Airborne_Again wrote:
Well, I don’t know how things work in the UK, but in Sweden what is called “working from home” has turned out so well that many companies plan to make it semi-permanent.
Here in Switzerland as well. Many companies with lots of office spaces are seriously considering saving themselves a lot of rental cost in the future. Thinking that we have had a whole floor of prime real estate sitting totally empty since March 2020 I can fully understand that.
Apart, quite a lot of bozos skiving while on homeoffice better think again. Most companies have possibilities to check how long you’ve really been online on your laptop…. I guess in the beginning there was a lot of skiving but after the first few people getting fired “pour encourager les autres” for pretending to work from home while horsing around in the pool. The other way simply is to get away from “hours” to “result” based assessment.
Hmmm some interesting issues will develop there, like webcams at home, and “security” staff monitoring your PC screen, your keyboard activity, and the data flows including web pages being browsed. It’s already happening, with distributed call centres.
WFH works for a specific narrow portion of the workforce, but will eventually collapse because most people need the social interaction, else they go mad.
That’s partly why WFH is not actually “working” right now: people aren’t actually at home, but in the absence of close monitoring (which most “liberal” people will absolutely not stand for) nobody can tell, so you just end up with an organisation like your local CAA which is definitely not “working” but due to weak management nobody can do anything about it.
In the long run, another step in degrading the quality of one’s working life… it’s been a decades’ long trend.
For most jobs you can absolutely tell whether work is being done or not just from the outputs, without the need to monitor anything. In any case, if someone at our place wants to skive off, they can skive in the office just as effectively as they can at home (see “presenteeism”)
I agree but you are speaking as a software guy 
I also am managing quite well contracting-out specific modules for the product I am developing right now. I think value for money is better too because it is either fixed-price (which has pitfalls unless the coder is very good) or hourly (which usually means the customer ends up paying way too much), and one tries to avoid hourly billing. But it works only if you can define the project well.
Most jobs can’t be defined so well.
I never argued that working in the office is inherently productive It is a lot easier to keep an eye on everybody though!
alioth wrote:
For most jobs you can absolutely tell whether work is being done or not just from the outputs, without the need to monitor anything. In any case, if someone at our place wants to skive off, they can skive in the office just as effectively as they can at home (see “presenteeism”)
Of course but we are not talking about that. I am not going to work because I jave tested positive. This morning the island of Arran, a large Scottish island has no fuel. 60k folks now stuck. No crew for the ferry??
Peter wrote:
It is a lot easier to keep an eye on everybody though!
Yes. It is clear that many companies that oppose working from home are really doing it not because it impedes on the work but because they have an obsession with controlling their staff.
Well, the degree to which staff needs monitoring is strongly related to lots of “social/civil liberties” factors, which vary between societies, but less so than between types of jobs.
Without monitoring:
A room full of PhDs will probably work quite well alone.
A room full of programmers will also work quite well alone – in between checking LinkedIn (and freelancer.com for the most enterprising) to see where the next job will be coming from.
A room full of CAA license processing staff will work about 25% of the time.
A room full of call centre “script monkeys” will work about 5% of the time.
What is one man’s “obscession” is another man’s “well managed business”. And I won’t guess what types of companies your pension fund (managed by “professionals”) is invested in 
One of the companies I’m involved with (software dev’t and associated customer support) now has a hybrid model. Tuesday and Thursday mandatory at the office, the rest of the time WFH. Free lunch brought in on the office days. Really works. Efficient interaction and serving the people’s social needs.
Yes I think that is the way to do it.
Still some challenges though, with some people.
Peter wrote:
Hmmm some interesting issues will develop there, like webcams at home, and “security” staff monitoring your PC screen, your keyboard activity, and the data flows including web pages being browsed. It’s already happening, with distributed call centres.
Most of that is illegal, at least in this country. What is not is to log the time you are logged on. So basically, every time your PC logs on or off, it creates a timestamp they can check. And as PC’s have automatic shutdowns after about 10 minutes if you don’t touch the screen and no ways normal office drones can circumnavigate that, it is pretty easy to see trends.
Monitoring webcams e.t.c. requires the consent of the worker and if it’s used against them, labour courts take bosses who do this to the cleaners.
While I have a degree of understanding for the wish of employers to see that they are not being exploited, my own take would be to set goals what has to be completed and by when and, as you would with normal office duty, check on that regularly or when there is reason to (e.g. delayed delivery). That way, nobody needs to care what people do at home as long as they deliver what they are paid for.
Peter wrote:
A room full of call centre “script monkeys” will work about 5% of the time.
I don’t know exactly whom you target with this, but as someone who does have phone duty in some of my shifts, I’d have to say at least in my field you have no idea what you are talking about….. phone shifts are those you walk off after 8 hours with a head the size of a rather large baloon and often enough first need to walk a few times around the block before you interact with anyone else. Script monkey or not, I’d think anyone being on the receiving end of a call center is just about the opposite of an office drone who bides his time and nobody notices if he’s there or not.
