My point was not to make out working from home encouraged a degree of laziness.
My point is that so many people ‘appear’ to want to work from home and are keen to shout out its (self serving) benefits yet fail to see the bigger picture.
An employer in London can instantly shave £K’s off a salary (London weighting etc) when the employee no longer has the expenditure of travelling.
You reap what you sow etc etc
My employer has had people working from home during covid. They're basically deployed VPN software to loads of desktops computers and sent people home with them.
The first issue to arise is that being a 24/7 business a desktop machine would be used by several people each day. Those of us who need to work in the the workplace suddenly found that 15-20% of the staff had taken 50% of the terminals home leading to us now having more staff than terminals. We've made it work but it has introduced inefficiency, I've spent the first hour of many a shift say drinking tea due to being no terminals and it has created a race to be first in to get on an available terminal. Leading to people coming in upto 90mins early. I have no interest in doing that so I'll always be one of the ones with no terminal.
The organisation is reluctant to buy more terminals because this is supposed to be temporary and because they're in short supply from the source. They have retained and patched up some stuff meant to be retired on the usual capital replacement but it's a finger in the crack in the dam.
There has over winter been an increase in grumbling and from those working at home a out the fact that they have had their heating and light in more so have higher utility bills and the fact they are using their own internet subscriptions, desks, chairs, spare rooms, and some.whondont have the extra space have suddenly found themselves with desktop computers on the kitchen table or in one case on a bit of work top across some upturned milk crates in the living room of his small flat with no extra compensation.
I believe the organisation has had to invest in some expensive IT kit to make the intranet suddenly available to a huge people via a Vpn / internet.
The argument that they are not using cars fuel public transport etc quelled the grumbling for a while but the grousing has returned with several pointing out they have cars on finance plans that that bought largely to go to work and that this is a cost that hasn't gone away. Several people live within a 5mins walk and so don't incur any such costs anyway. Apparently one of the unions is supposed to be taking it up, but as I don't subscribe Im out of the picture.
Anyway point is. Whilst working from home may seem like a great idea initially it seems from what I hear from those doing it they are increasingly hating it and can't wait to get back to the office.
From my perspective you lose so.much from being able to see people easily face to face. I've lost count of the number of zoom/ teams meetings that have had tech issues. We even have a set of yes/no/I can hear you/ I can't hear you/etc cards made up so we can hold them.up when sound goes awry. Then there are those that are interrupted by kids/pets/amazon deliveries/guests arriving and so on. Grrr.