Remote working - the future?

Housing is but one example. From citizen's information:

Landlords must use the RTB’s Notice of Rent Review Form when issuing a rent review. Landlords should fill out the sections of the form that are relevant to them and should not delete or change any of the form. Other forms, emails, text messages and spoken messages are not valid forms of notice.

(https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/renting_a_home/rent_increases.html).

There are a number of other similar things in the finance and social welfare / services sectors. I cannot be bothered googling details of them all for you. But I know I've seen (and helped generate) substantial volumes of physical mail in all of these sectors in recent years. Granted, fewer items than there were, say, 20 years ago.

Interesting examples ‐ do the Vista employees share the financial benefits of the reduction of office space by three quarters? Or do they subsidise their employer with space, light and heat?

Those three components make up a lot of the cost of providing a safe workplace. Of course they are what discussion will back to.

Quit with the personal abuse: just cos I disagree with you doesn't make me "ghoul".

The benefits to society of having young people cooped up working in their bedroom or boxroom, with only on-line exposure to colleagues and customers. Or of women being conveniently located to get in that extra bit of housework during their breaks, and out of sight so not exposed to stretch assignments and ad-hoc interactions which build professional competence and organisational trust.

Give me strength.

how is it only women who get that extra bit of housework in?

I disagree with that and I’d appreciate if you stopped with your sexist stereotypes please.

I'm about to put tonight's dinner on during my lunch break so we can have dinner as a family and nice and early too.

Damn I hate this employer exploitation. 😁

(Got to love slow cookers though.)

Bang of 'let them eat cake' off this now. Maybe he doesn't want to move from Swords. Maybe his family are in Swords. Maybe his kids are in school in Swords.

Maybe we shouldn't be expecting people to change their life plans because employers want to save a few quid on office costs?

As previously explained to you, this isn't about me or my employer. See the big picture.

It is far from neutral for an employer who could well end up halving their office accommodation costs. They'll be laughing all the way to the shareholders, while continuing to spin the HR/PR line of how WFH is a privilege and employees should be grateful for being left off the lead. Employees have one chance to share in these cost savings.

The issue is, for the vast majority of employees, they don't care if they have a seat in the office and they don't care if the employer makes savings, reduces footprint or makes an increased profit. Most employees are just interested in their own well being and they believe the costs of L&H + space in the home are greatly outweighed by the benefits of zero commute and the freedom to live anywhere in the country. I personally have practically no commute and much prefer WFH.

But if you don't believe that, that's fine too. You can continue to go to the office if you wish.

It depends. If my working conditions remain as they are now, yes it would. Were WFH reversed, it would depend on the size of the increase.

WfH is a perk, or at least it was until it became normalised by the pandemic, and one could try to calculate its value if they wanted to. Say I switched jobs to an employer with no WfH, I would certainly have a number in mind for the increase in salary in order to stand still.

Would you like the option to WFH and get a couple of grand extra?

Or to put it the other way:

Employee to self: I can work from anywhere.

Employer to self: anyone anywhere can do that job

Savings from your net pay too.

The problem Andrew is that if employees start insisting on being compensated fully for L&H and space well then it starts to tip the equation back in favour of office based employees for employers - as this decision starts to have a tangible cost, with less tangible benefits (like lower staff turnover). It's a case of picking your battles especially when you could lose it all.

Any employee with an ounce of sense knows that when you start to ask an employer to actually spend money on something, you encounter resistance and would possibly see the benefit reversed - because you risk turning it into a net negative for the employer. Or as we put it in our place, you don't rock the boat when you're onto a good thing. WfH generally has a greater net positive for the employee over the employer, but currently is still positive or neutral for both. So when someone is saving €8k per year from their net salary, most, if not all are willing to take the increased costs of running an office in the home on the chin because of the overall massive net positive for them.

So maybe in a few years when WFH is established normality outside of pandemic conditions I'd suggest employees could look for home office payments. But until then I would suggest they hold their fire least they end up in a worse position through losing the benefit entirely.

Anyway - remote working is old news - hopefully this will be the future

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/tech-company-typetec-moving-staff-to-four-day-week-on-full-pay-an-obvious-next-step-for-us-41150797.html

Hahah - yes - old news! (permanent work for home for me, happy with that, but it suits me. Have space for an office I can close the door on)

I've been doing a four day weeks since June. Completely excellent. Love it!!!

I work for a MNC who is broadly planning on a hybrid model once government gives the go ahead on return to office. But they've made some roles eligible for fully remote. Luckily my role is eligible, so I applied and got it. I am thrilled.

The savings in money are huge - No annual commuter ticket, no need for a second car to get to dart station, and spending far less on office attire.

But the biggest benefit for me is time. I save 3 hours a day commuting. 3 hours that I get to spend with my kids and husband. When my eldest (daughter) was one, I missed out on so many milestones because I was out the door at 7am and not back until 7pm 4 days a week. Weekends I was exhausted. I'm far more productive and happy.