Very interesting.

Ive been WFH for just under a year now. My colleagues havent. I drove past the office this morning and the carpark is 3/4 full. Showing a lot of folks in work.

I have been more productive at home. I miss people. Now it appears that its coming to an end i would have liked to have done more but i dont see how its possible. Colleagues have renovated their houses, been working on cars and gardens etc. However as i see it your still contracted to work. popping out for a couple of hours for a bike ride isnt on imo. Your working.

switching off is something ive started to do however and its make wfh a lot more enjoyable.

Unlike your work colleagues you cannot punch your family for being annoying and also don’t wee in their coffee

I think that ‘working from home’ is just part of the issue. A few years ago I implemented a results only working environment approach that in simple terms gets managers to agree individual personalised expectations for amount and quality of work each fortnight, and then leaves the employees to decide how and when to do the work.

About 40% carried on coming into the office as usual (more in winter to avoid the costs of heating their own houses) 40% or so worked relatively normal hours from home and 20% chose radically different approaches, either fitting work around ther other commitments, or cycling between groups as they saw fit. As long as the work was done it worked really well – increased job satisfaction as well as productivity. Only the managers disliked it as it meant that they had to actually manage. The unions were a bit put out at first with issues about sick leave and overtime initially being a sticking point.

It is time with all the digital technlogies we have, plus the environmental/health/family impacts of commuting etc for a rethink of whay we turn up at a central workplace. In the past we had to ‘cos that was where the telephone numbers rang, where the typists were, where the letters were delivered to, and where all the records and files were kpet. Its not anymore.

jj – I agree. I still think it slightly ironic that in the “The Decade of Disruptors” with Elon and his acolytes telling everyone that they are going to change the way we live and work, it turns out that all was needed was a bowl of bat soup in China.

Too much time is spent on calls, which appear to be getting less concise. It’s far to easy to have a discussion and they get in the way of doing any actual work.
I’ve seen directives that hour meetings should be 50 mins etc but it never happens.

I’d quite like if they limited you to no more than 4 hours a day.

There are people in my team who rightly or wrongly are much less keen to speak up in front of a group but in F2F meetings I can chat to them on the side or when arriving or just before the end. None of that is possible in a Zoom meeting and their ideas are often just as good or better than the people who regularly get all the air time in a meeting on the basis they are willing to make their voice heard over and over again.

I get those people to type their comments and suggestions into the chat boxes during meetings. Then everyone gets to see what they think despite the loud mouths.

FWIW I work for a global IT SI, and we’ve always had distributed working. Our rule around offices/home/client site is ‘work where you need to work’. There are no fixed patterns or rules, you’re just expected to be wherever you need to be in order to achieve the work expected of you. If that means being in one of our offices, then that’s where you go. If it means being on a client site because they want or need it, that’s where you go. If you don’t specifically need to be anywhere, then go where you like.

In terms of video replacing face-to-face, I’m in Birmingham and my direct reports are in London, Wales, and Scotland. My direct manager is in Scotland. My teams and clients are usually all over the world. We’re never going to be in the same office unless it’s through a massively deliberate effort, or coincidence. Reviews and checkins have always been conducted on calls and latterly video calls, and its been perfectly fine.

I guess when your entire company works like this without loads of formal processes, people just find the ways that work for them. Some of my colleagues religiously go into one of our offices. They like the atmosphere. I avoid them like the plague, as I think open plan offices are the worst invention ever for jobs that require thinking.

We have had the situation of meetings where some have been in a room, and other remote. If its my meeting I just tell everyone to go back to their desks and remote in. Puts everyone on a level playing field then.

Ultimately it boils down to there not being a one-size-fits-all answer, and the trick is flexibility both on the part of the company, and the employee. ‘work where you need to work’

Oh, and the other observation I’d make is don’t set aside days to be in the office for meetings.

Let teams decide if they need to co-locate if and when they need to co-locate to achieve a specific outcome that can only be done face to face. Otherwise you’ll end up with meetings being created to fill the void, and time wasted in travelling and in the office for meetings that don’t need to be held.

Worst is when someone has to travel into an office specifically for ‘meeting day’ and then either there are no meetings, or all the meetings that are done are virtual. I’ve had instances where I’ve travelled to the other end of the UK, and one memorable time, Brazil, for this to happen to me and it really pisses you off.

One thing that has just been raised in our team is what about all our equipment that we’ve taken home that needs PAT testing?

You don’t need a formal PAT tester person to do PAT. Look at your power cable, has the insulation frayed? Then it’s just failed PAT.

And do we need to have surge protector extensions provided, if not are we liable is laptops go bang?

Happens a lot that, does it?

Laptop goes bang for whatever reason, work provides repair / replacement or you can’t work.

What they prefer is irrelevant if you don’t want to do so. They have to justify a requirement

Lol, no it’s not and no they don’t

Lol, yes it is and yes they do.

If you’ve worked somewhere for six months then it’s a statutory right.

The issue of the face to face vs voice call is an important one. Employee welfare is, quite rightly, one of our top priorities

Have regular scheduled team meetings, even if it’s not required. I’ve just come out of one of ours, the primary topic of conversation was whether John should buy a new guitar.

Make sure you’ve worked out how to keep Teams, Skype or whatever communication method your company uses showing as working or available despite you not actually working to keep the boss happy.

Some of my colleagues religiously go into one of our offices. They like the atmosphere. I avoid them like the plague, as I think open plan offices are the worst invention ever for jobs that require thinking.

Ditto.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the last time I worked in an open-plan office for any length of time it presented a very real threat to my mental health. In the end I hijacked an unused office and claimed it as my own (it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission), had I not done that I’d have likely either quit my job or lost my mind.

Ultimately it boils down to there not being a one-size-fits-all answer, and the trick is flexibility both on the part of the company, and the employee. ‘work where you need to work’

And flexible working, as I said above, is statute.

Make sure you’ve worked out how to keep Teams, Skype or whatever communication method your company uses showing as working or available despite you not actually working to keep the boss happy.

The laptop I use for Teams isn’t the one I use for much of my day-to-day work. It’ll show me as ‘away’ when I’m sitting right here on a different machine.

There’s a way to get it to show available despite not using it.

I just hate office environment general. Find it a thoroughly depressing place to be.

I enjoy my office and interacting with the colleagues I work with. I find meetings via Teams hard to engage with,sitting looking at a screen just doesn’t work as a comfortable communication method for me, I also have some minor hearing challenges so that might be part of it. I would seem to be in the minority.

Out of an Office of 30 people of 6 different disciplines I think there are maybe 6/7 of us really keen to return as soon as we can. A number who’d like to never go back and some who are happy to just go in a couple of days a week.

I’ve got to say I know a good few ‘non-returners’ who’ve been very busy getting work done on houses and gardens and very active on Strava….

None of our manager/team leaders are keen to return. The cynical me feels it suits them not having to deal with us so much!

I quite like the ability for a mid day ride, long lunch, but that’s mixed in with some earlier starts and later finishes. I like the flexibility. We are hoping we can mix where we work when we do go back.

@cougar re PAT testing, just mentioning something that came up as a query from colleague in a team meeting as all our electrical equipment and extensions are PAT tested in the office (and now out of date) and also surge protected.

Seems a valid query if it’s felt necessary for H&S in the office and a guy goes around with a big trolley of tricks testing everything and sticking stickers on with test dates.

Maybe all we need at work is a quick look from staff at all their electrical devices annually to say ‘Nah looks good enough to me’? Would surely save a few quid on a qualified electrician,but I assume it’s a requirement under some legislation or for insurance, like fire alarm tests.

Would surely save a few quid on a qualified electrician,but I assume it’s a requirement under some legislation or for insurance,

There’s no strict legal requirement for PAT testing.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/faq-portable-appliance-testing.htm

The person checking appliances needs to be competent.

If you know not to use a 240V appliance with a frayed cable, you’re qualified…

Make sure you’ve worked out how to keep Teams, Skype or whatever communication method your company uses showing as working or available despite you not actually working to keep the boss happy.

I have the opposite approach, mine is permanently set to away. The people I want to talk to know this.

There’s no strict legal requirement for PAT testing.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/faq-portable-appliance-testing.htm

Interesting to know. I’ll pass it on, but assume our authority has taken a view it is needed for whatever reason.

One major issue which I could not see mentioned is the transition.

So we are on a cycling forum where many like myself would normally cycle to work.

Now if you are doing 1 in 5 in the office then you have to consider transport of a fairly heavy and delicate laptop.

I was lucky and just before Lockdown I persuaded my company to give me a spare machine so no transport issues.

Now wfh full time I went back in and pinched a chair and 2 monitors. I guess I might have to return them at some point !

Not best practice, but some useful things to think about in this article:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work

but I’m just as, if not more, interested in the process of working from home and not just the work station. Things like how do you keep track of your employees mental health if they’re not in the office and you’re not meeting them face to face regularly

I think you are starting in the right place here.

If you start there then other questions are:
How do I measure productivity etc. without adversely affecting my employees heath?

Ive been working remotely mostly for a decade and many of the challenges are as you are asking much less obvious.

How do you stop someone feeling guilty they lost some work on a unsupported device spending their entire weekend catching up? or the opposite someone saying “sorry it got corrupted” when they were off riding (or whatever) for 20 hours that week?
Is it actually OK to go riding if you finish the work or are they expected to sit there waitingand wiggling the mouse?

My internet failed… my electric is off etc.
I’m sorry I don’t have the answers but I think you are starting in the right place.