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Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#91

Post by llampx »

alibarber wrote: post #20
sn_master wrote: post #4

How would that work in terms of taxes? The UK doesn't have taxes based on location like the US?

Just like taxation regimes have scrambled to keep up with the fact that you can order something from abroad and have ambiguity of where the sales tax will be applied - this is the next big thing about to happen: High skilled, (comparatively) rich, healthy knowledge workers will leave the place they reside, move somewhere like Dubai (no tax, few free public services - doesn't matter they're not going to need them) to…

I think only a fraction of people would move away from their home country just to gain some tax benefits. Doesn't seem like most people I talk to are interested in that.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#92

Post by toiletduck »

geden wrote: post #55
quickthrower2 wrote: post #32

Earlier 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.

Yeah tell that to my teaching assistant wife who works at a Lincolnshire village primary school and is now 'always on' to the whims of the go getting headmistress 24/7. She feels she can't practically ignore out of hours requests and she doesn't want to challenge the practice for fear of rocking the boat.

I empathize after two years in UK education. The working culture is almost cult like and self reinforcing - the Peter principle in action turns the best teachers at reinforcing the status quo into headteachers.

Unions are really powerful in education - it's one of the only benefits of the sector I can think of. Hopefully your wife has a union rep they can teach out to on behalf of all the staff if not just herself? Teaching assistant salaries definitely don't to high enough to compensate for anything outside of school hours!

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#93

Post by dx034 »

davb wrote: post #79
dx034 wrote: post #57

Earlier 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…

> but internet is unbearably slow anywhere but in a few major cities There's only one city in the Highlands - Inverness.

Fort William had decent internet last time I was there. Probably not a city by most standards but the biggest place around there so it does feel like a major center. But maybe their connectivity is also a result of the tourists coming for Ben Nevis.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#94

Post by kmlx »

i read a lot of studies about how productivity increases when working from home.

so i decided to superficially calculate this after a year of working from home for all of my very diverse clientele (fortune 500, small agencies, etc). i felt that a lot less work was being done, but i didn’t know how much. or why.

since i’m a coder at heart i looked at tickets/features and commits. something easy to measure.

what i found is a big productivity drop. in some cases there was 40% less work done from home than from the office. and this happened gradually over the course of a year.

and since i know people working for big corps in HK i’ve asked them to do the same. their company’s productivity increased slightly (5%this is by no means a scientific study, but i was surprised at the huge drops i was seeing, and even more surprised at the continuous drop off across the time line.

did anyone else notice this, or are just my clients outliners?

what will wfh do to the productivity difference between asian countries and western ones? will this apparent productivity loss be offset somehow?

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

sn_master wrote: post #6
Hendrikto wrote: post #3

I 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 a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're always with your family. On the other hand, you're always with your family.

Fact of life is, many relationships have trouble finding balance between "me time" and "us time". Going to work is, for many, a way to catch a break from their home - with perfect plausible deniability, since it's socially approved and demanded externally.

Some people don't need it. I had a co-worker who would come super-early in the morning, so he could leave early and spend time with his kids. At work, we could see his kids were his whole world, and he was always happy. But at that same job, I also had a different co-worker who went out his way to find reasons to stay overtime - he dreaded coming back home. I don't keep in touch with them much, but I imagine the former one was super-happy about forced WFH, but the latter very much not.

Add to that, quite a lot of people in cities bought their apartments on the assumption that both partners are working 9/5 at the office and the kids are at school/daycare - this let them buy smaller places for less (or closer to work). Such apartments become living hell when all dwellers are present simultaneously for the entire day, and each is trying to do their work/school.

This is not to trade who has it worse - just pointing out that it's not smooth sailing for those of us with families either. There's a tight line between being happy to have people around, and hating their guts for it - this pandemic pushed a lot of us close to that border.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#96

Post by Kerrick »

dx034 wrote: post #57
Jonnax wrote: post #30

This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.

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…

I live just outside a small town (3,000 population), and I get 20mbit/s up and down via a local WISP that uses Ubiquiti PTMP hardware atop the local water tower. I pay $125/mo for the privilege, but it is enough for both me and my wife to work remotely with both of us nearly always on video calls.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#97

Post by carmen_sandiego »

namdnay wrote: post #83
carmen_sandiego wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've worked crappy jobs and never worried about getting fired. The crappier your job, the lower the threshold it's considered 'expensive' to replace you. It's not that hard to meet that threshold of contributed value. Employers generally have an incentive to keep you for this reason, unless you're truly terrible or something else is going on with their finances.

It's a little patronizing for you to assume I have no experience of being unprivileged just because our opinions about it differ. Or that those without privilege can't manoeuvre their way into choosing a slightly better job, even if they don't have an absolutely free choice over the space of all possible jobs, or even if they have to take a worse one temporarily in order to transition to where they want to be. Not all poor people are mindless cattle devoid of planning or agency.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#98

Post by aardvark179 »

ainiriand wrote: post #61
dx034 wrote: post #57

Earlier 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.

The highlands are difficult. They have lots of hills, lots of bedrock very close to the surface, and low population density. It’s hard getting any mobile coverage in some areas let alone 3, 4, or 5G. It’s even tougher on the islands as cables can get damaged and microwave links perform poorly during winter storms.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#99

Post by Arainach »

kmlx wrote: post #94

i read a lot of studies about how productivity increases when working from home. so i decided to superficially calculate this after a year of working from home for all of my very diverse clientele (fortune 500, small agencies, etc). i felt that a lot less work was being done, but i didn’t know how much. or why. since i’m a coder at heart i looked at tickets/features and commits. something easy to measure. what i foun…

You're ignoring the variables that conflate. Plenty of people I know are burnt out, tired, and not as productive as they are at their peak. This isn't "WFH". This is WFH and quarantine and not being able to travel or take travelling vacations and worrying about your health and the health of everyone you care about and schooling at home and a pandemic and......you get the point. No data claiming a productivity drop during this pandemic can be isolated to WFH with any reliability.

I'm burnt out. My productivity has been garbage this month. The cause isn't WFH or even work in general - the cause is that it's been an utterly miserable year for the world and it's wearing me down. I'm tired of isolation and I'm tired of constant reminders in the world around me that I'm surrounded by idiots without empathy who would rather protest their right to put others in danger than take basic precautions to protect those around them, and I'm ABSOLUTELY tired of the fact that these people haven't learned or changed in an entire year.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#100

Post by uzakov »

alibarber wrote: post #20
sn_master wrote: post #4

How would that work in terms of taxes? The UK doesn't have taxes based on location like the US?

Just like taxation regimes have scrambled to keep up with the fact that you can order something from abroad and have ambiguity of where the sales tax will be applied - this is the next big thing about to happen: High skilled, (comparatively) rich, healthy knowledge workers will leave the place they reside, move somewhere like Dubai (no tax, few free public services - doesn't matter they're not going to need them) to…

You raise great points. I think what countries would need to do is to lower taxes (potentially considered to be controversial by some) to attract talent from other countries and keep existing talent.
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