BBC article on season ticket prices

[hayfield]

2 hours ago, mdvle said:

 

And part of what the company sacrificed was the pool of available talent when hiring - one of the "benefits" of London (or any larger city) is being a reasonably centralised place to get to by employees.  Being located on the suburbs inherently means while those in the immediate area benefit from an easier commute, the 80% not in the immediate area will now struggle to take public transit to the new location - as for example most of the rail services go in towards the centre of the city.

 

 

Time will tell what changes from Covid become permanent, and what revert back to pre-Covid.

 

One disadvantage some employees will discover from work from home is the networking opportunities and other in person contacts, which can often be beneficial in climbing the corporate ladder or taking advantage of lateral moves within a company - or even learning about better opportunities elsewhere through word of mouth among fellow commuters or lunch companions.

 

And then there is the matter of employers tracking what their employees are doing, and the articles over the last couple of months about companies approaching various suppliers about ways to better "control" their employees who are working from home, to monitor their employees, etc. which may make some prefer a return to the office.

 

So far from the truth, less than 10% stayed in central London where their business contacts/customers were. Over 90% travelled into West End offices only then to travel to visit customers/contacts

 

The benefit to the company was in being able to offer much better office facilities at a far lower cost.

 

The benefit to the employees was to have an office close to home where they could then go out and see their customers. Every single person won, most who needed to be in the city stayed,  space was available to who worked from outer London and needed a room for meetings, there was a bit of resistance first from some which soon vanished as the benefits became apparent. The business as a whole benefited. 10 plus years on the business model altered and those who could were encouraged to work from home, I took advantage of this only going into the main office when necessary. 

 

My son in law changed this year from commuting everyday into the city, to working from home and only going into the main office when necessary. He spent quite a bit on fitting a bedroom out but is reaping the reward both in time and money 

[mdvle]

11 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

So far from the truth, less than 10% stayed in central London where their business contacts/customers were. Over 90% travelled into West End offices only then to travel to visit customers/contacts

 

The benefit to the company was in being able to offer much better office facilities at a far lower cost.

 

The benefit to the employees was to have an office close to home

 

Which only works if all of the employees happen to live in the same area of outside of London that the company has moved to.

 

To use an example using random locations from looking at a map of London, if the company moves out to Woking or Guildford that works great for anyone who happens to live in those areas - or who can move to those areas (because a spouse/partner doesn't require a different location).

 

On the other hand if you lived in Harlow or Stevenage and commuted into London and your office moved to Woking you are screwed.

 

 

Quote

vanished as the benefits became apparent. The business as a whole benefited.

 

To a point.  Again using the random place names, that hypothetical business that moved to Woking has now restricted it's talent pool for future employees to those who live around Woking - anyone living in Chelmsford, Luton, etc. are excluded by the limitations of either the roads or public transit from applying.

 

Now it may be that limitation doesn't matter for a given business - but for many companies the ability to hire from anywhere around London is a competitive advantage (and the flip, for many employees the greater selection of jobs in centralish London means more opportunities - at the cost of commuting.

 

Quote

My son in law changed this year from commuting everyday into the city, to working from home and only going into the main office when necessary. He spent quite a bit on fitting a bedroom out but is reaping the reward both in time and money 

 

Congratulation to him, it must be nice to have the money to afford a place to live that has a spare room that can be devoted to a home office - most people don't have that financial luxury.

Edited December 18, 2020 by mdvle

[Phil Parker]

4 minutes ago, mdvle said:

Congratulation to him, it must be nice to have the money to afford a place to live that has a spare room that can be devoted to a home office - most people don't have that financial luxury.

 

This the truth people don't mention about working from home. Long term you can't balance a laptop on the kitchen table. You need an office. Essentially, your employer transfers the cost of office space and equipment to the employee. That might be cheaper than commuting but that's not always going to be the case. 

[keefer]

Home-working isn't just about having the actual space to work in, it is vital to enable the physical/psychological separation of home & work. By all accounts this has to be done for the good physical & mental health of the worker. Even having a separate room is no guarantee, especially if the worker has a partner/children in the house when they are trying to work.

Some people have enjoyed the chance to work from home but equally, there are many others who struggle to manage the home/work balance - home should be home and work is work, they should be separate.

Long-term, things like a properly adjustable chair, desk at the right height with enough room for all eqpt etc. are vital to avoid back problems/eye strain/RSI.

Another thing i heard mentioned recently is that people may have to start reviewing their Home Insurance documents, as most normal policies do not cover the home being a place of work.

Edited December 18, 2020 by keefer

[pete_mcfarlane]

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

This the truth people don't mention about working from home. Long term you can't balance a laptop on the kitchen table. You need an office. 

It is worrying seeing on conference calls how many people still seem to be working from their sofas, or stuck in the conservatory with a coat on. 

 

 

[DCB]

6 hours ago, keefer said:

Home-working isn't just about having the actual space to work in, it is vital to enable the physical/psychological separation of home & work. By all accounts this has to be done for the good physical & mental health of the worker.

The separation of home and work can be important, but the shortening of the time away from home is surely more beneficial?  Where you can turn up for work at nine a millisecond after leaving home, coffee in hand , instead of leaving before 8 (or 7 or 6.30) for an hour travelling by foot/bus/car/ train to work arriving tired and wet at the office before grabbing a sandwich at lunch time and repeating the whole commute to get home at 6/7/8pm.  Its just madness. 

The only downside about home working is loss of time interacting with your friends/ workmates, But  a one hour each way daily commute is quite ridiculous.  Much better to have a home office with a railway around it at high level, so you can run a train when you need a break?.    Then all you need is a pub or Mosque to meet your mates on a Friday/ Saturday?

Obviously some high flyers need a five course business meeting with fancy fish eggs and sparkling plonk (totally different to a social meeting with fancy fish eggs and sparkling plonk which MPs etc obviously don't atend)

[Phil Parker]

It's fine as long as you are very disciplined. Working from home you can always be available, always nip onto the laptop to deal with an email. Eventually, work becomes a permanent state and you never really leave it, something many bosses and customers are very happy with. 

[Talltim]

25 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

It's fine as long as you are very disciplined. Working from home you can always be available, always nip onto the laptop to deal with an email. Eventually, work becomes a permanent state and you never really leave it, something many bosses and customers are very happy with. 

I thought your post was going to be about being disciplined to actually do any work when at home!

[DaveF]

 

I think the benefits or otherwise of working at home depend on the type of work.

 

I was in the fortunate position of being able to retire in my 50s and then worked part time at home for the same organisation for a further eight years.

 

The work was mainly to do with IT, setting up reports for others to use, sorting out software glitches and doing some rather specialised bits and pieces. I also did a lot of the long term planning involving budgets and staffing.

 

I went into the office now and then.  Most importantly there was an understanding that I would do the work at times of my choosing as long as I met deadlines.  That included responding to phone calls and e mails.

 

So I enjoyed that.

 

I am less sure about wanting to work from home if I was doing a call centre job (or any other job) with fixed hours and lots of targets.

 

David

[woodenhead]

29 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

It's fine as long as you are very disciplined. Working from home you can always be available, always nip onto the laptop to deal with an email. Eventually, work becomes a permanent state and you never really leave it, something many bosses and customers are very happy with. 

hmm yourself and @AY Mod moderating this site.....

[woodenhead]

11 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

It is worrying seeing on conference calls how many people still seem to be working from their sofas, or stuck in the conservatory with a coat on. 

 

 

And that is the crux of WFM - having the facilities to do so.   You cannot work from the kitchen forever.

 

I am lucky, the house I bought had space - my original railway room was the fourth bedroom/study on the ground floor after trying the kitchen in 2012 and realising it was never going to work.  The only problem with the ground floor office was I could't leave the window open all the time and bugs/bees would come in all the time due to the proximity to plants.  In 2019 I moved to the second floor when one of the kids left home permanently, this is my new railway room/office - nice big desk, sunlight, space for all my railway stuff and I can leave a window open when I am not in the room.

 

Before Covid I used to make the odd commute either to the local office or towards the centre of Manchester, I'd forgotten how awful it was.  Even long distance travel was usually done outside of peak - to save money mainly as we were encouraged to do so, but I would often arrange to arrive for a site visit the evening before so I could saunter into the office just after 9am the following morning, do my meetings then get out in time for a late afternoon return north on off peak fares.

 

One of the services my company provides requires people who work from 5pm through to 9am (on shifts) so it means some staff going to work or returning from work in the wee hours.  We had a secure car park, but it's still never the best to have to be on the roads during the night so for those staff working from home home now is great.  During lockdowns we have maintained offices open for those staff who really couldn't work from home be that a mental health or practical reason.  The company has no desire to force people back into the office once this is all over, there are clearly cost benefits, both for the employer and employee, but if you've a happier workforce from the flexibility it brings then why would you not choose to keep working from home where the circumstances are suitable.  Mrs Woodenhead works in the NHS, the office they worked from was awful, a lack of desks, cupboard space, awful aircon which used to leak strange materials at times and just not a nice place to work from, when Lockdown came we moved my original office desk into an empty corner of the lounge, got her set up with a couple of screens and a space for her laptop - she's been happy as a pig in muck, she just leaves home to go to schools now, all her work meetings are online.  She also gave up the gym, it was no longer working for her and she's realised the garage is great for the more energetic workouts and she can do the other stuff in the lounge with stuff streamed via the TV, she's taken up running again and the only thing she misses is the steam room and sauna.

 

Over the past couple of weeks I have been very busy with much longer hours but working from home I could break to shop, to cook and speak to Mrs Woodenhead.  If I was working late, I would stop, have tea, watch a bit of TV and then get back to work, it allowed me to take a couple of hours out one morning and drive up to Arcadia in Shaw to buy a loco in the middle of the day.

 

 

[hayfield]

13 hours ago, mdvle said:

 

Which only works if all of the employees happen to live in the same area of outside of London that the company has moved to.

 

To use an example using random locations from looking at a map of London, if the company moves out to Woking or Guildford that works great for anyone who happens to live in those areas - or who can move to those areas (because a spouse/partner doesn't require a different location).

 

On the other hand if you lived in Harlow or Stevenage and commuted into London and your office moved to Woking you are screwed.

 

 

 

To a point.  Again using the random place names, that hypothetical business that moved to Woking has now restricted it's talent pool for future employees to those who live around Woking - anyone living in Chelmsford, Luton, etc. are excluded by the limitations of either the roads or public transit from applying.

 

Now it may be that limitation doesn't matter for a given business - but for many companies the ability to hire from anywhere around London is a competitive advantage (and the flip, for many employees the greater selection of jobs in centralish London means more opportunities - at the cost of commuting.

 

 

Congratulation to him, it must be nice to have the money to afford a place to live that has a spare room that can be devoted to a home office - most people don't have that financial luxury.

 

We had 10 plus offices in central London and probably more in number in the suburbs, 2 offices remained and a series of larger offices were set up close and around the M25, those remaining in the central London offices were relocated there, everyone else was offered a place at their neared office to where they lived, or of their choice. (North West London we had 4 close to each other, but eventually merged into 2)

 

Very beneficial to all, except the managers, some got some better salesmen others lost some good ones. 

[phil-b259]

25 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

We had 10 plus offices in central London and probably more in number in the suburbs, 2 offices remained and a series of larger offices were set up close and around the M25, those remaining in the central London offices were relocated there, everyone else was offered a place at their neared office to where they lived, or of their choice. (North West London we had 4 close to each other, but eventually merged into 2)

 

Very beneficial to all, except the managers, some got some better salesmen others lost some good ones. 

 

Which is not very good environmentally speaking as it encourages car based commuting. Londons rail lines are radial and having a central London office makes it easier for people from many directions to use public transport. If you change that and set up an office in Hatfield say the folk living on the Chiltern, WCML, MML and West Anglia rail lines are going to be forced to switch to using their cars to get to work.

[62613]

Working from home was the norm 200 years ago. It's only since some people realised that the way to maximise profits and rewards for themselves was by concentrating the work to be done in one place, that travelling to work has become a thing.

[woodenhead]

7 minutes ago, 62613 said:

Working from home was the norm 200 years ago. It's only since some people realised that the way to maximise profits and rewards for themselves was by concentrating the work to be done in one place, that travelling to work has become a thing.

Bl**dy industrialisation, but for that we wouldn't have model trains to keep us entertained though.

[PenrithBeacon]

8 minutes ago, 62613 said:

Working from home was the norm 200 years ago. It's only since some people realised that the way to maximise profits and rewards for themselves was by concentrating the work to be done in one place, that travelling to work has become a thing.

True, but it's also true that the entire family was engaged in the work and therefore children didn't have a childhood. 

[hayfield]

50 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Which is not very good environmentally speaking as it encourages car based commuting. Londons rail lines are radial and having a central London office makes it easier for people from many directions to use public transport. If you change that and set up an office in Hatfield say the folk living on the Chiltern, WCML, MML and West Anglia rail lines are going to be forced to switch to using their cars to get to work.

 

In my personal case I both commuted into London after driving to the station, which as it happens was as far away as the office or drove to Regents Park then took a bus. My boss had a roof car park space just off Oxford Street, great fun using the car lift, but not very environmental. Not everyone lives near a commuter station.  

 

As it happens much to everyone's surprise it worked out very well. and for the odd occasion we could book out a central meeting room/office. Which in the end became redundant 

 

My son in law now works from home, an unused bedroom is fitted out as his office and he is more productive and time rich

 

My granddaughter and her fiancée, both work from home even though their offices are close by, their employers both deem it too dangerous to work in the normal office for all employees, both have opted to work from home in a tiny flat 

[hayfield]

51 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

True, but it's also true that the entire family was engaged in the work and therefore children didn't have a childhood. 

 

Still the norm in many third world countries

[SouthernBlue80s]

Most people I have spoken to are glad not to be commuting but their hours have increased. In effect their commuting time has turned into work time plus some.

 

One person said, working from home and then pondered .....perhaps it is living at work.

 

Living at work, working from home, living at work, working from home, I feel will suit many but will also increase mental health issues in many as well.

 

My 2p s worth on it all.

 

 

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Which is not very good environmentally speaking as it encourages car based commuting. Londons rail lines are radial and having a central London office makes it easier for people from many directions to use public transport. If you change that and set up an office in Hatfield say the folk living on the Chiltern, WCML, MML and West Anglia rail lines are going to be forced to switch to using their cars to get to work.

 

Which is what happened to me, when NR moved my workplace from (nearly) the centre of Glasgow to Springburn, only a matter of 4 or 5 miles but the shift patterns and train times resulted in me using a car two-thirds of the time, instead of occasionally; And I had to lease another car too ! And, unlike some, I actually enjoyed the commute; The walk to my local station, and from Glasgow Central to my work, provided my daily exercise, and I used the time on the train to read and/or listen to music. To be fair however, the train journey was only 30 minutes, and as I have safeguarded staff status, free !

 

As mentioned before, my son is working from home, which he loves as it saves the time and expense of commuting, however it means the top floor of the house, plus my railway-containing attic, is out of bounds when he is on shift. This has been going on for 9 months now and as the house/'his' office owner, plus electric etc bill payer, I am getting increasingly fed up with it. And my wife got him a new desk and chair to make his work time more comfortable - At our expense ! This cannot go on forever. 

 

[woodenhead]

15 minutes ago, caradoc said:

As mentioned before, my son is working from home, which he loves as it saves the time and expense of commuting, however it means the top floor of the house, plus my railway-containing attic, is out of bounds when he is on shift. This has been going on for 9 months now and as the house/'his' office owner, plus electric etc bill payer, I am getting increasingly fed up with it. And my wife got him a new desk and chair to make his work time more comfortable - At our expense ! This cannot go on forever. 

 

There is the issue of GDPR so people need to be segregated from others if the work they do is sensitive - works great for us as we have rooms on different floors that are our personal space too.  But I can see how it would be an issue when you've effectively lost personal space, you also need to put up his rent to cover the cost of the bills and he then needs to address this with his employer or with the taxman as there are allowances.

[mdvle]

12 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

The separation of home and work can be important, but the shortening of the time away from home is surely more beneficial?  Where you can turn up for work at nine a millisecond after leaving home, coffee in hand , instead of leaving before 8 (or 7 or 6.30) for an hour travelling by foot/bus/car/ train to work arriving tired and wet at the office before grabbing a sandwich at lunch time and repeating the whole commute to get home at 6/7/8pm.  Its just madness.

 

Except experience/studies are showing that in a lot of cases that former commute time (and often more) isn't spent as personal time but rather dedicated to the job - starting earlier/ending later - because the employee feels a need to prove that they aren't slacking off.

 

As well for many there is a much needed mental shift that the commute provides, shifting from personal life to work and then back again - going to a dedicated room only provides this partially, and going to the kitchen table doesn't provide it at all.

 

12 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

The only downside about home working is loss of time interacting with your friends/ workmates, But  a one hour each way daily commute is quite ridiculous.  Much better to have a home office with a railway around it at high level, so you can run a train when you need a break?.

 

Not saying the commute is always pleasant, but it is (for those who put in a small effort) an opportunity - whether it is coming up with a regular group on the train/bus to socialize with or reading a book, listening to music or a podcast, or reading RMweb.

 

Or, put another way, it doesn't have to be entirely wasted time unless that is what one wants.

[mdvle]

6 hours ago, hayfield said:

We had 10 plus offices in central London and probably more in number in the suburbs, 2 offices remained and a series of larger offices were set up close and around the M25, those remaining in the central London offices were relocated there, everyone else was offered a place at their neared office to where they lived, or of their choice. (North West London we had 4 close to each other, but eventually merged into 2)

 

And you have conveniently blown up your entire argument.

 

Because your employer wasn't located in central London, they were scattered all over the place both in central London and around central London.

 

And yes, a company running (by your own estimate) 20+ offices around London is going to find efficiencies in downsizing their real estate.

 

And despite your initial claim this wasn't a move to 1 suburban office, but you now say the company has maintained a number of offices around London, thus avoiding the commute issue.

 

Great that it works for your company, and whatever business it is in.

 

But most companies don't have offices scattered all over the city, they tend to be in one location.

 

[corneliuslundie]

One thing I do not seem to have seen mentioned is the employer's position on health and safety at the workplace if it is your home. If you have an accident in your home office what will your employer's insurance company's take be?

Jonathan

[pete_mcfarlane]

2 hours ago, mdvle said:

 

Except experience/studies are showing that in a lot of cases that former commute time (and often more) isn't spent as personal time but rather dedicated to the job - starting earlier/ending later - because the employee feels a need to prove that they aren't slacking off.

I wonder if some of those people were working on the train  before lockdown and so need to still do that extra work? 

 

The problem of course with working 120% all of the time is that it becomes the normal, and one day your department fails an audit or wins a big contract, and senior management ask if people can work a little bit harder for a while to get over the hump. So you end up working 120% of the 120% you were already doing. 

Edited December 19, 2020 by pete_mcfarlane