Remote working - the future?

The scramble is now on to find accommodation in cities like Dublin, where the pandemic has led to a lot of landlords selling up. The joys.. oh and the CAO offers are out next week too so students and professionals alike will be competing to rent a **** mouldy basement flat that costs you €1000 a month.

I thought looking for a flat before the pandemic was bad.

We have been told we will be working 40% of the time. My office mates have complained about the ventilation in winter etc., So good luck to them trying to get us back in.

The amount of emails flying aropund in our company asking if anyone has a spare room to rent while people find their own place once work gets back to the office.

Also a few asking for rooms for their kids going to college in various places.

Thats only in the last week.

I think there is a major panic on now from people who have just realized they have to come back to the office. In our place anyway.

Imagine if you continued to get all that time saving AND you got reimbursed for the additional power and heating costs? Your employer should be paying these anyway, from the considerable savings on office costs over the coming years.

There's a bit of Stockholm Syndrome going on here, where people were stuck in such desperate commute patterns that they grasp any opportunity to get away from those. Don't miss the opportunity to negotiate on costs.

Our employer sent around a questionnaire on what would be your preference for wfh, or blended or back in office. 1600 employees, 92 staff want to return full time to office

I really can't see how anybody can think the old way of walking over and chatting at a desk can work out better than using online chat.

You literally have the information saved in front or you where you can easily forget something while chatting in person.

Also again I really don't mind helping someone, but when you are trying to work through something and somebody comes over you need to stop and lose concentration.

If online you can just ignore the message and respond once you have time.

They're usually the ones that don't do as much work in the office and want to disrupt others.

Since we've started working from home, our metrics have been in the green compared with working from the office and there was red metrics

Perhaps if you lived in the real word you would realize that not everyone can live close to work.

That would be the icing on the cake but it's not a big increase and WFH arrangements/availability haven't been finalised so I'm not prepared to rock that particular boat right now. It has nothing to do with Stockholm Syndrome and everything to do with picking your battles, knowing which ones are worth fighting and which, even if won, could lead to losing the war. Anyway the small amount involved means it's more a skirmish than a battle.

Whoever this person is sounds like no fun at all!

No fun bobby. Great at office parties I'd say!

In fairness I do know one person who lives in a small house and has small children so wfh during covid wasn't great for her and she would like to go back to the office full time, but she is literally the only person I know who wants full time in the office.

Regarding the work survey of 1600 people, I'll find out what the break down was but I know of the people who wanted to go back in some hybrid form, and this was small, 1 day a week for "team day" was most popular choice

What is missing here is the need for management to assess the social and other soft skills of staff if they will be client facing or team working.

This includes dress standard, personal hygiene, odour, nails, hair and deportment and simple things like table manners.

Now the use of personal phone and social media during work time is a new headache.

When I started in a FINCORP back in the day, we all got invited to an in-house dinner, full 4 courses, with alcohol and cigars.. yes back that far.

Next day all who needed it got one to ones on table etiquette: eg, the guy who chased the peas with his knife held life a shovel got guidance

I am great at office parties probably too great.

I am not sure how not wanting to have awkward smalltalk at watercoolers makes somebody no fun.

Pretty well as predicted ...