Whilst sympathetic with your views about home working, the latest DfT Rail Usage figures (in this forum) suggest that it is very much ongoing. And therefore physical location of the "office" inevitably becomes less important.
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Transport Spending Inequality
- Thread starter PyrahnaRanger
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
I suspect that there's a mixture.
A lot of companies are wanting people in the office more, but probably not full time.
There's still quite a few people who are still working remotely full time (which can be done if the companies have the right methods in place to overcome some of the issues listed).
There had aways been a lot of jobs which can't be done remotely and due to the poor rail provision provided a lot had to move to car based travel, it'll take a lot to get them to come back.
On the last point, still having reduced frequencies means that it's still not enough to attract people to use rail, sometimes you need a critical mass of services to get to that. As (for example) reducing from 3tph to 2tph may not appear to be a significant change, if someone was needing to change trains to do what is otherwise a fairly short trip means that their journey could be quite a bit longer.
Likewise, knowing that you've got more services to use to get home after work (even if 90% of the time you use the same one) means you have reassurance that if a train is cancelled you can still get where you are going at a reasonable time.
Home working, or at least 100% remote, will be on the decline, but it'll be a slow transition back, and frankly I imagine the overwhelming majority of white collar jobs will retain some sort of hybrid approach.
I think it ultimately comes down to the culture of the organisation and how they manage remote working. My current client very much has an attitude of if you have a problem you pick up the metaphorical phone and call someone on Teams. I have sometimes dozens of calls a day, even as a software engineer, fairly well mimicking those coffee machine conversations or the times you peep over your monitors to ask someone if they've seen this error message before. We do quarterly team meetings in person where all expenses are paid and we go out for tea somewhere. This is also very valuable. I think this balance works ok.. at this client.
I've had other clients who prefer to try and solve problems by formal meetings. The mentality that if we just implement the Scrum Handbook we'll be great. But then you'd have a lead developer who wasn't actually up to date with modern coding standards and would be condescending in meetings and on calls. So people had less of an inclination to ask for help in group chats. It's not the right culture, and in fact had it been an office based environment, his behaviour would have been visible to management who would've pulled him up on it (I hope). This kind of organisation with these issues won't thrive under fully remote working. People will get disenfranchised and switch off and it'll go somewhat unnoticed.
Weirdly at my current client, because I'm a contractor, it's actually been difficult getting an access card to the buildings. When I arrive I have to call somebody to come down to security and collect me. It's not a secretive organisation or anything, in fact quite mundane, but it is London where office security is naturally tighter. So I can't really rock up at the office without some advance planning. I think they're perhaps a bit wary given I live hundreds of miles away in a different country and wouldn't come in weekly, so they think I don't need a card, but it is a mental barrier. Sometimes I think oh this would be way easier if I just say next to this person for 2 days and we bashed through it, but he's also a contractor and we have these hoops to jump through. Whereas I'm quite happy to jump on the sleeper with little notice and spend a day or two physically located with a few people I'm working closely with, and my boss is personally happy for me to do so also, but the estates/security team, less so!
On the other hand, I will not take a role which requires 3+ days a week in a London office, and my boss (or, the person signing off my contract extensions) knows this. So he won't even bother asking me to come in weekly because he knows what the answer will be. Nor do I think he'd want to sign off on the trains/planes and hotel. If they want in person working, they'd have to terminate the contracts, both permies and contractors, of almost all of the tech team.
I think it ultimately comes down to the culture of the organisation and how they manage remote working. My current client very much has an attitude of if you have a problem you pick up the metaphorical phone and call someone on Teams. I have sometimes dozens of calls a day, even as a software engineer, fairly well mimicking those coffee machine conversations or the times you peep over your monitors to ask someone if they've seen this error message before. We do quarterly team meetings in person where all expenses are paid and we go out for tea somewhere. This is also very valuable. I think this balance works ok.. at this client.
I've had other clients who prefer to try and solve problems by formal meetings. The mentality that if we just implement the Scrum Handbook we'll be great. But then you'd have a lead developer who wasn't actually up to date with modern coding standards and would be condescending in meetings and on calls. So people had less of an inclination to ask for help in group chats. It's not the right culture, and in fact had it been an office based environment, his behaviour would have been visible to management who would've pulled him up on it (I hope). This kind of organisation with these issues won't thrive under fully remote working. People will get disenfranchised and switch off and it'll go somewhat unnoticed.
Weirdly at my current client, because I'm a contractor, it's actually been difficult getting an access card to the buildings. When I arrive I have to call somebody to come down to security and collect me. It's not a secretive organisation or anything, in fact quite mundane, but it is London where office security is naturally tighter. So I can't really rock up at the office without some advance planning. I think they're perhaps a bit wary given I live hundreds of miles away in a different country and wouldn't come in weekly, so they think I don't need a card, but it is a mental barrier. Sometimes I think oh this would be way easier if I just say next to this person for 2 days and we bashed through it, but he's also a contractor and we have these hoops to jump through. Whereas I'm quite happy to jump on the sleeper with little notice and spend a day or two physically located with a few people I'm working closely with, and my boss is personally happy for me to do so also, but the estates/security team, less so!
On the other hand, I will not take a role which requires 3+ days a week in a London office, and my boss (or, the person signing off my contract extensions) knows this. So he won't even bother asking me to come in weekly because he knows what the answer will be. Nor do I think he'd want to sign off on the trains/planes and hotel. If they want in person working, they'd have to terminate the contracts, both permies and contractors, of almost all of the tech team.
telstarbox
Established Member
And going back to the Civil Service point, friends have told me they commute to a Whitehall office for the mandated 2 days a week only to spend much of the day on video calls with their colleagues in Manchester and Leeds.
A family member of mine commutes to a Newcastle office, spends 15 minutes working on a bar stool height table, then comes home.
The requirement for him to attend the office is assessed by having connected to the WiFi network (yes I have suggested ways he could get around this entirely).
His team are not actually based in Newcastle, in fact most of them live over a hundred miles away. So he isn't even spending time with his time when he goes in. He's just doing it to tick a box, which appeared to be required shortly after Jacob Rees-Mogg started talking about getting civil servants back into the office.
- Status