Are you working from home? My experience so far

As a writer I’ve always worked mainly from home, but this is different, since the former mode was a choice. It’s quite interesting the way almost the entire world has changed in such a relatively short time.

Still, the garden has never looked so good…

You make a convincing case for us to subscribe and while your article may be seen as an extended advertisement, I do congratulate you on your effort and perspicacity. I think you deserve to be proud and I don’t blame you for wanting us to know.
For me, I constantly come up against communication problems. The humble e, mail just works every time, but try and send a video down it or a musical wave file and it tells you to “get lost”. The alternatives then become something of a lottery. Do others have the same apps installed? Are they safe? Do they need an account and possible subscription? I deliberately keep my social profile low. Writing here is probably the only parapet I peer over. So, when asked to perform for my local band as part of a combined video, I turned on my lap top camera, used an inbuilt app and found a blank wall to stand against. On completion. I turned the camera back off again in the settings and latched on to the compositors drop box to send the result of 121 MBS of bandwidth. If that had not been available I could not have done the recording and sent it. I read and note the comments about various social media and how they can be compromised. The lower my profile the less hackers, scammers and other low life are going to know about me and the less time it takes to keep track of it all. Answering e. mails and writing here is time consuming enough. So, I’m probably not that communication literate but people know that, and if they want to chat they know there’s a phone line or e. mail to do it on. I’ve got Skype installed but not Zoom. Since my need to communicate is only personal, I don’t feel deprived. Photos and text can be sent and received and they are not accidently -or deliberately – shared with the world at large.

I am not so sure as many seem to be that working from home is going to become institutionalised, well not overnight anyway.

While it is reasonable to assume that executives and well-paid professionals will have adequate home accommodation to set aside for office work and will be reasonably well-equipped with technology, that cannot be assumed for the majority of the population. Even if their employer was prepared to supply some furniture and equipment many homes just do not have the space, and I would say that perching on the dining table or on one of those ledge-type ‘home office’ kits is not sustainable for the long-term. Even working at home for just one day a week can be disruptive for other family members or occupants.

I would question whether productivity can be maintained under such conditions; if not then the employee will tend to work longer hours or get more stressed as they try to achieve as much as they could at work. The bandwidth of their day will tend to expand to consume the time saved by not having to travel to work, and the frustration of not being able to see whether the colleague they need to talk to is available, thus having to make multiple attempts to phone them, must build up pressure stresses. Then there’s the whole business of photocopying, stationery, team working, work routines in a domestic environment, cost of calls, broadband charges, energy costs, and so on. It’s become quite apparent that Which? cannot service Conversation as easily and conveniently under the lockdown conditions. It might be alright temporarily but a prolonged absence will start to create further difficulties.

Only a minority of employment is office work but it seems to take centre stage, possibly because it is associated with commuting, that expensive and time-consuming activity that adds little value or quality to life but dominates much of the thinking about work. There are so many occupations which require little commuting it amazes me that anyone chooses to work in a remote office in a crowded and dirty city; perhaps the balance of values needs to be inverted so that office work is actually the least remunerative [which it probably is when the cost of commuting and wasted time are taken into account].

There is no certainty that personal relationships would be any more secure if the romantic hazards of office life were replaced by domestic confinement. I think the social dimension is the main thing for many people that makes working away from home attractive.

I took early retirement in 2011 but unable to get involved with a couple of charities I’ve been working on the house and garden. I’m so exhausted that I wish I was back at work.

I have done plenty of home working over the years. Living on my own, there was no interruption and I was able to concentrate on the really tedious jobs such as marking exam scripts, writing grant applications or articles and reading, reading, reading. If I was in my office in the university, people would call in or some sales rep would ring, or there would be some other distraction. I could be much more productive at home. Latterly, my work involved supporting a large number of students and much of this could be done online using a VLE. Rather than answering lots of emails asking the same questions I could deal with questions online. That only requires a computer that is online, so can be done at home. One of the reasons that I became a regular visitor to Which? Convo is that I enjoy the discussions on consumer issues.

I see that Kate has a cat on her keyboard, and that could be distracting. I just had a mouse.