 6-2 with a back up person at home and 2-10 the same the person who was backup is in the next day etc.
The main issue I have is whatever shift/cover I’m on I am still getting calls and working over my usual 8-5:30 hours so in effect am at work longer!

As someone else said if you live on your own as I do now its very isolating and as most online meetings seem to involve our site manager there is no banter 🙁

design brainstorming, project inception but the rest of the time there’s no point.

I get project manager roles being able to work remotely (as the job is easy 🤣). However as a Business Analyst myself sitting in a room with the experts to, as you said design/gather requirements is really ideal.

I’ve always WFH when I wanted before the crisis but for those types of meetings I’d setup workshops in the office and do them face to face/travel if need be.

I’ve not done a design/requirements session since being in lockdown so will be interesting to see how it goes, MS teams might help. I’m all for it but apprehensive at the same time.

WFH all the time at first seemed crap but I’m loving the no 2hr a day commute, it’s just the social interaction we’re missing as a team, so we have WhatsApp and things like that to plug that gap.

A small % of the population can work from home so it will not make a huge difference across society just in the lives of a few folk

I’m not sure anyone is saying that they could/should/would like to work from home permanently all the time. But certainly there are quite a few people who could work some or even most days at home, it’s been shown that it is achievable for more people and organisations than many expected.

My own civil service department is about to make a lot of experienced 40 somethings redundant later this year due to office closures that could not possibly involve a “working from home” option to retain these people.

These people are now working from home, and some have been asked to stay on beyond their original redundancy date…..

A small % of the population can work from home

Really?

https://www.hso.co.uk/leased-lines/technology-news/homeworking-news/50-of-uk-workforce-to-work-remotely-by-2020

In April 2020, statistics released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics showed 49.2% of adults in employment were working from home, as a result of the social distancing measures introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hmmm… 🤔

Really? Remote working website suggests that lots of people …might be… working from home soon?

‘ave a word.

Is the ONS a remote working website?

…the ONS are suggesting that 49% of people are WFH …because they are being forced to…this does not really equate to a successful and thriving economy.

I can’t wait to get back to the office. No room to work from home and keep it separate from my home life. Back is ruined from sitting at a small dining table, fed up of the same four walls, miss the downtime from walking or cycling to and from the office and find having work in my house to have a negative effect on me and my family.

Wouldn’t mind it as much if we had a spare room that I could have as a home office. Then at least I could shut the door and section off work at the end of the day.

If it works for some people though then I believe the option should be there. I’m really pushing my bosses to allow a member of my team to do it full time. Cuts down on his ridiculous commute and means he’s more awake and productive as a result.

I reckon more lke 20-30%. See all those big office buildings? Those.

See all those huge business and industrial parks, shopping malls, etc? How many of those are just people sitting at a desk bashing away at a keyboard?

but I’m not sure why the need for so much video conferencing when voice works so well most of the time.

You know those conversations you have with people on internet fora, about all sorts of different subjects? You know those awkward situations where what you typed was misinterpreted by someone else? You know how often you can tell when someone’s taking the piss, just joking about something, or is being sarcastic, when you can see the expression on their face?
There’s no way at all I could work from home, literally not physically possible, same for every other person I work with, that’s around 130 at our site.
Nobody else involved with what the company does could work from home either, and that can involve dozens of people every day. Same goes for practically every company on the industrial estate and business park around where I work.
Getting a lot of people off the roads through wfh would certainly relieve the daily thirty-odd mile commute to and from work, though just how many of those people are doing similar hands-on rather than office-based computer oriented jobs is impossible to guess.

Although I’ve been wfh since a couple of weeks after lockdown started I’d still prefer being in the office. Mostly as it’s just easier to discuss things with team members. Sure I can IM/Webex/Teams but it’s not as simple or convenient (plus I can’t screen share stuff on the classified network so it’s a pain having to describe stuff). I also need two PCs for my job and had 4 monitors in the office, can only fit three at home and it makes a noticeable difference (my quad monitor stand at work doesn’t fit my desk at home). I’ve also had to unplug my gaming PC so that’s a bit annoying (too lazy to plug everything back in just to use it).

I only live a mile from the office though so don’t have a crappy commute (in normal times). I also worked shorter hours in the office, generally 7am-4pm, traffic on the business park starts going mental after 4pm (can take 30+ minutes to get out of it at times) so there was always an incentive just to down tools at 4pm which meant I had a really long evening just to switch off and de-stress from the day. Recently I find myself working 7-6 or 7-7 at the moment (doesn’t help things are busier than usual) and then by the time I’ve eaten and watched something on TV I’m already thinking about heading to bed and then usually wake up stressing about something. Makes me appreciate not having a long commute in normal times and not getting home until late evening.

I have been thinking about the % of people who can WFH

I think one of my friends. The rest – not able to or effectiveness much reduced or occasional admin days. I am a nurse, I know teachers, musicians, photographers, sound techs, retail workers, builders, storesmen, landscape gardeners, ship crew, museum workers, cooks, hospitality workers

MY guess would be a few % of the population could WFH most days and another few % occasional days. Most people its just not possible

I was hoping that COVID may show the population that we do so much wasted travelling that causes environmental damage, but I don’t think we will learn the lessons.

Nobody needs to fly from one end of the country to the other for an important business meeting, let alone another country.

For years people have been getting a job 50 miles from where they live because they can’t get the same job on their door step, yet Joe Bloggs has been make the exact same opposite journey because they can’t get a job on their doorstep.

I’m not sure how you put that one right be it is ridiculous

It reminds me of the EV conversation. Many people use the extreme example to justify the everyday.

Moving from the Victorian concept of “presenteesim” which I still see in my workplace, (strangely often from very young members of the management team) to a totally agile and digital organisation is a continuum. Many organisations can free up a considerable part of the workforce to work in this way. The current situation has forced this change very quickly and although there has been a lot of scrabbling about many organisations have adapted very quickly in order to survive. or at least to avoid a huge financial and organisational impact then restrictions are eventually lifted.

Of course a huge number of companies cannot work in this way, we all know that and they are being severely impacted right now. My own company has been moving slowly along this continuum and it has been interesting to see those who have been obstructive and non cooperative to actually change overnight to deliver our services..

MY guess would be a few % of the population could WFH most days and another few % occasional days.

Why not look up the numbers of how many actually do rather than guess? They were a fair bit higher than that before lockdown. Obviously the number who could will be even higher than the number who do. I expect we will see a jump, especially in the second group.

TJ – I guess it depends on your social circle. Out of my friends, I would give a finger in the air guesstimate of >80% of them could all work from home. So certainly not only a few % based on my estimations.

For me, I would like to see an increase in wfh when this all ends. So perhaps most people wfh 1 or 2 days a week, leaving the rest of the time available for face 2 face work. Over time, I think (hope) that will increase further.

I only live a mile from the office though so don’t have a crappy commute (in normal times). I also worked shorter hours in the office, generally 7am-4pm, traffic on the business park starts going mental after 4pm (can take 30+ minutes to get out of it at times)

Are you really driving to work? Even though it’s a mile, and the traffic on s so bad it affects your working hours?

If only there were other ways to move from one close-by location to another!

TJ – I guess it depends on your social circle. Out of my friends, I would give a finger in the air guesstimate of >80% of them could all work from home. So certainly not only a few % based on my estimations.

For me, I would like to see an increase in wfh when this all ends. So perhaps most people wfh 1 or 2 days a week, leaving the rest of the time available for face 2 face work. Over time, I think (hope) that will increase further.

There certainly are jobs that need hands on. But there are many which don’t, and with a bit of creativity many jobs have elements that can be done remotely.

The cumulative effects of a small change in behaviour could benefit all. If the subway line you use operates at 95% capacity (and things run smoothly) VS it running at 105% and being unreliable and an awful experience.

If the roads are a bit quieter so flow better and journey times drop for all.

It’s worth trying to make the change, it could benefit *everyone*, including those who can’t WFH even if they wanted to.

For years people have been getting a job 50 miles from where they live because they can’t get the same job on their door step, yet Joe Bloggs has been make the exact same opposite journey because they can’t get a job on their doorstep.

The price of housing is a massive part of this. Lots of people get 1hr + train rides into London every day. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes tbh but there you go. A lot of my colleges think I’m odd living a 10min cycle from work as its “too close”, I might meet kids I teach and they need that down time of driving too and from work, how strange is that.

A lot of the people who work in London do so because of all the offices there. If 50% of the office workers are not there, we’ll have to find lot more jobs for all the service industry folks to do…

FWIW, I already have agreement to work 2 days a week at home, fixed days which has pros and cons. There are some jobs (as above rare design sessions, brainstorming etc) that are much better in person. You can do it remotely, but even with travel time, it’s more efficient in the same room.

I can see a time where we stack a few of those up so a fortnight of workshops is done in one hit.

In the 12-month period from January to December 2019, there were an estimated 1.7 million people who said that they work mainly from home; this represents just over 5% of the total workforce.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/coronavirusandhomeworkingintheuklabourmarket/2019#overview-of-homeworking

Spent the last 8 years working from home, travelling to offices/customers when I had to, lucky that I have a spare bedroom converted to office/studio and previous company I worked for paid for height adjustable desk and good chair (and didn’t ask for them back when they made me redundant).

Last couple of years I’ve been splitting my time between home and Germany, Slovakia and Sweden, January I travelled every week, 16 flights. Over the last 3 years I’ve flown well over 100 times, really played havoc with my riding and other hobbies, I’m really hoping that things do not go back to how they were before, I expect company will want to continue to save money and will realise that F2F is not required permanently, 1 week a month in Slovakia or Germany would be nice, rest of the time at home would be ideal.

I’ve not done a design/requirements session since being in lockdown so will be interesting to see how it goes, MS teams might help.

Yes, the sessions where you get a group in a room and everyone can scribble on the same wall and rearrange post it notes will be the most difficult thing to replicate when WFH. I’m sure improved virtual whiteboard software will help with this, but it’s difficult to get the same free flow of discussion and ideas on a remote call. Not being able to have quick discussions about questions or issues that come up during the day makes WFH a bit harder as well.

Having said that, I’m working on an IT change project for a national retail bank, and my team have all been WFH since before the official lockdown (as is most of the bank office staff). I’m sure there are a lot of organisations looking at how they have been working under lockdown and seriously thinking about whether they are going to keep running large, expensive central offices in the future.

In the 12-month period from January to December 2019, there were an estimated 1.7 million people who said that they work mainly from home; this represents just over 5% of the total workforce.

That’s the people who were already full time home workers before Coronavirus, but what is more interesting in that report is all the other home workers, including 8.7 million people who have worked from home at some time. I was in that group, and have gone from occasional WFH to full time WFH. If a substantial number of those people move to full time WFH that is a not insignificant % of the working population.

Yes, the sessions where you get a group in a room and everyone can scribble on the same wall and rearrange post it notes will be the most difficult thing to replicate when WFH. I’m sure improved virtual whiteboard software will help with this, but it’s difficult to get the same free flow of discussion and ideas on a remote call.

Yeah there are virtual whiteboard solutions (Webex has it built in) but drawing is a bit of a pain if you aren’t on a tablet with a pen.

Not being able to have quick discussions about questions or issues that come up during the day makes WFH a bit harder as well.

Slack does this very well for us. If you have even a few people on the team who use it well it becomes critical mass and everyone starts to use it cos that’s where the info is. I try to be that person because I’m quite good at chatting online. I must’ve had a lot of practice somewhere….

Slack does this very well for us

We’re not allowed slack, but we do have Skype for Business open all day. It’s the main communication channel in the bank.

Have been tempted to get one of those permanent chat rooms set up, but not got round to it..