To be, or not to be, in the office. Has returning to work stalled? Readers have been up in arms this week about a study by Stanford boffins suggesting that the return to the office trend is stalling, as workers rebel against demands that they take up the commute again. The analysis covers a topic that many in the tech industry (those of us blessed with jobs that can be done remotely at least …
There are also security concerns about more staff being remote, although earlier predictions of a criminals' field day appear not to have borne fruit.
Bogeyman after bogeyman. In fact, far larger security concern are workers commuting in and out of work. It is easier for thieves the scout the stations close to offices and find victims misplacing their laptops, not paying attention to equipment or documents or napping, being absolutely knackered after the day at office, than trying to find where certain workers live and try to strike there.
WFH is far more secure, because you don't have the effect of all eggs in one basket (all workers in the office) and everything is decentralised and can be asynchronous (more productive).
This whole debate comes from the fact the landlords can't face the future of their investments in commercial property losing value.
"This whole debate comes from the fact the landlords can't face the future of their investments in commercial property losing value"
Nor can the transport services rejoice in the reduction in demand -- here in the UK the railways and bus services are already cutting back (regardless of HS2). However anyone who has been parked twice a day on the infamous M25 will recognise that commuting is a massive contributor to pollution and CO2 emissions, so it can't be justified long term.
Rail travel in most of the country is actually back up overall, but it's more spread out (includes more leisure travel) rather than being as concentrated on the peaks as it was.
None of which has stopped the government from cutting services which are already busy, of course - especially outside of London and the lines which feed into it. Only to be expected, really - if it doesn't involve London then governments tend not to give a shit about it!
Rail travel in most of the country is actually back up overall, but it's more spread out (includes more leisure travel) rather than being as concentrated on the peaks as it was.
Yes, we've been at 100% of pre-Covid levels for a while. Significant increase in long-distance leisure, only being dragged down by the massive drop in commuting around London. Sod the rest of us I suppose - as it has ever been.
Which is why a return ticket to Edinburgh costs 3x more than it should unless you take the midnight train and there's only one train every two hours out of the West Midlands. Rail is not expensive in itself, pricing is purely a function of demand management. Which is why ended up driving that trip recently - the petrol was 1/3 the cost of rail, even though I would have much rather have spent 4 hours each way reading a book instead of driving (and my trip didn't allow for arriving at midnight).
HS2 was supposed to unclog the legacy lines and provide dedicated paths to get those long distance trains about. Alas, Sunak don't care, because helicopters don't need rails.
"Nor can the transport services rejoice in the reduction in demand "
It might be a good thing for the trains. With a reduction in peak demand, the usage could be more consistent which is less expensive to operate since they don't have to build out so much capacity only to deploy it twice a day, five days a week. If at the same time large companies can break up their staff into functional groups and have remote offices spread around, that also changes transportation patterns so not everybody is traveling into London in the morning and away every evening. A bonus is staff don't have to live in very high cost of living places or spend enormous amounts of time commuting just to pursue a career in something they enjoy
"The rail ticket pricing is such that going in 2 days a week does not offer any discounts"
That should be possible to overcome if the rail operator is clever. A big ask, I know. They should offer discounts for bulk ticket purchases so if you buy 20 rides, you get a discount. Perhaps you buy a set number of credits and a peak travel time costs more credits and if you are going in the opposite direction than typical peak traffic, you get a good discount. If the rides are only good for 6 months, people might decide to use up any balance on a weekend excursion as the expiration date approaches. There could even be a way to gift those credits to somebody else under certain circumstances.
Speaking of roads... all I can say is that judging by the traffic jams I see on my commute people have returned to work. I don't think it's everyone 100% in the office every day but the traffic jams are the same as pre-COVID on some days.
I know lots of people on this forum are very much against being made to go to the office and say they'd hand their notice in if asked to but where I work that's not the case. We had a couple of people who refused to come in and they're no longer working here. Same story when I ask around amongst friends and ex-colleagues.
So, that and the traffic make it look like a lot of people are in the office at least half the week... at least in the 2 capital cities where I've been recently.
NB. This isn't a comment on what's right or wrong just on what I observe.
@elsergiovolador "WFH is far more secure"
No it is not. There are just different security concerns that have to be addressed not larger. All those security concerns of workers commuting can be addressed by not allowing documents and computers to be taken home.
Sure all those computers (eggs) are in one basket., but it's a basket that should be more secure than than an employee's home. Before lockdown my work computer was always behind the corporate fire wall as it never left the office, an office way more secure than my unalarmed home.
My company a month into lockdown closed our office, moved the data center to another office and told us that we were now permanently working from home. They did not make that decision because WFH was more secure it was simply because WFH saved them money.
Please enlighten me. How is a computer remotely connected to the corporate network via a VPN more secure than a computer that is connected from inside the corporate network?
Are you claiming that WFH is more secure than working in the office because you remote connect via a VPN?
You seem to be conflating too separate things.
The security of the connection itself is the same, but in the office, a poorly paid cleaner my be tempted by miscreants to plug in a device to one of the machines in the office.
It's far more difficult to achieve the same at someone's home. First you need to find out where worker lives and then engineer a way in to their home, map the layout, habits, figure out where they keep the device and so on. Then if they have a laptop, they will obviously see something connected to it that wasn't there before. It's a different story in the office, where someone, a visitor, may plug the device in random machine and most likely nobody will take notice or even just drop the device disguised as a thumbdrive, hoping overly bored worker will plug it in themselves.
Are you claiming that WFH is more secure than working in the office because you remote connect via a VPN?
I am claiming that WFH is more secure because of vastly smaller and costlier attack surface.
@elsergiovolador "I am claiming that WFH is more secure because of vastly smaller and costlier attack surface."
No you did not claim that. I said the WFH was not more secure there are just different security concerns to which you replied "Have you heard of VPN?" which is the connection.
As for visitors wandering around an offices stuffing devices into random machines, never heard of a reception to challenge visitors, requiring visitors to sign in and be accompanied by an employee before they can access the offices. That's how it was at my office, you had pass reception and entry to the office required you to swipe your ID card to open the door.
An office is no less secure than WFH "there are just different security concerns that have to be addressed"
Setting aside your lack of comprehension of logic...
As for visitors wandering around an offices stuffing devices into random machines, never heard of a reception to challenge visitors, requiring visitors to sign in and be accompanied by an employee before they can access the offices. That's how it was at my office, you had pass reception and entry to the office required you to swipe your ID card to open the door.
I guess you have never worked in an office. There are multiple ways to gain entry to a company. From wearing the old and trusty handyman outfit and a ladder, charming the receptionist, to simple "Oh shoot, where is my ID card, I am new here. I am Steve, you? Nice. Do you know any nice coffee place nearby *walking already in the office*" and then "Sorry! I forgot I need to send an email, nice to meet you!" and then go in opposite direction to find machines to plug into. You can also go to places where employees eat lunch and see if you can score an ID card.
These "attacks" are not quite possible at home. People have different levels of "spidey senses" when it comes to their own home and an office where they just work.
"I guess you have never worked in an office. There are multiple ways to gain entry to a company. "
Deviant Ollum did a talk where he accessed an office via an lift with access from the employee parking lot. The vestibule was open but it took an access card to call the lift. The thing with lifts is they have to comply with fire regulations and that's what they exploited. Many times and in many places there has to be a common key for fire brigades to use. Once inside past the security barriers, they were able to freely roam. I don't recall if they posed as workman, but they could have easily put on a lanyard with a facsimile of the company access card to allay people's concern about who they were and if they should be there.
@elsergiovolador "I guess you have never worked in an office. "
Wrong, I just worked in an office that took security seriously. To enter the office required you to swipe your ID card to open the office door. If a staff member turned up without their card they had to ask reception for a temporary pass card which required a managers signature before it would be issued, no exceptions.
I know this from experience, had to wait for over an hour in reception once before the Dev manager turned up to sign me in. So if a employee of almost 10 years can't blag their way in not much chance of a visitor doing it. Not saying it could not have been done but it would not have been easy.
"worked in an office that took security seriously."
If they took security seriously, they'd have turnstiles that can't be jumped over, not just a door with a badge access. Even then, there's ways in.
"I know this from experience, had to wait for over an hour in reception once before the Dev manager turned up to sign me in. So if a employee of almost 10 years can't blag their way in not much chance of a visitor doing it. "
Again, more bollocks. Just 'cos you had to wait for an hour, doesn't mean someone with professional social engineering experience couldn't easily blag their way in. (which wouldn't work in my house, as I know everyone).
And I have cameras, alarm + Kensington locks at home, because I don't relish the cost and inconvenience of not working for weeks while they sort me out a new laptop if mine gets stolen.
And I have cameras, alarm + Kensington locks at home, because I don't relish the cost and inconvenience of not working for weeks while they sort me out a new laptop if mine gets stolen.
To be fair I have one of those as well just as a protection against burglars. I have little or no faith in it though. I've never tried but it seems to me like it could be pulled out with a good yank. It'd slightly damage the case but it doesn't seem like it would stop anyone other than a casual burglar in a hurry.
If you can't get in through the front door, try the back door.
I used to work in a place with similar levels of security. The sort of place where you had to swipe in and out (no exceptions) and leave your mobile phone in a locker at reception.
There was also a side door by the smoking area (at the edge of the car park) which was usually being held open by someone going in or coming out. It was trivially easy to walk in without a card.
You would, of course, have been challenged if you weren't wearing a lanyard. You know, the sort of lanyard which you can order by the thousand from online retailers, with the word "STAFF" written on it.
This sort of security is what Bruce Schneier refers to as "security theatre"; all it accomplishes is the illusion of security.
Similarly, I bet that if someone turned up to the front desk of the place you worked, wearing workmen's clothes, with a hard hat, hi-vis and carrying a tool bag, and then made up some story about being from the building management company to inspect the roof, or some such, they'd be escorted right past the card-check, once they had signed in with a totally genuine name. That's a much easier way to break the security model than trying to attack the hardest point (looking like an authorised employee with a card and lanyard, and also looking like someone who works there without being questioned about who you are, because the receptionist has never seen you before).
"because the receptionist has never seen you before"
Receptionist? Perhaps for a larger business, but I see more and more with just a phone and a directory to reach somebody. The receptionist could be someplace else entirely and have many other duties so that they can't keep track of who people are. If they are covered by random people for breaks and lunch, that temp person may not know everybody.
A good receptionist will have a memory for faces and be strict about entry rules, so they are useful. The problem is that many companies see that position as a good place to chop heads and save money rather than find more tasks to keep them busy. In some places, reception is part of security, but the problem there is that staff isn't answering phones or doing other tasks.
>People have different levels of "spidey senses" when it comes to their own home
My wifi is wide open, no password required. I live in the country and it is necessary to enter my property to even pick up a wifi signal. Therefore anyone on my wifi is also trespassing and I can shoot them. 'Merica! In WFO they only get to provide that level of security response at places like Area 51.
Seriously though, that anecdotal statement humorously illustrates security concerns are fundamentally different between home & office. As a Reg reader, I can guarantee my home network is more secure than the corporate network. That is not the same for Susie in accounting or Bob in sales when they WFH.
Yes, a full tunnel VPN can secure a WFH endpoint the same as if it was on the office network, but backhauling all that traffic has its own issues. I think the future will continue to see more cloud based applications which do NOT require office network access. SFDC is a classic example - no need to be on the corporate network (or even a corporate device) to use the tool. In fact, most of my day-to-day productivity can be done via these types of tools without having to grant my endpoint access to the internal network infrastructure. That is inherently more secure than plugging my laptop in to the physical wire inside the physical office.
Bottom line... WFH security concerns are different then WFO. Neither is necessarily better or worse than the other. They are simply different.
" I live in the country and it is necessary to enter my property to even pick up a wifi signal. "
You better be way off the road. Back in my more naughty days, we'd use a high gain antenna and a modified wi-fi card to do our "war driving". We could be quite a distance from an open access point and not nearly as obvious.
There are multiple ways to gain entry to a company.
Or just a poorly paid worker from a cleaning agency who has a key/card to access the office out of business hours. I've worked at several companies over the years where the cleaning staff come in out of hours when no employees are around. During that time they have the freedom of the office.
Now to be clear I don't believe any of the cleaning staff I knew ever did anything nefarious but still, there's an awful lot of SMEs that have unattended outside staff wandering around on their own at various times.
Working from home is typically becoming FAR MORE secure compared to how working in the office used to be.
To deal with so many people working from home and/or using different devices, it's pushing most companies from using traditional corporate firewalls to cloud-based Firewalls/SDWAN type offerings, device fingerprinting, AI mechanisms etc..
Everything I use requires 2-factor authentication as well as the traditional security of the VPN. Annoyingly I can't even make a coffee before everything locks down. Compare that to the basic security we had on office machines 5+ years ago, with border firewalls.
I am claiming that WFH is more secure because of vastly smaller and costlier attack surface.
I would say it is a hard call, as you are trading off two very different types of attack. One is the networking aspect of how machines are secured against other machines (both inside on LAN and outside on WAN). While the trend today if for "zero trust" and similar to treat your LAN as hostile and authenticate against everything, not all businesses do that. If not, you have added risk from home with people's home routers being out of date / unpatched, etc, and other home machines potentially being infested from years of pr0n browsing, etc.
The other risk is the "evil maid" sort of physical attack, and again it is not a clear cut case. In an office or during travel there are better chances for anonymous attackers to blag there way in and have rich pickings once in, especially against machines that are not locked down because "its a secure building" or can't be for other reasons. At home that sort of attack is less likely by blagging, but of course many homes will not have the same security/alarm that a properly engineers office could have, so a skilled intruder could get in/out while folks out and not be caught.
But the bottom line is machines should be locked down (encrypted drive, secure boot, password-protected screen saver on automatic, etc), remotely backed up, and treat the LAN as hostile in any case. And if proper security applies to the machines then WFH versus office are not really that different, and arguments over stopping WFH on security are utterly bogus.
"both inside on LAN and outside on WAN"
My computers at home are hard wired. I get much better speed and can restrict the wi-fi to the two devices that I might want to have untethered via their MAC addresses. The computers are password protected and really sensitive stuff is encrypted with some hidden so it's not obvious. I'm not fooling a TLA, but good enough for somebody that needs to be in a bigger hurry. Sensitive files are also on an NAS that isn't sitting with everything else in the office.
If a business doesn't require an "always on" VPN into the corporate network (with appropriate border firewalls), then they are already insecure by default. The internet is insecure, end of.
If you are on a VPN, then all traffic through your home router is encrypted, and you are using the company's DNS. It doesn't matter if it's a honeypot access point set up by a hacker across the street, the network layer can be as insecure as you like if the transport is encrypted.
If a business doesn't require an "always on" VPN into the corporate network
Again we are looking at the difference between a properly secure machine that only works over a certificate-based VPN to the mothership (with content/end-point filtering, etc, to the ultimate WAN), and your typical machine from your typical company (or BYOD use).
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...
> Are you claiming that WFH is more secure than working in the office because you remote connect via a VPN?
How do you think branch offices etc most often connected to the corporate core? Oh wait - VPN...
> As for visitors wandering around an offices stuffing devices into random machines, never heard of a reception to challenge visitors, requiring visitors to sign in and be accompanied by an employee before they can access the offices. That's how it was at my office, you had pass reception and entry to the office required you to swipe your ID card to open the door.
You've clearly never worked late in an office. The receptionists normally go home before the cleaners come in.
"There are just different security concerns that have to be addressed not larger. All those security concerns of workers commuting can be addressed by not allowing documents and computers to be taken home."
There can be serious security issues when working from home. If the work involves state secrets or company "secret formulas", having that data accessible and able to be printed out remotely can be an issue. The same things goes for entities that handle PII. In an office environment, a company can place physical restrictions to access and people can be prevented from simply toting a laptop full of sensitive information out of the front door.
I can envision (and there likely already is) the technology that allows people to see and work on documents remotely over a secure connection that prevents them from printing, downloaded or making screen shots. It would be quite the project to use a mobile to take shots of screen after screen of PII, but if data like that were found outside of the fences, logs could show who had been given access and the pattern could be very telling even if several people are all looking at those files. It comes down to people thinking about the issue and coming up with ways to mitigate the problems. For very sensitive data, it could make sense for people to need to visit an office with stricter controls and layers of physical security.
"Before lockdown my work computer was always behind the corporate fire wall as it never left the office, an office way more secure than my unalarmed home"
Much to the consternation of my former Large Corporate employer, the Red Team spent an embarrassingly long time strolling around the Big Office Building undetected by any security, until eventually challenged by a junior member of staff.
(AC for obvious reasons)
(Different anonymous coward) kind of stunned reading all this “office is more secure” stuff, most types of entry cards left unattended can easily be cloned (and are not that secure anyway), and just having the right appearance/story can get you entry in lots of places, yes even “secure” ones.
I suggest people read the late great Kevin Mitnick’s ‘“The Art of Intrusion” and “The Art of Deception” for multiple real life accounts of gaining entry to offices, and avoiding problems when challenged.
I’ve worked for major global corporates as well as government clients and none of them had totally secure office environments even if they thought they had.
>There are also security concerns about more staff being remote,
Specifically security concerns for the company
All those little chats over the water cooler about fixing rates or after-work drinkies with a competitor to agree on prices now take place over email/teams/whatsapp and those messages can look a little embarrassing when read out in court.
Remember never send an email that can be a phone call, never make a phone call that can be a private conversation and never say something which can be a wink - especially if you are a democratically elected government.
"Remember never send an email that can be a phone call, never make a phone call that can be a private conversation and never say something which can be a wink - especially if you are a democratically elected government."
I'm amazed at how so many people these days commit things to writing that are dangerous enough to whisper in somebody's ear. I notice lots of people that will send and receive texts when it would be simpler to hold a voice call since they are both not in a situation where talking on the phone would be disruptive.
I think I'm with Jessica's flexibility argument on this, notwithstanding Brandon's point about "collateral damage". It seems to me that the main reason to have large and centralized gatherings of people (at school, work, or county fairs) is mostly to socialize and party (certainly not do actual work). Important and serious practical matters of the greatest utility are best taken care of at home, and in small highly-localized groups of knowledgeable folks. MDs and other pros can surely make house calls as needed (eg. using quantum algorithms to optimize their traveling salesperson routes).
The oppressive and authoritarian CCCP-style over-industrialization of education, labor, grocery stores, and related development of massive pyramidal hierarchies (coupled with excessive centralization, eg. in France) have caused us all to have to travel ever larger distances on a daily basis to acquire an often tepid education, earn an equally lukewarm living, and procure the blandest and stalest of near-unedible goods, albeit in plentiful supply (IMHO). As we commonly say in French: "Tout ça ... pour ça?!".
The results have been as one can expect, zombified uniformization of the broad populus, widening rifts between haves and have-nots, himalayan topographies of outsized superfund garbage sites, industrial-scale pollution of air, water, and soil, road accidents, asbestos, and lawyers (among others).
If we now have the tech (eg. remote working) needed to avoid all this nonsense, then, by all means, let's put it to good use ... go local, de-centralize, re-humaize ... there's really no need to waste all the soap and water used for daily showers just to show up at the office for another day of snoozarooni, or to spend time in a Montréal library ( https://globalnews.ca/news/10114209/smelling-badly-could-get-you-kicked-out-of-montreal-libraries/ )!
Reason and logic have no place in this debate - a good proportion of pointy-haired bosses are like Musk, and think that anybody whom they can't see in the office is clearly at home skiving. The fact that a very large fraction of office work is in fact makework and unnecessary meeting attendance does not matter to the PHBs. It's a bit like feudal times - each baron must have his court, and his courtiers and lackeys wait upon him and pledge allegiance.
A further influence in the UK and US (possibly continental Europe also) is that property investors are amongst the largest individual donors to centre right parties, who then see it as their duty to discourage WFH.
"a good proportion of pointy-haired bosses are like Musk, and think that anybody whom they can't see in the office is clearly at home skiving."
It could be a problem for Elon as he isn't a good manager of people. With good employees, you set them a task, a time frame and support them as necessary to get jobs done. If you have to wander by and make sure they're working once an hour, they aren't worth keeping. With good pay and a good working environment, keeping good people and having stiff competition where there are openings is not that hard.
"It seems to me that the main reason to have large and centralized gatherings of people (at school, work, or county fairs) is mostly to socialize and party (certainly not do actual work). Important and serious practical matters of the greatest utility are best taken care of at home, and in small highly-localized groups of knowledgeable folks. MDs and other pros can surely make house calls as needed "
Having a MD dropping by for a visit might be a bit uncomfortable. Certainly and unannounced visit would be a problem.
I don't see a problem with a periodic meet up for a functional group somewhere to discuss things in person and also socialize to some extent. "Partying" would be a bit extreme since you would have a mixture of people that are tea-total, older/younger, married/single, etc. Locations with a transportation nexus would be the most handy.
Skilled workers like me, who are still much in demand even with all the recent layoffs, are willing to be in the office *as much as necessary*. That is not 'as much as the insecure exec thinks is necessary because then he won't have people to kiss his ass and micromanage' or 'as much as the line boss thinks is necessary because he has to make it look like he's actually managing'. That is 'I need to get hands on physical equipment I don't have at home and isn't really usable remote' like a manual vacuum pump. I also go in to physically demonstrate things or help people as needed. This turns out to be about once or twice a week.
Otherwise I stay at home, don't waste 40 minutes a day commuting, get stuff done far more efficiently without the distractions of the office (your boss may call it 'the synergies of working together', I call it 'the loud sales asshole who is always on speakerphone and won't shut his door because he wants everyone to hear his voice and he is, frankly, a twatwaffle who goes around bothering everyone else because he assumes they have as little to do as he does' ). There is absolutely nothing productive about a (mostly) open office, there is decades of evidence to back this up. It's just corporate cost cutting wearing the cloak of 'synergy' and other Orwellian corporate buzzwords.
I am more productive and happy at home, the rest is just wastes of space trying to justify their jobs.
People don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad bosses, so the trueism goes.
Bad bosses will not have a productive team, neither in the office nor with WFH. They won't set clear goals nor expectations, they won't deliver enough training or socialisation or team building, they won't push back on upper management to let the workers do the right thing nor will they get the right skillsets or collaboration tools to do the job. Managing is hard, and for most middle managers its just something that is done on the side, over and above the day job, because only Ps, VPs and Directors just get to manage other people. (Middle management is just a ponzi scheme to make skilled workers think they can make the jump to the next level)
Good bosses, on the other hand, will get it right. And they can do it in (almost) any scenario.
So, everytime I hear "we need to get back to the office" I am hearing an admission that the wrong managers are in place. Or there are other vested interests in place making the push (the landlords, the local restauranteurs, petrol companies, toll road operators ... everyone making dollars off the commute or refreshment of workers away from home). Anyone except those concerned with the wellbeing of the workers.
"Won't someone think of the multi-billion real estate corporations"
Cubicle farms Open floor plans are awful. I was once on a project that we were sure was going to be late. As luck would have it, I took my work laptop with me for the Christmas holiday with my parents and my car broke down. The car repairs delayed my return to the office. During the time that the car was out of commission, I was at least twice as productive working remotely. I had no atypically annoying people interrupting my work by asking for updates. No people bothering me with urgent* requests. No teleconferences on speakerphone sprinkled throughout the office with that wonderful echo because of the slight delay between speakerphones. No inane conversations to distract me. I may be the exception, but I am more productive at home than in a noisy cube farm.
* As in your failure to plan constituted an emergency on my part.
Every office had a "twatwaffle". Our one was an office manager who used to walk about with a headset talking loudly in fluent management bollocks so everyone could see how important he was. His main job was to sign off the admins staff timesheets and leave requests as far as we could tell.
God knows what he does now with WFH.
Our company is trying to get us to be more hybrid, but they closed half the office, closed 4 other offices and merged them to the half sized one, so we have 500+ staff assigned to 125 seats (some of which permanently booked by admin and managers who don't know what to do unless they can see other people working) and the odds of getting a desk are slim anyway. All my work involves project teams from across the world, so all I'll be doing in the office with regard to meeting people would be Teams meetings I do at home anyway.
So far I've managed to avoid coming in because there's no logical argument for it, but logic won't hold up forever when dealing with management.
At current gig, they only last week published the latest floorplan with seat assignments by team, listing size of team and number of desks allocated.
Our team has 101 members at out location. We have 40 assigned desks plus 4 perma-assigned for manglement, whether they come in or not.
This is a very large multi-national corporation with 3 major offices in Australia alone. HQed in Europe.
This train has left the station. Stick a fork in it, the argument is done.
What we are seeing with enforced returns is, as we can read over and over on ElReg and other tech publications, purely in the USA, as a hidden method of staff layoffs/attrition.
For the rest it's hybrid all the way. I have 1 day in office only written into my contract. The perms tend to do 2, if they feel like it. We have an "anchor day" we're everybody is supposed to be in, but as the numbers above show, that's not even expected to be *everybody* everybody, unless we sit on each others' laps.
I suspect the enforced return to work enterprises that persist may well find their competiveness significantly less than those with more flexible working arrangements.
They will less likely to be the "employer of choice" for talented new graduates, women (actually anyone with children or dependents), the more creative and imaginative and any that enjoy the work they do.
They will be left to cast their nets amongst the fish that John West rejected - talentless, unmotivated and unproductive workforce.
"They will less likely to be the "employer of choice" for talented new graduates, women (actually anyone with children or dependents)"
That may be true, but on the subject of kids I do think there needs to be a strict rule that anyone working from home is not also looking after their kids. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was attending meetings in 2020 which were totally pointless as several of the attendees had kids running in and out, disrupting it. Much less of a problem when the schools were open again, but can still crop up in school holidays.
"They will less likely to be the "employer of choice" for talented new graduates, women (actually anyone with children or dependents), the more creative and imaginative and any that enjoy the work they do."
We think of women and children, but as the population ages, more of us will be looking after older family members.
Were made in the discussion. Jess is a perfect example of how she can manage a family and work at the same time by breaking up her day between work and taking care of the kids. An office at the bottom of the garden is another great adaptation for those that need to be separate from the household to get anything done. It's also a good way to shift your brain from 'home' to 'work'. Most of the books I've read about working from home stress the importance of having a dedicated workspace rather than the dining room table or a desk in the bedroom. WFH can also be shifted to WFRO (Work from Remote Office) which could be a small rented space in your own town that lets you get away from home yet still not have much of a commute and the ease of returning home or running errands during the day. The owners of retail buildings on High Streets with upstairs space might want to think about turning some of those to shared space offices or just bare bones offices. I'm thinking mainly of smaller towns and villages more than big downtown city centers.
"Many employees - particularly new ones - have sometimes never met their coworkers and so lack the crucial knowledge that only comes from personal contact."
When I was working in an office, I'd never meet any of my "coworkers" who sat more than a few desks away from me. Why? Because I was sat at my desk, doing the thing I'm paid to do: working.
Back then, if I needed to talk to someone, it would usually involve wandering over to their desk and hanging around until they were able to give me their attention, talking about whatever it was that needed discussing, and then wandering back to my desk. Now that everyone is using Teams, and is used to doing so, I can send them an IM to ask for their attention when they are free, get on with something else, and then, when they are available, sort out whatever it is that needs sorting via a chat session, or a call, screen share, video call, or whatever. This is arguably more effective, for everyone involved, and there is absolutely zero reason why I need to be physically present in an office to do so.
Similarly, "face-to-face" meetings have been replaced with video calls, and I have yet to encounter any problems with these. No longer do I have to get up at unholy o'clock to travel for half a day to have a half hour meeting with a prospective client on the other side of the country. This, too, can be done by Teams.
I have yet to hear a decent justification for getting people back into offices, at least for those who are able to work from home. I do understand, and appreciate, that some people do not have an environment at home conducive to work, and that those people might prefer to commute to an office and work from there. Go ahead, I'm not stopping you, but just don't try to force the same working pattern onto me for the sake of a perceived benefit that does not exist.
"No longer do I have to get up at unholy o'clock to travel for half a day to have a half hour meeting with a prospective client on the other side of the country."
I'm not too bothered about that sort of thing if it means $$/££ and it's infrequent. If it was a daily commute, that would bother me. I do get a bit fed up with the four walls of my office, so a trip out now and then is a nice break.
I had the distinct pleasure of telling a recruiter that I have a job, I work from home and they could not match my pay. Especially after the conversation started out with my usual, "yes I'm currently employed but always looking for better," and their reply was "back to office required."
I then said maybe, but here's my pay requirements.
And that was that.
Can you please stop spouting this utter rubbish phrase without actual research?
In certain very specific environments, it's possible to happen across a colleague or team doing something interesting, but this is very much job specific.
The rest of my team are in different regions of the UK, Europe, or half way around the world. It was that way before the pandemic and has not changed.
There was no 'crucial knowledge' that I came across from personal contact unrelated to normal projects or meetings in the course of my job. Any unexpected knowledge could equally have arrived remotely as opposed to in person.
It's true that many companies do not take training and documentation seriously, but instead of a stream of people asking for guidance from the same person, it is more effective to at best have professional technical writers or teachers dispense information, or at worst get the person with the knowledge to write the documentation *ONCE* so they don't waste their and the business' time endlessly and incompletely passing on information.
We're all IT professionals, there are tools and procedures (documentation, daily stand ups, operating procedures, training courses, gap analysis, post mortem checking) to work more effectively. In these days of fibre broadband there's no excuse not to use them, we're not limping on with 33K6 modems any more.
I started my career travelling around the UK, installing software using floppies, and having in-person meetings. I don't miss that, and I miss much less losing over two hours a day to commute to an office that whilst (to be fair) it is quite well equipped, has slower connectivity than my fibre connection, fewer monitors, and less flexibility about how I can spend my lunch hour. Whereas home has none of those disadvantages, plus backup 4G connectivity, and once I shift my arse in the new year, UPS backup too (not least because it takes my network switch 7 minutes to boot up from cold).
Exactly this. The bit about the lunch hour is also crucial. If I'm working from the office, my options here are to go into the town centre (I live in a city, but the centre is best described as a town centre, because it's that bad), queue up in a busy shop to buy an, at best, mediocre and overpriced sandwich, and then sit somewhere grey and crowded to eat something stuffed full of mayonnaise, salt, sugar, and low quality ingredients.
When I'm working from home, I can pop into the kitchen and prepare myself something healthy and tasty to eat, and do so in the comfort of my own home. I can also use that hour to go to the local independent shops, which are much more useful than the city-centre chain shops, and visit the bakers, butchers, greengrocers and fishmongers which are all within a 10 minute drive, rather than having to go to a busy out-of-town supermarket at the weekend, or in the evenings after work, to buy what is usually lower quality, and often more expensive food (especially fruit and veg). This gives me a much better work/life balance, which in turn makes me less stressed and more productive, while still having more free time, because I don't have to commute every day, or spend a chunk of my weekend doing a weekly food shop. It also means I'm healthier because I'm not eating highly processed food all the time and slowly developing heart disease and diabetes as a result.
But Sir Alan* thinks I should be in a city centre office, so he can continue to make profits from commercial real estate, and he's prepared to pay politicians to say so.
*One example, pick your capitalist rentier of choice.
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