When it comes to working from home, Register readers are bucking national trends Every week we run a reader survey at the bottom of articles and the results for last week's question on home working made for interesting reading. More than 5,000 of you responded to the home working poll and the results show that around three-quarters of readers work at least part of the week at home – with staff in EMEA …
I do not miss all the American Candy Stores within walking distance of my office.
If I do feel like sampling America's finest cuisine, I go to the world foods section at my local big supermarket, where it is much cheaper, and contains actual genuine American chemicals.
Saving a fortune on transport and childcare is a huge blessing also.
Personally I find hybrid suits me best, a couple of office days breaks the week up nicely and also helps to add structure. Having loads of meetings in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays leaves Mondays and Thursdays free for actually getting things done whilst sat at home in peace. Fridays are still Fridays :)
What I like best about it is finally feeling like I’m being treated like an adult and not a naughty school boy. I no longer need to be seen in the office to be trusted to do a good job, fantastic. I reward that by working harder and more productively than ever. As such I have very little time for those who bang on about returning to the office full time.
Saving a fortune on transport and childcare is a huge blessing also
See how public got brainwashed. You are not saving! You are not spending money on something you don't need.
It's like saying oh I saved a £1,000,000 today by not buying that sports car.
Employers want you to think that they are doing you a favour and somehow you have the benefit, whereas in fact they are using your home as office without paying the lease!
It's quite funny. Employees fear to raise that point, because they are afraid employer may ask them to come to office instead of paying extra, whereas employers fear to raise that point because they don't want to lease offices.
"You know you've hit the nail on the head."
Not this time, sabroni. More like hit the nail squarely on the thumb.
The sports car was never an expense, the childcare and transportation costs were.
Last time I looked it up, here in Sonoma County California the median cost of infant day-care is about $20,000/yr, and pre-school kids about $15,000/yr. That is a very real savings if one or both parents are working out of the house and the kid(s) can stay home.
I'll leave the cost of transportation for two adults going to work, five days per week, as an exercise for the reader.
All of this adds up to significant out-of-pocket expense for a working couple. Unless one or both are working from home.
Bluntly, elsergiovolador is dead wrong.
Isn't it odd how my house has 2 offices
No, 2 is even.
Seriously: Mountain Fastness 2.0, which my wife designed, also has two offices. They're only 8'x8' (~ 2.4m2), but the ceilings are more than 9' (~2.7m) so they seem larger, and that's enough room for a desk, large bookcase, filing cabinet, and some other furnishings. My wife's has a nice large window, and mine has a venting skylight. We both generally work from home, and when we were forced to share space in MtF 1.0 (which is really just a casita) it made things like simultaneous calls difficult.
I use my office for non-work purposes too, so I don't feel the need to pretend my employer ought to be paying me to use it, and I don't claim it as an expense on my income tax return.
Partly true. My Internet and electric isn't paid for by the company and they were thinking of scrapping head office as more work from home (that didn't happen). I know the last place I was, if working from home (this was long before covid) they paid for your broadband. Obviously it was just basic broadband but they still paid for it.
Shrug. I'd have Internet service (which is a flat rate here) regardless of whether I used it for work, and the additional electricity consumption is negligible.
IIRC, a couple of decades ago, Micro Focus would let you expense home Internet if you did significant work from home, too. These days that doesn't really make sense.
Not quite. I could choose to go into the office 5 days a week if I wanted to. I choose not to, because it saves me money, time, and improves the quality of life for myself and my family. The choice is entirely my own. These are undoubtedly better terms than being obliged to travel into the office every day, as I was until 2020. Of course having the company also pay my power bill would be even better still, but why stop there! They should really be paying me twice my salary. And they should double my annual leave whilst they’re at it. I must be very brainwashed indeed.
As a polite note starting your argument with a patronising insult only ever serves to make you look silly, particularly when you go on to make a daft nonsensical point. Next time maybe leave that bit off. Unless of course you’re paying £50 a day for electric at your house, in which case I take it all back.
Not having a 90 minute commute each way has done wonders for my blood pressure.
I can't disagree but I do miss listening to CDs during the journey. I know I could power-up the Hi-Fi any time I want but it's just not the same. So not the same I think it's been over a decade since I listened to any recorded music.
I'm one of those lucky ones who works permanently from home. The only real downside is it's a bit like doing jail time if you are single and don't ensure you have a decent social life. On the plus side I hardly noticed the pandemic restrictions.
The other thing I miss is calling other drivers "wankers". But there are enough opportunities for that as a pedestrian. Or get some strong ale in and just shout in the local park.
Being someone who suffers from anxiety, I prefer working from home. I'm a lot better than I used to be and comfortable where I am, despite the shit pay, so don't mind going into the office. It being a decent office and within walking distance helps but prefer working from home with the private bathroom and kitchen. Also save money making lunch rather than going to the shop each lunch when I'm in.
Also like being around my animals. Being at home with the dog is more enjoyable than being in the office.
Being neurodivergent, after returning from the office, I found myself needing to spend at least an hour each day in the wardrobe, enveloped in complete darkness with my noise-cancelling headphones, to recover from the sensory overload of the open-plan environment. This, coupled with a two-hour commute, was quite taxing.
Now, working from home, I've never been happier.
The secret is to have a social life outside of work
Having a social life in work is not mutually exclusive. Even as an autistic person, with the common misconception that we don't like any form of social contact, I find it hard if I never meet my colleagues. There are ad-hoc conversations that happen in the office that just don't happen virtually - plus I get to have conversations with other people from other teams which really helps with knowing what the rest fo the business is doing.
Maybe it's because I'm a left-pondian but as someone who has worked as a consultant for large corporations for over 2 decades I found it best to maintain a certain professional distance from all co-workers. I like to compartmentalize my life. Work life is work life, personal life is personal life and never the twain shall meet.
If someone were to invent a Star Trek-like transporter where my commute would be in seconds instead of 3 hours I would come into the office more often. As I stated, I do miss all the excellent eateries and drinkeries surrounding the office.
Beer icon because I really do miss the drinkeries!
There was a comedian that had a joke stating something like the following that I always found nearly relatable and quite funny.
I keep my work and home life completely separate: My coworkers don't know that I am married, and my wife doesn't know that I have a job.
I wish I could remember who it was. It may have been from the 60's or 70's.
I've compartmentalised as I've gotten older as I have long-standing friends, but when I was new to the work scene socialising with coworkers was the done thing. Many of my long-standing friends are from my first post university job. Helped that the average age in the company was low (~26 or so). Nowadays I'm a bit more selective over whether I want to hang out with those from work.
"plus I get to have conversations with other people from other teams which really helps with knowing what the rest of the business is doing"
This. I've overheard and had myself so many conversations where someone from an unrelated team had the solution to a problem but this was only discovered by accident. When I was doing reporting (could have been work from home but that wasn't an option back then), since it didn't matter where I sat I asked for a desk in the middle of operations. It was quite educational listening to conversations about their process. At times I had a better idea of what new reports were needed than my manager(s) did.
But I do like work from home, too.
At times I had a better idea of what new reports were needed than my manager(s) did.
I hope you didn't share those ideas. Employees are not paid according to the value they create for the company.
So giving such nuggets without extra compensation is foolish.
Also if you show your manager that you are capable of doing more than they hired you for or that you have better ideas than themselves, then they may start seeing you as a danger and in fact it may inhibit your career prospects in the company if that's your thing.
If you still want to share such ideas, because you have a certain objective, then do it in such a way so that manager thinks they came up with this themselves. They'll feel smart and they may see you as useful.
Oh cod I hate office politics...
"I've overheard and had myself so many conversations where someone from an unrelated team had the solution to a problem but this was only discovered by accident."
This is true, but one must balance this with the sheer number of inane conversations that haven't had the solution to any problem. My productivity and that of my team fundamentally collapses when we're "collaborating" in the newly enforced return to the office.
The signal-to-noise ratio isn't worth it.
Having worked remotely since the 1990s, except for a few year stint pre-COVID in the office, I can say I learned more from "random conversations" as a remote worker than in-person. I hold conference call sessions left and right with various teams, and being remote means I actually talk to people from departments I'd never talk to in-person -- because we wouldn't be using the social channels of the various chat tools.
In person/office? No one talks to anyone, even inside your department, unless there is no other choice.
There are ad-hoc conversations that happen in the office that just don't happen virtually
Why do you feel the urge to be distracted or to distract your colleagues?
One thing that puts me off is people randomly barging in with their out of context ideas or questions. If it is work related and I am paid for this (e.g. if mentoring is specified in the contract), then sure go on. But I don't need to know about antics of someone's plumber who thought it will be fun to switch hot and cold taps or that someone found only fans account of someone from HR and became their subscriber or which platform they should run their side project on.
which really helps with knowing what the rest fo the business is doing.
Helps with what? If it is not related to tasks at hand, why would you want to know these? Are you a spy?
If it is not related to tasks at hand, why would you want to know these?
Because I'm not a call center drone that stick his head down and does "one task". Because sometimes knowing what else goes on in the business can help you do your own job better/easier (such as knowing who might know something you need to find out). Because what I do may impact on what other people do and it's good if you can make that a positive impact rather than a negative one.
Hardly surprising someone with the handle "Joe Drunk" has a social life outside of work - and I'll bet I can guess what that social life revolves around!
As a consultant I used to fly to my gig Monday morning and return Thursday evening. I'd get them to set me up with a corporate apartment so all I had to bring was my laptop bag, and it was easy travel. Even traveling to Canada each week as easy (though that was a year before 9/11...) After the 2008 crash companies tightened their belt and so they didn't want to pay to fly me out every week. I was fine working from home 100% of the time, and once had a contract that lasted two years without ever traveling on site or meeting anyone involved.
I don't miss the airport hassles and flight cancellations, or getting up at 4:30am to make a 6am flight Monday morning, but I think something is lost if I've never met the people I'm working with. Maybe Zoom changes that (I retired from consulting around when covid hit, so I never did any video meetings) but I doubt it. There's something to be said for building up a personal rapport with someone, but that doesn't have to be done in person - there just has to be some unstructured time where you interact and can talk about non work related stuff to get to know each other (like at the start of a meeting before it gets going)
Some people hate that idea, and one of the reasons they like working from home is the lack of small talk with co workers, but I don't think you can build up that level of rapport if all you ever talk about are your assigned work tasks and where they mutally overlap.
I agree - it can be that "inane small talk" that's not part of the job that gives you an insight into the sort of person your are dealing with, and so helps your deal with them most effectively - that rapport which so often helps things along.
Sometimes we get a bit of that on conference calls while waiting for everyone to dial in, but mostly it gets missed when remote.
I spent 20yrs working where I do, with great people, and I loved the social times i had with my colleagues. It was a fair proportion of my social life which I don’t see as a bad thing.
Covid destroyed that at the drop of a hat, and even now half of my colleagues won’t return in any meaningful sense.
Long story short: even if you have a social life outside of work, you can’t just shrug your shoulders and ignore the effect that wfh has on office social life. I dont begrudge colleague A spending most of the time working from a lovely house from a lovely country, but I do miss the informal chats/lunches/coffees/raised eyebrows that we had pre-covid.
I could not do a full home working job - as you say, quite isolating.
During Covid I didn't set foot in the office, or physically meet a colleague for 18 months - the site was restricted to production essential people only. While management went to great lengths to try and compensate, it really wasn't the same. I can actually say that (due to internal reorganisation) I joined a department, and left later (when it was made clear my post wasn't wanted), without having physically met any of my colleagues in 18 months !
Now I'm part of that political mandate desperately looking for policy based evidence to support it called 60% in office time. In our team we've been told to give it the ignoring it deserves and carry on doing what works best for us to get our jobs done. I go into the office regularly, and even if it wasn't mandated I'd still do it - but 3 days/week, some of my ex-forces colleagues who are more "forthright" have a suitable expression "FRO".
Civil Servant, top down mandate that everyone must be in the office 60% of the time, no evidence presented as to why it's a reasonable demand nor any recognition that it varies between departments/teams/etc. After "a certain level of adverse comment", statements (not evidence) are being made as to why it's needed.. Classic government "decide on the policy, make up the evidence to support it later" - i.e. policy based evidence making.
One or two days in the office, maybe, enough to build that social rapport. Fully wfh is quite isolating, I find.
I think this depends very strongly on the individual employee, their immediate coworkers, and the organization.
I've worked from home for a quarter of a century now. Prior to that I was in the office every day for a few years, then at a remote office by myself for a few years, then at office every day for a few years.
For me, both environments were pleasant and productive. I'm introverted by inclination but generally get along with people I know (and I've learned to interact with strangers, even if I find it requires more effort). In my experience — which is certainly not universal, and may well not be common — the office was not distracting or oppressive, and while I won't claim to have enjoyed commuting, it was bearable, particularly when I used public transport and could read while traveling. Conversely, I've never found working away from the office left me isolated or "out of the loop".
My employer used to fly me out once or twice a year to meet in person with my teammates, which was nice, as it was something of a working vacation and a chance to socialize with them. That ended quite a few years ago as part of cost-cutting measures, and I do miss it, though now the logistics would be horrendous. (I've gone from a 20-minute drive to a small regional airport to a 2 1/2-hour drive to a large one, and my connecting flight has similarly gone from around half an hour in the air to more than two hours.)
But I talk with my teammates every day, and there's plenty of joking and socializing as well as serious work discussion.
Different approaches will work for different people. I read a piece in CACM during the pandemic about a team that basically stays on a video call for the entire working day. Most of the time they're all heads-down doing their own thing, but they can see and talk to each other spontaneously. Apparently that suited them. I'd find it awful.
I last went into the office, for about 2 hours, over a year ago.
There's plans to meetup with colleagues at our new offices at the end of the month.
I work for a huge corporate with offices all over the world. The office I work from - or more accurately, where I had the option to work from, was sold.
It belonged to the company. They've recently leased a space 25 percent of the size, with a maximum of 140 seats.
The usual modern mix of meeting rooms, quiet spaces and all that guff.
I may start going in more often, because I really have got lazy over the last almost 4 years now!
I never realised just how much I walked when I was at the office!
The commute, however ... that always holds me back. It's a minimum of 45 minutes drive one-way, which isn't terrible - or wasn't considered terrible 4 years back.
Public transport? Forget it - over 2 hours each way.
I still struggle to comprehend how I managed to put up with over two decades of commuting in my career - having to be in the office every day, 9 to 5.
I couldn't do it anymore, no chance... well, ok, if push came to shove and being noticed at the office made the difference between having a job and not having one?
Things are looking interesting in not such a good way in the IT sector right about now...
Well, your guessed right. The number one bubble nation and their abbreviations which OF COURSE THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS. "No one says Day Of Birth, they all say DOB".
NAM? Vietnam? All those movies and television series with "I've been in NAM"...
LATAM? Sounds like a cash terminal to me...
EMEA: OK, at least I know that one. But see, "Europe = Middle East" - WTF are are you combining such VERY different regions for? Oh, yes, many Americans put Germany near Moskow, off by only a thousand miles (literally, Berlin to Moskow = 1004 miles on a straight line). But I've also seen Americans putting Germany in the region of Riyadh, since the Suez canal somewhat resembles the Bodensee with its two arms pointing west.
APAC? Aircraft and Personnel Automated Clearance?
At least global average is clear.
I should give a course on how to collect down votes.
You did not get which region I refer to, 'cause your version of writing the date and your other remarks proves you are not the region I refer to, so my "DOB" remark does not refer to you or the region you are from. Kinda weird you thought it could refer to you.
As someone who is not "office friendly", working from home 5 days a week has actually helped me to progress and be promoted within my field.
Prior to the forced adoption of remote working, I've either quit or been fired from every office based job I've had due to the in-house bullshit.
Lounge pants and flip-flops, can't beat it.
Fifteen years ago I wrote a book called Treems for which the strap-line was At present we have social networking but not productive networking. That's like having the factory canteen without the factory. This was before Zoom and 'everyone has broadband'. The obvious conclusion for ROUTINE WORK is to keep the number of distant contacts to a minimum to make-up for limited bandwidth communications. It helps with clarity of focus and understanding what part everyone plays in the process.
But few contacts leads to lack of random stimulation, getting familiar with trends and social isolation.
How is the boss going to encourage, threaten shout or otherwise look like they're managing? This is why WFH is frowned on by poor managers. Oh dear my staff are leaving/ don't understand my orders/ push back on timescales and worst of all won't join my 'team building' chumminess... Obviously that's nothing to do with my skills, so it must be WFH which is depriving my ego of its daily sustenance.
A new understanding of the NON-ROUTINE WORK and accepting that it's more important to have the right sort of mentality in the right sort of job is required.
When you're inside the mother-ship you can grumble about what might be important things but how do you do that when you're floating outside on a bit of string? (So that's why you need a grumblee who will accept the grumble and investigate how the organisation might address it.)
When you're sitting next to a square-peg in a round-hole then perhaps you can accommodate their weaknesses and build on their strengths. With less constant and less nuanced communications it is difficult to have the necessary trust, empathy and flexibility. (So that's why it is really important to recruit people with certain mind-sets into the right roles. Some people get a buzz from accurate administration without stress. Others have a buzz from being outward facing. Others are motivated by involved technical challenges. These three personality types are pretty-much exclusive. See the reference above for more.)
personality types or MIRO is also part bullshit. We were forced to do some MIRO training and it surprised the trainer as it shouldn't be forced (although hardly anyone would of then turned up). This was done during Covid and remotely and I was asked "You seemed to be distant. Is there an issue?". I replied "Not really an issue I just don't believe in any of this, most of what you're saying etc. Not that I'm saying this about you but its much like mediumship which is known to be bullshit. You can cold read people and twist your questions to be a hit, rather than a miss, on how the person reacts to that question". Others on the meeting smiled and the trainer moved on and didn't ask me anything again :)
After the training had finished and we had showed what our "Colours" were, our manager, who also thought it was bullshit, proved the point. He had fudged his answers as he worked out what they required to get the results for each colour, so that he was equal bits of each colour :)
Sadly, despite all this I still hear people talking about it in the office "What's your MIRO colour?" so there are still people who believe in that bollocks.
> MIRO
What does MIRO stand for in your context?
My list is:
MIRO Mass in Running Order (recreational vehicle weight)
MIRO Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter (US NASA)
MIRO Microwave Induced Resistivity Oscillations
MIRO Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization
MIRO Migration Internal Review Office
MIRO Mineral Industry Research Organization
MIRO The Michigan Institute of Radiation Oncology
MIRO Managed Internet Route Optimizer™
MIRO MUREP Institutional Research Opportunity
MIRO Movement In Receipt Out
MIRO Mortgage Interest Run-On
MIRO Mainland Island Restoration Operation
MIRO Manchester International Roots Orchestra
MIRO Mandibular Implant-Retained Overdentures
MIRO Marketing & Industrial Relations Organization
MIRO Mercer Island Radio Operators
MIRO Mercy International Relief Organization
MIRO Minimum Information for the Reporting of an Ontology
etc...
"What does MIRO stand for in your context?"
In the given context, MiRo is essentially a dumbed-down version of MBTI, and just as useless in the great scheme of things. It's the name of a bit of pseudo-science in the field of Psychometrics. I have never known what MiRo stands for, and a quick glance at t'intrawebtubes suggests that nobody else does, either. Unless you pay the "practitioners" an exorbitant sum of money, no doubt.
> "What does MIRO stand for in your context?"
> In the given context, MiRo is essentially a dumbed-down version of MBTI,
AAAAAAAGH!
Mean Between Time Indicator? Mass Bullying Terror Investigation? Murder By Tungsten Injection? Mario Beats Turbo Inkling? Mother Builds Top Incliners?
I know you mean Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, since this time the context is clear and the search engines give useful answers. But pleeeeease, don't use an abbreviation to explain an abbreviation to explain an abbreviation...
I run a small team of developers for a mid-sized ISV. Before COVID, working from home was a rare treat - mostly unattainable. My director hated people working from home and did his best to prevent it. Then came COVID and everyone worked from home for 6 months and productivity remained the same, or increased in some areas. Suddenly the director needed a good reason to get people back into the office and he couldn't think of one. It turns out that his main reason was so that he could survey his empire from his giant glass office doors. He also loved to wander around and tell terrible jokes, which people felt required to laugh at. That's mostly gone now - he does force hybrid working on his PA and a few others but the rest of us are essentially 5 days a week at home.
This is so perfect for me. For the first time I'm not ecstatic every Friday afternoon and depressed every Sunday evening. I only ever lose productivity from interacting with colleagues and I get enough social activity outside work. My introvert team of young developers all state a preference for it also. They have the option to visit the office whenever they like but choose not to. I don't think that is necessarily good for recent graduates. I see problems for young people who have only ever known working from home. They don't really understand the culture/structure/direction of the company. They aren't forced to learn how to deal with Tudor, who clips his toe nails at his desk, or the manager from the other department who thinks he can get them to work on his pet project ahead of time. They don't overhear the gossip, technical or personal. One member of my team, after two years in the job, is not known by any member of senior management. Great for not be asked to do extra work for another division, terrible for being seen as a rising star.
I hated working in the office full time but it taught me a lot about people and organisations and definitely helped me progress my career. I wouldn't ever go back to the office but I do worry that twenty-somethings are missing something. I hope that the world will develop a way for young people, who work from home, to get the benefits that working in an office gave without suffering the drudgery and Tudors of office life.
I see problems for young people who have only ever known working from home.
Not sure why? Offices, in essence, emerged as a necessity born from the absence of affordable, accessible technology. Imagine the impracticality of shipping bulky company computers to employees, not to mention the Herculean task of laying underground lines to connect them to a barely functional company network (if it existed). And let's not forget the sheer size of these early computing behemoths – finding space in a typical home for such a machine would be akin to squeezing a grand piano into a broom closet. Plus everything was on paper. Imagine sending actual mail to co-workers and waiting days for answers.
We don't long for the days of using beads for calculations, just as we shouldn't lament that today's youth have only ever known the convenience of calculator apps.
Offices have been around a lot longer than even (electro)mechanical computers. Ask Lloyd's, just as one example.
Also, almost as soon as computers became more than somewhat useful to business, they were accessible from home. The Teletype Model 33 came out in 1963, and was in common(ish) use by top-tier remote mainframe support staff by the late 1960s. Dad had one installed in '67 or thereabouts ... the company even brought a second POTS line into our house for it, their dime. I soon used the same system to access ORVYL, the Stanford timeshare system, with the blessing of Dad's company. (I also later used it to access a new-fangled thingie that DARPA had Stanford and Berkeley et al working on ... but that's another story for another day.)
"We don't long for the days of using beads for calculations"
I use an abacus to calculate livestock feed & supplement needs down in the feed barn. Electronic calculators tend to die quite quickly in that environment.
I also still use a sliderule about the place. It's more accurate than guestimating for fencing, fertilizer, seed, roofing, paint, roadbase, DG, working loads on beams and the like.
I'm fully WFH, with the exception of a maybe once-per-month trip to London for a big team meeting. However I was one of the WHF brigade prior to Covid. I prefer it, but also my nearest company office is 2.5 hours away, so commuting really isn't feasible.
To be honest I've never found it a problem. I have multiple meetings a day with my colleagues, always with video on, we chat a bit and socialise as well as getting on with business, so I've never felt isolated from people at all. Saying that, outside of meetings it is much easier to focus on work without all of the distractions that come with open plan office working.
Long may it continue.
Years ago we had a complaint from a customer that one of our staff was disrespectful because they were wearing a novelty tie. It wasn't really novelty, it had a horse's-head pattern - it wasn't like a Simpson's or Southpark tie. My boss asked the customer who he should send next time - the best person for the for the job or a useless bloke that had a nice tie and told him that if he wanted to include a dress code in the SLA then we'd add a clothing allowance to the bill.
The last 9-5 I interviewed for (in 1989), I was wearing my racing leathers. When the interviewer queried my choice of "uniform", I pointed out that he had asked me to drive up from Palo Alto to South San Francisco by 10AM ... and had called at 9AM. I knew I could make it on the bike, but there was no way I was driving the Bayshore without armor ... I got the job.
The 9-5 prior to that, I wore the same outfit, for similar reasons. When queried, I responded along the lines of "are you hiring an engineer or a fashion plate?" ... They made me an offer. I counter offered, they hired me at my price point.
Interesting that the carbon footprint of remote working is seldom mentioned in these articles.
A million people remote working on any day is a million cars not being used or a million spaces on trains available.
Remote workers generate 30 to 54% less carbon than commuters.
There are other side effects but aren't we all so concerned with carbon output?
I believe I read somewhere that it also means a million households being warmed or cooled during the day, instead of just a few big office buildings so it may well be that some of the carbon savings from not using transport are negated.
Seems plausible but I don’t know of any hard numbers to support or disprove that statement.
Depends
We look after an ill relative who lives with us (she (and us) has own areas of the house for privacy & then shared areas. Partner is retired so at home.). So heating would be on anyway (if required). So when I WFH only extra power use is computer (& same amount of power would be used in the office), as router, APs etc. all on for family member use anyway.
Obviously for some people, without anyone else in their accommodation in "working hours", then home heating is extra carbon (though saving on commute carbon) so there is no easy answer on which option is most "green" - and house insulation etc makes a big difference.
Apart from recent sub zero spell in UK, Winter heating generally only on early morning and then for a while in evening, through most of the day, heating is off (thermostat and timer driven e.g. no point heating coming on at 2 AM when everyone in bed, even if it is cold, so timer overrides thermostat at some parts of the day / night) . So heating not on very much in "working hours" anyway.
.. Though all of us sharing the house, old enough to have grown up in the era of poorly heated houses, ice on the inside of your windows in Winter was not a surprise, so fine with house temperature not being excessively hot (lots of younger friends don't seem happy unless their indoor house temp is in the mid twenties!)
I am frankly rather dubious that there would be a large change to home heating or cooling without WFH, at least in the US where energy costs as a share of income are not typically high enough to encourage people to use significant setbacks for the hours the house is vacant.
When my wife and I were living in the Stately Manor in Michigan, I had a programmable thermostat and did set the heat back during the day when she was at work (we didn't have air conditioning, so nothing to set back in the warmer months). But I did work from home, so in my case WFH didn't affect that practice.
Here at Mountain Fastness 2.0 I don't bother, because we use very little energy for heating, thanks to a lot of thermal mass, a lot of insulation, and significant passive solar gain. (Again, we don't have A/C; it's completely unnecessary here if your house has a halfway decent design, since air temperature drops dramatically as soon as the sun's below the horizon.) Also we have a wood stove, though I've only used it a couple of times because usually it's too warm in the house to want it.
I've known very few other people with programmable thermostats, even though they're readily available and easy to install.
Obviously in theory there are advantages to heating and cooling the same volume in fewer buildings, thanks to the ratio between surface area and volume, and other effects such as greater thermal mass and scaling efficiencies in the equipment, assuming similar levels of insulation and other factors. (Which are some pretty big assumptions.) But my suspicion, without having evidence to hand, is that while you might see a big effect with arcology-style mixed-use buildings (or even something like Whittier, Alaska), in practice WFH doesn't make a huge difference.
I come in one day a week.
Massive open-plan space. Rows of hot desks. No personal storage space. People who work together can't easily sit together - and if they did then the neighbours would complain about the noise of conversation. Loads of Teams calls going on around me. Sometimes face to face and whiteboard scrawling sessions are really useful but those have to be specifically scheduled to ensure people are actually there at the same time, so are rare.
If you want people to come into the office, make the office less horrible.
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