Working From Home Megathread

Our office pushed out from the planned staged opening in September, the dreariness of WFH continues....

Facebook have pushed back their return to office, yet again, this time to January 2022, for staff safety reasons, with the exception of a small number of contractors.

Adrian says he would not be surprised if it will be September 2022 before an office return. Spring 2022 seems to be the consensus here right now but if it is a very bad Winter then God knows it will get pushed back again.

Interesting how the protection of people's privacy and health information is described as an "issue" in this article.

Poor American companies that cannot run their business without treating their employees as human beings who have rights. If you survey them, they will also tell you that having 25days holidays is an issue for their business and that people should have 1 or 2 weeks only like in the USA. I am not even talking about the existence of unions.

The Irish Times article says ..."One of the key barriers is the lack of clarity on how to reconcile health and safety of staff in an indoor setting, GDPR, and vaccination status". Sounds like some companies are worried about liability if there is an outbreak in their office and the health and safety implications of having staff in indoor enclosed high risk settings often with poor ventilation, along with not been able to ask if someone is vaccinated.

Article also says that most businesses now revising return to office plans due to Delta.

Yes there is a good reason: mathematics.

Disease spread is roughly proportion to social mixing: the more mixing, the more cases.

Opening schools will lead to more mixing. Delaying Reopening offices will limit the amount.

Individual restrictions don't have to make sense, or be fair.

Wow, only 12% of ECB staff agreed with the the plan to return to the office in October. Many citing health and safety, concerns about too many people together and the Delta wave. ECB staff are mainly well paid smart people, if you can't get ECB staff to agree to return to offices, who can you. The ECB example shows how companies risk revolt if they push return to office plans until the situation is much safer.

If employers lost 10% of their staff for failing to consult on a WFH policy, they will really struggle to hire employees to make up that 10%, without either changing the policy or offering much higher wages. The market is definitely an employees market at the moment and I think the reason we do not see any companies trying to force people before the end of the year is because they know that it will create a HR headache.

I used 10% as an example as I think that's approximately the figure of employees who would like full time WFH going forward so even a day or two per week would cause them to move jobs. I'm sure I'm not alone as one of the 10% who sees what jobs are out there and is waiting for my employer to bite the bullet and just announce that full time WFH is actually the norm after 18 months of doing it so going back to an office makes no sense. Otherwise I'll be gone and replying to the many LinkedIn jobs available! From the IT article and anecdotal experiences in the sector, insurance seems to be 100% WFH forever with maybe a day a month to come into an office for meetings, sounds like insurance could become an attractive area to work.

very interesting, I'd imagine for workers in that type of job, remote work can be a God-send. remote work is a whole new way of living - here's hoping employers can embrace it.

i note the comments from C.Lagarde arguing against remote. she, however, is 65 and likely to retire in the next couple years.

Update today, a report has been published on the submissions received for the Right to Request Remote Work public consultation

https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/Publications/Publication-files/Submissions-Report-Right-to-Request-Remote-Working.pdf

Only 126 employees responded. A pitifully small number, I've been involved in public consultations for far less important issues that would have gotten similar numbers. If there were to be a public consultation tomorrow on some issue like "De ESB Pylons Causing De Cancer", I'd say it would get much more than 126.

The good thing is that even while the number of employee submissions was low, the number from employers was much lower again. As we live in a democracy, the legislation should in theory be favourable toward an employee POV and if employers don't like it, well they had their chance to make their views known.

Leo interview accompanying the publication;

I think we can all breathe easy and keep the "do they still fit?", suit pants test until early 2022 as WFH guidance won't be changing this year from the government.

Interestingly is the right to request WFH and the obligation for the employer to provide an operational justification for denying it. For those WFH full for the past 17 months, there won't be many "operational" reasons for employers to hang their hat on to get employees back in.

Schools and colleges are rightly the priority for September so it will be a case of waiting a few weeks to see how that goes and make a decision on further removing of restrictions once the data is clear. That will be October but as you say the hospitalisations will start to climb because we're coming into winter so the government will be cautious about telling employers it's okay to pack your employees onto cramped buses and trains to commute to the office!