Working From Home Megathread

That's cos hybrid is a cod.

In office works and is productive, WFH has been proven to be productive.

Hybrid and dragging people in for the sake of it on arbitrary day is an unknown and therefore a concern.

Does anyone know what the latest updates mean for offices?

NPHET advise to the Government:

• homeworking has played a very important role in containing the spread of COVID-19 throughout the duration of the pandemic. With the easing of social and economic restrictions, a majority of employees have already or will need to return to the workplace on an at least partial basis over the coming months. This should continue to be phased and cautious and the NPHET continues to recommend that all who can work from home should continue to do so. All other protective measures currently in place, as set out in the Work Safely Protocol, should continue to be adhered to by workplaces, employers and employees. In particular, there is a need for an ongoing partnership approach between employers and employees to ensure that the importance of self-isolating when symptomatic is understood, communicated and facilitated, such that employees are not disincentivised to identify themselves as symptomatic and stay at home where appropriate.

^^What is the source of that NPHET advice?

What exactly is a phased basis? We have been phasing in 50% of the time with a full office return on the 26th Oct. Hopefully employers will open a dialogue with employees but I doubt my place will unfortunately

RTE saying that a "full return" to the office cannot occur until "Spring". I take that to mean that social distancing is needed until March? i.e. 50% capacity max in most cases.

The NPHET advise is that they "continue to recommend that all who can work from home should continue to do so". Some employees will no doubt quote this back to their employers if they are been pushed to return to the office.

My money is still on ... hospital cases getting worse over the coming weeks, government gets under pressure to do something but not something big and the government reintroduces 'work from home where possible'.

Yeah leo said the spring thing at the end of the presser.

If you can work from home it should be facilitated he said. And office for training / meetings.

But also mentioned people working from laptop on bed that they could be facilitated in office if kept away from each other or something

If it's not to be expected until the end of Spring, why send out the ambiguous "phased basis" message? That's what I don't get.

That the problem, NPHET said it to the Government but the Governement didnt say it to employers. They should have come out and said in order to reduce incidences to allow other industries to return to some sort of capacity & reduce pressure on the healthcare service during the busy winter period, that anywhere where you can work from home, you should work from home... but they didnt.

Our place has said nothing is changing, they are pushing ahead with return to work as they planned - absolutely gutted. I'm terrified of catching it in work, and despite all their 'we care about your mental health', all conversations have been one sided - we are here to support you, as long as you do what we say.

No one is cleaning down surfaces after them or sanatising coming in & out anymore either, people think its gone.

It might be updated after they meet with Unions and employer representatives and discuss what's what.

It's certainly strange but straight talking is not really one of the government's forte.

That being said the public would conceive this as going backwards again.

I hope that I am wrong though...

I work for a MNC too. Not a peep from management today about anything changing. We were due to go fully to the 3 day/wk hybrid model next week. Not sure if this is still happening.

Good to see that gov.ie have updated advice but yeah it is not clear enough. Seems like they want to keep some MNC's happy with broad wording.

The Gov.ie advice could be read a lot of ways but I read it a similar way as you, one should be working from home unless you have a damn good reason to be in the office. This is in line with what Leo and others have said.

This throws return to office plans in the bin for most companies until March.

I suspect that once things get worse, which it seems like they will, the government will simply change the advise to 'WFH where possible'.

The UK government are now under pressure to mandate WFH for Winter as part of their Plan B.