And yet....
.... one of our outsourcers has guaranteed for years and years that all staff could work from home if the city their office was based in flooded or something else happened. As soon as the pandemic kicked in it transpired that only 1 in 10 of their employees was telling the truth.
It wasn't within my authority to audit their claim and I will admit it would be very expensive and difficult to audit unless you provided the equipment and training and tested it regularly. Which is why I'm thankful I in-sourced the critical parts of my division as soon as I could. The whole outsourcing model is in jeopardy now that remote working works as its just as easy to hire in Leeds, China or India directly unless volume is your specific concern, which massively undercuts the day rates charged by the big body shops.
Return to work is easy, if you have an office job. When there is a vaccine or a treatment that stops C-19 killing people, then I'll ask my teams to come back to the office. Until then they work from home. My devs are other peoples kids and we owe them a duty of care - how would you want your child treating in a pandemic?
