Maree,
I suggest that being "logged in " is only a minor check, you can be logged in, all day, and not doing anything.
As for phoning them, Mobile Phones can be anywhere, as well.
It’s good to hear all the these, Upright, workers saying that they don’t screw with the system, but are you confident that the Majority are like that?
Underneath it all, I guess it comes down to the person and the type of job.
(p.s. Just going to play golf & all the tees are booked!)
Hostels for all the asylum seekers/illigal immigrants etc.,??
I appreciate under the strange circumstances of Covid some people had no choice but, in the normal way of things, there is no way on this earth I would want work invading my home/privacy. My home is my sanctuary - work was something I had to do to keep it, and all my working life the two were quite separate. I never discussed home things at work - and I never discussed work things at home. Nor would I ever bring work home to do - if a task was running late I would stay at work until it was completed rather than let it intrude into my home.
My last two jobs have blurred the boundaries between work and home. On both occasions, work (mostly admin, I have to say) the work was expected to be dealt with at home, and in the job before this one, your phone was expected to be answered even on days off, to resolve problems. It made planning time off very difficult, because oftentimes employees were expected to come into work even if they were scheduled off. Even the high up bosses answered calls when they were abroad on holiday - I had to call one who was on a beach in Barbados drinking cocktails!
My last job was done from home, self employed consultancy type lark, spanning 11 years.
I’d have wash & brush up, breakfast, out for a brisk walk and be at my desk from 09:00 till 18:00, most of the time, Mon-Fri.
Sometimes, even after dinner with a couple of glasses of wine, I’d been composing letters and emails, but not sending till after rereading in the light of day.
When away on hols I’d pick up messages from my home phone and maybe alert an associate to deal with it.
It was a female, and she took great pleasure in informing me of her situation when I was trying to have her authorise a contractors quote for flood damage, standing in a foot of water, with damaged stock, in the middle of winter 
Possibly! 
And so was I…unfortunately not alcohol induced though!
It doesn’t work like that on Microsoft Teams We don’t use landlines or mobiles, when I call them it’s on Teams and they pick up on their HP. So if they’re logged into that as working, that’s where my call goes and I expect them to pick up
If they didn’t do anything all day, I’d know, because their productivity would be down, they wouldn’t be progressing their cases and their yield would be down
Yes, I’m confident the majority don’t screw the system, it would be too hard to cover up. And productivity increasing when people work from home speaks for itself
Just came across this article today. I don’t know if it’s representative. According to this, 77% of managers in US companies surveyed will be requiring their workers to be back in the office.
Middle managers are probably trying to justify their positions. Whether they’ll be successful remains to be seen.
Job market is still good though, so employees might have more leverage.
Already about half of US workers are back in the office full-time.
Well, if your employer wants you in the office, obviously you’ve gotta go or get fired, it’s not down to you!
But if the manager isn’t the overall employer then my guess is that some of these managers want the employees back because they’re worried about their own job!
Because, after the cost of office space, middle management is another big cost that employers eye up for a cull
And managing workers remotely means a lot less of them could be needed
Maybe office space isn’t as expensive in the US?
Anyway, what it will come down to is that companies and employers will look at their income and expenses and compare their profits with employees working from home with less office space to pay for and less managers and paying for travel and accommodation etc against the profits when their employees work in the office
And then they’ll make their decision based on that
In the thread where I read that article, most of the people commenting were saying that if it came down to that, they’d be looking for another job.
Here’s the first comment in that thread:
This is in the technology section of that site, so they’re mostly tech people who have more opportunities, and job hopping isn’t as frowned upon. And also people in high demand. So it depends a lot of which sector the job is in and how much demand the employees have
Office space is crazy expensive in the US, especially where the jobs are highest. Google’s office complex pays millions of dollars a month just in property tax for that office space. They’re one of the companies quoted in the article that expects most of their employees to return.
If only it were that logical. There’s books written on this subject, but basically there’s a layer of fat in the workforce that’s insulated from getting fired if only because it would expose the lies being told in the workforce. They’re called bullshit jobs.
Has covid exposed some of this? I don’t know.
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X
Yeah, it’s always going to be about supply and demand , isn’t it? If you prefer to work from home, and you can’t in your current job, then you’ll look for one where you can
So employers that insist on office working, especially it modern fields like IT and software could well lose out n the best talent and get left with the dregs
I work in a super modern office building. It doesn’t compare to Google but it’s on the same lines. Emphasis is on collaboration, so there’s break out areas, booths, quiet rooms, informal areas for meetings, different types of seating, and no one has a fixed desk, we are expecte to move around using th different facilities according to what we’re doing. It’s lovely 
And we’ve switched from office based, part time in the office, part time working from home
The office was only built four years ago and because we are able to work from home, they have sublet four floors now. A huge financial saving
Yes, I do think Covid has exposed how little some people were actually doing and that employers can do without them
Just saw an article about working from home and the UK.
A study shows that almost half (47%) of UK workers will walk away from their jobs if forced to go back to the office. Almost half of employers (48%) want employees back in the office.
(is it the same half of workers willing to walk away from their job in the same companies as the half of employers wanting them back in the office? Those percentages weirdly match. lol)
69% of UK workers surveyed said they feel confident they could get a new job if they walked away from their current one.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I bet someone working from home wrote that report!!!, anyway if so many folks are doing WFH, WTF is the M6 still always congested?
@spitfire, There’s a lot of talk about WFH skivers taking a 20% drop
in wages ! Which should in theory raise productivity by the same amount ??
This move has been promulgated by employer organisations !!
I wonder how the skivers feel about this ??
BTW how has the civil service responded to JRMs call to RTW so far ??
Donkeyman!
DM, it is getting very tedious trying to contact call centres etc still, both, in the time kept waiting and, the high incidence of getting cut off as the call is transferred to a home landline or whatever, then the line is sometimes bad which, when coupled to someone who’s English is a second language, who, has to contact remotely, a manager or a specialist to get an answer, the process is a complete tosspot.
@spitfire , What gets me Spitty is that the WFH “workers” are threatening
the employers with chucking in their " jobs" if they can’t continue
with WFH ??
Let them go l say !!
Donkeyman! 
Why don’t they just say “Hands up, we have had it good for a couple of years, it is now time to return to the commute and the drudgery of the workplace”?
