Working from home clarified

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The issue for the employer is productivity; will their organisation will be as productive with everyone working from home and if it drops can they restructure/invest/train to get it back to where it was. While rent and rates etc are high they probably don't outweigh a well structured business model.
I completely agree that it's not sustainable for a couple in a one-bed apartment and if small children are in the mix it's a disaster.

I agree fully. However I don't think the employee will offer WFH if they believe there will be a loss of productivity. Neither will they permit a person working from home to be 10% less productive. In my organisation management believe productivity is the same as pre covid with us all wfh however staff are flagging issues that to maintain stability it has required extra effort. We are also flagging issues about cross team contact etc which will lead to less measurable but long term issues for the business and staff.
 
I heard a first year university student on the radio talking about the difficulties and shortcomings of getting lectures remotely and not being on sight, they absolutely hate it. Of course the big issue is missing out on the college social scene but also the standard of their education has dropped. Since the WFH directive began univerities have noticed that first years from last year are at a much lower level than previous years especially in intensive courses like engineering and the sciences. An awful lot of learning comes from your peers not just from lectures and that is not there now.
 
Heard something on newstalk this morning about the big US multinationals saying they are suffering somewhat from the WFH directive. According to them teamwork is suffering because workers cannot help their colleagues adequately , also innovation has dropped off a cliff because everyone is at home. It is interesting that it is the big US tech and pharma that are actually voicing these concerns, but when you think about it it makes sense because these companies are all about innovation and anything that hampers that is detrimental. They are also looking for guidance from the government on when business travel can resume as that is also very important to them.
So from that it is obvious that WFH kept companies in a holding pattern merely maintaining services as they had been in february 2020 but no real innovation has happened except in the areas of directly dealing with corona.
 
I can't speak for Pharma (particularly where they may have physical plant) but this doesn't make any sense for US tech. I wonder what the primary source is.
 
I can't speak for Pharma (particularly where they may have physical plant) but this doesn't make any sense for US tech. I wonder what the primary source is.
well if you are a technology company innovation is their bread and butter, innovation happens when you have teams of people working together and also people need to travel from one team to another in different countries. Innovation does not happen when everyone is sitting at home in isolation at a screen. There is not a neat compartmentalization of work into screen based and physical even more so in technology.
Maybe for people who are merely consumers of technology WFH is not such a big issue.
 
I work in a tech company on project teams spread across three continents. I don't identify with these issues. Which is why I'm interested in Newstalk's primary source for this reporting.

Working from home does not necessitate isolation. Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration can still happen. Granted some opportunities for face to face collaboration and travel are lost, but there are ways of adapting and there are some advantages as well as disadvantages. It's different, not better or worse.

Some very successful technology companies and technology projects only have remote workers.

And I'd also argue that innovation often does start with just one individual working alone.
 
I'm curious as to why are you so upset about the move to wfh, Joe Sod? A lot of unsubstantiated claims seem to have been made by you, on reading through this thread. The government had an expert group on teleworking back in 2000 with input from IBEC and ICTU which worked to remove any structural issues preventing wfh eg planning permission and which stressed both employer and employee benefits.

Even back then, there were good research projects and case studies going back to the 70s in a range of countries, showing an average 10% increase in productivity when wfh. If you want more recent control group studies, try this one: https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/a-2...-productivity-boost-of-working-from-home.html

So I'm just wondering, what it is that is bothering you? If you don't like it for yourself, fair enough - make a case to your employer as to why you should be an exception. But why are you so active trying to change other people's views yet not providing evidence for your own view? Is it the sector that you work in, or a personal experience, or a family member or friends? It would be interesting to know the background for your views.

Going back to the original query, it has always been possible to get more than 10% of the wfh expenses taken account of but only where vouched. I did this from 1995-2005 (form 11) then from 2016-2018 (PAYE).
 
well if you are a technology company innovation is their bread and butter, innovation happens when you have teams of people working together and also people need to travel from one team to another in different countries. Innovation does not happen when everyone is sitting at home in isolation at a screen. There is not a neat compartmentalization of work into screen based and physical even more so in technology.
Maybe for people who are merely consumers of technology WFH is not such a big issue.

This is just complete twaddle. If you had experience you'd know that technology companies have been working remotely for years. In 1998 I worked on an AI system used to generate credit ratings for one of the well known factoring companies, the team was distributed across three continents. In 2003 I was one of the core team that worked on systems for the NASDAQ, the team consisted of two people in Norway, one in Switzerland, one in Dublin, a couple on a farm out in Idaho and three people in New York. And the development company did not even have a physical head office.

And as outsourcing has really taken off it is now common place to have members working for all kinds of home location. The current team I lead has three people located in the Ukraine, one in Italy and 4 in India.

As far as I can see your post are long on opinion and very short on facts.
 
Given the choice between brain-storming and team planning sessions, virtual versus in person, I would have strong preference, and expect same for my colleagues that they be in the office. Such sessions virtual are slower, less interactive and need more preliminary work.
Even pre-covid for staff who primarily WFH, they would have made a point to be in the office for those sessions.
It makes a big difference whether we're talking about an 80/20 WFH split and a 100% WFH approach.
I work in IT and have been working remotely for 6 months .
 
So I'm just wondering, what it is that is bothering you? If you don't like it for yourself, fair enough - make a case to your employer as to why you should be an exception. But why are you so active trying to change other people's views yet not providing evidence for your own view? Is it the sector that you work in, or a personal experience, or a family member or friends? It would be interesting to know the background for your views.
Because I dont think it is the nirvana that alot of people think it is, it doesn't affect me personally either I am just expressing an opinion and giving the other side of the argument. I am highlighting the disadvantages to WFH but more specifically the enforced working from home, I know it is somewhat necessary now with the corona virus. However I think there is a danger in extrapolating forward this enforced WFH into the future and not giving proper consideration to the disadvantages. The disadvantages and costs are by and large being borne by the businesses themselves and not by workers therefore they are not adequately considering the problems down the road.
Yes big Tech and Pharma can probably absorb these costs but irish indigenous businesses with no great depth in technology can not and could be gone in the next year or so , not just the obvious hospitality sector either. It might be great to be WFH now but if the company cannot absorb the costs and you are not particularly highly skilled you could be out of a job in the next few years.
PS it was discussed on Newstalk show at 10pm "Down to Business" with Bobby Kerr
 
PS it was discussed on Newstalk show at 10pm "Down to Business" with Bobby Kerr

Bobby Kerr makes some of his money from doing consultancy to improve high street retail businesses. Therefore he is not exactly "neutral" on the subject of working from home.

A lot of small businesses already do work remotely precisely because it's flexible and cheap. If an indigenous business is not IT literate, and therefore in difficulty with wfh, at this stage it's that lack of IT "nous" that is their problem, and what is going to cause them to go bust, and not working from home.

Can you provide any actual examples, with costs, where a business is finding it more expensive to provide working from home options for employees? Can you provide any examples of enforced wfh that has been disadvantageous to an employee? In most cases there will be a contract of employment which is most unlikely to state wfh is compulsory unless the employee was recruited on that basis, and agreed to it on recruitment. Therefore the employee is likely to have rights to refuse wfh once lockdown is lifted.

I really think you are protesting too much without any evidence.
 
Because I dont think it is the nirvana that alot of people think it is, it doesn't affect me personally either I am just expressing an opinion and giving the other side of the argument. I am highlighting the disadvantages to WFH but more specifically the enforced working from home, I know it is somewhat necessary now with the corona virus. However I think there is a danger in extrapolating forward this enforced WFH into the future and not giving proper consideration to the disadvantages. The disadvantages and costs are by and large being borne by the businesses themselves and not by workers therefore they are not adequately considering the problems down the road.

My sense is that collaboration and innovation does suffer in a WFH environment, but you need to consider that pre and likely post COVID, for most people, WFH is not 100% of the time. I suspect that many of the companies pushing greater levels of WFH (the company I work for included), will operate hybrid models. WFH was expanding to facilitate staff who wanted to WFH, if you force people to who don't want to, to WFH, they'll just go elsewhere.

Few if any people spend all day everyday brainstorming or in group design sessions. Those tend to be focused short-lived intensive efforts and afterwards everyone goes away to work on their own or in small pods. With planning, 1 day in a week or two in the office

The company where I I work were supporting increasing levels of WFH prior to this, driven by staff demand and the challenges of hiring suitably qualified staff to offices in high-demand locations. There were concerns about a drop in innovation though, so they carried out a few studies. They installed sensors on floors in a few buildings that trace the movement and interaction of people over the day, so they had data on the usage of collaboration spaces and conference rooms.

The data suggested large scale WFH could work so they started to allow more to do it. They did recognise the challenges it brings though, so they are also redesigning many of the work practices to better support it. Functions and responsibilities are being split out into smaller more autonomous teams with coordinated planning at preset intervals to surface interdependencies and ensure everyone is moving in the right direction. It's a different way of working, it needs different structures to support that.
 
WRH will, hopefully, have a very positive impact on the rural/urban divide.
 
WRH will, hopefully, have a very positive impact on the rural/urban divide.

Very good point, it might be the saviour of some rural Irish communities. Over the last couple of years quite a few where I work have moved out of Dublin to various parts of the country they couldn't have considered if they were not allowed WFH most of the time.
 
Only if you can get broadband! ;)
Nearly every town and village can. It's not reasonable to expect to buy a 3000 sq.ft. house in the middle of nowhere for the same price as a one bedroom apartment in Dublin and expect the same access to services as that one bedroom apartment. The trade-off is space, privacy and comfort against access to shops, hospitals, broadband etc. That said we certainly need to ensure that every town and village, and city suburb, has good broadband access.
 
You'd be surprised how easily accessible are shops, hospitals and broadband outside of dublin.
 
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