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I’ve worked from home for an organisation of 3 people since 2014. It’s an office job but so linked with a network in Wales with meetings pre Covid around Wales that “abroad” wouldn’t work. Love that it’s meant my colleagues live around the country though. (A bit of a thread...) https://twitter.com/kirstiemallsopp/status/1290987043829489666
A huge strength of us all working from home is that we don’t have the huge cost of office space. Another is that when we went into Lockdown we were ready to carry on working despite the weird situation of my new boss starting during lockdown & despite having the kids home.
From talking with friends and family, the cost of office space and the ability of people to work well from home has been a revelation & businesses are likely to downsize physical office space but still employ the same people, maybe on a rota system.
Of course for those of us who care for children or other relatives at home while working from home it’s been more challenging than usual. These have not been normal times but I hope we can learn from employers acting fast and flexibly for the future.
It will have been frustrating for disabled people who’ve asked for flexibility in the past or to work from home and told no. Suddenly it’s possible to work from home because the abled need to as well. Businesses need to remember what they made happen and how quickly.
A friend’s husband was seeing this move from physical offices as an opportunity the other day, opening up a chance to apply for other jobs without having to uproot from their home.
Kirstie doesn’t have an office job so maybe she doesn’t realise that they’re not all the same, that not all employers of office staff behave the same, that not all office jobs are like call centre jobs in little booths in huge rooms.
Working from home during lockdown with meetings taken online to Zoom and the like has meant I can get in the virtual room of meetings like @WNCardiff which I’d never have had a chance logistically to get to with travel and school drop offs. For me it’s felt democratising.
I don’t believe my job would be given to someone who can do it cheaper abroad also because I don’t and never have earned megabucks.
Kirstie’s tweets often have a sour taste as they come from a place of privilege and also not from someone with the lived experience of an office job. Unless she employs people in office jobs and is planning to sack them all for what some would call cheap foreign labour?
