Office workers, when will we be back?

When will non essential workers be back in the office?


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mtenga

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As a "non-essential" office worker I am now working full time from home. The company sent us home after the government advice on Monday. Johnson is is saying we might be able to lick the worst of this in 12 weeks but I doubt it. So, if you are in a similar position when next do you expect to be working from the office?
 
Hopefully never again. Now they realise it can be done, all those expensive office buildings seem a bit pointless. Perhaps something good can come out if this terrible situation.
 
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@adrianwright do you know something the rest of us don’t?! ;)
 
Not at all, just trying to look on the bright side. I am on gardening leave at the moment and was due to start my new job today. My start has been delayed until the 1st of April and I thought it would cheer me up to vote April :)
 
Not at all, just trying to look on the bright side. I am on gardening leave at the moment and was due to start my new job today. My start has been delayed until the 1st of April and I thought it would cheer me up to vote April :)

Don't feel obliged to answer but will you be paid from today?. I presume the gardening leave was for your old contract, I know its only a couple of weeks but still that would be a little unfair if not imo.
 
I have been working from home since Monday and was on leave for a week and a half before that. I can easily carry out the role from home but I do need to go on site to discuss works. Which at the moment is on hold, so I'm preparing a lot of the work from home thus when I do return which I hope will be June or July I will be very busy like most people.
 
Johnson is is saying we might be able to lick the worst of this in 12 weeks but I doubt it.
We're relying on you under 50s to get infected and laugh it off.

If the continental isolation measures are shown to work, it's feasible a 'burnout' stratedgy could be employed. The caveat is that it needs to avoid a 2nd or further infection spike. CMO has stated they need to see things through to when a vaccine becomes available.

We'll know once a decent amount of testing has been done what the background infection rate is and that might guide future attack vectors.
 
Loads have started home working at my offices and for some of them I can't say I've noticed they are not there!!
 
I've been working from home for over a year now, but the isolation of NEVER visiting one of our sites or attending customer meetings etc. is going to be pretty hard. We're closing our London office at the end of the month and had planned to replace it, but that's now on hold until June at the earliest. One of my team went to see her folks in Denmark for a few days and is now basically stuck there. She wouldn't mind, but she took very little clothing with her and left quite a bit of food in the fridge!

We're fortunate in having enough space at home to be able to spread out and have room for the kids to work, my wife to run her (now online) music school and me to keep my home office. As a work team, we have setup up "banter" groups to keep in touch socially as well as for business reasons and it's deemed perfectly acceptable for the first and last part of any conference call to be quite business unrelated and a time to catch up.

I think 8-10 weeks will see a relaxation of the rules and some sort of return to normality, but home working may well remain more common once businesses realise it can actually work!!
 
Hopefully never again. Now they realise it can be done, all those expensive office buildings seem a bit pointless. Perhaps something good can come out if this terrible situation.

from a technical perspective absolutely spot on... the problem is the staff... they can be proper lazy bar stewards... :D
 
I’m pretty anxious at the moment.

I would freely admit that I am in a much better situation than most. There is no question of leave without pay and to be honest, I would welcome redundancy if that became an option.

So my anxiety is not about paying the bills but being able to fo the job.

I work in an IT consultancy, and last Friday I finished on a project that I expected to run to the end of the year at least but has been put on hold in light of the various restrictions imposed by COVID (it was to involve international travel for one). So this week I went onto the bench (which is what my employer calls available for other assignments - quite commonplace with consultancy companies). I expected to be on there for some time, even in good times you can get stuck on the bench for weeks.

But they have found an assignment and this is why I am anxious. It is not a very good fit of my experience and expertise but it is quite common in consultancy to get someone in so they can invoice. In this situation I would normally be a little anxious, but have some comfort that I would be going into an office, working with a team, having face to face meetings. But but of the situation everything is going to be done remotely which is making me feel very uncomfortable given that I am new and unfamiliar with the project and team and din’t even have relevant experience and expertise to bring to the table.

Not looking forward to Monday, when I start, at all.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
The answer to the question has to be - only when testing, for both the virus and antibodies, is rolled out on an industrial scale.

I.e. until people can easily (and quickly) find out that that have had/don't have the virus, they can't return.
 
We have been made to work from home from Monday onwards. I am in Northern Ireland and my company is all ready working off the assumption that we 4 weeks ahead of where we actually are.

They have ordered laptops for those that need them in order to work from home. The crisis management has been brillant thus far.

I am hoping that we are back in the office as soon as. I have never been fond of my home being used as work as I like to seperate the work/home life and leave any issues at the office when I leave and pick them up when I return.

I voted September which is probably going to be longer but fingers crossed
 
As long as it takes? The NHS needs as much help as possible. Working from home is a minor inconvenience and an option not possible for others required to travel to keep their jobs and pay the bills
 
Think the question should how many of you really need to work in an office or use public transport at the moment?
 
I have an IT job for a massive media UK company... did a trial WFH day on Monday (WFH was done by most in office 1-2 days a week) then Tuesday onwards we were told to WFH if you can. As of Friday it was changed you must WFH. Then COB Friday normal office is completely shut until further notice.

I am not too bothered about being isolated as we can still go outside & during the work we use Skype & Teams to have a laugh and talk bollocks. My wife is also WFH so I have company from her.

after work, I have an Xbox I play regular so get some chat with other players but last few days chats & party function has been a bit flaky probably either a technical issue or the volume of users has increased with everyone isolating.

however home working for 3 months or longer does make me worry. I am happy in my own company, I have my wife, but also know I enjoy being in office go talk bollocks with work mates.

but I am lucky, I worry more for people who are self employed & work in the industries that have been advised to shut. My thoughts & hopes for a speedy turn around lie with them.
 
No idea. That option is missing.

I've been working from home for a week now. I have popped into work 'off peak' to do some stuff I can't do from home. As my job is Web based I can do the majority of it pretty much anywhere.

Personally, I'd like to get back within a month or two (at the latest).
 
Seems to me there's lots of people can work from home.
Not sure why it's not done anyway and have a nice a week check in.
 
Seems to me there's lots of people can work from home.
Not sure why it's not done anyway and have a nice a week check in.

I would say the issue with working from home is discipline. When you are at home with all your worldly comforts there are a lot of distractions.

I do at times find it hard to focus and that is why I like the act of going to an office, it keeps you focused as well as giving you the support of having your team in person close by to bounce ideas and issues of.
 
I work for a small/medium sized IT company out of one of their two Northern offices, my local one is very close to home. As of Friday all non-essential workers are now WFH. VPN's updated with 2FA/MFA and Teams are the plan

Not only did we have to invoke our own company business continuity plans but also assist our client base, some go whom rapidly understood the necessity of a BC/DR plan (despite me advising them of such for a couple of years).

I deal with Law Firms, large well known corporates amongst others and their attitudes have changed dramatically in the last 72 hours.

Thanks
 
2 weeks ago my department was split in 2, across 2 different sites, to enable functions to continue should someone catch it. On Tuesday we did an unannounced 'for some' work from home day, and we have not been back since,
By the end of the week I expect to be on a minimum 2 months unpaid leave. If I am not back at work in June, that means July is also fudgeed and I have no idea what that future looks like if that happens
 
Back at work tomorrow. 3 days at work. 2 at home currently. Staggered shifts at work so not many in the building at once.

See if that changes this week...
 

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