Until we see vaccination trials for the “under 18” crowd, masks and distancing will need to continue. Makes me wonder about schooling.
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Will physical work offices return to normal, post-pandemic?
- Thread starter satchmo
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Until we see vaccination trials for the “under 18” crowd, masks and distancing will need to continue. Makes me wonder about schooling.
So we have always had the ability to work from home for a couple of days a week. But our office has remained open as not everyone can. Those with smaller houses (flats as we call them here in the UK) are worse off. Working from home for me is no real different. I have a 27" screen, decent internet and a large office space.
But if you have multiple people working from home or are in a one bedroom place are not so well off.
I work from home most evenings these days. But that's not anything new for me. We just have a lot of work to cover in my senior role. I try and go into the office 1-2 days a week. But MS Teams makes it less and less important to do so.
But I think many businesses will be looking at the office lease and if not abandoning the office completely will be thinking of a smaller place. We have an office where you can sit 50. On average we have 4 in the office a day.
But although lots of people enjoy the benefit of spending less on petrol or having to get up as early, there are downsides.
Mental health (especially for those who live on their own)
Productivity
Increased heating/AC costs (depending where you live!)
The knock on affect for smaller business district based businesses who serve coffee or lunch. Cleaners, all those people doing office maintenance etc.
Each business will make the decisions based on what works best for them. Our biggest saving this year (apart from furloughed staff) has been the amount of travel we have stopped. It would be normal for at least one or two international flights a week and hotels etc. All that has stopped. This has made a massive difference to our bottom line. Especially as sales have been higher than expected.
Nearly end of year bonus time!
But if you have multiple people working from home or are in a one bedroom place are not so well off.
I work from home most evenings these days. But that's not anything new for me. We just have a lot of work to cover in my senior role. I try and go into the office 1-2 days a week. But MS Teams makes it less and less important to do so.
But I think many businesses will be looking at the office lease and if not abandoning the office completely will be thinking of a smaller place. We have an office where you can sit 50. On average we have 4 in the office a day.
But although lots of people enjoy the benefit of spending less on petrol or having to get up as early, there are downsides.
Mental health (especially for those who live on their own)
Productivity
Increased heating/AC costs (depending where you live!)
The knock on affect for smaller business district based businesses who serve coffee or lunch. Cleaners, all those people doing office maintenance etc.
Each business will make the decisions based on what works best for them. Our biggest saving this year (apart from furloughed staff) has been the amount of travel we have stopped. It would be normal for at least one or two international flights a week and hotels etc. All that has stopped. This has made a massive difference to our bottom line. Especially as sales have been higher than expected.
Nearly end of year bonus time!
I think many offices will not return to normal pre-pandemic conditions. I think work from home will be a permanent option for many companies. I think "resort campuses" with on-site sushi chefs and yoga instructors will continue to decline.
it is easy to provide a encrypted channel into the company servers.
a company could run on this alone for the short term till the covid is gone
bigger issue is how to conduct a project forward to completion w/o drama.
software development has its established scrum like tools
are the company procedures up to date; do you have to pin the company badge on the pajama bottoms while workin form home.
a company could run on this alone for the short term till the covid is gone
bigger issue is how to conduct a project forward to completion w/o drama.
software development has its established scrum like tools
are the company procedures up to date; do you have to pin the company badge on the pajama bottoms while workin form home.
For me, one of the difficulties of WFH is the initialism itself.
It looks too much like WTFH, so I'm constantly misreading it.
It looks too much like WTFH, so I'm constantly misreading it.
These days most of our stuff is cloud based so access is only limited to internet connectivity.
face to face is not an issue, never has been... People in such situations, just want to MAKE it one..
You have TeamViewer, Facetime for meetings..... So no one is really disadvantaged. The only thing would thing "Well, i'd like to hand this to you but i can't at the moment.."
while in other cases, just technical IT, or engineering, it may just not be practice to work from home.. It may not be fully pre-COVID, but the majority will return to work.
That would also be a consideration based on the how bad the situation is. There wouldn't be one silver bullet for all
You have TeamViewer, Facetime for meetings..... So no one is really disadvantaged. The only thing would thing "Well, i'd like to hand this to you but i can't at the moment.."
while in other cases, just technical IT, or engineering, it may just not be practice to work from home.. It may not be fully pre-COVID, but the majority will return to work.
That would also be a consideration based on the how bad the situation is. There wouldn't be one silver bullet for all
I don't know to be honest. I think the only thing that will stick around post COVID seems to be the increased use of Apple Pay. I feel like people have kind of rushed back to the office, and even riding public transit again here.
Some of us never stopped going into the office though! The one think that gets my back up at the moment is that we have all had hours and hours of free time whilst we've been sat at home all year learning to play the accordion or whatever! Truth is I've just been working longer and longer hours, covering for the furloughed staff.
Obviously, you need to practice the accordion while standing under the windows of the furloughed staff.
At 3 am.
I think some kind of hybrid model could be ideal. For example, there may still be certain days where people still need to return to the office for meetings and to touch base. This may be like 2-3 days a week. The rest of the week, if you have no meetings and your work can be done remotely, the employee may be given the option of staying at home.
This is pretty much the model that I’m using right now. Some days I am home when I don’t have a reason to venture to the office and other days I don’t have a choice for admin work, but we try to stagger people, so they don’t all congregate on the same day. It’s working quite well.
:lol: The thing I miss about being at the office is the free food. I'm talking about stuff people bring to share, not taking someone's lunch out of the fridge. Especially at this time of year, there are always cookies, candy, assorted varieties of popcorn, and the old standby: doughnuts!. Plus where I work, they bring in lunch for everyone once a month.
If a return to normal means returning to the exact same way things were before 2020 then I say no. Even with a depressed economy companies should have enough data to evaluate productivity during this time and weigh the benefits and downsides to people working from home more. My wife has been working from home for over a year now after we had a baby and then COVID hit. I asked her what she misses out on by not being able to go to the office. She said the printer. How much money, resources, and time are spent on the idea of people needing to work in the same office environment? That's not to say it is never a good idea to work in an office or have people together for face-to-face interaction, but there are certainly times when it isn't a necessity and is being done because that's the way things have always been. What's the environmental impact of people commuting to and from work to do a job they could easily do from home? Or the environmental impact of massive office buildings for these people to do things that could be done from home? I feel like I'm arguing for the idea of an office to go the way of the dinosaur, but I'm not. I just think things could and should change. Also, how long is it going to be before 25 people can cram into a 10x10' elevator?
Agreed. They will evaluate and make a determination one way or the other. I could see some companies adopting at home work And others not, for a variety of reasons.
I would be happy to never go back to an office again. I don't miss the gossipy cliques who are more focused drama than on work. If I never had to step foot into my office and work remote forever I totally would. I just do not miss that environment.
Social distancing though I think will be around for a long time I think it's a good thing because it keeps folks out of your personal bubble.
Social distancing though I think will be around for a long time I think it's a good thing because it keeps folks out of your personal bubble.
I'm set up on VPN, so I have access to printers at work (2 locations). But, if I want a print at home, I have to e-mail the file to my personal address and print from my Mac. That only works for letter size. I can't do 11 x 17 at 100%
Also, how long is it going to be before 25 people can cram into a 10x10' elevator? /I think you can do that now. Nobody talks, don't stay there for more than 10 minutes. Tall building (over 10 floors)? Make a sign that tells the person in the corner what floor you want. Getting off from the back? Clap your hands.
It certainly would be possible to practice physical distancing on the stairs, but many people would max out at two flights before needing to rest. If you have the time to wait for an empty elevator cab...
At our clinic, there are two public elevators. One is of a standard office building size, the other is a standard hospital size. Some people will only share the hospital elevator, and will wait for it if someone is in the small one.
At our clinic, there are two public elevators. One is of a standard office building size, the other is a standard hospital size. Some people will only share the hospital elevator, and will wait for it if someone is in the small one.
If you can only manage two flights before needing a rest I would activity encourage you to avoid lifts! Sounds like they need the exercise.
I agree, but I know there are lots of people out there who would be winded after two flights. At the aforementioned clinic, there are only three floors, one below street level. Most perfectly ambulatory visitors use the elevators. I use the stairs. I did so at two office locations where my destination was the fifth floor. That was over a decade ago, but I know I could still do it.
I think this also. The last time a pandemic hit, it took 2-3 years for the worse to pass. But then again, there were no vaccines to develop and implement at that time (the influenza vaccine was developed around 20-25 years later).
Also, it might be time to remember that there is no "normal", only the habitual and frequent, and that gets called normal most times. So what becomes frequent nowadays will be "the new normal".
The world won't be the same. Let's all hope its change for the better.