Working from home, good/bad?

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burge13

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Jan 25, 2019
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No idea why business aren't cutting costs on office rent and just having staff WFH. Would save a motza and people abuse the WFH ability now anyway At least in my/friends experience across a few different sectors). So long as they meet KPI's; who cares? Saves travel time for the employee and rent $ for the boss. win-win IMO
 

jd2010

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No idea why business aren't cutting costs on office rent and just having staff WFH. Would save a motza and people abuse the WFH ability now anyway At least in my/friends experience across a few different sectors). So long as they meet KPI's; who cares? Saves travel time for the employee and rent $ for the boss. win-win IMO
I don't get why business don't set up mutilple local small shared office hubs rather than 1 central point. Would be ideal for workers if they knew they could go into HQ or work from their local hub office.

4x smaller spaces 10-20km out of the city is probably cheaper than 1x big space in the CBD or 2km ring around it.
 

burge13

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Jan 25, 2019
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I don't get why business don't set up mutilple local small shared office hubs rather than 1 central point. Would be ideal for workers if they knew they could go into HQ or work from their local hub office.

4x smaller spaces 10-20km out of the city is probably cheaper than 1x big space in the CBD or 2km ring around it.
I travel 50 mins into the CBD to do a job I could do 100% remotely. I'd love for this to happen...
 

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jd2010

Well done boys. Good process, carry on
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I travel 50 mins into the CBD to do a job I could do 100% remotely. I'd love for this to happen...
Lets face it probably 80% of the people who work in the inner ring or CBD spend 40-60 mins commuting into work. If an office could identify where they were spread and have 4-5 spots for them to go that would mean they'd only spend 20-30 mins this would be a massive win for productivity. Still getting the non-isolation advantage by having groups of people still in the same office.

My current office of 70 could easily have 3-4 spots in Melbourne with 20-30 in each of them. With IM, email and phone you should be able to get through the whole can't walk over to their desk component (mind you I hate people who do that)
 

DaRick

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Jan 12, 2008
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It depends on who you are.

If you're a grad/inexperienced employee, there's no way in hell you should be working from home, because you'll need ongoing training unless the job is absolutely menial.

If an employer forces you to work from home, they're likely setting you up for a dismissal, unless there's a lack of office space. Look for alternate employment if possible (may be difficult to pull off without enough experience).
 
I’m doing less and less in the office and more at home or by a hotel pool.

Generally 1-3 hours in the morning. All board meetings attended from home, usually pulling weeds in the sun and dog at my feet.

Most client meetings around the kitchen bench.

It would only work for some jobs and probably only work for those already established in their career.
 

raskolnikov

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* No one cares if half the tabs open on my PC are bigfooty or pornhub

What pisses me off at work is staff members (usually female) who will stand around the staffroom for hours gossiping but give me strange looks if I spend five-ten minutes of my lunchtime on Big Footy. Hey, at least I'm not disturbing anyone else, whereas your mindless drivel drives me to distraction.
 
I've been working from home for the last 10 years in varying capacities - and I'm spent.

The last 5 years I've had very little social interaction or contact with co-workers and I hate it. I find it increasingly difficult to differentiate work from homelife/family and I feel guilty when I'm working and feel guilty when I'm not working at home.

To the point now where I'm looking to take a $50k pay cut to just get back into mainstream employment and try to enjoy work again.

It works for some no doubt, it worked for me for the first few years but not now.
 

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revo333

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I've been working from home for the last 10 years in varying capacities - and I'm spent.

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raskolnikov

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I couldn't work from home. The nature of my work doesn't make it possible anyway. But I would find it so hard to motivate myself.

"I really need to get this done today".
"Ooo look. Reruns of Gilligan's Island!".
 

Stratton_Gun

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What pisses me off at work is staff members (usually female) who will stand around the staffroom for hours gossiping but give me strange looks if I spend five-ten minutes of my lunchtime on Big Footy. Hey, at least I'm not disturbing anyone else, whereas your mindless drivel drives me to distraction.
This except swap BigFooty for NBA. They chat s**t for ages while I'm working but if I chuck on the game for 10 min I'm a bad guy
 
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The company i work for sent us to work from home from last Monday through to the end of April.

I always worked Monday's from home and the other 4 days in the office. I love my 1 day at home... BUT..

I'm finding it hard to deal with after 5 days, the lack of human contact and general feeling of lethargy is bothering me.
 
as long as work gets done i don't care if my direct reports work from home.

But i do expect them to be available too take calls as and when required.

If management have a clear expectation set then no it shouldn't be an issue - if employees take the piss it quickly gets taken away as a privilege.
 

PenAndPaper

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as long as work gets done i don't care if my direct reports work from home.

But i do expect them to be available too take calls as and when required.

If management have a clear expectation set then no it shouldn't be an issue - if employees take the piss it quickly gets taken away as a privilege.
That's exactly what it should be. If the direct reports are still achieving KPI's there is no reason that WFH shouldn't be an option.

I was the Social Media Coordinator for my last employer & could have done 90% of the work from home. The one week I was 'allowed' to work from home, my productivity increased dramatically because I didn't have the boss micro managing everything & calling me into his office every 15 minutes to complete tasks unrelated to my role/workload.

Quit that job though when he thought it didn't go well because I wasn't there to help him with all those little things despite the huge productivity leap in my actual role.

Worst thing is though now I'm looking for something more work from home based but haven't been able to find anything.
 

Caesar

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Mar 3, 2005
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So how many people have now joined the WFH club due to covid?
My team starts tomorrow.

In my experience, although bigger organisations tend to have the best WFH setups on paper they have been the slowest to implement it across the board because of scale issues.

Our team is the first of thousands of employees who will soon be drawing on our server capacity to run remote desktops, and I don’t think our IT department’s BCP ever envisaged that sort of load.
 
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