Nationwide is on your side
Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
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Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#82I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.
People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.
It's more likely that we'll end up in a hybrid environment. Previous companies I've worked for already had clean-desk policies. No-one, not even the CEO had a fixed desk.
Teams were assigned areas so they knew where in the building to meet, but if you arrived late and all the desks were taken you simply went and found another area (or if you needed to hide to minimize disruptions).
In a hybrid-model this becomes even easier, because the hardest thing with the above model is keeping free capacity in a growing company.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
At will employment is the problem. You should be able to switch off at a certain time and ignore work comms. But I think in US you’d be scared of being fired. In other countries like UK this has never been a concern, and WFH doesn’t change that.
The UK is basically 'at will' for the first two years. I've never worried about getting fired in that period. Just pick who you work for carefully and make yourself valuable.
> Just pick who you work for carefully and make yourself valuable
you realise that's a relatively privileged position in the emplyment market, right? you:
a) have enough choice in employers to be able to pick one
b) have both a profession that allows you to differentiate yourself and the skills that can make you differentiate yourself
that's unfortunately not the case for the majority of employees
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s…
What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.
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Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being home alone in a tiny apartment, the desk placed next to my bed - that's not the home office I want to spend all my time in. With family and house, sure. But I literally don't have the real estate to make a nice home office. Mixed mode works very well tough, I can go to the office if I want and stay home if I want, so I mostly spend 4 days in the office, 1 at home.
I'm in a similar solution - 1br, 1 living room, 1 kitchen, 2 people - so while everyone's been showing off their fortress of solitude, I've spent 12 months at the kitchen table. Watching people on youtube build stylish and spacious home offices has become our new fantasy porn. I've heard a lot of people saying that companies are going to realise this means they can cut down on their property costs, but far, far fewer…
I think permanent WFH means tons of savings for employers, and meager tax savings for employees. Our costs have gone up substantially in one year of working from home, and the government doesn't allow us to write almost anything off.
Whereas an office could write off coffee, TP, cleaning staff, electricity, the whole rent etc, we are stuck with only being able to write off equipment we bought specifically for working and wondering if the tax authorities will come after us for that.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#86I expect employers should offer an additional allowance for extra space to work in at home or (post lockdown) coffee shop/coworking space fees.
ok, but then they can reduce by the equivalent travel savings :)
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#87I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.
Crazy to think that if WeWork held out a bit longer they could have come out of this on top, as WFH becomes more common.
I think the jury is still out on that. It is still commercial real estate, and that has taken a massive hit since March 2020.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#88Flexibility sounds good but what I have seen over the last year is that all boundaries in terms of when and where work begins and ends are being eroded. This started accidentally but it is now being actively exploited on an unprecedented scale.
Setting boundaries is your job, not your job’s job.
Almost everyone I know works normal hours or less even during WFH.
To be perfectly clear, this is true regardless of WFH. Your work will never set boundaries for you as they benefit from you working harder and longer.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.
It will probably end with a better balance than right now. I used to enjoy working from home a couple days a week as focus days with minimal interruptions, but doing this all week with a lot happening inside the house at the same time (schools and daycare closed, spouse also wfh every day, grandparents in the house taking care of the kids, 3 different package delivery services at the door etc.) is not that great and…
Could it be that working in close proximity of your kids is the main cause of that?
We experienced 2 months of 'school at home' with kids 5 and 8, and there is no comparing with the current situation (schools open)
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#90at some hazily defined point work anywhere, anytime becomes work everywhere, all the time.
as mentioned earlier, setting boundaries is up to you