If there are job losses in London because working from home moves jobs from the city centre perhaps property prices will drop and real Londoners will be able to afford to live there again
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@Donkeyman, well I did wonder that. Why pay someone silly money to work on the internet, living in their posh apartment in London, when they can get someone from the other side of the world to do it for half the price! There’s a woman travel blogger I watch on youtube, and she goes all over the place, but still works in her “office” doing meetings and admin. (Some folk have all the luck! 
)
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If I counted the number of hours I work from home vs how many I did in the office you would be shocked. I was even working on Saturday morning. I do well over the recommended hours. Sometimes I start at 6am and finish at 6pm. Pre covid we used to have a mixed approach mainly office with some days working from home usually if you needed to not be disturbed or had personal reasons eg. a delivery doctors appointment. Going forward people will be able to do either/or but there will be less space in the office so we will have no choice. The main convenience is not having to spend hours commuting on packed trains/working wardrobe/lunch savings. There is a trade off because communication is obviously better in an office face to face.
Companies have insurance and rules separate to that of entertainment venues. You spend far more time in a working environment so there is a higher risk of infection. But in general some organisations (mine included) have taken the opportunity to rationalise facilities as it costs them less. The work still gets done. People’s lifestyles have changed as a result of covid. Some have moved further away from work etc. Can’t see us going back to the old world any time soon.
Anyway IMO far more slacking in the workplace with people chatting around coffee facilities etc. Some days it’s hard to get away from the computer to even make a cup of tea or go to the loo!
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In my case crunched numbers DM, I make sure that 1+1 does not equal 50.
@Maree , Lt will never happen Maree, because the billionaires that own
London nwill never allow it, they would lose too much money ??tt
They might condescend to allow a couple of undesirable areas to be
inhabited by enough workers to keep the sewers etc functioning etc?
These areas would be kept separate from the “real” London !!
Hold on! isn’t that already happening ?? 
Donkeyman! 
Sorry but can’t agree with a lot of the above.
My daughter works from home, not her choice, the company has decided it is safer to do so at the moment. She works for a family run business that supplies furnishings to various councils and housing associations to support fitting out of properties for those in need.
As for being work shy, nothing can be further from the truth. Because she works from home she starts earlier and finishes later. She has to arrange delivery times for furnishings, organise the route ensure stock is available. Because her job is timescale critical there is no time for slacking.
Sorry but generalisation annoys me. Rant over back to being Capt A 
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@AnnieS , That’s wot computers were invented for Annie. ??
Are you sure your not redundant ??
Donkeyman! 
I agree Captain, but, are any of the companies employees going to say, the James Bond film premier on Thursday for example, that scenario I would find confusing. 
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To be honest spitfire if the company have decided they want staff to work from home because thy can’t provide a covid safe office environment then the workers have no option.
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Fair point @Chillie6 
We shouldn’t generalise. 
Not every job is the same, and I suppose working from home imposes more on employees, because they can’t access the same resources as they would in the office.
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I don’t generalize Pixie, just trying to get to the bottom of what’s goin on, and who is in control of it. 
You sure you know how computers work DM? 
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Boris is in control. Does that answer the burning question?
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I had occasion over many months, through fraud committed to us.
One of the largest Telephone Companies’s Agents, employ home workers only…yes all from home, but they are based all around the World…They will not be going into any Works Office anytime soon…
When they cannot deal with a situation themselves they Contact ‘Base’ via computer and then the ‘Base’ if your lucky phone us back…Terriblle set up, although it was really interesting to chat away to these people about anything other than the Problem we were experiencing…They were interested to listen to my chatter as well… 
P.S
Agree with a lot that has been aired…Work and Play are not neccessary the same people
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@AnnieS ,. Har! Har! Allthough l may have difficulty in getting a computer to
do what l want, l do know that computers talk to each other and are quite
capable of doing sums etc without human intervention if directed by a
suitable app.!!
That’s why Banks made thousands of number crunchers redundant not
so long ago ?? It saved them a fortune every month !!
Donkeyman!
DM, it was folks who kept me in work at the puter, the number of mistakes they made pumping the info in kept me more than busy. 
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If the employer and employee have agreed that the employee can work from home and are both happy with it, I don’t see why the employee shouldn’t go to the cinema in their own time if they choose to?
I’d only see a problem if the employee had asked to continue working from home when asked to go back to the office because they were worried about Covid infection, because going to the cinema would show that was a fib And it wouldn’t be fair on any other employees who had to go back in
But if the employer and employee have agreed to it for other reasons, such as work life balance, reducing office space required, maintaining social distancing in the office or reducing the pressure on public transport, the I going to the cinema would be the employees choice
It’s all about honesty really, isn’t it?
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Generalisations are just that Something that might apply to the general part of the population under discussion. Of course there will always be exceptions to generalisations but it doesn’t mean a generalisation doesn’t apply.
I think that’s a bit of an old fashioned attitude to management nowadays Longdriver
The emphasis now tends to be away from micro management and supervising employees every minute and for people to take responsibility for their own workload, targets etc
It’s as easy to check on people’s productivity when they are working from home as when you are standing over them in the office.
You’ll always get slackers but it happens in the office too, making coffee, smoke breaks, gossiping, browsing the net, reading the paper in the loo, walking around carrying a spanner or a file to it looks like you’re going somewhere with a purpose!
If people are meeting and exceeding their targets and doing the work expected of them, then they’re not slacking, at home or in the office
We have a tracking app that can tell if we are at our desk. If you go and make a cup of tea or the loo the colour changes…which is more control than in the office. You can also tell if people are getting on with something you asked them to do as the system tells you if someone is in a file and for how long.