Working From Home Megathread

Cost of staff turnover...

You deliberately asked a strawman. Even if you hire a better person there is still a cost to transition.

It depends how long you have to walk or cycle. In case of walking I think you have to invest in more shoes per year because they will wear out much quickly. The same is with a bike and bike gear. It is a cost as well. I think more then 100euro per year.

Replying and quoting on boards these days is so broken. Between that and Androids also broken auto text. Almost impossible to use this forum on a mobile.

I never said everyone wants to WFH.

Literally no one said that those who want to stay in the office are less talented. There is however less talented people who want to stay in the office than there are talented people overall (unless you think no talented people want to work from home).

Thus companies who force work from the office will have to fight over those who want to work from the office or suffer while those with a more flexible approach can draw from the entire pool of talented people.

This also says nothing about experience lost and the cost of finding those talented people who want to work in the office to replace those who have left.

I think WFH will slowly retract. Companies and People are unwilling or unable to embrace change.

We had a load of obsolete paper based process that only changed due to lockdown. The amount of modernisation that happened over the last 2 years was incredible.

What exactly does 50% mean? 3 days one week, 2 days the next?

I am seeing anecdotally that 3 days a week at home seems to be the minimum ask from employees. Employers that mandate 3 days or more in the office are getting a very rude awakening. Employers demanding 3 days are effectively asking employees to spend the majority of their working week in the office and employees are telling them to get lost. The naive employers will lose their best and brightest before they wake up.

No, it isn't. Nobody said it was.

Have you heard of the "Great Resignation", though? It's real, and not just in the U.S., and not just in tech companies.

When everywhere pivoted from "We do not allow remote access. Our staff work in the office 100% of the time." to "Here's a laptop and here's how to log in to Citrix" over the course of a couple of months in 2020, people used a lot of the time since to re-evaluate their work-life balance.

* Some - like @AndrewJRenko - have decided they prefer working in the office, thanks all the same.

* Others - roots in Dublin, can work from home or office, like me - have decided two days in the office works well for them.

* Others are saying no, they can absolutely work just as well from anywhere and have proven it over the past two years, so why the hell should they endure a commute and higher rents/mortgage to be probably less productive in the office? Not to mention the extra expense of "walking around" money - the coffees, the lunches, etc., you have when in the office.

So companies that have a 100% office-based policy will lose staff. WFH Software Inc will have more opportunity to hire staff, versus Officecore Ltd. Traditional Rigid Finances will find its losing staff, with many moving to Flexiwork Insurances.

Will they be able to replace them? Yes. Will the staff they hire be looking for more wages? Yes, probably - they will have higher expenses (transport to/from office, that "walking around" money, the higher rent/mortgage needed to live in commuting distance of Dublin city centre, where most people work). Will they be as good as the staff who left? Maybe? Sure, quite possibly, in time. But no, not straight away. They'll need training, they'll need to learn the culture of the new place, etc. They won't hit the ground running unless they're damn good at their job - and given the competition there'll be for them, they'll likely cost more. No, that probably doesn't apply or matter so much if they're a call-centre drone. It absolutely matters if they're a top financial analyst or high-end dev.

It's a real cost to the business. I lost one of my better staff members recently (not due to the WFH policy) and our team is feeling it - increased workload for everyone else until they're replaced, and even then, weeks and months until the replacement is up to the same level as the person they'll be replacing. Assuming they ever do get to that level. I'd hate to be facing into the next year knowing I'm likely to be losing more staff because a senior manager is insisting we come into the office because they signed a 20-year lease for our offices with WeWork or Regus three years ago, and we're damn well going to occupy them!

It predicts really badly and the cursor for selecting in text is very unreliable. I think the layout of boards forms makes it worse. Quoting is a pain. By the time I've corrected something the thread has moved on and my post is out of context.

I turned on my old windows phone recently and it still works far better than Android.

Nope. Flexible hours is a really good perk, definitely, but WFH - especially if it's fulltime except for special events/meetings - carries many of the same benefits of flexi and saves most people a small fortune. That's in addition to the convenience of no commute, saving an average of two hours a day if your office is based in Dublin. That's more than a work day a week saved in not sitting or standing on a bus or train, or in a metal box on the quays!

Not sure why WFH is classed as a perk.

It's a perk for the employer too. They are able to hire and grow at scale and have you WFH if you want to and they don't need to provide you with office space and office equipment.

I work in tech and we've loads of WFH workers nationwide, the company is flying it, doubt the company would be able to grow as quickly if they had to find an office space for everyone in their Dublin city office. They wouldn't have the space and the costs would increase dramatically.

It also means they are not limited to just hiring talent who can commute to the office daily, they can recruit nationwide meaning a bigger and better selection of candidate available to source from.

It works both ways, win win in this example.

Plus it means they don't need to rent office space etc.

My company which is a massive multinational has always embraced WFH even before covid. When covid struck we had a massive advantage in that we came in on a Friday and told the entire company 130k+ people were going WFH.... not one of our competitors could do that...they ended up having to beg us for help on setting up their entire infrastructure to cover wfh...cost them a fortune too.

We..the employees saved on travel costs etc, our employer for sites they rented they were able to close and save even more money by not having rental, heating.power and insurance costs.

Even now most of the workforce works from home and we are all grown up, we get our jobs done and we have flexi time. It makes for a great atmosphere.

I am going to start going into the office at least once a week but in reality I can do far more work at home than I ever could in the office.

WFH only gets a bad rep because of the public sector who will do sodall at the slightest chance since there are no repercussions to face, and secondly from businesses in towns who were previously reliant on those office workers to keep their business going.

Going forward definitely a hybrid solution I feel would be best. If you don't offer at least this don't expect to get the best staff.

If it's any consolation, they're dreading seeing you back too.