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Pressure to return to office-based work

BTC3 said:
Most are now clamouring to go back to the office, as they found it harder to create a hard break (time-wise) between work and home life
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I think that break will remain harder to enforce. Lots of us have been using our own tech to to work from home for the past 18 months. I regularly forget to close MS Teams on my own laptop and only realise I have it open when someone messages me outside working hours. Then there's the temptation to quickly check your email at the weekend...
 
The company I work for was previously very office focused and very much against working for home (which I very often ignored as I was more productive from home). For non sales folks like me they're requesting 1 day a week in the office as a minimum, which isn't too bad IMHO. Not sure if I'll actually do it myself yet though!
 
we've found the break very easy to enforce.

My wife isn't allowed to use personal IT for work purposes, so once work is done, the laptop and work phone is put away.

I do use personal IT for work at home, on two designated machines, in a specific room. When the time comes, work is switched off and I leave the room. I have a personal laptop with no connection to work.

The only cross-over device is my phone, but alerts from work email and Teams are automatically switched off outside working hours.
 
I’m starting to plan a move from my current role (which has been fully remote since Lockdown but will be mostly remote from Nov onwards). My criteria for the next job is full flexibility but mainly remote (maybe 1 day in the office) is my preference. I won’t even consider any company that insists on full office presence. I imagine that I am not alone.
 
Covid switched my company (financial services company hosting a banking platform for one of the UK big 4) from WfH as an exception to it being the norm, and apart from a few team morale issues it’s worked out really well. So well we move building next year to one that can only seat 30% of our staff at any given time - from a company perspective it’s quite interesting - during Covid we had to work from home. Now we are telling staff they must work from home…and we need to pay them for it :) Likely means we fund a BYOD smart phone and laptop for all staff, plus an allowance for home office.

I’m more productive at home, but will be in office 1 or 2 days a week under new regime.
 
Dowser said:
Covid switched my company (financial services company hosting a banking platform for one of the UK big 4) from WfH as an exception to it being the norm, and apart from a few team morale issues it’s worked out really well. So well we move building next year to one that can only seat 30% of our staff at any given time - from a company perspective it’s quite interesting - during Covid we had to work from home. Now we are telling staff they must work from home…and we need to pay them for it :) Likely means we fund a BYOD smart phone and laptop for all staff, plus an allowance for home office.

I’m more productive at home, but will be in office 1 or 2 days a week under new regime.
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and a suitable contribution to the heating bills?
 
The going back to London Office with the commute thing after working from home for so long helped me to a decision to retire along with changes in the Hierarchy and structure looming and a new computer system comin in which looks woeful.

I suspect many of my generation in late 50s or early 60s may follow suit.
 
Before I retired, the company I worked for was already making extensive use of videoconferencing and teleconferencing to save time and money on journeys around the country, (though the technology was still a bit hit and miss) but there was still very much a 'presenteeism' culture. I doubt that'll come back.
 
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