Covid-19 to have a permanent downward effect on commuting patterns with more partial working from home?

[UP13]

It's interesting that the attitude of some people on furlough has changed while others are still enjoying being away from the workplace.

Back in March, there was this behaviour of being off work, enjoy the sunshine, drink lots of beer, maybe have a barbeque, take the kids to the seaside and general enjoy the relaxation of bring on paid leave from work.

However, I do think there is a major shift in attitude now. One of my oldest friends has been furloughed since the beginning of November and he is climbing the walls desperate to get back to work to ease the bordem and monotony of being at home.

CJ

My sister-in-law and her fiancé seem to encapsulate both sides. Both went on furlough and my sister in law was clawing at the walls and was getting really depressed. Her fiancé on the other hand was bragging about how he was being paid to stay at home and play video games all day.

 

[Hadders]

Just remember, many of us have been told to work from home. Its not necessarily a choice.

Appreciate that but you’ve still saved money. I’m on about a more permanent arrangement rather than what has happened over the last few months.

 

[superjohn]

These people in the ‘new world’ are raking it in with their full salaries, no travel costs and then not putting anything back into the economy by not busing coffee, lunch, socialising after work etc

Unless they are literally putting their money under a mattress, it is going back into the economy. It may be via a different route but money always circulates. Our economy will adjust to suit as it always has, in the same way that led to all the coffee stands and sandwich shops popping up in the first place.

 

[duncanp]

I’ve no idea how it could be implemented but I did float the idea of a working from home tax a few weeks back. These people in the ‘new world’ are raking it in with their full salaries, no travel costs and then not putting anything back into the economy by not busing coffee, lunch, socialising after work etc.

Against this you have to take account of increased heating costs, especially at this time of year.

There will also be increased expenditure on food to replace the sandwiches and coffees that you might normally buy when at the office.

Whilst working at home may be financially beneficial for some people, it is not necessarily the case for everyone.

Then you have to take account of the effect on mental health and personal relationships. Working at home means a blurring of the boundaries between work and home life, and there can be an effect on physical health by not having the ergonomic equipment and facilities that you would normally expect to have in an office.

If the government wants people working from home to put something back into the economy, it might try actually opening the economy first.

 

[Chester1]

OK it sounds like you haven't experienced the kind of meetings I'm thinking of so as an example.

Team working on project for client: We expect to deliver the project by Friday
Client: We do want to make one change which is ...... Will it still be delivered by Friday incorporating that change?
Team working on project for client: Just give us a couple of minutes. (Microphone muted and video turned off while the team discusses among itself whether delivering the project is on Friday is still achievable without impacting other client's projects. Client can not hear these discussions as it would breach commercial agreements with other clients.)
(Microphone unmuted and video turned back on) Yes we can deliver by Friday but it will now be last thing on Friday, we were originally hoping it would be by lunchtime on Friday.

If you have a client who has clear requirements and never changes their minds, then that may not be required but 95% of the time that isn't the case.





I was speaking to one Stockport based e-commerce business owner the other week. He originally advertised a role as remote being possible but ideally someone who can regularly or occasionally work from their Stockport office. After getting 230 applicants from people living in a commutable distance of Stockport, he decided to change the requirement to be someone who can work from their office post-COVID. While he said many of the applicants weren't suitable, he also said he had over 100+ local suitable applicants, rather than the 15-20 he expected and if he'd known he could get that many he wouldn't have bothered mentioning remote possible. The issue with that role could have been it is based within walking distance of Stockport station, a place well served by local and long distance trains.

Regarding the points you made about offices in central locations and yourself be willing to work for a London based company. I'm aware of one business who moved from a central London location to Surbiton to save money. If you were making a once a month trip to an office not far from Paddington station, would you be happy to carry on doing that if it meant 50 minutes of travelling after arriving at Paddington? And what if getting the first train from your local station, didn't get you in to Surbiton in time and you had to not only travel to Surbiton once a month but you had to stay in a hotel (at your own expense) once a month? If not, aren't your two of your potential advantages incompatible with each other?

I think your Stockport example highlights that its a matter for individual businesses and employees. There is a section of people who don't like change so don't like the shift to WFH, its really none of their business. A friend has a high skilled engineering job and attending the office every day through the pandemic unnecessarily was a major factor in moving to a different company. He is attending full time while for first few weeks but will WFH 1-2 days a week long term. Companies need to balance a range of factors when making their WFH policies and decide what is best for them. Cost of office space should make WFH more common in London and the South East. It is extremely expensive to the point that will often more than offset any reduction in worker output.

Many people I have spoken to about this 'working from home' are now getting a little jarred off with it all, the level of service from Companies, so quite big, and some very big names has plummeted to rock bottom, I tend to agree, I too am fed up with either emails saying response time will be longer as staff are working from home, or telephone lines ring.....and ring...and then you get a message saying due to limited staff in the office(s) you may have longer to wait.
Back to work, use public transport, and just wear the bloody mask !

There was one Company I emailed about an item, and they said 'due to covid'......' our order completion times are now between 20 and 24 weeks' once I had stopped spluttering I said that I would not bother thankyou.

Then spend your money elsewhere!

 

[Yew]

not putting anything back into the economy by not busing coffee, lunch, socialising after work etc.

Many of these things have been forcibly closed for most of the last 9 months, so I don't think these criticisms are fair. I've been working from home and would love to go out for some after work drinks.

 

[Hadders]

Many of these things have been forcibly closed for most of the last 9 months, so I don't think these criticisms are fair. I've been working from home and would love to go out for some after work drinks.

I did say this wouldn’t be based on what had happened over the last few months, but on the situation once normality had returned.

 

[Yew]

I did say this wouldn’t be based on what had happened over the last few months, but on the situation once normality had returned.

I'm struggling to see it, I think I saw a post from you in another thread?

 

[peters]

There's already a tax rebate that covers that... https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home (although capped at £1.20 a week so nowhere near normal office overheads).

Employers can provide £6 per week to employees who work from home (tax free), without the employee being required to produce receipts. If they have higher costs for working from home then the employer can provide more but the employee needs to provide evidence for it to be treated as tax free.

Martin Lewis has promoted that even if your employer can't or won't give you a £6 working from home allowance, then you can still claim £6 per week of your normal salary is being used for working from home expenses and claim tax relief on that. In response to that HMRC decided everyone who has had to work from home during the 20/21 tax year can claim tax relief for the full year, regardless of the number of days people have actually worked from home.

One thing to note is if you work part time and earn £12500 a year then you can't claim tax relief for working from home, unless your employer gives you a working from home allowance to take you above the threshold for paying tax.

Cost of office space should make WFH more common in London and the South East. It is extremely expensive to the point that will often more than offset any reduction in worker output.

I agree on that. Additionally, many companies and organisations, including the BBC, give a higher salary to those based in and around London then someone doing the equivalent job elsewhere. So employing someone from Newcastle who works from home might be a double saving, even if you allow for them making occasional visits to a London premises and getting expenses for them.

 

[Mag_seven]

This is the traffic in our area this morning after the snow overnight. Our workplace - where most of us are working from home - is unaffected, but it's pleasing to think that some of our competitors (who are run by the "I need to watch over you while you work" brigade) are currently getting nothing done.

Its a bank holiday today.

 

[peters]

Its a bank holiday today.

Indeed. Although some businesses are operating as normal today, most employees who usually work Monday to Friday are on a day of statutory leave with 26th Dec falling on a Saturday. Although, it's disappointing bus operators and Royal Mail seem to think it's an extra Bank Holiday and have both 26th & 28th off - that's not the intention, especially not for essential public services. At least the railways have it right and are running a service today after not providing one on the 26th.

 

[lkpridgeon]

Appreciate that but you’ve still saved money. I’m on about a more permanent arrangement rather than what has happened over the last few months.

I wish I was saving money from working from home, it seems to be slightly more expensive as my oil, water and electric usage has gone up, I'm spending more on food as I'm having cooked lunches and my commute was rather efficient as I collected my food shopping on the way, did out of work activities and other stuff on the way back of which I'm still mostly doing. My saving in transport comes to a whopping tenner out of my 250-300/month total spend (of which was 150 for my commute). I'm sure a lot of people will be in the same boat as I am here too.

I pay about 10k a year in tax (Income+NI) alongside corporation tax and business rates, why should I pay more for something I've been forced to do? I don't mind paying tax however I don't see the point in discriminating based on where you choose/are forced to work.

 

[Hadders]

I wish I was saving money from working from home, it seems to be slightly more expensive as my oil, water and electric usage has gone up, I'm spending more on food as I'm having cooked lunches and my commute was rather efficient as I collected my food shopping on the way, did out of work activities and other stuff on the way back of which I'm still mostly doing. My saving in transport comes to a whopping tenner out of my 250-300/month total spend (of which was 150 for my commute). I'm sure a lot of people will be in the same boat as I am here too.

I pay about 10k a year in tax (Income+NI) alongside corporation tax and business rates, why should I pay more for something I've been forced to do? I don't mind paying tax however I don't see the point in discriminating based on where you choose/are forced to work.

That's interesting, although my experience is somewhat different. My working arrangements have been unaltered other than around 6 weeks during the 'hard' lock down as I cannot effectively work from home. A number of my colleagues, who have a similar job to me, are able to work from home (but pre-covid worked from the office). My colleagues

- Are no longer paying £5k+ per annum for a rail season ticket
- Are no longer paying around £1k per year to park their car at the station
- Have stopped buying coffees and lunch at the office and replaced it with cheaper home made alternatives

To be fair there are some additional costs of working from home but HMRC allows you to claim tax relief of £312 per year to help off set this cost.

To be fair this example is more of a London example but even in other ares of the country where a rail commute isn't part of the journey to work a 50 mile round trip would equate to an annual cost of around £1,800 in fuel alone.

 

[Ianno87]

It was a just a suggestion to try and get people back into offices at least some of the time, so they can contribute to the economy and fund borrowing, not a very good suggestion it seems.

But I do think we need to think outside the box in terms of economic recovery from this pandemic.

I’ve no idea how it could be implemented but I did float the idea of a working from home tax a few weeks back. These people in the ‘new world’ are raking it in with their full salaries, no travel costs and then not putting anything back into the economy by not busing coffee, lunch, socialising after work etc.

We all still pay tax and use our local shops....

I'm old enough to remember the days when Millennials got criticised for spending all our money on (apparently) Avocado Toasts rather than saving...

 

[futureA]

I have some very mixed feelings regarding working from home.
I work in a specialised design profession that relies heavily on close collaboration and I do feel that working from home has made certain tasks more difficult. Some things are just easier when you are in the same room as the other people.

Me being young and sharing a small flat, I simply don’t have the space for a desk and chair and certainly don’t have a spare room to turn into a dedicated work area.

I have spent the past 9 months working from an armchair in my bedroom with my laptop on my lap.

In the office, I have a very high end PC with two very large monitors so working from a tiny laptop screen via a laggy screen sharing app is a very noticeable downgrade which can be highly frustrating at times.

I also miss interacting face to face with my colleagues. I miss overhearing conversations about other projects. I miss the hustle and bustle of the city.

Although we have a weekly catch up meeting, I feel almost completely ignorant about what else is going on in the company.

Yes, I have saved a lot of money from not travelling but I worry about the changes which might occur in a post covid world.

I’ve always been drawn to the buzz and vibrancy of cities but if 40% fewer people are communing then will any of the shops, restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities which bring vibrancy to a place survive? Will all the people saving money from not committing be surprised when there are no restaurants or bars in which to spend that money? Most of the shops and restaurants in city centres are sustained by office workers so a large drop in patronage can’t be a good thing.
Combined with the demise of retail is the city centre a thing of the past?
Will large parts of our cities become derelict wrecks like they where I the 70’s?
Things don’t bode well for rail travel either. What is the point of HS2 if there are going to be 40% fewer commuters? Will we need a second Beeching axe in a few years?

Perhaps I am being a little hyperbolic but most of our cities have improved massively within the past 20 years and it seems a shame to throw all that away.

Going back to more practical matters, I agree that home working must be terrible for new recruits and especially terrible for people just joining my industry. How do you get a feel of the company when they don’t even have an office?

In my industry once you start working you learn my doing. But much of that learning happens passively just by being immersed within an office environment. You overhear conversations, you can see not only what people are doing but how they are doing it.

Perhaps in some industries a computerised training course is sufficient to bring people up to speed, but not in my industry.

I think people in my industry do realise that we are not particularly suited to working from home so we will remain mostly office based.

I think post pandemic I will definitely be one of the people working mainly from the office, perhaps 5 days per week.

I appreciate the social aspect of working so I wouldn’t be interested in taking a job where I never meet my colleagues.

 

[LAX54]

I have some very mixed feelings regarding working from home.
I work in a specialised design profession that relies heavily on close collaboration and I do feel that working from home has made certain tasks more difficult. Some things are just easier when you are in the same room as the other people.

Me being young and sharing a small flat, I simply don’t have the space for a desk and chair and certainly don’t have a spare room to turn into a dedicated work area.

I have spent the past 9 months working from an armchair in my bedroom with my laptop on my lap.

In the office, I have a very high end PC with two very large monitors so working from a tiny laptop screen via a laggy screen sharing app is a very noticeable downgrade which can be highly frustrating at times.

I also miss interacting face to face with my colleagues. I miss overhearing conversations about other projects. I miss the hustle and bustle of the city.

Although we have a weekly catch up meeting, I feel almost completely ignorant about what else is going on in the company.

Yes, I have saved a lot of money from not travelling but I worry about the changes which might occur in a post covid world.

I’ve always been drawn to the buzz and vibrancy of cities but if 40% fewer people are communing then will any of the shops, restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities which bring vibrancy to a place survive? Will all the people saving money from not committing be surprised when there are no restaurants or bars in which to spend that money? Most of the shops and restaurants in city centres are sustained by office workers so a large drop in patronage can’t be a good thing.
Combined with the demise of retail is the city centre a thing of the past?
Will large parts of our cities become derelict wrecks like they where I the 70’s?
Things don’t bode well for rail travel either. What is the point of HS2 if there are going to be 40% fewer commuters? Will we need a second Beeching axe in a few years?

Perhaps I am being a little hyperbolic but most of our cities have improved massively within the past 20 years and it seems a shame to throw all that away.

Going back to more practical matters, I agree that home working must be terrible for new recruits and especially terrible for people just joining my industry. How do you get a feel of the company when they don’t even have an office?

In my industry once you start working you learn my doing. But much of that learning happens passively just by being immersed within an office environment. You overhear conversations, you can see not only what people are doing but how they are doing it.

Perhaps in some industries a computerised training course is sufficient to bring people up to speed, but not in my industry.

I think people in my industry do realise that we are not particularly suited to working from home so we will remain mostly office based.

I think post pandemic I will definitely be one of the people working mainly from the office, perhaps 5 days per week.

I appreciate the social aspect of working so I wouldn’t be interested in taking a job where I never meet my colleagues.

I think there are a lot of valid points there, it is not all rosey working at home I am sure, and from an outsider looking in, as I have said before, it can be very frustrating, with things taking a lot longer, I also wonder what the tax or insurance implication is of having your workplace as your home address.

I can also imagine that those with a poor internet speed, which is still quite a large part of the UK, will find it very annoying/frustrating too ! There must be so many plus points from being in an office with some other people, being at home 24/7 on your own could end up being very soul destroying !

 

[RuralRambler]

Higher taxes for those working from home will never happen - far too complicated and far too unfair. Taxes will obviously rise across the board to pay for covid and also to pay for the longer term investment needed in the NHS etc will will now have to happen.

Though an equivalent effect to "penalise" home workers may happen in other ways. Perhaps the govt will have to subsidise public transport even more in the longer term to encourage people to use it - that means that commuters using public transport could benefit from reduced fares. Another option would be to grant tax relief on commuting costs using public transport, i.e. claim the costs against your income before tax. Both would be sure vote winners.

Put together, everyone pays more tax, but those commuting using public transport will benefit either from lower fares and/or tax relief on the costs.

What is certain is that post covid, the Treasury won't be doing the same things as previously, i.e. things will be VERY different, as they need to be. We've had years, if not a decade or two, of faffing around the edges with tax laws, public sector spending, etc., and just making small "nudges" to change things. The post covid world will require big changes in lots of areas.

 

[Cdd89]

Though an equivalent effect to "penalise" home workers may happen in other ways. Perhaps the govt will have to subsidise public transport even more in the longer term to encourage people to use it - that means that commuters using public transport could benefit from reduced fares.

My speculation a few months ago was that single and return tickets would increase in price, while travel cards and season tickets would remain the same or decrease, increasing the disparity between the two. This squeezes more money out of the people going in 3 days per week (and whose available income to pay has gone up), while not penalising those who do need to commute 5 days a week.

 

[3rd rail land]

I have some very mixed feelings regarding working from home.
I work in a specialised design profession that relies heavily on close collaboration and I do feel that working from home has made certain tasks more difficult. Some things are just easier when you are in the same room as the other people.

Me being young and sharing a small flat, I simply don’t have the space for a desk and chair and certainly don’t have a spare room to turn into a dedicated work area.

I have spent the past 9 months working from an armchair in my bedroom with my laptop on my lap.

In the office, I have a very high end PC with two very large monitors so working from a tiny laptop screen via a laggy screen sharing app is a very noticeable downgrade which can be highly frustrating at times.

I also miss interacting face to face with my colleagues. I miss overhearing conversations about other projects. I miss the hustle and bustle of the city.

Although we have a weekly catch up meeting, I feel almost completely ignorant about what else is going on in the company.

Yes, I have saved a lot of money from not travelling but I worry about the changes which might occur in a post covid world.

I’ve always been drawn to the buzz and vibrancy of cities but if 40% fewer people are communing then will any of the shops, restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities which bring vibrancy to a place survive? Will all the people saving money from not committing be surprised when there are no restaurants or bars in which to spend that money? Most of the shops and restaurants in city centres are sustained by office workers so a large drop in patronage can’t be a good thing.
Combined with the demise of retail is the city centre a thing of the past?
Will large parts of our cities become derelict wrecks like they where I the 70’s?
Things don’t bode well for rail travel either. What is the point of HS2 if there are going to be 40% fewer commuters? Will we need a second Beeching axe in a few years?

Perhaps I am being a little hyperbolic but most of our cities have improved massively within the past 20 years and it seems a shame to throw all that away.

Going back to more practical matters, I agree that home working must be terrible for new recruits and especially terrible for people just joining my industry. How do you get a feel of the company when they don’t even have an office?

In my industry once you start working you learn my doing. But much of that learning happens passively just by being immersed within an office environment. You overhear conversations, you can see not only what people are doing but how they are doing it.

Perhaps in some industries a computerised training course is sufficient to bring people up to speed, but not in my industry.

I think people in my industry do realise that we are not particularly suited to working from home so we will remain mostly office based.

I think post pandemic I will definitely be one of the people working mainly from the office, perhaps 5 days per week.

I appreciate the social aspect of working so I wouldn’t be interested in taking a job where I never meet my colleagues.

WFH in your situation sounds pretty awful. There is no way I could work from just a laptop screen whilst sitting in an armchair. I don't know if your employer is willing to provide a monitor etc to make WFH easier for you but if you don't have space to put it anywhere its rather a moot point. I am rather lucky that I have space in my flat to have a proper WFH setup as the money to set it up to my liking. I'd know I wouldn't get an ideal setup out of the items my employer would be prepared to provide me with.

As for laggy screen sharing I think this happens to all of us. If someone is doing a presentation I find they often start talking about content on the next slide a good 3 seconds before the slide actually appears on my screen as obviously the slide loads for the presenter before it does everyone else. Its frustrating to have to check that everyone can see the screen when you load in whatever you are attempting to share.

As for what else is going in in the company I find my employer isn't the best about sharing this information regardless of where I work. For example my boss runs a support team for about a dozen small programmes and I haven't heard of any of them except for one which I have been assigned to in the past to cover annual leave. When looking for opportunities, which I am now, I rely far too much on my boss to help me get a suitable role as I simply don't know what opportunities are out there in my company. The vacancies page my employer has is rubbish and the job descriptions are not great to say the least.

Starting with a new employer WFH must be pretty awful as you point out but if my role changes and I end up on a different programme I don't have a problem doing this WFH as I know how the company works even if I might not know a lot of my new colleagues.

I do miss the days of having an office 20 minutes away that I went to 5 days a week but it has long since closed so for me WFH is going to last far beyond the end of the pandemic. In fact I will probably only ever to to an office for planned activity that can't be performed remotely which given my role in IT is now quite rare as nearly everything is cloud based and can be done from anywhere with an internet connection. In theory this should open up more opportunities as it massively reduces geographical restrictions but to date I haven't seen the benefit of this!

 

[The Ham]

I think there are a lot of valid points there, it is not all rosey working at home I am sure, and from an outsider looking in, as I have said before, it can be very frustrating, with things taking a lot longer, I also wonder what the tax or insurance implication is of having your workplace as your home address.

I can also imagine that those with a poor internet speed, which is still quite a large part of the UK, will find it very annoying/frustrating too ! There must be so many plus points from being in an office with some other people, being at home 24/7 on your own could end up being very soul destroying !

Statistically 600,000 homes (out of 27,800,000 homes in total) have internet speeds of less than 10mbs, with the average internet speed of about 60mbs.

As such whilst it's true that there's a larger area with lower broadband speeds, the majority of people should be able to get fairly decent speeds.

 

[RuralRambler]

Statistically 600,000 homes (out of 27,800,000 homes in total) have internet speeds of less than 10mbs, with the average internet speed of about 60mbs.

As such whilst it's true that there's a larger area with lower broadband speeds, the majority of people should be able to get fairly decent speeds.

It's not just lack of decent broadband, there are also lots of places with poor/inadequate mobile phone signals too, which means problems with phoning/texting if you're WFH in such an area. Eg, I don't get any mobile coverage in my office at all - that means that I miss texts sent to me until I get home at night. Broadband is also slow as we're a couple of miles away from the BT exchange (copper wires all the way) and we aren't covered by Sky nor any other cable broadband options. Our village shop has some kind of satellite dish for it's National lottery terminal. This is a village of 6,000 occupants, so not a hick "side of hill" hamlet. I think covid is really highlighting that we need to massively improve broadband and mobile coverage in more rural areas.

 

[3rd rail land]

It's not just lack of decent broadband, there are also lots of places with poor/inadequate mobile phone signals too, which means problems with phoning/texting if you're WFH in such an area. Eg, I don't get any mobile coverage in my office at all - that means that I miss texts sent to me until I get home at night. Broadband is also slow as we're a couple of miles away from the BT exchange (copper wires all the way) and we aren't covered by Sky nor any other cable broadband options. Our village shop has some kind of satellite dish for it's National lottery terminal. This is a village of 6,000 occupants, so not a hick "side of hill" hamlet. I think covid is really highlighting that we need to massively improve broadband and mobile coverage in more rural areas.

I live in London and can only get fibre direct to the property, i.e. not via the BT exchange. That means there is a choice of just 1 ISP I can go with if I want decent internet connectivity, all the others offer standard broadband only which is speeds of up to 16mb. My borough has 328,000 residents so I don't understand why BT haven't upgraded my local exchange as its not as if I live in some remote part of the country!

I think the issue really lies with the VPN that companies provide. In normal times they have enough capacity as a lot of people are in the office but with everyone working from home there isn't sufficient bandwidth to go round everyone. Earlier in the year my employer had to ask people north of Coventry to use the secondary VPN, which was only ever designed to be a failover option in times of outage, whereas before everyone would be on the primary connection without any problems. Some companies will have upgraded their VPN capacity but I expect some will have a make do attitude and not increase VPN capacity.

 

[infobleep]

You could flip the argument on its head - should people working from home start claiming expenses for extra heating, electricity etc that they wouldn't need if working in the office?

You could and people can claim an extra £6 a week in tax benefits. If costs are over that then they need to submit receipts.

I live in London and can only fibre direct to the property, i.e. not via the BT exchange. That means there is a choice of just 1 ISP I can go with if I want decent internet connectivity, all the others offer standard broadband only which is speeds of up to 16mb. My borough has 328,000 residents so I don't understand why BT haven't upgraded my local exchange as its not as if I live in some remote part of the country!

I think the issue really lies with the VPN that companies provide. In normal times they have enough capacity as a lot of people are in the office but with everyone working from home there isn't sufficient bandwidth to go round everyone. Earlier in the year my employer had to ask people north of Coventry to use the secondary VPN, which was only ever designed to be a failover option in times of outage, whereas before everyone would be on the primary connection without any problems. Some companies will have upgraded their VPN capacity but I expect some will have a make do attitude and not increase VPN capacity.

My company added in the capacity to support home working. We went from 5% regularly working from home to 95% with no major probldms
Even windows updates are not a problem even though it goes through a VPN. They use Chromsbooks and Google though so not everything or everyone needs to route through the office. I struggle at times but I'm using heavy duty software and even with a ultra fast fiber optic it isn't always enough

 

[3rd rail land]

You could and people can claim an extra £6 a week in tax benefits. If costs are over that then they need to submit receipts.

My employer has said, long before Covid, that they won't pay the extra cost incurred from home working. They say that people save on travel costs so this should more than offset the cost of extra heating etc...

 

[telstarbox]

Conversely I know of employers who have paid their staff to buy desks, monitors etc for home use - the increase in productivity will more than pay for this initial cost. Always worth asking

We all still pay tax and use our local shops....

I'm old enough to remember the days when Millennials got criticised for spending all our money on (apparently) Avocado Toasts rather than saving...

And a few years ago there was concern that not enough households have "rainy day" savings, relying too much on credit. Now something's happened which allows some people to build up savings and then people want to tax that away again :/

 

[infobleep]

My employer has said, long before Covid, that they won't pay the extra cost incurred from home working. They say that people save on travel costs so this should more than offset the cost of extra heating etc...

Same where I work but they will pay for people traveling to the office if their regular place of work is at home.

 

[3rd rail land]

Same where I work but they will pay for people traveling to the office if their regular place of work is at home.

I am officially classified as a mobile worker so I can claim travel expenses to anywhere I need to go for work purposes.

 

[The Ham]

Conversely I know of employers who have paid their staff to buy desks, monitors etc for home use - the increase in productivity will more than pay for this initial cost. Always worth asking


And a few years ago there was concern that not enough households have "rainy day" savings, relying too much on credit. Now something's happened which allows some people to build up savings and then people want to tax that away again :/

We've not benefited from employers providing much kit, but what we've done is wall mounted monitors (significantly reduces the size of desk needed) and got a folding desk for our bedroom (reduces the space needed within the room for a desk, in fact it allows it to be in front of our wardrobe which wouldn't otherwise work with a fixed desk). We've also got a USB hub so that the keyboard, mouse and headset is a single thing to plug into the computer, these live on a small shelf which doubles up as a bedside space.

This gives us a much better work setup than using the kitchen table with just a laptop screen to work on.

 

[theblackwatch]

I think the issue really lies with the VPN that companies provide. In normal times they have enough capacity as a lot of people are in the office but with everyone working from home there isn't sufficient bandwidth to go round everyone. Earlier in the year my employer had to ask people north of Coventry to use the secondary VPN, which was only ever designed to be a failover option in times of outage, whereas before everyone would be on the primary connection without any problems. Some companies will have upgraded their VPN capacity but I expect some will have a make do attitude and not increase VPN capacity.

My employer had a VPN which was used by a minimal amount of people before Covid came on the scene. It was gradually rolled out to more people (including myself) to see how it coped, and I believe there has been some upgrade work too. It works fine for me 99% of the time. One of our senior management said something along the lines of the situation has brought forward what would probably have occurred in a few years time.

We all still pay tax and use our local shops....

I've found myself spending more money on my local high street, and slightly further afield. I pop down to the local butcher's shop for a pork pie or similar for lunch at least once a week, and also try and have 'lunch out' one day each week, which can entail something like a 2 mile train journey, visit the privately run station cafe for a sandwich and drink, then walk home. Not only does it get me out, it supports local businesses and a good form of exercise, although my walking route now has to be via the main road, as the more pleasant walk over the fields has become too boggy! I suspect my spends are broadly in line with what I would spend in the shop/staff restaurant at work.

Conversely I know of employers who have paid their staff to buy desks, monitors etc for home use - the increase in productivity will more than pay for this initial cost. Always worth asking

I've been told I can bring my chair and a monitor home from work. But I already have a computer chair, and a second monitor wouldn't fit sensibly on my small computer desk. I'm managing to do my job on a laptop, and although certain aspects of it are better done with two screens, I'm surprised at how quickly I adapted.

Looking ahead, I can see me doing a mix of home and office working, which - for my circumstances - is a 'best of both worlds'. There are some parts of my job which are certainly better done in the office, but there are others which can be done just as well from home. There are other advantages of being able to work from home on occasions - for example, this morning when I woke up to 2 inches of snow. While I would have battled in to work (and probably arrived late), others would have rung up and said they couldn't get in. If you can work from home, then the disruption for both the employer and employee is much less. On another occasion, a recurring health issue I have flared up the other week - I was able to work from home, but wouldn't have been able to go in to work, so no sick day needed.

 

[LAX54]

Statistically 600,000 homes (out of 27,800,000 homes in total) have internet speeds of less than 10mbs, with the average internet speed of about 60mbs.

As such whilst it's true that there's a larger area with lower broadband speeds, the majority of people should be able to get fairly decent speeds.

In our area, most of the properties can get 2 to 3mb max ! (some, like my connection we get 45mb max, new estate buil next to us, but no high speed ) as for mobile phone coverage (all providers) useless !

Reading between the lines in some of the posts, it seems that WFH is not all it's cracked up to be !