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Return to normality - a double edged sword?

How would you prefer the country to be once the crisis is entirely over?

  • Keep the lockdown regulations

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • Return entirely to normality, as it was in 2019

    Votes: 66 45.5%
  • Return to normality, but keeping some of the elements such as work-from-home

    Votes: 70 48.3%
  • Keep many of the lockdown rules but remove some of the more restrictive aspects

    Votes: 2 1.4%
  • Remove all of the lockdown rules but societal changes in behavior which make life closer to lockdown

    Votes: 6 4.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    145
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py_megapixel

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Thought I'd break this out into its own thread. The premise is that I find a complete return to normality very unlikely because there are some undeniably good things to have come out of it.

I don't agree - people want normality back, and it will return. The question is when.
But do they really?

How many people actually enjoyed getting into a car early in the morning and driving in stop-start traffic to their workplace.

How many people enjoyed restaurants being absolutely packed in the evenings?

These are just a couple of examples.


Yes, being in lockdown is awful - but a return to normality means a return of the unpleasant bits of "normal" life. What's needed is an intermediary, where we regain our freedom without losing some of the positive points of lockdown.
 
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Bantamzen

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I had to think about this for a moment, but I've gone with the working from home option (despite some concerns about the long term implications). As much as I'd like a full return, I can't see a lot of people accepting it and it would be the perfect excuse for governments to go full retard at the first sign of a spike (note spike, not wave / surge). Working from home at least a few days a week would allow the economy to start to recover, whilst taking the pressure off transport, stores, services, and even to a degree recreational & hospitality sectors. I would also caveat this with a stronger set of legislations ensuring that workers do not get penalised when diagnosed with the virus and having to stay at home.
 

NorthOxonian

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I had to think about this for a moment, but I've gone with the working from home option (despite some concerns about the long term implications). As much as I'd like a full return, I can't see a lot of people accepting it and it would be the perfect excuse for governments to go full retard at the first sign of a spike (note spike, not wave / surge). Working from home at least a few days a week would allow the economy to start to recover, whilst taking the pressure off transport, stores, services, and even to a degree recreational & hospitality sectors. I would also caveat this with a stronger set of legislations ensuring that workers do not get penalised when diagnosed with the virus and having to stay at home.

I took the poll to be asking the ideal situation long-term, not just during the current crisis.

In my case, as someone who is still a student, the prospect of working from home for my entire career terrifies me. I can't see it being useful for training, and while there are ways to build team morale virtually, I don't believe these are as effective as actually meeting in person. And while a long commute isn't ideal, a shorter commute of under half an hour is useful, since it clearly delineates your day into "at home" and "at work". With working from home becoming the norm I worry that will mean never being able to truly switch off and bosses expecting you to be at their beck and call 24/7.
 

DB

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How many people actually enjoyed getting into a car early in the morning and driving in stop-start traffic to their workplace.

That is a valid point to an extent. We've done a survey at work, and a good few people would be interestd in working from home for part of the week. Hardly anyone (think it was about 4%) wanted to work at home all the time.

So yes, it may accelerate the amount of home working a bit - but it's not going to eliminate offices, and it's unlikely to cause the major changes you suggested in another thread. In some cases it may result in a reduction in office space, but not all cases - we've looked at this, and even with an increase in home working it's not likely to make much difference in our case - people come into the office to talk to other people, and this means a strict rota of person A does Monday and Tuesday in the office and Person B does Wednesday-Friday is in many cases not going to work.
 
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Richard Scott

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I think there are quite a few people hoping to do a partial work from home, my sister is hoping to do one day at home out of five. I cannot work from home but for me that's a good thing, hate being stuck in the house and enjoy the company of colleagues at work.
 

yorkie

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Back to normal as soon as possible, but allow people to work from home a reasonable proportion of the time (which will vary depending on the job, but there should not be pressure to make people work exclusively at home; see https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/remote-working-preferences-in-the-longer-term.203448/ )
I think there are quite a few people hoping to do a partial work from home, my sister is hoping to do one day at home out of five. I cannot work from home but for me that's a good thing, hate being stuck in the house and enjoy the company of colleagues at work.
Yes a reasonable balance is good; see the following thread for a really good discussion on working from home preferences:
The poll is interesting too!
That is a valid point to an extent. We've done a survey at work, and a good few people would be interestd in working from home for part of the week. Hardly anyone (think it was about 4%) wanted to work at home all the time.
Yes, this is consistent with the results of the poll in the thread discussing working from home preferences.

Does anyone have anything to discuss other than the work at home elements? I suggest any further discussion regarding working from home preferences takes place in the existing thread, to avoid duplication.
 

westv

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I can just imagine a not small number of dinosaur managers squashing dead any hopes of WFH for some people.
 

MontyMinerWA

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I'm really hoping that I will be allowed to work from home full time. I certainly don't miss travelling to work or the office.
 

bramling

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I had to think about this for a moment, but I've gone with the working from home option (despite some concerns about the long term implications). As much as I'd like a full return, I can't see a lot of people accepting it and it would be the perfect excuse for governments to go full retard at the first sign of a spike (note spike, not wave / surge). Working from home at least a few days a week would allow the economy to start to recover, whilst taking the pressure off transport, stores, services, and even to a degree recreational & hospitality sectors. I would also caveat this with a stronger set of legislations ensuring that workers do not get penalised when diagnosed with the virus and having to stay at home.

One negative aspect of working from home seems to be dawning on people now - if someone can work at home, what's to stop their work being outsourced to locations offshore where labour is cheaper?
 

MontyMinerWA

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One negative aspect of working from home seems to be dawning on people now - if someone can work at home, what's to stop their work being outsourced to locations offshore where labour is cheaper?
In all fairness this has been happening for a long time and certainly way before many of us started working from home.
 

WelshBluebird

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One negative aspect of working from home seems to be dawning on people now - if someone can work at home, what's to stop their work being outsourced to locations offshore where labour is cheaper?

It does depend on what industry you are in, but for what I do - the thing that stops work being outsourced is often the quality of that work.
Large companies tried offshoring software development in the 90's and 2000's, and many regretted it afterwards.
Even the company I work for, who have offices all around the world, including in some of the lower cost areas where you could offshore all of our jobs to if you didn't care about quality, keep us around because of the quality of what is delivered.
The above doesn't have to be a known against the people in those offshored offices either. Often, there is a degree of familiarity with the problem domain that you just don't get if you aren't embedded in that culture.
 

johntea

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I have found my sweet spot is 3 days working from home and 2 days in the office, full time at home and even with Teams or similar you just feel like you’re talking to a computer and often you don’t ‘feel’ the impact of the work you’re actually carrying out

To link this back to this thread if I’m working from the office now I’ll usually treat myself to a meal and maybe a few drinks one of those days every couple of weeks

Sadly for the leisure and pub industry I think it may be a long time before the traditional Friday end of week / payday socialising resumes!
 

thejuggler

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Just listening to radio and we are now in a new normal. Homeworking will have to be looked at due to reduction in desks which can be used. I was in an office yesterday and they are using 40% of their desks.

I do think however we need another 6-8 weeks to see if more people have returned to work once schools go back as at the moment it is impossible for thousands parents to go back to work due to childcare issues.

As for end of week socialising that went at least 20 years ago for me. Just one of those things which fizzled out as the older generation retired.
 

Class 33

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Return to normality as it was in 2019, as soon as possible! As these "social distancing" and "COVID-Secure" measures dragging on for months on end are absolutely wrecking the economy! We can't go on much longer like this.
 

AM9

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I took the poll to be asking the ideal situation long-term, not just during the current crisis.

On that basis, 'long-term' is a lot longer than some imagine if you mean when there is no longer a risk of rises in infections. Nobody here knows how far ahead thast is but personally I would guess about 2 years at least. So assumimg 2 years is the case, then the following issues will have moved forward:
The progress in the government's commitment to a net carbon-zero economy by 2050​
The three months of minimal carbon emissions from road traffic and aircraft has given people a unique view of a cleaner environment, with lower local air pollution and reduced noise levels. Effectively we have sampled the environment further down the curve of carbon reduction. That won't be lost on most people, and will make it more difficult for carbon burning dinosaurs to paint those who care about the environment as optimistic tree huggers chasing an impossibe dream.​
Mass unnecessary commuting habits​
At first, there were shrieks of horror from managements who just didn't trust the workers that they themselves had taken on if they couldn't see them. As the weeks went on, there were plenty of comments that that view was more an inadequacy in the management than the employers, and many took to working at home as efficiently of better. With the reward that successful homeworking is a win-win result for both employees and employers, there is a general presumption that those that can work at home should, (despite Johnson trying to say that it is employees'' 'duty' to crowd into city centres to provide profits for cafe's and pubs near workplaces). Once the expensive provision of offices and commuter transport is redirected to better equip homeworkers, we stand a chance of a genuine increase in productivity in the UK, something that we have lagged the rest of Europe on for decades. Reduction of commuting volumes will also feed into the drive for a carbon neutral economy as well.​
The necessity for a quarantined population to keep away from shops selling non-essential products and limit the number of essential shopping expeditions has boosted the mail/online-order volumes to higher levels than ever before. The constant wringing of hands about how the high streets are dying is just a continuation of the last 20 years commentary. They were going anyway, - the pandemic has just pushed us a little faster down the curve. There's no going back on that.​
The rapid rise of online services has also telescoped the change. Telephone triages with GPs were already increasing. The need to remove as much face to face consultations as possible has ushered in the age of video sessions with GPs and other medical health providers. Soon, they will be the norm rather than a quick fix for the COVID-19 restrictions. Many more people will see the value of not travelling to the surgery/hospital, and just like happened with telephones in the last 100 years, some form of internet connected audio-visual communication device will become as commonplace in normal homes as phones are now.​

This is my undertanding of the 'new normal'* and everyone not living in a cave will be affected by it. Pushing against those aspects that don't appeal will be pointless.

*for those who object to the term 'new normal', then just call it 'normal' because that is what it will be like.
 

MontyMinerWA

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Sadly for the leisure and pub industry I think it may be a long time before the traditional Friday end of week / payday socialising resumes!
In all fairness pre Covid 19 I couldn't bothered with after work drinks, I just wanted to go home!
 

adc82140

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We can't go back to gridlocked traffic and a rail system unable to cope, so I've gone with no.3

Other things I'd like to keep are the ability to book an appointment with a salesperson in a big furniture or carpet shop, and the ability to book an appointment at the tip and avoid queuing to get in.
 

Horizon22

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I imagine 80-90% as normal but with elements such as occasional working from home, some road restrictions to allow residential streets and car demand surpressed, more online "social events", less overseas travel etc. To be honest a re-balancing of peak demand more evenly spread across the day would be very helpful for railway operations.
 

Islineclear3_1

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I've gone with No. 3 but appreciate that this won't be an option for everyone. My work can't be outsourced (yet...) due to the specialist medical work and years of training required to do it and much of it has to be done face-to-face as it involves tests/scans etc.

Be interesting to get an idea of the demographic here; i.e. will the older members here prefer some home working and the younger members prefer pure office/workplace-based working?

And of course, "proper" train driving/signalling/dispatch/maintenance [insert speciality here] can't be done from the comfort of one's own home
 

Nicholas43

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I'd like to keep many elements, and build on them. Eg, re-purpose surplus office space and associated sandwich shops and bars as housing; simpler rail fares because peak is smoothed out; keep encouragement of cycling and walking; keep car-free inner cities; keep less flying; re-purpose some airports as wild woods.
 

talldave

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My normal was working from home for nearly a decade (up until 2019 my office was in Belgium!). Just before coronavirus killed my job, I working for a London organisation with 50 something hot desks for 70 ish staff, so was 90% home based still. You can't survive without some face to face networking/contact, but I've always found home working more productive and I could take my little one to the park during the day and get a stack of work done late at night.
 

philosopher

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I would rather things went back to the 2019 normal. I know the 2019 normal had its flaws, but at least you knew what you where dealing with and could make decisions accordingly. The very potential very rapid pace of the changes from this particularly concerns me.

For example with WFH, if it gradually increased from people working entirely at the office to half the time at home over a period of 20 years, then those businesses dependent on office workers can adjust accordingly. However if this shift happens in overnight as could well be the case, then these businesses have no time to adjust.
 

Richard Scott

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In all fairness a lot of those were in a poor state before Covid 19.
Doesn't mean they wouldn't have survived. We know business comes and goes but how can anyone say all recent events didn't damage economy. When did the economy last contract at the rate it is?
 

SouthEastBuses

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For me: 2019 normal however with a minor change:

Banning domestic flights (except those to Northern Ireland and islands cut off from mainland UK such as Isles of Scilly), and short distance international flights (such as those to Paris, Amsterdam or Brussels, for example) and having more trains to replace them. That way, international (and long distance domestic) travel can be kept like before, but in a more ecologically and environmentally sustainable way. Instead of more unnecessary domestic / short distance international flights, we should have for example: more Cross Country trains (and electrification) for domestic travel, and more Eurostar trains to more destinations (maybe Bordeaux or Frankfurt, or even all the way as far as Spain or Italy?) on the European mainland for short distance international travel.

And, hopefully, in about 20-30 years time, having the Japenese Shinkansen L0 Series maglev supersonic speed trains (the one that reached the world speed record of 603 km/h) replacing long haul flights! They can apparently go 643-804 kmh - that's only 100 km/h less than a regular plane in flight! Although of course building the infrastucture can be very difficult and very expensive, costing billions, if not trillions of money. Especially if you want to build a route across the Atlantic Ocean...
 
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