Push to get staff back to offices amid warning of UK's 'ghost towns'
Workers will be encouraged to return to the office as part of a major media campaign to be launched by the government next week. The television and newspaper messages will promote the government’s aim to reduce the number of employees working from home amid fears that town and city centres are becoming ghost areas as workers stay away.
A report in the Telegraph said the campaign would push the emotional and mental health benefits of mixing with colleagues but also said that ministers would warn that those working from home could be more vulnerable to being sacked.
>>30627 I think we've had enough 'young outsiders' for one lifetime. At this point I'd rather we get some doddering old fossils in, someone who has sat on a bajillion committees and managed to survive scandals. Someone utterly boring who will listen to their advisers and only tweet insipid bullshit to such a degree the Party tells them they don't have to do it anymore.
>young outsiders who don't know specifics but are much more likely to use their position to advocate for the people they represent.
An MP who can't be bothered to read up on her job or think about what she says isn't fit for office. It's not a case of not knowing the specifics, if you don't know you either use the resources at your disposal or you ask. The whole job is about good judgement for fucks sake.
She dumped the flyers because she didn't want to vote for a Tory minister. She didn't realise what you're supposed to do is vote for a Tory minister who will fuck with Ministers on the cabinet. It's not her fault that the British political system plays out like Franz Kafka's hallucinatory fever dream wank.
In your first paragraph you are describing the function of Civil Service Mandarins, not elected representatives.
Name a single young person not connected to the establishment who has had any significant influence on British Politics since 1997.
>>30635 Farage made his fortune working for the City of London before he got involved with politics as an 'outsider', his father was also a stock broker in the City of London, so he has generational wealth and I would consider that to be Establishment Ties in and of itself.
Even were that not the case and Martin Webster groomed this innocent young man. Webster was a member of the Young Conservatives and by that reason alone can be considered to be an Establishment figure. He was also active in a group called 'League of Empire Loyalists'. Make of that what you will.
Even discounting both of these points, Farage hasn't been anything resembling a 'young man' for 26 years. He was 35 when he first took office as an MEP.
And if Nigel Farage is the best refutation you have against the point I made initially, it serves only to support my point that the people in politics with any considerable influence have interests at odds with the electorate.
>>30640 What about Are Jayda? By the time Britain First were banned on Facebook they had about 2.5million people following them; they certainly played a large part in people getting radicalised on social media.
>>30634 >She dumped the flyers because she didn't want to vote for a Tory minister. She didn't realise what you're supposed to do is vote for a Tory minister who will fuck with Ministers on the cabinet.
i.e. She's didn't check on why it isn't done. A dangerous thicko.
>In your first paragraph you are describing the function of Civil Service Mandarins, not elected representatives.
It's character and yes they ought to be similar given we're talking about professionals. The politician commissions work on X, gets a proper assessment and list of viable options followed by it going back and forth periodically with a suitable level of consultation. Politicians are decision makers, that is what they do.
None of that policy-based evidence making or any other bollocks. Just boring stuff like we're a proper democracy.
>Name a single young person not connected to the establishment who has had any significant influence on British Politics since 1997.
Jo Swinson did a good job imploding what remained of the Liberal Democrats.
But being that she's a convicted criminal who has never been elected into office I would argue that her influence has been negligible, [spoilers]and if she really managed to influence 2.5 million British voters you can rest assured they would be voting Conservative. The system works as intended.[/spoiler]
Again, if you are drawing parallels between an elected major party MP calling for an end to austerity and corruption and some mong with a facebook group hating on immigrants you might want to go and get yourself checked for brain worms.
We'll get there though lads. We'll find a young anti-establishment person that we can wag a finger at and use to justify the status-quo in all its dementia-addled glory.
>>30643 >and if she really managed to influence 2.5 million British voters you can rest assured they would be voting Conservative. The system works as intended
>>30646 Yes. I am saying that the pro-racist online communities were very successful in recruiting white working class traditionally labour voters to vote against their own economic interests due to racism.
And we trail through. Pamela Nash is now leading some unionist thing and Mhairi Black should be interesting unless you're just going to whinge that she hasn't achieved anything.
Now look here! We might be a Constitutional Monarchy, But once in a while when they see fit we get to (with 10,000-100,000 other people), Pick a person, who is in the same club as a bunch of other people, and the lead of that club might get to pick who is in the government as long as more people get a seat from their club in a house and the monarch approves. Also there are a bunch of people who have equal power as the person we picked who are there because they are feudal barons.
>The chancellor has warned bosses that staff may quit if they are not allowed to work from the office as the UK emerges from lockdown. Rishi Sunak told the Telegraph that employees would "vote with their feet" and could consider leaving for a rival if made to work from home full time.
>A number of companies have announced plans to close offices prompting fears for city centres. But now the chancellor has urged firms not to abandon the office altogether. Mr Sunak told the newspaper that home working is no substitute for an office environment with "people riffing off each other".
>"You can't beat the spontaneity, the team building, the culture that you create in a firm or an organisation from people actually spending physical time together," he said.
>The chancellor argued that an office environment was particularly important for younger workers looking to understand how a company works. He said it was "important that we try and get back to a good degree of that". Although he acknowledged that hybrid working, using tools like Zoom to communicate, could work for some businesses.
>His comments come amid concern from businesses that rely on busy cities that workers may spend more time at home. More than 17,500 chain stores and other venues closed in the UK last year, but there are fears that the true impact of the pandemic on High Streets is still yet to be felt. On Thursday, building society Nationwide revealed plans to allow 13,000 of its staff to "work anywhere" as it closed three of its offices in Swindon, while Santander announced plans to reduce the amount of office space it rents in London and move its headquarters from the capital to Milton Keynes.
Anecdotally most of the people I've spoken to at work are looking forward to getting back to the office. I think generally people like having that routine, that central hub to go to - but only to a limit. I reckon we'll see more opportunity to work from home when requested, which would be ideal for me.
>>32751 I think it's more a sign of how hard he's being lobbied. I'm sure come summer his tune will change as ice cream men become the new drivers of the economy.
Costa-on-wheels sounds quite nice actually - all the different service vans can have their own distinct tunes so we know when to leave the house. "I've earnt my treat" I'll say to myself at quarter past 10 on Monday morning as the sausage bap wagon parks outside my house and wafts it's smells in my window.
>>32753 >I reckon we'll see more opportunity to work from home when requested, which would be ideal for me.
I'm still hanging onto the opposite idea that WFH will be the default and we'll book desks when we want/need to come in. A light expectation of 2-3 days a week in the office complete with the odd social drinks and the chance to retroactively not come in on a booked day when we can't be arsed.
>>32755 >book a desk
Hot-desking can lick my balls. If I'm expected to be in the office more than once a fortnight I want my own desk that has my own clutter on it and my own carefully adjusted chair.
I have a nice house, and a nice home office. I even have a little wanky summer house (it's too poncey to count as a shed) to work from as a change of scenery.
But the thought of working from home every day fills me with dread. I suppose I'm not a typical office worker, I deliberately chose a career that involves being outside or at least wandering about, but still. The drive to work gets me in the right mindset for work, the change of scenery is refreshing, and being able to talk to people and look at them in the face is nice too.
I'm probably a weirdo and everyone else can't wait to spend the rest of their careers in their underwear on the sofa but I'm really not into it.
>>32775 >I have a nice house, and a nice home office. I even have a little wanky summer house (it's too poncey to count as a shed) to work from as a change of scenery.
Alright, David. Let us know when your next book is coming out.
I just want the missus out of my bloody hair lads. I love her, I really do, but the only thing that has ever made cohabitation sustainable is the space you get apart when one or the other is at work, out with mates, etc.
You've no idea how much I miss waking up and stretching out in an empty bed, then pulling up the laptop for a nice casual wank. My missus has a fanny tighter and tidier than any porn you've ever seen I can assure you, but nevertheless I'd still like the privacy to tug one out by myself every now and again.
Sometimes it's not even the wanking, sometimes it's nice to just have a few hours of looking/acting like a slob free of any observation, eating peanuts and watching shite on YouTube.
What I'd give to watch The Running Man with a couple of funny friends and some bottles of cheap beer.
This is why men need sheds. The biggest mental health crisis facing Britain isn't coronavirus - it's the unaffordability of sheds. Generations of men have enjoyed the solitude of shiplap, but young people are being forced to live in flats and houses with barely enough outdoor space for a rabbit hutch. You can't even get an allotment these days, they're all being hoarded by the boomers.
I'd suggest angling, but I'm not sure if that counts as exercise under the lockdown rules.
>>32784 The gate into my back garden kept blowing open and being smashed apart by high winds, and because we're technically four flats, nobody really owns or cares for the garden that much anyway. So my landlord has fixed the latest replacement gate by just padlocking it shut. I can't even go out with my shears to trim the two-foot grass we get each summer. It's fucked up.
>>32788 I don't cut it very much. I normally cut out a small circle to stand in, and then leave the rest for him or one of his lackeys to come round with a lawnmower.
>From now on if you work for PriceWaterhouseCooper you'll be able to work from home a couple of days a week and start as early or late as you like. This summer you can knock off early on Fridays too.
>Following the pandemic the accountancy giant is offering its staff much more control over their working pattern. PwC chairman Kevin Ellis said he hoped this would make flexible working "the norm rather than the exception".
>"We want our people to feel trusted and empowered," Mr Ellis said.
>The building society Nationwide has told its staff they can choose whether to work at home or in the office. Oil giant BP has told office staff they can spend two days a week working from home and several banks are examining hybrid home-office arrangements. But PwC is the first of the big four accountancy firms to announce their post-pandemic strategy.
It can make sense in that the cost of maintaining an office building for your staff is a huge monthly overhead expense. Less office space means less to pay for the lease each month, or if you own the building, it's less capital tied up if you can buy a smaller building. With cheap broadband Internet nowadays, I'm sure many jobs that you just used to assume needed to be done inside an office building all day long can be externalised.
It's really an externalisation of cost, because your employer no longer has to provide a place for you to sit and work ten hours a day, and instead you are really the one who is paying for your workplace, with your monthly rent or your mortgage payments. And even though they don't go up just because you are at home the whole day, your utility bill will.
From a company's standpoint, the key factor is going to be if productivity holds up when you don't have teams working physically side-by-side the whole workday. Personally, I value the convenience of just being able to walk over to a coworker and show them something I've just drawn up with a pen and paper. Or telling your other team members to just meet you in the conference room in ten minutes. There are ideas that you can't really convey as efficiently and as true to your actual thoughts during a video chat. And I've found that it's much easier for me to focus on the issue at hand when I am physically in a room with people.
>>32918 The real dream is for companies to compete to provide the comfiest working experience, so that corporate fuckfaces who insist you go in every day for no reason go out of business, because everyone just works for the companies that let you stay home. Imagine if that happened. Mmm, baby.
If anyone hears screaming it'll probably be the PAs who have to work across people diaries for meetings.
>>32919 I know what you mean from a productivity standpoint. For over a year now my actual working hours could be cut in half and collaborating across teams or different offices has become much harder. Even having a coffee and a natter has its place in cementing workplace alliances and blowing off steam which is hard to replicate when my cactus doesn't drink coffee.
Not on your delusional belief that you can just waltz over and find an empty conference room though.
If anyone hears screaming it'll probably be the PAs who have to work across people diaries for meetings.
>>32919 I know what you mean from a productivity standpoint. For over a year now my actual working hours could be cut in half and collaborating across teams or different offices has become much harder. Even having a coffee and a natter has its place in cementing workplace alliances and blowing off steam which is hard to replicate when my cactus doesn't drink coffee.
Not on your delusional belief that you can just waltz over and find an empty conference room though.
>Not on your delusional belief that you can just waltz over and find an empty conference room though.
We have two conference rooms in an office of 30 people. One of them is/was usually available. Or if it was just four or five of us, we'd huddle in somebody's room.
My ideal work environment post-covid would be to spend the majority of the time back at the office, but maybe two days a week of my free choosing at home. It would sort of help stay on top of all the other things I've got going on in my life besides work. And you can't beat the feeling of going through the latest project documents in your jammies on your sofa with a cup of tea at 11am.
>Exclusive-HSBC moves more than 1,200 UK staff to permanent home working
>HSBC is moving more than 1,200 staff in Britain to permanent working from home contracts, in one of the strongest indications yet of how banks are locking in changes to employees’ work patterns as a result of the pandemic to cut costs. Around 70% of the bank’s 1,800 call centre staff based across England, Wales and Scotland had volunteered to never return to the office, Unite, one of Britain’s biggest employment unions, told Reuters.
>Scores of companies have quickly cemented hybrid working and cut office space, but HSBC’s move to base some staff permanently at home goes further than most rivals opting for a mixed approach. Such changes could lead to wellbeing concerns long term if not handled properly, Unite said.
>Unite said HSBC has offered staff a 300 pounds per year working from home top-up payment to cover additional expenses such as higher heating and electricity bills. Dominic Hook, the union’s national officer, said the contract changes for the 70% opting in were being finalised with teams, with those taking it up expected only to come in to HSBC offices for training.
>A quarter of staff declined the offer as they wanted to work in the office at least some of the time, while 5% preferred to go back to the office permanently. HSBC and other British banks have started to cut office space partly because staff are working from home. HSBC had already closed a call centre in Swansea, South Wales since the pandemic. Its main two remaining call centres are in Leeds in northern England and Hamilton, Scotland.
I was actually of a mind for a 3-2 working pattern but...just imagine would you could buy with £300. And that's even before the savings on tacos, trousers and transport. I sometimes help organise my employers corporate training as a side gig too so I could just organise something and go to the pub afterwards if I wanted to meet in person.
If unions started representing their members and pushed for this everywhere I'd join mine in a heartbeat.
>>33043 £300? Just got my over-winter leccy bill, £600 more than last year. Really must get a heat pump or something.
It'd be nice to think that call centre staff get a less shitty life by WFH, but I'm sure the crappy companies will still manage to torture them in new and exciting ways. Might be easier to jump ship to a good one, though?
Call centre staff are a bit different to the kind of pretend job office plankton you lot all seem to be, though. Productivity is never going to be impacted for them, because their job isn't really "productive", it's just to answer the phone every five minutes, which they have to do regardless.
The question remains to be answered whether the rest of us (by which I mean you lot, I have a real job) will be allowed to sit at home in your underpants collating TPS reports and forwarding CSV updates and so on.
>>33045 In theory, my job should be difficult to do from home, as it needs a fair amount of space and specialist gear. Fortunately, I have both as I get to do my hobby for money, and my employer is fine with me bringing their gear home.
Most of the rest of the office are software monkeys, they can do most of their job anywhere with a comfy chair, a laptop and a few screens, now that the kids are back at school.
So yeah, we'll keep the office, but we don't go there often. We can't be that rare.
