Remote working - the future?

Young_gunner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837260#Comment_117837260

I think the headline there could be a little misleading when you read the article. Let's see.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117836985#Comment_117836985

When commuting costs went up, train fares or Luas fares or fuel costs, did the employer jump in with an offer of salary increases to cover? My ass they did.

Commuting costs were the responsibility of the employee in the bad times, so why should the employer get the benefit of reduced costs in the good times?

screamer

There will be people now who have purchased a house far away from the office and can be forced back, into commuting. That, or be at the mercy of employers who will never, ever give them another pay rise. We’ve all handed over too much of our lives to employers, and I really thought this government would take the opportunity of making working from home a realistic work term, but alas the coffee shops and sandwich joints need cash, not to mention the revenue from fuel when commuting, so, work life balance be damned. For those saying find a better/ equivalent job locally, yeh, if such a thing existed, there would be no commuters.

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837645#Comment_117837645

I think if the job is fully remote, i.e. they have no office space, then they should definitely cover at a minimum the cost of electricity and heating at home. If there is a desk in an office and the employee chooses the work at home, I am not seeing why they should do so. Surely they could just say, there is a desk here for you, come on in if you want to keep home costs to a minimum.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837703#Comment_117837703

Fwiw, one of the companies I am working for is planning on expecting any one who wants to work at home to have a suitable desk, chair, private work area and fast, reliable broadband. The first hint that one of these isn't available, and the message will be "a suitable desk is available here, use it".

Kintarō Hattori

I'm not at all looking forward to heading back to the office. When all this kicked off my daughter was 3+. I was up and out the door before 7am for an hours commute to a drab business park. Now I can wake up beside my 4+ year old, help get her ready in the mornings and drop her to playschool. I used to have an hours commute back in the evening which meant I might have gotten 60-90 minutes with my daughter before I put her to bed. Not to mention that I'm saving €300+ per month by not commuting.

I live in a small house and have a desk in the main bedroom which is fairly large and work from there. I can sit here with no shoes on, make a coffee whenever I feel like it wth no-one judging you for not being at your desk permanently. The biggest thing for me though, apart from all my daughter related benefits is that I can sit here and listen to music- something you absoluely couldn't do in the office. Have a pair of earbuds in while working? You were anti-social.

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837789#Comment_117837789

Well that makes perfect sense surely? You can hardly work from home if you don't have suitable space or reliable broadband!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837260#Comment_117837260

Bit of a clickbait headline, no? It says further down that 2/3 companies are planning that employees work at least 2 days from home. This kind of hybrid working is always what was expected. I don’t think anyone realistically thought that there would be much full time WFH (and not many people actually want that according to the surveys - most want flexibility)

C3PO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837789#Comment_117837789

This is one of the big concerns for companies that are considering allowing blended/full remote working. During the pandemic a certain leeway has been allowed in terms of a suitable home work environment. But going forward it will be the responsibility of the employer to ensure that an employee who is working remotely has a safe and ergonomic facility to work in. This will be a nightmare for facility and IT departments!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837645#Comment_117837645

God I hope you don't work in accounting or anything financial related, you're really bad at this

JimmyVik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837680#Comment_117837680

I really feel for people who upped and moved far away from Dublin.

I know for a fact in my place of work they will be checking addresses and use it as a tool to negotiate lower salaries with new staff who live far away.

I also think you are right in that someone who is working from home will be susceptible to smaller increases in salary since the employer knows it will be harder for them to move to a competitor.

And it looks like a fair few people who left apartments in Dublin to move home to parents will now be paying up to 50% more in rent when they finally do get another apartment in Dublin.

JimmyVik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837703#Comment_117837703

A friend of my other halfs, last January got told she could work from home until the lockdown was over. Possibly the rest of the year or even longer if it worked out.

Herself and about a dozen of her colleagues crafted a compliant that they now wanted money for heating for working from home.

Employer refused and just told them they were all to come back after the lockdown was over. They will probably all now have no opportunity to WFH in that ccompany.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837838#Comment_117837838

You write as if this is a new thing. It’s been around for years in many companies. I’ve not worked more than 3 days a week in the office for almost a decade, and have never had to do anything more than a questionnaire and some basic personal attestations. And these have been in companies with sophisticated HR departments. London especially has had tens of thousands of people hybrid working for many years.

it is not that big a deal and people are trying to overplay it to make it seem like an insurmountable problem

same with GDPR

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838205#Comment_117838205

I guess some managers could be a bit vindictive like that.

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838255#Comment_117838255

It might be the first time where heavily unionised companies/organisations allow remote working. The likelihood of cases related to accidents at home etc would be a lot higher in that type of situation. I can just imagine in the future reading about someone bringing a case because they weren't properly trained to use their home office.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837795#Comment_117837795

People have been WFH in vastly unsuitable conditions since Mar 2020. Be cause it was "successful " in their eyes, some expect to be able to continue in the same way. I spend a lot of time at the moment explaining that a transaction failed most likely because of a timeout in someone's broadband (they're using software which was not designed for unstable connections ).

Some are quite incensed when I remote access their machines and run a speed test to show how bad it is. People with teenagers in the house (probably streaming games or movies during working hours) seem to have particular denial issues.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117837703#Comment_117837703

Some employers might try to hardball in such negotiations. However, there is a legal obligation in H&S legislation for the employer to provide whatever equipment is necessary for a safe working environment. If a desk and decent chair is required to ensure that the employee isn't going to cripple themselves working with a kitchen chair at a kitchen table, the employer is obliged to provide this. There is a lot to gain for the employer here in reduced office accommodation costs, so they might be shooting themselves in the foot by playing hardball.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838332#Comment_117838332

A single one-off speed test is fairly meaningless, and can be heavily influenced by other users in the house (as you said) and even other users on the road, if they are sharing services to some extent. You'd really need to see a trend over a few days to come to any useful conclusion.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838109#Comment_117838109

Really bad because I'm not letting employers away without pushing their office accommodation costs onto their employees?

It just shouldn’t be this hard. Literally hundreds of people worked from home every day (pre-pandemic) in my company with none of this angst and worry. I get that there might be difficulties with unionised workers to whom this is new, but in the private sector for WFH 2/3 days a week (for those that want to do it) there really are no issues other than intransigent management

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838463#Comment_117838463

In your example the employer will have to weight up the increased costs in terms of equipment/electricity/heating/remote IT support/potential H&S issues with WFH vs the expected cost savings in the office. It may not stack up at all.

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838496#Comment_117838496

I was just going to say this. Paying the individual equipment/electricity/heating/remote IT support/H&S support among 100s of workers at home or have all workers located in a single open plan office space will probably be cheaper. Escpecially since most employers will have an office space anyway.

There is dedicated companies out there that can analyse an office space and work out how to cram as many people into that space as possible.

Tip for you @AndrewJRenko , look up what economies of scale means, you might learn something new.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838463#Comment_117838463

A single one off test doesn't mean your broadband is good, for sure.

But in our senior managers eyes, a single bad measurement means "yours isn't good enough please work from the office".

I've been told that when the day comes, I'm expected to be pretty brutal about reporting failed transactions: people might get away with a one off failure once, but after that it's "please come in ".

There's a few fights coming, but permanent jobs are hard enough to get.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117836985#Comment_117836985

My own savings from not going to the office every day is significant.

• 100 euro monthly luas ticket no-longer needed
• Between lunch in the subsidized canteen and the can of coke/bag of crisps you have in the afternoon(possibly just to take a break), conservatively is 5 euros a day. Multiplied by 20(4 working weeks in a month), equals another 100 euro.

So that alone is a 200 euro saving. Now, yes of course, I still need to have lunch every day, but I would struggle to spend 5 euros a day on Lunch at home. It would be closer to 2 euro. A six pack of pepsi from SuperValu, 4.50, so 75 cent each, versus 1.50 from the vending machine in work. So, 2.75 x 20. equals 55 euros a month on lunch. With these rough figures, I am 145 up. The extra heating, lighting and electricity, would make a very small dent in that saving.

stateofflux

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838205#Comment_117838205

You have hit on an important point that a lot of people i talk to seem to miss. Supply and demand dictates the market.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117839014#Comment_117839014

plus you can get tax relief on WFH expenses. Wonder how many people know that they can claim this, or whether employers have told them.

From revenue: Revenue's rate for the cost of running a home office is 10% of the cost of electricity and heating. This means that you can claim 10% of the total amount of allowable utility bills against your taxes. You can also claim 30% of broadband costs for the tax year 2020.

"running a home office" includes days that you are WFH (but does not include if you work on a holiday or any time that you work at home outside of hours after being in the office)

Everybody should be claiming this for the 2020 tax year, but I bet that most dont know about it

Dav010

Is anyone concerned that those who return to office work might be more likely to be promoted as they are there daily with their managers/employers while those wfh are off site/out of mind?

There seems to be an expectation that as there are quite a lot of jobs available, those companies which refuse wfh will lose employees to those that do, but that will likely taper off after a while as a state of equilibrium is reached, and jobs that require office attendance will eventually employ those that are prepared to attend as it will be a condition of employment. Given that most employment contracts have a stated place of work, if employers decide to reinstate office attendance, as Leo said, there may not be a lot of negotiating to be done, unless of course the employee has some skills which are not replaceable.

Selenophile

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117839259#Comment_117839259

A colleague crunched some numbers and it turned out to be really small money, most of the people wouldn't even bother to workout their own expenses.

caviardreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117839259#Comment_117839259

It also doesn't include weekends, annual leave etc., so if your heating bill is 1,000 per year - the amount you can claim tax relief on is approx 1000*.1*(230/365)=63 - so at 20% tax relief you would get back €12.60 for the year. Not exactly great.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117839324#Comment_117839324

Sure, on a daily basis it looks small. But over a year it’s money I’d rather have than not!

bokale

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117838949#Comment_117838949

How does the broadband speed cause the "transactions" to fail?

Turtwig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117839445#Comment_117839445

Wondering the same thing.

One thing I'd love to know is how the levels of sick leave in employers that had their staff remote working compare to when they weren't. I would imagine that with almost nobody in the offices there were less infections and absences from everyday illnesses. However, it would be nice to know what way things actually panned out.