Changes begin

Nationwide Building Society have announced that employees have the option of working from work or home but what are the realities behind this? actually money and shareholder profits and if we think about it then it becomes obvious. Any business premises cost and while business rates are obvious along with water rates, gas, and electricity, has anyone else looked deeper? if we add it maintenance for buildings and grounds, cleaning and car parking we can see an agenda forming and this is money.

Lets assume you have an office building and you have contract cleaners in twice a week and a window cleaner doing the same and add such often unforseen costs over a year we can see significant savings made; if a company has 1000 employees and 250 intend working from home you can downsize your building with the immense savings, you can negotiate lower rates of pay because employeees have no travel costs and negotiate wages downwards.

Lets give this some context, if you are a bank and have a city centre location you know you have lower footfall and are paying top prices for this location and with falling footfall and more people banking online what do you do? if you own the building you can sell it and if you rent or lease the building you don't renew them and this saving can be invested in smaller premises in a sub prime location which means cheaper business rates and lower overheads, same turnover with more profits.
Further implications may be on a business radar such as cars, smaller car parks and congestion charging, smaller car parks means fewer cars and if your town or city is introducing congestion or emissions based charges this means fewer cars which is pandering to Government agendas. Congestion charges will rocket as car volumes fall and a few will be paying a lot as councils never accept falling revenue into their coffers.

What about the social side? many people dont know who their work colleagues are and this introduces divide and conquer tactics into wage negotiations and people cannot act collectively which benefits companies.

yes big companies will save a fortune on the overheads associated with keeping many people comfortable while at work.

It's by no means a new idea, see one paper from 2009, and the second one is undated by the products referred to are long obsolete so it is probably just as old ..
https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?articleId=5000107
https://www.cisco.com/web/offer/powernow/docs/mobility/Teleworking.pdf

However companies didn't really think it would work until they were forced to do it.  Now many are saying that they don't intend ever to return to fully on-site.  

For employees it's going to depend.  Savings in cost and time commuting, verses additional heating or electricity costs.  And maybe a more expensive Internet provision than would be justified for domestic use.  I don't see many employers offering to pick up these costs. I wonder how many employers have carried out workplace risk assessments for people working from home, DSE requirements etc.

Assassin refers to the "workplace social" impact as well, which I don't think I've ever seen discussed. At the moment I guess many people working remotely are still with the same colleagues as before.  But imagine starting a new job never having met any of your co-workers in person?

it seems to be a very neat way of bringing in everything the powers that wish they were wanted for the last 20 years.
Yes very strange this new "normal" .. shudder.

Not everyone in the establishment thinks it's a good thing ...
People may quit if force to work from home

There is also the security of data etc which are a big concern, look how many times Barclays have been hacked! And that with their big massive servers and encryptions/ spyware blah blah, so if its that easy for it to happen when they have all that, what chance have we got of it being ‘as secure’ in someones home!!???
Also just say the employee that was working from home had a fall out with their partner and they then decided to steal the device they were using and it end up in the hands of a proper cyber criminal? Or they got burgled? The risk are far to great imho

SS

Savings on travel are mostly lost on electrical and heating cost etc. when working at home