9 ms·

Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

140 points by CraigJPerry 6y ago

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
at some hazily defined point work anywhere, anytime becomes work everywhere, all the time.
- cletus 6y ago
  This reminds me of companies who have “unlimited” vacation days. If I can’t take the next 40 years off at full pay it’s not “unlimited”. A more accurate description is probably “vacation days determined by whether your manager likes you”.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    I've turned offers down over that. I will not work for a company that claims "unlimited" vacation, unless they're at least prepared to specify a contractual floor.
  - beforeolives 6y ago
    Unlimited vacation is such an obvious lie, I'm surprised so many people see it as a perk. It's like claiming to have flat structure. Nope, there is still a hierarchy, just like there is still a limit to the "unlimited" vacation days you can take. You just took something explicit and made it implicit to the detriment of your company. It's a red flag when I see either of these advertised as perks and it makes me less likely to work for the company.
  - dx034 6y ago
    I also don't like it and I believe it's not necessarily legal in all countries. Many European countries have a minimum amount of vacation days and companies need to make sure employees also take those (not all do but theres no enforcement unless someone complains). "Unlimited" without a floor might lead to more vacation days for some but likely to fewer days for most. And if they were truly unlimited, why would anyone work part-time? You could just work full time and take 2 days off per week (plus vacations) at full salary. But I doubt many companies would accept that.
- xvector 6y ago
  as mentioned earlier, setting boundaries is up to you
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    My wife's sister once said my problem was that I couldn't say no.
    - xvector 6y ago
      One of the most difficult but most empowering skills to learn, in my opinion
Hendrikto 6y ago
I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.
- sn_master 6y ago
  People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    Being home alone in a tiny apartment, the desk placed next to my bed - that's not the home office I want to spend all my time in. With family and house, sure. But I literally don't have the real estate to make a nice home office. Mixed mode works very well tough, I can go to the office if I want and stay home if I want, so I mostly spend 4 days in the office, 1 at home.
    - NamTaf 6y ago
      I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a 2br (65-70m^2 internal) to myself, so I have more than enough room and don't feel cramped. As such, I tend to go the opposite direction - 4 days at home, 1 day in the office out of obligation. Sometimes I just skip that 1 day a week if my workload requires more focus time, as office time is generally me helping more junour staff. I agree though that a mixed mode can be a best of both worlds scenario. If we as a whole continue down the path of more WFH, open shared office spaces may eventually begin to find their feet and fill that 'mixed-mode' equivalent if the company itself does not have office space. I predict there might also be more public spaces such as libraries opening up with work areas for people to get out of home when working. The other challenge is the social component of work, but I think that will change post-Covid too. Being in Australia has afforded me the extremely lucky capability of being able to get out and socialise almost completely freely during the last year, and it undoubtly helps immensely. I think that for people who live alone, working from home will become less isolating when they can socalise outside of work hours more freely again. For example, social sport is a lot easier to fit in to your day when you're not then also losing an hour or more in your day to travel. You can do it and still easily have time to prep dinner or do your daily chores. In short, I think that the shift to WFH due to covid will be a lot easier for a lot more people once the restrictions of Covid subside.
sn_master 6y ago
How would that work in terms of taxes? The UK doesn't have taxes based on location like the US?
- billynomates111 6y ago
  I don't think they're saying work anywhere in the world. They're saying work anywhere within the UK, including HQ, local high street branches, at home, or a mixture of the above.
- dkarp 6y ago
  By anywhere, I expect it means anywhere in the UK. The UK doesn’t have “state” taxes like the US, so it won’t matter where they are
  - ruaraidh 6y ago
    This isn't quite true - Scotland's income tax rates are slightly different from the rest of the UK's, so residence inside or outside Scotland is relevant.
    - midasuni 6y ago
      But that’s the same now. Work in Carlisle and live in Dumfries and you get a Scottish tax code. Work in Dumfries and live in Carlisle and you get an English one.
- alibarber 6y ago
  Just like taxation regimes have scrambled to keep up with the fact that you can order something from abroad and have ambiguity of where the sales tax will be applied - this is the next big thing about to happen: High skilled, (comparatively) rich, healthy knowledge workers will leave the place they reside, move somewhere like Dubai (no tax, few free public services - doesn't matter they're not going to need them) to work for a company based - on paper, somewhere similarly - meanwhile the sick, aging and destitute back in the old country depend on tax-funded public services that have lost their tax base. I don't know what the solution is - but it's something I think needs to be considered. Conversely, people might want to move the other way (say to the nordics), but, I'd wager it being heavily skewed in the first direction.
alexf95 6y ago
A mix of both home-office and going to the actual office is probably the way to go for most companies. Sometimes being in the office just isn't necessary and colleague interaction can be done by phone or chat/video apps. However, going into full time home-office mode isn't great either since you would miss out on the random meetings/talks when you run into each other in the office.
- midasuni 6y ago
  When people are at home and getting on with working you won’t get to run into them at the office.
gswdh 6y ago
It amazes me people pretend this is something unexpected. Going to the office has always been undesirable and pointless for a lot of people. It’s only been employers blocking the progress due to their own insecurities.
benlumen 6y ago
Living up to the name.
f6v 6y ago
Meanwhile, here in Belgium, some companies force employees to come to the office despite government plea to allow remote work. Subjectively, there's been much less traffic on the streets in the beginning of the pandemic. Now, it seems like far too many people are still commuting every day.
- reeeeee 6y ago
  You are completely right, some employers just can't cope with the tiny bit of control they lose when their employers work from home. A friend of mine (who is also in IT) still has to do an hour and a half drive 3 times a week just so that a client can 'see' that he is working. There is no reason for him to go work there, other than inspection. We're in IT, all we need is a decent computer and a network connection. All while WFH is obligated by the government.
- dx034 6y ago
  It won't be for everyone but there has still been a huge revolution. Many businesses didn't even have laptops for employees before. Having the technical infrastructure makes it much easier to allow 1-2 days per week from home. I've also seen WFH advertised much more in job ads. That in turn probably means that more candidates ask for partial WFH as part of their decision to join the company. In the end, that will drive change even if some managers object it.
scandox 6y ago
Flexibility sounds good but what I have seen over the last year is that all boundaries in terms of when and where work begins and ends are being eroded. This started accidentally but it is now being actively exploited on an unprecedented scale.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  At will employment is the problem. You should be able to switch off at a certain time and ignore work comms. But I think in US you’d be scared of being fired. In other countries like UK this has never been a concern, and WFH doesn’t change that.
  - scandox 6y ago
    I'm based in Ireland. I think your view is a bit one dimensional in terms of the employer-employee relationship. A lot of soft pressures exist for employees even when their actual employment is secure.
  - geden 6y ago
    Yeah tell that to my teaching assistant wife who works at a Lincolnshire village primary school and is now 'always on' to the whims of the go getting headmistress 24/7. She feels she can't practically ignore out of hours requests and she doesn't want to challenge the practice for fear of rocking the boat.
    - toiletduck 6y ago
      I empathize after two years in UK education. The working culture is almost cult like and self reinforcing - the Peter principle in action turns the best teachers at reinforcing the status quo into headteachers. Unions are really powerful in education - it's one of the only benefits of the sector I can think of. Hopefully your wife has a union rep they can teach out to on behalf of all the staff if not just herself? Teaching assistant salaries definitely don't to high enough to compensate for anything outside of school hours!
    - Dyac 6y ago
vm646m80v4 6y ago
Company name checks out
mattuk89 6y ago
I like the mention of being able to work from your local branch. It may help keep more branches open if they're doubling up as workspaces for the "office" staff
Jonnax 6y ago
This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Nationwide is based in one of those smaller towns (Swindon, pop approx 220,000).
- dx034 6y ago
  Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s available in rural areas. I personally love the Scottish Highlands but internet is unbearably slow anywhere but in a few major cities. Let's hope Starlink can meet demand of those areas.
  - ainiriand 6y ago
    What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.
    - dx034 6y ago
      40km from Berlin isn't really rural though. Try going 100km further. I recently drove through rural Brandenburg & Saxony close to the border to Poland. Some villages had 2G, I also encountered (tiny) villages with basically no mobile connection at all. I can understand why people are forced to leave for bigger cities if you cannot even get reliable 4G or decent internet at home.
    - csunbird 6y ago
      Mobile data in Germany is very, very, very expensive. An hour of video meeting consumes around 1GB (I think, probably even more), you can not keep up with the cost, I think.
kzzzznot 6y ago
I expect employers should offer an additional allowance for extra space to work in at home or (post lockdown) coffee shop/coworking space fees.
- dijit 6y ago
  In Sweden (and I suspect the UK) there are tax exemptions for home offices. There are some requirements, you can't use the room for anything except work, it must have a lockable door, etc; There's some consideration too for broadband, though I don't speak Swedish well enough to be able to file this for myself.
  - donpott 6y ago
    > (and I suspect the UK) Can confirm. Or rather, there are tax exemptions for working from home, as opposed to having a home office. https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home
  - piva00 6y ago
    There are tax exemptions but during corona Skatteverket has stated that most of those cases aren't eligible for 2020 [0] (answer to the question "Kan jag göra några avdrag med anledning av corona?"): > Du som under 2020 har jobbat hemma med anledning av pandemin kan som regel inte få avdrag för exempelvis arbetsrum, bredband, möbler eller kaffe, även om du har haft de kostnaderna för att du har jobbat hemma. Translating: > Can I make deductions due to corona? > If you have worked from home in 2020 due to the pandemic, you cannot normally receive a deduction for, for example, workplaces, broadband internet, furniture or coffee, even if you absorbed the costs by working from home. [0] https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/deklaration.4.2b543913a42158acf800013508.html https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/deklaration.4.2b543913a42...
- RichieAHB 6y ago
  I’d like to think that most employers that have spent the time and effort to make this work would have policies that cater for the cost of working from home, rather than just saying “you’re saving money on your commute, deal with it”; but this may be naive! I know that at Spotify this is the case. When choosing to work from home you receive Wi-Fi allowance, as well as being allowed to expense a standing desk, monitor, desk lamp etc. You are also allowed to claim for coworking space fees, but only if you are > 50 miles from the office. Since working from home has begun all employees have been given a prepaid food card for lunch expenses, and after the pandemic this will be available to both home and office workers. The other benefit for a multinational like Spotify is you can work from any country that they are legally registered. I don’t know how other companies will approach this.
curiousgal 6y ago
Interns and junior employees will suffer because of this.
- dx034 6y ago
  Absolutely. You learn so much more during the first years than just technical content. It's all about behavior at work, socializing, office politics etc. Sadly, anyone deciding if people should work remotely has already done that and is most likely in a position where they have a family and enough space at home for a nice office. Few people in upper management work out of a studio apartment in their first job.
alephnan 6y ago
Nationwide is on your side
kmlx 6y ago
i read a lot of studies about how productivity increases when working from home. so i decided to superficially calculate this after a year of working from home for all of my very diverse clientele (fortune 500, small agencies, etc). i felt that a lot less work was being done, but i didn’t know how much. or why. since i’m a coder at heart i looked at tickets/features and commits. something easy to measure. what i found is a big productivity drop. in some cases there was 40% less work done from home than from the office. and this happened gradually over the course of a year. and since i know people working for big corps in HK i’ve asked them to do the same. their company’s productivity increased slightly (5%<). they were never forced to work from home. this is by no means a scientific study, but i was surprised at the huge drops i was seeing, and even more surprised at the continuous drop off across the time line. did anyone else notice this, or are just my clients outliners? what will wfh do to the productivity difference between asian countries and western ones? will this apparent productivity loss be offset somehow?
- Arainach 6y ago
  You're ignoring the variables that conflate. Plenty of people I know are burnt out, tired, and not as productive as they are at their peak. This isn't "WFH". This is WFH and quarantine and not being able to travel or take travelling vacations and worrying about your health and the health of everyone you care about and schooling at home and a pandemic and......you get the point. No data claiming a productivity drop during this pandemic can be isolated to WFH with any reliability. I'm burnt out. My productivity has been garbage this month. The cause isn't WFH or even work in general - the cause is that it's been an utterly miserable year for the world and it's wearing me down. I'm tired of isolation and I'm tired of constant reminders in the world around me that I'm surrounded by idiots without empathy who would rather protest their right to put others in danger than take basic precautions to protect those around them, and I'm ABSOLUTELY tired of the fact that these people haven't learned or changed in an entire year.
- guilhas 6y ago
  Definitely down. Not sure if because the amount of distractions at home, kid, pet, things to tidy up... or if because people are taking this more like exceptional times, so it is OK to slack.
aseerdbnarng 6y ago
I have two comments on this: a) I feel sympathy for the young, single-types who benefit most from working in a busy environment. The WFH change is wonderful for the older types a bit fed up with long-commutes and open plan offices. I hope the hybrid approach allows us to treat the office like an old-school marketday where once or twice a week, everyone is there and the goal is to be as social as possible. The softer skills of work arent easily passed on via a Zoom call b) The world has had to quickly adapt to WFH, and I suspect much of the dislike some people have experienced with WFH is due to things that arent fit for this purpose. Many of my colleagues live in small London flats with both parents trying to hold simultaneous zoom-calls and with schools being shutdown, having to manage their children while also doing their jobs. As WFH (hopefully) sticks, these problems iron themselves out
- adamhp 6y ago
  For (a) can we do barbecues and cookouts and happy hours instead? We can bring whiteboards if needed but I really don't want to spend even 2 hours a week commuting again.
- piva00 6y ago
  On your b. topic, that's what my company has been pretty clear about: we aren't working from home, we are at home, during a global crisis, trying to work. It's not the experience I had before, around 2010-2011, working completely remote/from home for 2 years with processes and companies adapted to that. Being able to take 2 hours during an afternoon to meet people for a coffee somewhere, or go to the gym. We are just trying to work from home now, not really living through a proper experience of that with all its benefits.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > On your b. topic, that's what my company has been pretty clear about: we aren't working from home, we are at home, during a global crisis, trying to work. Mine was too, and I really appreciated that they made a point of it. Lowered expectations led to lowered stress, people did their best without fear of negative consequences for decline in productivity - and, as it turned out after management reviewed the issue few months later, productivity did not suffer.
rkangel 6y ago
Is there a risk of wide adoption of home working becoming discriminatory against people with low incomes? I am lucky enough to have a 4 bedroom house that I share with just my fiancée. This means that I have space to have a nice office, that is separate from whatever else is going on in the house. This is not a luxury that everybody has. In most cases it will be because they can't afford it, but in some cases it will be because they prefer to or need to live in a big city where it is affordable to very few. If you're in that situation working from home is going to be a less pleasant, less attractive option. If a large portion of workplaces become remote-first are you going to be at a disadvantage if you prefer an office? We're not there yet - there aren't many remote first companies, and most companies offer the option but I worry that what for a lot of us is a blessing will become a curse to some.
- em-bee 6y ago
  that's a very good point. i could not get any work done if i didn't have a separate room. it's a small one (4-5sqm) but that's enough. however that's the thing. most apartments i looked at in one particular city didn't have any small rooms. in order to get four bedrooms (one to be converted to an office) i could not find anything smaller than 150sqm. a friend of a relative has a 100sqm apartment with 5 rooms. two of them are mere closets with a window, but that's the perfect size for a home office. another issue is tax relief. if you don't have your office in a separate room, you can't write off the full cost for that office as a work expense (which would be subtracted from your income, so you pay less income taxes). if your office is a desk in the living room, then you only get to write off half of the cost for that desk (or less) just because the room is also used for other purposes, and your kids, god forbid might use your desk for other activities when you are not working.
londons_explore 6y ago
I bet they'll walk back this advice when employees start moving outside the UK and start living across the world, and suddenly Nationwide has the laws and bureaucracies of hundreds of countries to deal with... "Hi HR, you need to pay be the 8 years maternity pay you owe me because I live in Svalbard and the local laws require all employers pay that".
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  That would be an issue, but thankfully isn't necessarily the case. you're usually bound by the locality where the contract is signed, so you dont suddenly gain rights just by moving abroad until the employer actually creates a new contract. for that to happen, the employer would have to create a legal entity in that legal region. do note however, that some nations dont allow you to work while on their soil, unless you specifically get a visa permitting it.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    A nation who has laws as you suggest opens their population up to remote slave labor. Ie. Some foreign company encourages citizens to work for less than minimum wage, paying no employment taxes, in conditions that would otherwise be illegal. That in turn also hurts local employers competing for the same labor pool. Therefore I believe all nations will decide that work done on their soil must follow their employment laws, even if done for a foreign company. There is precident for that interpretation pre-pandemic in many western countries.
  - sensitive-ears 6y ago
    This may or may not be true in all locales, but one issue described to me is that having a legal entity in one jurisdiction with employees in another jurisdiction can expose the company to be also tax liable in the workers jurisdiction
  - prepend 6y ago
    This is not true in the US as state laws apply for where the employee conducts the work, not the location of the employer. The employer will need to withhold taxes for the state of the employee as well. This is frequently hard to detect with everyone teleworking, but rest assured that HR is getting a call if someone works in a state with maternity leave laws requiring it. While not generally applicable for digital jobs that telework, I think the most obvious would be minimum wage. If I live in Seattle and telework to a job in Alabama that pays only $11, that’s a liability for the employer. Of course, I think that if an employee was teleworking from a location without approval that’s likely grounds for dismissal.
nonameiguess 6y ago
Something I haven't seen brought up much, probably because most of the people commenting on these posts aren't disabled, is the positive impact on disabled people. I have spine problems that effectively prevent me from being able to commute. I was able to get around that in the past by taking trains I could stand/sit on, but that required me to both live and work within walking distance of a train station, which in the US is not very many places. Then I was able to get around it when my wife started working at the same site because I could just carpool with her and be reclined the whole time. But nothing truly freed me like the ability to work from bed. The possibility of a bad flareup or injury always haunted me because in the past it has meant possibly months of missed time while I go on disability or even having to change jobs. Now it means nothing. I mean, something because I'll be in more pain and miserable, but I can at least keep working.
- em-bee 6y ago
  i do hope that you are still taking a break when the pain flares up but i can totally see the difference to being out of commission for a week just because it's to painful to get in a car, when you could otherwise work, as long as you can sit comfortably and lie down for breaks, or whatever it is you need to do to get relief. not to mention the difficulty of finding work that will accommodate your needs, since, even if it's required by law to not discriminate, some companies still find an excuse to not hire, or are making it difficult to get your workplace adjusted to your requirements.

140 points by CraigJPerry 6y ago

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

at some hazily defined point work anywhere, anytime becomes work everywhere, all the time.

cletus 6y ago
This reminds me of companies who have “unlimited” vacation days. If I can’t take the next 40 years off at full pay it’s not “unlimited”. A more accurate description is probably “vacation days determined by whether your manager likes you”.
- vidarh 6y ago
  I've turned offers down over that. I will not work for a company that claims "unlimited" vacation, unless they're at least prepared to specify a contractual floor.
- beforeolives 6y ago
  Unlimited vacation is such an obvious lie, I'm surprised so many people see it as a perk. It's like claiming to have flat structure. Nope, there is still a hierarchy, just like there is still a limit to the "unlimited" vacation days you can take. You just took something explicit and made it implicit to the detriment of your company. It's a red flag when I see either of these advertised as perks and it makes me less likely to work for the company.
- dx034 6y ago
  I also don't like it and I believe it's not necessarily legal in all countries. Many European countries have a minimum amount of vacation days and companies need to make sure employees also take those (not all do but theres no enforcement unless someone complains). "Unlimited" without a floor might lead to more vacation days for some but likely to fewer days for most. And if they were truly unlimited, why would anyone work part-time? You could just work full time and take 2 days off per week (plus vacations) at full salary. But I doubt many companies would accept that.
xvector 6y ago
as mentioned earlier, setting boundaries is up to you
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  My wife's sister once said my problem was that I couldn't say no.
  - xvector 6y ago
    One of the most difficult but most empowering skills to learn, in my opinion

Hendrikto 6y ago

I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.

sn_master 6y ago
People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Being home alone in a tiny apartment, the desk placed next to my bed - that's not the home office I want to spend all my time in. With family and house, sure. But I literally don't have the real estate to make a nice home office. Mixed mode works very well tough, I can go to the office if I want and stay home if I want, so I mostly spend 4 days in the office, 1 at home.
  - NamTaf 6y ago
    I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a 2br (65-70m^2 internal) to myself, so I have more than enough room and don't feel cramped. As such, I tend to go the opposite direction - 4 days at home, 1 day in the office out of obligation. Sometimes I just skip that 1 day a week if my workload requires more focus time, as office time is generally me helping more junour staff. I agree though that a mixed mode can be a best of both worlds scenario. If we as a whole continue down the path of more WFH, open shared office spaces may eventually begin to find their feet and fill that 'mixed-mode' equivalent if the company itself does not have office space. I predict there might also be more public spaces such as libraries opening up with work areas for people to get out of home when working. The other challenge is the social component of work, but I think that will change post-Covid too. Being in Australia has afforded me the extremely lucky capability of being able to get out and socialise almost completely freely during the last year, and it undoubtly helps immensely. I think that for people who live alone, working from home will become less isolating when they can socalise outside of work hours more freely again. For example, social sport is a lot easier to fit in to your day when you're not then also losing an hour or more in your day to travel. You can do it and still easily have time to prep dinner or do your daily chores. In short, I think that the shift to WFH due to covid will be a lot easier for a lot more people once the restrictions of Covid subside.

sn_master 6y ago

How would that work in terms of taxes? The UK doesn't have taxes based on location like the US?

billynomates111 6y ago
I don't think they're saying work anywhere in the world. They're saying work anywhere within the UK, including HQ, local high street branches, at home, or a mixture of the above.
dkarp 6y ago
By anywhere, I expect it means anywhere in the UK. The UK doesn’t have “state” taxes like the US, so it won’t matter where they are
- ruaraidh 6y ago
  This isn't quite true - Scotland's income tax rates are slightly different from the rest of the UK's, so residence inside or outside Scotland is relevant.
  - midasuni 6y ago
    But that’s the same now. Work in Carlisle and live in Dumfries and you get a Scottish tax code. Work in Dumfries and live in Carlisle and you get an English one.
alibarber 6y ago
Just like taxation regimes have scrambled to keep up with the fact that you can order something from abroad and have ambiguity of where the sales tax will be applied - this is the next big thing about to happen: High skilled, (comparatively) rich, healthy knowledge workers will leave the place they reside, move somewhere like Dubai (no tax, few free public services - doesn't matter they're not going to need them) to work for a company based - on paper, somewhere similarly - meanwhile the sick, aging and destitute back in the old country depend on tax-funded public services that have lost their tax base. I don't know what the solution is - but it's something I think needs to be considered. Conversely, people might want to move the other way (say to the nordics), but, I'd wager it being heavily skewed in the first direction.

alexf95 6y ago

A mix of both home-office and going to the actual office is probably the way to go for most companies. Sometimes being in the office just isn't necessary and colleague interaction can be done by phone or chat/video apps. However, going into full time home-office mode isn't great either since you would miss out on the random meetings/talks when you run into each other in the office.

midasuni 6y ago
When people are at home and getting on with working you won’t get to run into them at the office.

gswdh 6y ago

It amazes me people pretend this is something unexpected. Going to the office has always been undesirable and pointless for a lot of people. It’s only been employers blocking the progress due to their own insecurities.

benlumen 6y ago

Living up to the name.

f6v 6y ago

Meanwhile, here in Belgium, some companies force employees to come to the office despite government plea to allow remote work. Subjectively, there's been much less traffic on the streets in the beginning of the pandemic. Now, it seems like far too many people are still commuting every day.

reeeeee 6y ago
You are completely right, some employers just can't cope with the tiny bit of control they lose when their employers work from home. A friend of mine (who is also in IT) still has to do an hour and a half drive 3 times a week just so that a client can 'see' that he is working. There is no reason for him to go work there, other than inspection. We're in IT, all we need is a decent computer and a network connection. All while WFH is obligated by the government.
dx034 6y ago
It won't be for everyone but there has still been a huge revolution. Many businesses didn't even have laptops for employees before. Having the technical infrastructure makes it much easier to allow 1-2 days per week from home. I've also seen WFH advertised much more in job ads. That in turn probably means that more candidates ask for partial WFH as part of their decision to join the company. In the end, that will drive change even if some managers object it.

scandox 6y ago

Flexibility sounds good but what I have seen over the last year is that all boundaries in terms of when and where work begins and ends are being eroded. This started accidentally but it is now being actively exploited on an unprecedented scale.

quickthrower2 6y ago
At will employment is the problem. You should be able to switch off at a certain time and ignore work comms. But I think in US you’d be scared of being fired. In other countries like UK this has never been a concern, and WFH doesn’t change that.
- scandox 6y ago
  I'm based in Ireland. I think your view is a bit one dimensional in terms of the employer-employee relationship. A lot of soft pressures exist for employees even when their actual employment is secure.
- geden 6y ago
  Yeah tell that to my teaching assistant wife who works at a Lincolnshire village primary school and is now 'always on' to the whims of the go getting headmistress 24/7. She feels she can't practically ignore out of hours requests and she doesn't want to challenge the practice for fear of rocking the boat.
  - toiletduck 6y ago
    I empathize after two years in UK education. The working culture is almost cult like and self reinforcing - the Peter principle in action turns the best teachers at reinforcing the status quo into headteachers. Unions are really powerful in education - it's one of the only benefits of the sector I can think of. Hopefully your wife has a union rep they can teach out to on behalf of all the staff if not just herself? Teaching assistant salaries definitely don't to high enough to compensate for anything outside of school hours!
  - Dyac 6y ago

vm646m80v4 6y ago

Company name checks out

mattuk89 6y ago

I like the mention of being able to work from your local branch. It may help keep more branches open if they're doubling up as workspaces for the "office" staff

Jonnax 6y ago

This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Nationwide is based in one of those smaller towns (Swindon, pop approx 220,000).
dx034 6y ago
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s available in rural areas. I personally love the Scottish Highlands but internet is unbearably slow anywhere but in a few major cities. Let's hope Starlink can meet demand of those areas.
- ainiriand 6y ago
  What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.
  - dx034 6y ago
    40km from Berlin isn't really rural though. Try going 100km further. I recently drove through rural Brandenburg & Saxony close to the border to Poland. Some villages had 2G, I also encountered (tiny) villages with basically no mobile connection at all. I can understand why people are forced to leave for bigger cities if you cannot even get reliable 4G or decent internet at home.
  - csunbird 6y ago
    Mobile data in Germany is very, very, very expensive. An hour of video meeting consumes around 1GB (I think, probably even more), you can not keep up with the cost, I think.

kzzzznot 6y ago

I expect employers should offer an additional allowance for extra space to work in at home or (post lockdown) coffee shop/coworking space fees.

dijit 6y ago
In Sweden (and I suspect the UK) there are tax exemptions for home offices. There are some requirements, you can't use the room for anything except work, it must have a lockable door, etc; There's some consideration too for broadband, though I don't speak Swedish well enough to be able to file this for myself.
- donpott 6y ago
  > (and I suspect the UK) Can confirm. Or rather, there are tax exemptions for working from home, as opposed to having a home office. https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home
- piva00 6y ago
  There are tax exemptions but during corona Skatteverket has stated that most of those cases aren't eligible for 2020 [0] (answer to the question "Kan jag göra några avdrag med anledning av corona?"): > Du som under 2020 har jobbat hemma med anledning av pandemin kan som regel inte få avdrag för exempelvis arbetsrum, bredband, möbler eller kaffe, även om du har haft de kostnaderna för att du har jobbat hemma. Translating: > Can I make deductions due to corona? > If you have worked from home in 2020 due to the pandemic, you cannot normally receive a deduction for, for example, workplaces, broadband internet, furniture or coffee, even if you absorbed the costs by working from home. [0] https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/deklaration.4.2b543913a42158acf800013508.html https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/deklaration.4.2b543913a42...
RichieAHB 6y ago
I’d like to think that most employers that have spent the time and effort to make this work would have policies that cater for the cost of working from home, rather than just saying “you’re saving money on your commute, deal with it”; but this may be naive! I know that at Spotify this is the case. When choosing to work from home you receive Wi-Fi allowance, as well as being allowed to expense a standing desk, monitor, desk lamp etc. You are also allowed to claim for coworking space fees, but only if you are > 50 miles from the office. Since working from home has begun all employees have been given a prepaid food card for lunch expenses, and after the pandemic this will be available to both home and office workers. The other benefit for a multinational like Spotify is you can work from any country that they are legally registered. I don’t know how other companies will approach this.

curiousgal 6y ago

Interns and junior employees will suffer because of this.

dx034 6y ago
Absolutely. You learn so much more during the first years than just technical content. It's all about behavior at work, socializing, office politics etc. Sadly, anyone deciding if people should work remotely has already done that and is most likely in a position where they have a family and enough space at home for a nice office. Few people in upper management work out of a studio apartment in their first job.

alephnan 6y ago

Nationwide is on your side

kmlx 6y ago

i read a lot of studies about how productivity increases when working from home. so i decided to superficially calculate this after a year of working from home for all of my very diverse clientele (fortune 500, small agencies, etc). i felt that a lot less work was being done, but i didn’t know how much. or why. since i’m a coder at heart i looked at tickets/features and commits. something easy to measure. what i found is a big productivity drop. in some cases there was 40% less work done from home than from the office. and this happened gradually over the course of a year. and since i know people working for big corps in HK i’ve asked them to do the same. their company’s productivity increased slightly (5%<). they were never forced to work from home. this is by no means a scientific study, but i was surprised at the huge drops i was seeing, and even more surprised at the continuous drop off across the time line. did anyone else notice this, or are just my clients outliners? what will wfh do to the productivity difference between asian countries and western ones? will this apparent productivity loss be offset somehow?

Arainach 6y ago
You're ignoring the variables that conflate. Plenty of people I know are burnt out, tired, and not as productive as they are at their peak. This isn't "WFH". This is WFH and quarantine and not being able to travel or take travelling vacations and worrying about your health and the health of everyone you care about and schooling at home and a pandemic and......you get the point. No data claiming a productivity drop during this pandemic can be isolated to WFH with any reliability. I'm burnt out. My productivity has been garbage this month. The cause isn't WFH or even work in general - the cause is that it's been an utterly miserable year for the world and it's wearing me down. I'm tired of isolation and I'm tired of constant reminders in the world around me that I'm surrounded by idiots without empathy who would rather protest their right to put others in danger than take basic precautions to protect those around them, and I'm ABSOLUTELY tired of the fact that these people haven't learned or changed in an entire year.
guilhas 6y ago
Definitely down. Not sure if because the amount of distractions at home, kid, pet, things to tidy up... or if because people are taking this more like exceptional times, so it is OK to slack.

aseerdbnarng 6y ago

I have two comments on this: a) I feel sympathy for the young, single-types who benefit most from working in a busy environment. The WFH change is wonderful for the older types a bit fed up with long-commutes and open plan offices. I hope the hybrid approach allows us to treat the office like an old-school marketday where once or twice a week, everyone is there and the goal is to be as social as possible. The softer skills of work arent easily passed on via a Zoom call b) The world has had to quickly adapt to WFH, and I suspect much of the dislike some people have experienced with WFH is due to things that arent fit for this purpose. Many of my colleagues live in small London flats with both parents trying to hold simultaneous zoom-calls and with schools being shutdown, having to manage their children while also doing their jobs. As WFH (hopefully) sticks, these problems iron themselves out

adamhp 6y ago
For (a) can we do barbecues and cookouts and happy hours instead? We can bring whiteboards if needed but I really don't want to spend even 2 hours a week commuting again.
piva00 6y ago
On your b. topic, that's what my company has been pretty clear about: we aren't working from home, we are at home, during a global crisis, trying to work. It's not the experience I had before, around 2010-2011, working completely remote/from home for 2 years with processes and companies adapted to that. Being able to take 2 hours during an afternoon to meet people for a coffee somewhere, or go to the gym. We are just trying to work from home now, not really living through a proper experience of that with all its benefits.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > On your b. topic, that's what my company has been pretty clear about: we aren't working from home, we are at home, during a global crisis, trying to work. Mine was too, and I really appreciated that they made a point of it. Lowered expectations led to lowered stress, people did their best without fear of negative consequences for decline in productivity - and, as it turned out after management reviewed the issue few months later, productivity did not suffer.

rkangel 6y ago

Is there a risk of wide adoption of home working becoming discriminatory against people with low incomes? I am lucky enough to have a 4 bedroom house that I share with just my fiancée. This means that I have space to have a nice office, that is separate from whatever else is going on in the house. This is not a luxury that everybody has. In most cases it will be because they can't afford it, but in some cases it will be because they prefer to or need to live in a big city where it is affordable to very few. If you're in that situation working from home is going to be a less pleasant, less attractive option. If a large portion of workplaces become remote-first are you going to be at a disadvantage if you prefer an office? We're not there yet - there aren't many remote first companies, and most companies offer the option but I worry that what for a lot of us is a blessing will become a curse to some.

em-bee 6y ago
that's a very good point. i could not get any work done if i didn't have a separate room. it's a small one (4-5sqm) but that's enough. however that's the thing. most apartments i looked at in one particular city didn't have any small rooms. in order to get four bedrooms (one to be converted to an office) i could not find anything smaller than 150sqm. a friend of a relative has a 100sqm apartment with 5 rooms. two of them are mere closets with a window, but that's the perfect size for a home office. another issue is tax relief. if you don't have your office in a separate room, you can't write off the full cost for that office as a work expense (which would be subtracted from your income, so you pay less income taxes). if your office is a desk in the living room, then you only get to write off half of the cost for that desk (or less) just because the room is also used for other purposes, and your kids, god forbid might use your desk for other activities when you are not working.

londons_explore 6y ago

I bet they'll walk back this advice when employees start moving outside the UK and start living across the world, and suddenly Nationwide has the laws and bureaucracies of hundreds of countries to deal with... "Hi HR, you need to pay be the 8 years maternity pay you owe me because I live in Svalbard and the local laws require all employers pay that".

411111111111111 6y ago
That would be an issue, but thankfully isn't necessarily the case. you're usually bound by the locality where the contract is signed, so you dont suddenly gain rights just by moving abroad until the employer actually creates a new contract. for that to happen, the employer would have to create a legal entity in that legal region. do note however, that some nations dont allow you to work while on their soil, unless you specifically get a visa permitting it.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  A nation who has laws as you suggest opens their population up to remote slave labor. Ie. Some foreign company encourages citizens to work for less than minimum wage, paying no employment taxes, in conditions that would otherwise be illegal. That in turn also hurts local employers competing for the same labor pool. Therefore I believe all nations will decide that work done on their soil must follow their employment laws, even if done for a foreign company. There is precident for that interpretation pre-pandemic in many western countries.
- sensitive-ears 6y ago
  This may or may not be true in all locales, but one issue described to me is that having a legal entity in one jurisdiction with employees in another jurisdiction can expose the company to be also tax liable in the workers jurisdiction
- prepend 6y ago
  This is not true in the US as state laws apply for where the employee conducts the work, not the location of the employer. The employer will need to withhold taxes for the state of the employee as well. This is frequently hard to detect with everyone teleworking, but rest assured that HR is getting a call if someone works in a state with maternity leave laws requiring it. While not generally applicable for digital jobs that telework, I think the most obvious would be minimum wage. If I live in Seattle and telework to a job in Alabama that pays only $11, that’s a liability for the employer. Of course, I think that if an employee was teleworking from a location without approval that’s likely grounds for dismissal.

nonameiguess 6y ago

Something I haven't seen brought up much, probably because most of the people commenting on these posts aren't disabled, is the positive impact on disabled people. I have spine problems that effectively prevent me from being able to commute. I was able to get around that in the past by taking trains I could stand/sit on, but that required me to both live and work within walking distance of a train station, which in the US is not very many places. Then I was able to get around it when my wife started working at the same site because I could just carpool with her and be reclined the whole time. But nothing truly freed me like the ability to work from bed. The possibility of a bad flareup or injury always haunted me because in the past it has meant possibly months of missed time while I go on disability or even having to change jobs. Now it means nothing. I mean, something because I'll be in more pain and miserable, but I can at least keep working.

em-bee 6y ago
i do hope that you are still taking a break when the pain flares up but i can totally see the difference to being out of commission for a week just because it's to painful to get in a car, when you could otherwise work, as long as you can sit comfortably and lie down for breaks, or whatever it is you need to do to get relief. not to mention the difficulty of finding work that will accommodate your needs, since, even if it's required by law to not discriminate, some companies still find an excuse to not hire, or are making it difficult to get your workplace adjusted to your requirements.