When will this shit end?

[Ozanne]

12 minutes ago, phimill said:

When does the "work from home if you can" order stop? I havent seen it outlined properly. I told my boss it was the 21/6 (he doesn't keep an eye on the news - so at least i can have as long as possible WFH until they try to bring us back!)

I think it’s June 21st. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

3 minutes ago, Henrik said:

wut?

A small minority of office workers want to return 5 days a week and an equally small minority want to WFH full time.

 

The vast, vast majority of people want that flexibility to visit the office 1-2 times a week while mainly working at home. 

[zahidf]

[stuie]

16 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

That’s exactly it, give people the option. Nationwide have done that this week, their plans seems ideal to be honest. 

Some companies have gone too far - Saga has permanently closed a 600 person call centre by me in Ramsgate. All staff to work from home - no choices!  Their nearest office for breakouts, meetings etc is 30 miles away. As we open up again, they will lose a lot of people. 

[jparx]

37 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Japan might be ok by late summer/autumn too, apparently they are going to start mass vaccinations in April. My missus is Japanese and wants to get over there sometime, probably in the autumn.  Cases/deaths from covid have never really got that high in Japan, nothing like we've seen in Europe.

Hope you’re right dude! I’ve pretty much ruled it out given how strict they have been with their boarders and the fear around variants which I see a lot on the Japanese news sites, but fingers crossed!

[incident]

PHE have updated their Excess Mortality numbers for England with this weeks breakdown by age group. The short version is - they continue to show that the groups more likely to be vaccinated have gone from having far more to far fewer excess deaths, with the effect starting to be seen about 3-4 weeks after vaccination:

[JoeyT]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

A small minority of office workers want to return 5 days a week and an equally small minority want to WFH full time.

The vast, vast majority of people want that flexibility to visit the office 1-2 times a week while mainly working at home. 

The issue you have with people working flexibly is with kit / equipment. 

This raises a problem because many offices will be decked out with PCs rather than laptops so of course aren't ideal to move multiple times a week between office and home.

Therefore this then puts companies in a position of either writing off £1000s of pounds worth of kit in order to purchase laptops which isn't great in the current economic climate or requiring staff to purchase their own equipment to work from home.

Equipment is also broad in the sense of it not being great for posture etc. to be sat at a kitchen table on a kitchen chair for instance so do companies then also have to supply all of this kit as well?

Many people don't have the space required to have a desk, computer chair, specific work space etc. either. 

 

[Ozanne]

8 minutes ago, stuie said:

Some companies have gone too far - Saga has permanently closed a 600 person call centre by me in Ramsgate. All staff to work from home - no choices!  Their nearest office for breakouts, meetings etc is 30 miles away. As we open up again, they will lose a lot of people. 

That does seem too far to be fair, unless they asked their staff and everyone wanted to WFH which seems unlikely. It’s about choice isn’t it ultimately. 
 

If a worker wants to stay WFH but come into the office say once a month then that should be an option as should the choice on either side of that scale too. 

Edited March 26, 2021 by Ozanne

[Huckleberry Finn]

On topic, off topic I’m not sure but Mrs Finn (late 30s, minor health concerns) and MIL (late 60s, no UHC) are getting their second jabs today just six weeks on after their surgery reported “excess supply”. Based in Berkshire.

[parsonjack]

3 hours ago, JoeyT said:

If you fancy a holiday but Europe is off the cards you can just think Phuket and go here instead.

 

Subject to achieving herd immunity by giving just under 1 million vaccinations to 70% of the local population by end of June - 2 doses each to 467,000 people.  

[incident]

Just now, Huckleberry Finn said:

On topic, off topic I’m not sure but Mrs Finn (late 30s, minor health concerns) and MIL (late 60s, no UHC) are getting their second jabs today just six weeks on after their surgery reported “excess supply”. Based in Berkshire.

Is that Pfizer, or AZ?

If it's AZ, I'd personally say no just because there's clear data that an increased (ie 10-12 week) window improves efficacy. Pfizer it doesn't seem to matter as much.

[Huckleberry Finn]

18 minutes ago, incident said:

Is that Pfizer, or AZ?

If it's AZ, I'd personally say no just because there's clear data that an increased (ie 10-12 week) window improves efficacy. Pfizer it doesn't seem to matter as much.

Yeah it is Pfizer (have the mixing trials shown any results yet?). The booking system certainly acknowledged the date of the first jab so I was content that the offer was fine.

Not sure how rare that is, but interesting given the supply issues and continued efforts to contact the 1-9 group for just their first.

[Fuzzy Afro]

25 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

The issue you have with people working flexibly is with kit / equipment. 

This raises a problem because many offices will be decked out with PCs rather than laptops so of course aren't ideal to move multiple times a week between office and home.

Therefore this then puts companies in a position of either writing off £1000s of pounds worth of kit in order to purchase laptops which isn't great in the current economic climate or requiring staff to purchase their own equipment to work from home.

Equipment is also broad in the sense of it not being great for posture etc. to be sat at a kitchen table on a kitchen chair for instance so do companies then also have to supply all of this kit as well?

Many people don't have the space required to have a desk, computer chair, specific work space etc. either. 

 

This is a pretty minor reason not to get with the times, IMO.

 

Tbh most companies should have been running at 70%-80% capacity before the pandemic so as not to be inefficiently wasting space. On any given day you’ll have 10% of people on annual leave, 10%-20% WFH, some unfilled vacancies, sick leave etc. It’s very unlikely that more than 80% of your employees would be attending the office on a given day so it’s silly to have a desk for everyone. If you do have a particularly low level of absence (say it’s a busy month and no one is taking holiday) then just have a rotating schedule of WFH to free up desks. This approach mandates laptops and docking stations rather than PCs. 

[DeanoL]

18 hours ago, JoeyT said:

Pretty sure that's called normality not social distancing?!

Speak to your female friends! The men leaning in far to close to talk to a female stranger in a pub, the guys "just squeezing past" which for some reason involves putting their hand on the waist of your mate, or worse when they've had a few drinks. 

Ironically women have been shouting about this stuff for years and been ignored but they might finally get listened to now because of social distancing.

17 hours ago, Barry Fish said:

I do find it funny how one side of the split on this thread are so brittle they have to reach for the block button because they can't handle seeing the other side of the debate 🙂 

Its kind of pathetic 😄 

Maybe. It's not half as pathetic as someone using their own dead family to win a debate on an internet forum though is it?

[Fuzzy Afro]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Speak to your female friends! The men leaning in far to close to talk to a female stranger in a pub, the guys "just squeezing past" which for some reason involves putting their hand on the waist of your mate, or worse when they've had a few drinks. 

Ironically women have been shouting about this stuff for years and been ignored but they might finally get listened to now because of social distancing.

Maybe. It's not half as pathetic as someone using their own dead family to win a debate on an internet forum though is it?

 

This is another issue in itself and something we need to talk about, but the distance needed to respect someone's personal space and not sexually harass them is a lot smaller than "social distancing" of 2m/1m+

[eFestivals]

53 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

A small minority of office workers want to return 5 days a week and an equally small minority want to WFH full time.

 

The vast, vast majority of people want that flexibility to visit the office 1-2 times a week while mainly working at home. 

By now most business shouldknow how wfh has affected productivity and profits

Edited March 26, 2021 by eFestivals

[philipsteak]

16 minutes ago, Huckleberry Finn said:

Yeah it is Pfizer (have the mixing trials shown any results yet?). The booking system certainly acknowledged the date of the first jab so I was content that the offer was fine.

Not sure how rare that is, but interesting given the supply issues and continued efforts to contact the 1-9 group for just their first.

My mum got her second jab yesterday, 5ish weeks after her first. Pfizer

[Avalon_Fields]

With extended government emergency powers until September, despite the vast majority of the vulnerable population well on the way to a high degree of safety, I'm increasingly thinking the answer to this thread's original question is when public opinion shifts from meekly accepting any and all restrictions on life to questioning the need for this in a balanced way, we're not there yet but it will come.

[Ozanne]

10 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

By now most business shouldknow how wfh has affected productivity and profits

My team had sorted out laptops and home working 2 years before the pandemic as we needed a contingency plan if the office wasn’t usable. So we were all set to go when the pandemic really took effect. 

[DeanoL]

5 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

 

This is another issue in itself and something we need to talk about, but the distance needed to respect someone's personal space and not sexually harass them is a lot smaller than "social distancing" of 2m/1m+

Yeah but that's just the current rule. It'll still be social distancing if its 0.5m. Or even if it's just "as far away as is reasonable in the circumstances".  Like I said, I've convinced it's not going to just be "1m away from people" or "you can't hug anyone". It's just going to be guidance around awareness of distance. 

It's interesting the things he said they thought would still be in place actually: handwashing, masks, social distancing. Do they ring a bell at all. Remember at the very start: "hands, face, space". We were told with Johnson's first announcement to start social distancing. Not in any proscribed way, just being aware of your space.

It's not just sexual harassment in pubs, that was just an example of somewhere where people get closer to strangers than necessary. The other big one is shaking hands in business meetings - it's not necessary, we can just stop doing that. 

Other than that it's tiny things: if you're passing someone in a shop, and there's plenty of space, and they're on one side, you walk down the other side of the aisle. You don't just walk down the middle of the aisle because it's the straightest line to the ice-cream section. You take half a second to allow as much space as possible. It's just tiny little bits of awareness that all falls under the concept of "social distancing" and it's not new as it was literally government policy for the first week of the pandemic.

[eFestivals]

1 minute ago, Ozanne said:

My team had sorted out laptops and home working 2 years before the pandemic as we needed a contingency plan if the office wasn’t usable. So we were all set to go when the pandemic really took effect. 

If company profits have held up then xompanies won't be too bothered about people continuing to work from home. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Yeah but that's just the current rule. It'll still be social distancing if its 0.5m. Or even if it's just "as far away as is reasonable in the circumstances".  Like I said, I've convinced it's not going to just be "1m away from people" or "you can't hug anyone". It's just going to be guidance around awareness of distance. 

It's interesting the things he said they thought would still be in place actually: handwashing, masks, social distancing. Do they ring a bell at all. Remember at the very start: "hands, face, space". We were told with Johnson's first announcement to start social distancing. Not in any proscribed way, just being aware of your space.

It's not just sexual harassment in pubs, that was just an example of somewhere where people get closer to strangers than necessary. The other big one is shaking hands in business meetings - it's not necessary, we can just stop doing that. 

Other than that it's tiny things: if you're passing someone in a shop, and there's plenty of space, and they're on one side, you walk down the other side of the aisle. You don't just walk down the middle of the aisle because it's the straightest line to the ice-cream section. You take half a second to allow as much space as possible. It's just tiny little bits of awareness that all falls under the concept of "social distancing" and it's not new as it was literally government policy for the first week of the pandemic.

 

"Hands, Face, Space" wasn't brought in until the summer (Face coverings were advised against initially)

I'd like to see hand shaking make a come back post June. In a business meeting, it's a warm method of greeting someone and letting them know they can trust you. Most people who suggest otherwise I'm guessing don't attend many business meetings.

[aj6658]

1 hour ago, Hannibal Schmitt said:

Someone in this thread asked about Oktoberfest in Munich some time ago, seems unlikely to happen now. Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD): "One can be very skeptical." The decision should be made by May at the latest, said Reiter. "But I wouldn't place any bets on an Oktoberfest in 2021." The Oktoberfest was canceled last year due to the corona pandemic.

Yeah that was me who was keen to go. Well that sucks but probs for the best.

[DeanoL]

 

29 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

By now most business shouldknow how wfh has affected productivity and profits

It's not quite that simple. Plenty of places are planning to move to a "hybrid" model but I think they're massively underestimating the impacts of that. Having a model where some people are in the office and some are at home is absolutely not the same as having everyone at home.

We used to have a hybrid system and frankly it's been loads easier since we've moved to full time WFH .

[Boilingtent]

28 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

If company profits have held up then xompanies won't be too bothered about people continuing to work from home. 

The main thing I am hearing is skepticism of working from home for one year vs. working from home for 5 years +.

Training being one factor. Several graduates at my work have told me they are finding it almost impossible to learn efficiently.

Also concerns of genral moral and motivaiton when not seeing your coworkers on at least a semi regular basis.

I've worked from home for one year and a 20/80 home/office ratio sounds ideal to me. Id take 100% in the office over 100% at home. That said I cycle 20 mins to work and have no kids to look after.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Boilingtent