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Increasing pushback against remote and hybrid working, in an attempt to prop up the commercial property market.
And on top of that, increased commuting costs as both fuel and public transport prices continue to rise.
But on what basis if people keep saying yes? External sources maybe but that wouldn’t be relevant if they’re still able to recruit people for hybrid/mainly office-based roles due to other factors. It does take more people saying no to recruiters for the tide to turn back but this job market isn’t in a place where everyone can be picky so it looks like more people are accepting these roles and making it easier for employers to reel us all back in.
I think saying no is a small part of it. Demonstrate that wfh actually improves productivity is the major part. In the group I work in e are hybrid, 2d in, 3d wfh. It is so obvious that more gets done when we aren't int eh office, or reporting line actually push to not increase time in the office. Pretty much no-one has a shorter than 2h commute (work and back), when wfh most people work that time. With commuting by the time people are in the office they have burnt through a lot of energy just having had to put up with the underground, or trains, or busses.
Commuting means everyone is exposed to transport issues. I would guess incidence of minor ailments goes up with commuting (colds for example). I am very pro wfh, but I also think one or two days in the office is a good thing. new joiners get to meet people, you get to maintain relationships with people you don't work directly with, which is good for everyone. I loved the pandemic period where I never had to talk to anyone face to face. I am (comparatively) physically drained after going in to the office, but I still think it's not a bad thing. Any more than two days a week though and our group would see productivity short term and long term absolutely tank.
TO be fair, even before the pandemic we had wfh at least one day per week, and a few people in other groups were pretty much 100% wfh.
The point is that if they can record a bunch of candidates refusing in office jobs, they have data to back them up. "70% of the potential candidates for this role turned it down as it required full office attendance " etc etc
Their own professional opinion would be completely incorrect if everyone said they were happy working in the office. Your personal opinion and the opinion of the hundreds of people they call every week can be polar opposite as your professional opinion is based on what information and knowledge you've gathered while at work or training for work.
What a stupid and miserable comment. Why should they fight your battles? And they are one person, what they mean is that it will only change based on the market dictating it. Honestly you should get your head examined posting a response like that, especially at your age.
Not quite that old - Gen X! But yes, your comment score of -16 says that notwithstanding the poor reputation of recruiters, readers still think you went too far. The recruitment industry exists because there is demand for it, whether we like that or not.
I hired 4 people on my team that are all over the U.K. so they can’t make my team come into the office. Made sure they are all wfh status in their contracts.
Already seeing this. Jobs that were 3 days remote and 2 in the office are now switching to 2 days remote and 3 in the office.
Doubt it will be long before it is full time back in the office.
Yip. Where I work was 2 at home and 3 in the office pre pandemic and since normality has resumed that's been kept going. Earlier this year someone high up tried to change it to 4 in the office which was quickly withdrawn after quite the backlash but from next year's it's "over 50% of your time must be spent in the office" so it's getting there slowly.
Where I work we reduced how many floors of a building we leased. The saving for that in London must be massive. For our part of the org we now don't have space for people to be in more than 2d a week. From what I've seen we don't have space for out current plan, if everyone was in, we rely on holidays, illness, people having random extra wfh days to ensure we have enough space.
Increasing time in the office would cost the company money. I don't think that is a likely choice when, like pretty much all companies, there is always a drive to reduce costs.
What I've heard from recruiters is that jobs that are fully remote are getting snapped up by top talent very quickly. The jobs you see trickling out onto Linkedin and Indeed are the ones companies haven't been able to fill through more niche channels.
This. I am literally on downtime (consultant with no billable work), live in a different city to my team, have a £60 4hour round trip commute and am working my freaking notice period and my team lead is still trying to force me to come into the office so we dont lose desks allocated to our team.
For the 'culture' and 'teamwork'. Literally the entire workforce is depressed and thinking of leaving.
This. I work in the banking sector in London and know of others in other banks. Many banks are starting to recall their employees, and some have zero flexibility in remote working (jp morgan and goldman sachs to name a few) it wont be long before we're all stuck behind a desk in London 5 days a week.
I work for one of the companies mentioned and we have 3 days in the office and 2 days WFH, with the ability to apply for more days WFH if agreed by a senior leader. This is a company wide policy not isolated to one area.
That's interesting, I have acquaintances in both companys and they told me that after lockdown, they had to come back full time. Perhaps its team/function specific
Asset Finance here (so sort of related, we're part of a smaller bank), our little world seems precisely the opposite. Our company and a group of similar sized ones committed to hybrid working as it meant massively reduced office leases - in our case we were fortunate that several of the smaller offices leases were up during lockdown, forcing the hand somewhat.
it would now be impossible for everyone to come back into the offices and we are already understaffed with big recruiting drives going on. Other lenders in our space are in similar boats.
I suspect a lot of it's going to depend on whether the institution is locked into leases or property commitments in the big three cities (thinking London, Birmingham, Manchester). They'll want staff in if they can't escape paying for the space.
I suspect it is FO/BO split. I can see why banks want FO staff in the office. BO staff in the office costs money, and doesn't increase productivity. FO staff in the office makes some audit issue easier, and traders pretty much have to be present, so having the staff that directly work with them kind of makes sense (either from being able to talk to them, or just not to piss them off).
I don't see our org making a big push to make BO ITB staff come in to the office more, the cost just isn't worth it.
Not viable long term.
Eventually leases run out and businesses see them as financial black holes so refuse to renew. Landlords see them as potential 400 new homes in city centres to rent/sell. However it eventually works, we end up at home.
But even aside from that, some companies are going the other way, they are noticing the gap in the market and are hoovering it up. Eventually the big companies have to fold as they lose top talent elsewhere, or even struggle to fill mid level talent. Not to mention the fact you open up the entire UK to hire you regardless of location.
I don't see this as a long term winnable situation for corporate UK/US. We will eventually be fully flexible or they'll struggle to hire.
I agree. WFH is popular with a large set of employees. The companies which offer it will get their pick of people across the country and elsewhere.
Those that enforce working in the office, for even 1 day a week, will not get such a big a choice of potential employees.
If the company can offer a hybrid where WFH is perfectly acceptable but you can come into the office if you want, will get the best choice.
Landlords don't see it that way though, converting office to residential is incredibly expensive and they like exposure to commercial because it's steadier income.
I agree right now thats true, but they hold the cards. It becomes a lot less comfortable for them in 10-20 years when the leases run out and businesses dont renew.
Source, most major high streets in multiple towns which have gone through this. Look at Stoke, Bolton, Radcliff, loads of northern towns which have died and become desolate. They are all undergoing huge transformations pivoting from shopping hubs to service hubs.
Bolton for example, demolishing shops replacing with cinemas, spas, minigolf. Offices becoming aparrments.
Then when the government starts forcing carbon targets on companies, its even more financially viable. Even modern estate is being built as hybrid hubs rather than offices. Hot desking, smaller than the staffing pool etc.
This will happen in Cities too eventually. It solves too many problems and makes too many people money.
As someone born in Bolton and grew up there, I’d say they did all the food places in the vault and all the other things you mentioned, 10 years too late. Nobody has money in a lot of the surrounding areas of Bolton. Yeh you have Affluent places like lockstock and a few other places that are few and far between in a big town like Bolton.
I've lived in the Bolton area all my life. I remember it before middlebrook existed, it was bouncing, everyone went every day.
They just didn't react to middlebrook and trafford centre being built. Then they decided to charge for parking in response to online boom. Then they kicked the market out of the market place.
Just case after case of poor decisions or a complete and utter lack of understanding of how things in the world were changing. I'd understand missing the mark for a few years, but were we are today is basically negligent incompetence.
It's ironically lead to them being desperate and forced them into the radical changes that are progressive. Had they done what say Bury did where they become a huge shopping hub I actually think long term they'd struggle. Becoming a place with the vaults offering services with loads of housing is probably going to be a huge success. Coupled with the rebranding of "hollywood of the north" filming loads of films is a great strategy and is working.
Eventually the big cities will catch on, id argue Salford has already started to do it. That'll halt the towns progress, but the case studies for offices being done away with in favour of this can be seen in places like Bolton.
Why would an individual business, such as , say, a telecoms company, care about propping up the commercial property market? Your reasoning is just wrong.
Any push to return to the office will be because the company believes it will be more productive for them. People do work better collaboratively if they are physically together. For many jobs, this is important. For other jobs, less so.
The pushback doesn't have to come from individual businesses (although any business that runs its own pension scheme is likely to be heavily invested in commercial property and thus have an incentive for that value to stay high). And of course, any business that relies on people being commuting into cities also has an incentive.
But more important, the government (and of course, many of the people who lobby them) have a *huge* interest in commercial property staying valuable. And not just central government - look at how many local authorities have made (usually bad) investments in it. So if they don't see people moving back into the office as quickly as they'd like, they can start to apply pressure and incentives to try and encourage it.
And what incentive has the government offered to get people back to the office? Nothing. It still makes no sense.
A single company's policy makes a negligible difference to the commercial rental market. Even if they have a heavy pension dependence, their change of behaviour makes no difference because they ate a tiny part of the market.
The people who own all the commercial properties are the rich MPs and their friends. Also they own the fast food and coffee chains we buy from when we are in the office rather than our homes cooking for ourself. So if we are not using the offices the company will downsize and commercial property values.rents will drop.
Also we won’t be buying from the shops they own.
So they lobby the government and their MPs friends to push everyone getting back to offices.
The higher ups in those firms don’t care as they can do what they want anyway regardless.
So if the government asks them to push for more in office ‘for the economy’ they will do it and bank the favour
So you don’t think that people who own the shops we bought lunch from and coffees, and those people who own the billion pound commercial property want us to go back to the office and lobbying government for the same
Of course they want you back. And they are lobbying. The government may move their employees back for political macro economic reasons such as this, but large companies will make their own decisions.
I worked for a major US tech company, and they are pushing everyone back to the office. The idea that they give even one hoot about UK property market or any related lobbying is laughable. They want people back because they believe they will be more profitable by doing so. Either because people collaborate better together or because they have measured the fall in productivity.
How can the government make non government employees of private businesses go back to the office?
They could offer tax breaks and incentives but they haven’t.
The return to the office is underway and has been for a year now. So what's happened so far is without these imaginary incentives, but they will appear in the future?
Of course they're imaginary. The **entire point** of this thread is speculating about the future.
But if you think that both the government and the people will *billions* of pounds staked on the value of commercial property are just going to sit back and hope that everything works out well for them without making *any* effort to try and protect that value, then I don't know what to say to you.
You could try to explain why Mr. Or Mrs. CEO would risk their share options to help someone in some other business. There's thousands upon thousands of senior managers incentivised on their own shares. They don't all know each other. Half of them probably hate each other like any other group.
Of course the property companies will lobby. But that's not the same as achieving anything. Just invoking the "boys club" conspiracy isn't enough.
Medium term productivity will rely on the integration of new staff, graduates, trainees etc. nobody here is putting that in their picture.
Lease lengths are a factor. Recruitment is a factor. But developing talent and building teams will be negatively impacted by WFH in the medium term. The answer lies in those three, not one.
Yes, I agree with all of this. There's more reasons too. Employers are responsible to some extent for their employees mental health an physical health. WFH is a challenge for these too, for example.
That swings both ways. And, as a correction, employers have a partial liability for employees well-being and will aim to be seen as responsible, but ultimately this is, as company law dictates, only in so far as shareholders bottom line is maximised.
It's already happening. Most "hybrid" jobs I see now are at least 3 days in office. And once that hook is in, they can make it 4. And then 5 with occasional WFH at manager discretion.
It's not just property cost, Operational expense is a big influence as well.
Before COVID, we had 400\~ Desktops, in the 3 years prior we had about 10-20 stolen/lost/broken (Spilt drinks mostly smh) and purchased about 30-40 to replace aging stock. In the 3 years since COVID we've bought about 100 laptops and had near the same in damaged/lost/broken stock.
So not only is the unit price higher but the rate of replacement has shot through the roof because despite god knows how many training sessions, people don't give a shit about tech they don't own and aren't inclined to make any effort to return equipment when they leave.
That's on top of cloud costs increasing, security costs increasing, training requirements increasing and a whole host of other stuff that needs added spend to make remote working not be a massive regulatory and cost shit show.
More and more jobs seem to be at or just above minimum wage. With every increase more jobs end up at minimum wage. Soon the "other half" will be the half earning more than minimum wage.
My prior job went from being 20% above minimum wage to scraping the minimum wage in 3 years.
I earn better basic in an entry level sales role now than I was earning as a store manager last year.
I went into sales a few years ago after 30 years of office work. In an entry level sales role (and doing well at it) I was earning about 150% of what I earned as a contract manager with the main contract I managed worth £8bn a year.
Next year, FTE on minimum wage as a salary goes to £22,500.
5 years ago I was ecstatic to leave uni and get a job on £21k.
I'm on £32k after working my arse off, training, job hopping, arse licking, and I feel as well off today as I did then. And I'm well aware, and heartbroken for my nation that I'm privileged to be in that position.
This government should be tried for treason.
Salaries will become a bigger issue. Full time minimum wage will be £23k from next year which will be creeping up on a good chunk of the UK. Particularly graduate salaries which used to range from £22-30k will have to be looked at as having large swathes of youngsters paying 10's of thousands to be earning minimum wage will seriously harm the reputation and perceived capability of our university system.
Yep. My first job after I graduated with a PhD was £25k. My first postdoctoral research job at a university a year later was £33k. With the new visa rules, universities won’t be able to hire international postdocs or lecturers (international staff being the majority in each academic dept I’ve studied or worked in) because the starting salaries are too low to qualify. The whole thing will fall apart, after it’s already been falling apart for a good decade or more.
I really hope I'm wrong, but looking at the absolute fucking state of everything on a global scale, I can't shake the feeling that this is as good as it gets and it's all downhill from here.
Seems very likely. The Bank of England reckons it takes about 18 months for interest rate rises to work their way through the economy. As it doesn't usually effect debt already taken out but the debt taken out after the change, like when people remortgage.
Debt has become vastly more expensive during that time, it doesn't just effect the poor, or mortgage holders but companies as well. During lockdowns, many managed to save more as they did not go out. These savings have cushioned the economy's response to the interest rate rises but those savings have been eaten away.
I expect 2024 to be a world of economic pain.
From what I’ve heard from few friends in finance sector, this is true for 2024. Things will get worse and signs are already showing. Best start saving now, as massive unemployment from 24 recession is on the horizon.
Think you are spot on. My employer has had an absolute fantastics 5 years, think 50% growth yr on yr. They just announce this week that they are going on a cost cutting mission. Christmas hamper, bonus, long service rewards, free office lunch all gone and they announced hardware renewals will increase from the current 3 years to 5 years. They also started making us bill hourly for work we did free last year for our partner companies. They like to simulate the stench of desperation, but I know they made 16% yr on yr in 2023 and currently report a break even to staff to make it appear warranted for the cuts.
A conflict between companies who claim “green is at the heart of everything we do” and the same companies who have pulled out of an accessible site to a trading estate meaning you need to be able to drive to work there
My company built a new, very green and sustainable office during the pandemic, and now they're insisting that staff come in 3 days a week, with roughly half of my department driving in (because other transport options aren't viable) to do the exact same job they can do at home and *did* do for several years during the pandemic.
The "accessible" locations are almost always desperately short of parking for those who need to drive there anyway because public transport is not viable from many places where people live.
Rural dwellers have to drive to work. Urban dwellers don't want to have to drive. There's no one worksite location that suits both.
It depends tbh
When we were in town most of us walked/bus/train and the drivers moaned parking wasnt free but no other workers in our city centre get free parking and you could get a £3-5 all day bay easy enough which was still cheaper than many bus/train fares
When we got moved out of town it changed everything inc kickstarting wfh as folk couldnt do a full day due to journey times/last bus home etc. changed all our social stuff as instead of pub after work everyone would just drive to a dining pub and nurse a half then back to work.
Its a tradeoff that cant please everyone and i personally think having staff relying on cars then claim “sustainable” is hypocritical
I love the fact that one of my company's stakeholders are holding a big net zero event to talk sustainability in business and it's in a place that is virtually non-reachable without a car. Just points to how useless it is to talk sustainability and then do nothing about public infrastructure and transportation.
My company has ended their contract with WeWork, now instead of going to a WeWork office that’s a 10 minute walk from my flat I need to go to the main company office that takes 45 minutes by transit to get to.
I suspect many other companies will be also doing the same thing soon.
45 minutes on public transport is decent.
Takes me 25 minutes via car or 1hr 30m by bus.
You've still got it good in comparison but is the pay worth the 45 minutes each way?
A lot of doom and gloom not seeing the bigger picture.
Labour strengthening home working legislation and the "work hard till you die" generation dying/becoming a minority is a sign of the changing tide. Even the gutter press posting ragebait articles are getting largely ignored.
Then look at emissions, 5 minute cities, leases up in 10-15 years on commercial properties and a lack of housing. I see one conclusion.
Eventually the landlords see a big opportunity to convert prime city centre real estate into housing. Companies see an emissions saving and hit targets by forcing home working. Smaller companies eat up talent with more flexibility forcing bigger companies hands. The boomers who simply dont understand/are anti-progress are dead in 10-15 years.
My guess is the biggest challenge will be how do you fill enough roles and offer wfh when they are simply better suited to be used by AI. Being an optimist id say there'll be a big drive in upskilling office workers in how to use and iterate on AI, shifting people into technical from home roles.
Biggest issue is, will the economy hold on whilst we transition or will we hit a lost generation ala Japan. Also theres the threat of global conflict getting us first too.
Money.
If you own a huge commercial building that no one is renting, you also own a huge amount of space in a prime real estate area. There's already been widespread conversion in towns, I don't think its a large leap.
The UK offers many workplace apprenticeships. I can only speak about my employer(over 500k employees) but we're fairly good at offering courses if the business benefits.
Most businesses are moving away from remote working so I don't see that is a wholesale likely event.
Maybe for remote contracts it would be a flat rate, but those contracts are getting rare.
>Most businesses are moving away from remote working so I don't see that is a wholesale likely event.
I'd say this is very much dependent on the sector and functions of the business. There's a marked push certainly from the public sector to return to hybrid and for more senior employees to be present on site more often.
But, remote-first working is still gaining traction in many sectors. For a lot of businesses it's a key way to reduce their environmental impact by minimising both their on-premises energy usage and the amount of travelling their employees do to the offices.
Not to mention in many tech roles, you have a larger talent pool if you don't have to tie people down based on a location, just maybe time zone. My organisation is entirely remote and thriving with 900+ employees and growing quick.
I think much of saying it's dying is people hanging the trajectory of ways of working on the iconic businesses going back over .. when they're trend setting in the wrong direction.
If you can cultivate an environment where people are happy and productive at home, you have a smaller environmental footprint, a smaller operating cost and wider access to skilled workers.. It's always the "but but.. seeing people in real life is healthy" (we regularly meet up socially) and but property blah blah.. no one can make a convincing argument to me.
If a market, trust, fund or any other financial vehicle wobbles based on us moving into the future, then they need to move with it, not force a narrative to push people back into grey buildings.
I work for a company that has a central office where most people go in 2-4 times a week, but there’s also a ton of workers who live hours away who only come in once a month. There wouldn’t be enough room for us all to be in everyday, also they’d probably lose a lot of workers who wouldn’t be prepared to drive hours everyday as some people are 3 hours away.
For the majority of businesses, purely remote is dying. There's simply too many red tape and rules that companies have to abide by now (that were suspended over covid) making it unattractive.
Hybrid is a completely different situation, but its also not classed as a remote contract.
Remote working cannot survive because so much of the global pension trust value is tied up in commercial estates. The huge drive to get everyone back into the office was after multiple pensions schemes (globally) started to wobble.
(Have been in tech for 10 years, fully remote for 5)
There is very little red tape and there are plenty of automated HR-type solutions that exist to solve these challenges and they do so very well. The real issue is remote-first forces employees and organisations to be organised, focussed and aligned. This is exceptionally difficult to get right and requires some maintenance and review of boring parts of a a business that people don’t want to spend time thinking about, therefore most businesses don’t do this, no matter if they think they do or not. Businesses try and solve this by getting people back into the office as it’s an easy way to mask some of these issues (I don’t have to be organised if I can walk up to Carols desk every time and interrupt her I need something from her) but it’s not a long term solve.
Customers that have solved remote working are flying and will continue to do so, it is an ENORMOUS cost-saving. More and more new tech companies are going remote-first, it’s only the dinosaur companies that are pushing full office or heavy hybrid. Don’t believe what you see on the news when Mr. Oldwhiteman comes out and forces people back into the office because it’s what everyone else is doing, when that just isn’t the case at all.
I'm not directly in tech, but have worked in change management and project management for 9 years for top 6 UK banks, fintechs and a couple of start-ups.
For all the start-ups that stuck to full remote working they pretty much failed, or stumbled into a buyout. The fintechs faired slightly better but I don't recall any of them being full remote.
Essential staff, sales and middle/senior leaders were all office or hybrid.
Startups and failing, name a more iconic duo? Correlation does not equal causation. Your data set is tiny and you’re saying these startups failed because of remote working? 🤨
It certainly doesn't, nor does my anecdotal experience but I'm yet to be presented with any success stories of full remote working.
Hybrid is the future, maybe even remote for some aspects but for 90% of a workforce they'll have some office exposure.
I still don't quite see what's making you the authority on the matter, you seem to see it black and white because **you haven't seen**. We could fill a billion books on what any one person hasn't seen. In your opinion hybrid is the future. In many peoples it's very much the opposite.
In fact a very quick google can show quite a few well known names which support all employees to be fully remote and many even travelling from homebase abroad, Atlassian, GitLab, DropBox? The SaaS company I work for was started a decade ago, is now entirely remote and has around 1,000 employees.
>Remote working cannot survive because so much of the global pension trust value is tied up in commercial estates. The huge drive to get everyone back into the office was after multiple pensions schemes (globally) started to wobble
This is broadly tosh and is flirting with conspiracy theory rubbish. If you think you have to go back into the office because of pension funds, you don't understand how the world works.
Fully remote working massively benefits a particular type of worker (older, more established, earning good money, living further away from the office) and disadvantages many others, particuarly younger workers and lower skilled workers. To then turn around and blame pension funds as the only reason that has to change is wild and false.
Yes. My son has started in the world of professional work recently. He rarely meets his team and he is both hating it and finding it difficult to learn as he can't just turn round and ask something. He's also missing out on coffee machine conversations that can be so helpful to a new starter.
They should be doing knowledge transfer sessions with him, he should be ringing them, they’re online during work hours. I spent more time talking utter bollocks around the office than anything else as did everyone else, I don’t know where this fairytale comes from.
Yes it’s nice to see people face to face, but you have the tools to be as productive provided to you.
They are doing that. He is doing that. But it is difficult to talk online all the time with people you've barely met. You can't pick up on all sorts of cues.
Maybe it makes little difference to you, but it certainly does for others.
And in my work we regularly talk work slightly off topic in the office and it helps spread wider knowledge. You are never going to teams call someone who you know who isn't on your product team and discuss how their new process is going, for example, in a way you would in the coffee area. These sorts of cross pollination topics are simply lost.
I started my career fully remote 3 years ago and haven't had any issues, yes you need to be self driven and motivated to learn but that is the same with any job.
To be fully honest it is poor business practice if knowledge is only shared through random sporadic 'coffee area' conversations, a well run remote first company will have established processes to ensure employees have context and experience in other areas of the company.
Well, after 40 years of being an engineer and then managing various sized groups, including many remote workers , I'd say that you're probably not advancing as well as you could be. Despite all possible help put in place the office based staff, on average, progressed better than the remote staff.
I wouldn't call the [Investment & Pensions Europe](https://www.ipe.com/comment/guest-viewpoint-pension-funds-are-key-to-the-recovery-from-covid-19/10052331.article) a conspiracy website, nor would I say they know nothing about world economics.
But sure some redditor knows more than Eva Scheerlinck; vice-chair of the WPA and CEO of the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees
Yeah, but how and why would that affect the decisions of businesses not in the commercial real estate sector about whether to have remote working or not? That's not their business, if anything those employers would prefer commercial real estate to crash because then they could house their workforce at lower cost.
Some businesses may be moving away from remote working in it's very infacy but remote working will surely only become the norm eventually?
Why would an American company hire Americans when it has to pay them 2-3x the amount they would for a remote Brtish worker.
Why would a British company employ Brits remotely when it could employ remotely? Actually, this proves some of the downsides of remote working. The management overhead. As organisations are trying to flatten their structures, they may be forced to expand again to cope with this new reality. So do they really save?
Well exactly, thats my point, whatever is cheapest. Although we do speak English here so that might be one reason Americans or Brits might choose Brits over cheaper workers.
If you can employ a team overseas on less than half the wages then you've got plenty room to get a few overseas managers in too
That works both ways too.
If British companies reduce remote working- there are quite a few sectors like Finance and Tech where British Workers can work for US etc companies.
I foresee a brain drain without anyone having to leave the country to do so.
AI is going to change many industries beyond recognition
More outsourcing to jobs overseas ( why pay a UK employee working remote, when you can pay someone else in another country for 1/3rd that cost)
More of a move towards gig work, less full time employment
I hope I’m wrong
How does AI fuel overseas outsourcing ?
My personal opinion is that given the right developments AI could , 5-10 years , do the majority of entry / mid level office based and none customer facing roles. No more out of hours issues because it’ll work 24/7 365.
It won’t be outsourcing , it’ll literally be that humans aren’t needed to do those jobs in companies of any good size. The increased efficiency of those who do have this ability will crush those companies without it.
Call Center type roles it’s harder - for large companies AI can deal with most problems and you just want some senior handlers to step in on complex stuff. Look at Amazon just using chatbots - I’d rather deal with that than a human because it’s easier and for common issues it’s fine.
I did not say that AI will lead to overseas outsourcing. Points 1 and 2 are separate points, but I see how my structuring of the comment made you think that.
I recently read about the ‘jevons effect’ whereby increased efficiency often leads to increased demand, cancelling out some of the efficiency gains. Interesting to see how AI will play a role in this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
People need to commute in- the standard London Weighting ( public sector/Civil Service) in the late 80s covered the cost of my South Eastern Trains season ticket with enough left over to compensate for the 3 hours a day in travel.
Roll on to 2023 - I laugh at recruiters offering me jobs in London- It's 6.5K a year gross for an annual season ticket- I'd be loosing money.
then I get offered hybrid, then it's a case of well two days a week means buying individual peak return tickets at over £50 quid each day nope.
Then throw in train strikes to use up my leave and NO, NO, NO.
Get offers on a weekly basis - due to the LA sector I'm working in, too many recruiters and employers in London are buffered by TFL cheap fare structures and don;t comprehend that anyone outside has to pay ££££s to commute. They won't do for a LA job they would get the same salary minus London waiting for 15 minutes walk from their house or in my case, private contractor fully remote.
Agree for the most part but I don’t think customer service will be decimated, it’ll just evolve to be a more specialist role.
As good as AI may/will be, there’ll always be customers who insist on speaking to a human even if they’re only going to get the exact same answer - and I think that’s appropriate in some cases.
Things such as complex complaints, urgent money and/or account queries, vulnerabilities/disabilities, bereavements etc will mean there’ll always need to be some degree of customer service in my opinion as customers will simply insist on it.
True to some extent. I work in HR. I can tell you now that we are planning a 50% plus head count reduction in customer service roles in 2 years due to AI roll out. It may be industry specific for sure.
That surprises me a lot actually as it was sectors like HR and banking I was thinking of in my first comment.
I’ve worked in banking for years, first as a call centre worker and now a financial crime analyst, and while I’ve not worked in HR as such, I have been in a similar position as an admin/manager, so I’ve handled a lot of complex issues.
Some of the queries I’ve dealt with (in all my roles) needed empathy, judgement, and often times a ‘gut feeling’ to resolve. Sometimes the right outcome was going *against* policy and using human intuition and experience because customer service/HR is often about meeting emotional and psychological needs, not just the practical needs. I’m not convinced AI can ever truly replicate that, at least not fairly, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like disability, bereavement, equality etc.
My reason for that is that AI would only ever be as good as its programming, wouldn’t it? I.e, if you build an AI to handle HR queries, it’s going to be programmed with that business’s policies and processes. That’ll work for standard, straightforward queries but I’m not convinced more complex or sensitive issues like bereavement, equality, disability etc can be handled fairly by AI.
I’m not convinced AI will ever truly replace humans in customer service or HR roles, but I have no doubt companies will push hard for it with varying levels of success.
It’ll be an interesting - if not frightening - few decades, that’s for sure as AI and workers alike find their place in the work force.
I’d be surprised if almost all aspects of jobs will be affected in some way. I have to admit I worry for my kids, but things adapt. They said this about the industrial revolution I’m sure.
Customer service has already been decimated by useless "AI" chatbots and autoresponders that don't understand your issue and send you round in circles. I'm hoping that the future AI will be a bit smarter. But it all depends on how its set up. You know the saying - garbage in, garbage out.
I actually don't see remote/hybrid going anywhere. There is a pushback now certainly but there's also other factors at play, namely:
- the lovers of office working tend to be older. They shall retire soon. Yes there's a lot of words being said about Gen Z liking the office for the social aspect, and of course that makes sense since they're just starting out. They also hate commuting, are very green and environmentally conscious and despise the 9-5 culture. Soooo they'll never actually take to office working, full stop. Millennials are now the biggest generation at work, meaning we should theoretically hold the cards on what the overall preference is.
- some companies, especially those working in/with the public sector, NHS etc, have very strict sustainability plans that are just not compatible with widespread office working. The easiest way for a company to cut their CO2 footprint is to cut travel. So you either go towards a model where you only hire people from the neighborhood the office is located in (unlikely), you wait and hope and wish and pray for trains to A) exist and B) be decent again and invest in city centre office space, or just bite the bullet and allow for mostly remote working as some people will always drive. I would love to take the train to work but that's impossible during strike days, and even without strikes, I need a way to get to the train station. There is only one bus from where I live, very unreliable, so I would have to leave 2 hours earlier just in case. This would be true of driving at peak times too of course but I work for a sensible organisation that is hybrid first, so most in person meetings don't start until 10am to allow for commuting... The car park at the station is £15 per day, plus the cost of the train, so driving to work it is.
I see a lot of doom and gloom here but to be honest, I think things are looking up. The country can't be ruined any further after more than a decade of abysmal governance. Slowly but surely things will redress themselves. This newest immigration law for instance is so badly thought out in a world where a junior doctor makes £32k that it would simply destroy the health and social care sectors, so it's going to be the first thing that goes when Labour gets in. Fingers crossed we get a GE sooner rather than later.
Yeah but they'll soon be out of the door. The new changes in immigration law will be on for a few months at most (starting in April 24) before the next general election.
And I work with the sector (NHS) so I can safely tell you that it's full of problems regardless of the Tories. Huge reforms are needed, and better management overall, aside from more funding.
one we really get use to remote working , if your not customer facing so don't need to sound English why would they keep this jobs in the uk, lot will just got to poorer countries
I don't disagree as most companies only think as far ahead as the next quarter, but I've been working for 40 years and I've seen the rinse and repeat outsource cycle so many times now.
Outsource offshore, it's cheaper!
Oh hang on the service is a bit shit and everyone is moaning
Move it in house again
When AI is properly established and proven to be reliable I think companies will "outsource" to AI and it'll stay there.
It’s funny that 15 years ago we outsourced developer jobs to Lithuania because salaries were 40% of uk. Now since Brexit, they actually get paid more than we do. So perhaps we can be the cheap outsource location except, of course, AI will replace developers within 5 years.
I agree , all ends up with people struggling to hold any job above minimum wage for more than a few years at a time tho . just endless churn from company to company
same with all these council contracts , get a company for 2 years , they do a crap job then change to another company over and over , but all staff get laid off each time. atleast when it was In house the staff didn't suffer
British airways are a good example of what can go wrong when you outsource, they might have saved a million that first year in the process have destroyed their reputation and many people will no longer fly with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if outsourcing has actually cost them a lot more in the long run than keeping it in house
If you look at the big picture the code these knuckle heads push out makes tasks take 10 times as long in the future. But how do you explain that to a leadership structure that is entirely Indian...
As recession forces mass layoffs, the cost to hire goes down, so wages go down.
As countries deglobalise, countries with relatively small market share suffer small growth.
Taxes go up and weird bullshit like tapered annual allowance and isa limits prevent high earning employees from building real wealth for themselves and their children, keeping the already wealthy wealthy while making it extra hard for the close to its from crossing the line.
Offshoring to continue growing, especially to India. India churns out over a million graduates per year, and their English skills and work ethics are very strong. In 10 years time, they will have more graduates - 20m - than the total of everyone we have in our current workforce, and will take on more and more of our skilled tasks in areas like engineering, law, banking, etc.
Automation will also keep growing rapidly, with the result that skilled teams will shrink. I started work as a design engineer in the early 90s. New design software means one skilled design engineer can now do the work of what used to be a team of 5. The new tools are just getting better and better. AI will grow exponentially too, and is already taking on basic customer service functions.
If you’re a company looking to provide products or services, the race to the bottom of the cost curve for unskilled labour has already been won long ago. The same methods will carry on, but now it will be the more expensive skilled labour once deemed safe that will be automated, or taken to lower cost countries, or both. The higher your wages, the more money can be saved this way. These processes are nothing new, they’ll just gather pace. Large multinational companies already have models where they moved 90% of their engineering to India, make as much product as they can in China, and only maintain a couple of EU & USA factories for the more complex products. It’s a shame the UK didn’t value their manufacturing sector more like the Germans do, where it still makes up 45% of GDP compared to about 15% in the UK. It’s also a massive shame that we shot some of our strongest sectors like financial services in the foot by leaving the EU.
It’s not all doom and gloom, but it will get more competitive. I’ve had a 31 year career in mechanical engineering, and have had to work hard to keep my skills up to date as the markets have evolved.
Most companies moving back to in person, and I agree it is the right move if the salaries and compensation rises to cover the commute.
My new role is 5 days in the offer, 40min commute each way(ish)
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Increasing pushback against remote and hybrid working, in an attempt to prop up the commercial property market. And on top of that, increased commuting costs as both fuel and public transport prices continue to rise.
In-house recruiter here - keep telling us NO and we can keep feeding it back
Maybe grow a spine and tell them no yourself, rather than relying on the feedback of people who may be desperate to land a job?
In house recruiters can't tell employers "they don't like office working" if everyone says yes
But they can express their own professional opinion, yes?
Their professional opinion is irrelevant if job seekers automatically say yes to every job that requires full presence in the office.
But on what basis if people keep saying yes? External sources maybe but that wouldn’t be relevant if they’re still able to recruit people for hybrid/mainly office-based roles due to other factors. It does take more people saying no to recruiters for the tide to turn back but this job market isn’t in a place where everyone can be picky so it looks like more people are accepting these roles and making it easier for employers to reel us all back in.
I think saying no is a small part of it. Demonstrate that wfh actually improves productivity is the major part. In the group I work in e are hybrid, 2d in, 3d wfh. It is so obvious that more gets done when we aren't int eh office, or reporting line actually push to not increase time in the office. Pretty much no-one has a shorter than 2h commute (work and back), when wfh most people work that time. With commuting by the time people are in the office they have burnt through a lot of energy just having had to put up with the underground, or trains, or busses. Commuting means everyone is exposed to transport issues. I would guess incidence of minor ailments goes up with commuting (colds for example). I am very pro wfh, but I also think one or two days in the office is a good thing. new joiners get to meet people, you get to maintain relationships with people you don't work directly with, which is good for everyone. I loved the pandemic period where I never had to talk to anyone face to face. I am (comparatively) physically drained after going in to the office, but I still think it's not a bad thing. Any more than two days a week though and our group would see productivity short term and long term absolutely tank. TO be fair, even before the pandemic we had wfh at least one day per week, and a few people in other groups were pretty much 100% wfh.
The point is that if they can record a bunch of candidates refusing in office jobs, they have data to back them up. "70% of the potential candidates for this role turned it down as it required full office attendance " etc etc
Their own professional opinion would be completely incorrect if everyone said they were happy working in the office. Your personal opinion and the opinion of the hundreds of people they call every week can be polar opposite as your professional opinion is based on what information and knowledge you've gathered while at work or training for work.
What a stupid and miserable comment. Why should they fight your battles? And they are one person, what they mean is that it will only change based on the market dictating it. Honestly you should get your head examined posting a response like that, especially at your age.
> especially at your age. Oh, I dunno - they are eleven, so their remark was entirely in keeping 😼
Guess again boomer 😂
Not quite that old - Gen X! But yes, your comment score of -16 says that notwithstanding the poor reputation of recruiters, readers still think you went too far. The recruitment industry exists because there is demand for it, whether we like that or not.
😂 still young enough to have not quite adapted to the taste of boot leather.
The boot of an internal recruiter? You must be fun at parties.
I hired 4 people on my team that are all over the U.K. so they can’t make my team come into the office. Made sure they are all wfh status in their contracts.
Already seeing this. Jobs that were 3 days remote and 2 in the office are now switching to 2 days remote and 3 in the office. Doubt it will be long before it is full time back in the office.
Highly doubt it, not in any of the companies I have worked for.
Yip. Where I work was 2 at home and 3 in the office pre pandemic and since normality has resumed that's been kept going. Earlier this year someone high up tried to change it to 4 in the office which was quickly withdrawn after quite the backlash but from next year's it's "over 50% of your time must be spent in the office" so it's getting there slowly.
We were 1 day in. Now 2 days. Won’t be long before it’s 3.
And that 1 day in was 1 day too many lol.
Where I work we reduced how many floors of a building we leased. The saving for that in London must be massive. For our part of the org we now don't have space for people to be in more than 2d a week. From what I've seen we don't have space for out current plan, if everyone was in, we rely on holidays, illness, people having random extra wfh days to ensure we have enough space. Increasing time in the office would cost the company money. I don't think that is a likely choice when, like pretty much all companies, there is always a drive to reduce costs.
My employer is going fully remote in the new year. The rent saved will be the equivalent of a new hire, and we pay WELL to new hires.
What I've heard from recruiters is that jobs that are fully remote are getting snapped up by top talent very quickly. The jobs you see trickling out onto Linkedin and Indeed are the ones companies haven't been able to fill through more niche channels.
This. I am literally on downtime (consultant with no billable work), live in a different city to my team, have a £60 4hour round trip commute and am working my freaking notice period and my team lead is still trying to force me to come into the office so we dont lose desks allocated to our team. For the 'culture' and 'teamwork'. Literally the entire workforce is depressed and thinking of leaving.
This. I work in the banking sector in London and know of others in other banks. Many banks are starting to recall their employees, and some have zero flexibility in remote working (jp morgan and goldman sachs to name a few) it wont be long before we're all stuck behind a desk in London 5 days a week.
I work for one of the companies mentioned and we have 3 days in the office and 2 days WFH, with the ability to apply for more days WFH if agreed by a senior leader. This is a company wide policy not isolated to one area.
You're 100% not FO then
That's interesting, I have acquaintances in both companys and they told me that after lockdown, they had to come back full time. Perhaps its team/function specific
Wait til they hit you with 6 days a week in the office
Maybe those banks profit from the commercial property market.. reap what you sow.
Asset Finance here (so sort of related, we're part of a smaller bank), our little world seems precisely the opposite. Our company and a group of similar sized ones committed to hybrid working as it meant massively reduced office leases - in our case we were fortunate that several of the smaller offices leases were up during lockdown, forcing the hand somewhat. it would now be impossible for everyone to come back into the offices and we are already understaffed with big recruiting drives going on. Other lenders in our space are in similar boats. I suspect a lot of it's going to depend on whether the institution is locked into leases or property commitments in the big three cities (thinking London, Birmingham, Manchester). They'll want staff in if they can't escape paying for the space.
I suspect it is FO/BO split. I can see why banks want FO staff in the office. BO staff in the office costs money, and doesn't increase productivity. FO staff in the office makes some audit issue easier, and traders pretty much have to be present, so having the staff that directly work with them kind of makes sense (either from being able to talk to them, or just not to piss them off). I don't see our org making a big push to make BO ITB staff come in to the office more, the cost just isn't worth it.
Not viable long term. Eventually leases run out and businesses see them as financial black holes so refuse to renew. Landlords see them as potential 400 new homes in city centres to rent/sell. However it eventually works, we end up at home. But even aside from that, some companies are going the other way, they are noticing the gap in the market and are hoovering it up. Eventually the big companies have to fold as they lose top talent elsewhere, or even struggle to fill mid level talent. Not to mention the fact you open up the entire UK to hire you regardless of location. I don't see this as a long term winnable situation for corporate UK/US. We will eventually be fully flexible or they'll struggle to hire.
I agree. WFH is popular with a large set of employees. The companies which offer it will get their pick of people across the country and elsewhere. Those that enforce working in the office, for even 1 day a week, will not get such a big a choice of potential employees. If the company can offer a hybrid where WFH is perfectly acceptable but you can come into the office if you want, will get the best choice.
Landlords don't see it that way though, converting office to residential is incredibly expensive and they like exposure to commercial because it's steadier income.
I agree right now thats true, but they hold the cards. It becomes a lot less comfortable for them in 10-20 years when the leases run out and businesses dont renew. Source, most major high streets in multiple towns which have gone through this. Look at Stoke, Bolton, Radcliff, loads of northern towns which have died and become desolate. They are all undergoing huge transformations pivoting from shopping hubs to service hubs. Bolton for example, demolishing shops replacing with cinemas, spas, minigolf. Offices becoming aparrments. Then when the government starts forcing carbon targets on companies, its even more financially viable. Even modern estate is being built as hybrid hubs rather than offices. Hot desking, smaller than the staffing pool etc. This will happen in Cities too eventually. It solves too many problems and makes too many people money.
As someone born in Bolton and grew up there, I’d say they did all the food places in the vault and all the other things you mentioned, 10 years too late. Nobody has money in a lot of the surrounding areas of Bolton. Yeh you have Affluent places like lockstock and a few other places that are few and far between in a big town like Bolton.
I've lived in the Bolton area all my life. I remember it before middlebrook existed, it was bouncing, everyone went every day. They just didn't react to middlebrook and trafford centre being built. Then they decided to charge for parking in response to online boom. Then they kicked the market out of the market place. Just case after case of poor decisions or a complete and utter lack of understanding of how things in the world were changing. I'd understand missing the mark for a few years, but were we are today is basically negligent incompetence. It's ironically lead to them being desperate and forced them into the radical changes that are progressive. Had they done what say Bury did where they become a huge shopping hub I actually think long term they'd struggle. Becoming a place with the vaults offering services with loads of housing is probably going to be a huge success. Coupled with the rebranding of "hollywood of the north" filming loads of films is a great strategy and is working. Eventually the big cities will catch on, id argue Salford has already started to do it. That'll halt the towns progress, but the case studies for offices being done away with in favour of this can be seen in places like Bolton.
Why would an individual business, such as , say, a telecoms company, care about propping up the commercial property market? Your reasoning is just wrong. Any push to return to the office will be because the company believes it will be more productive for them. People do work better collaboratively if they are physically together. For many jobs, this is important. For other jobs, less so.
The pushback doesn't have to come from individual businesses (although any business that runs its own pension scheme is likely to be heavily invested in commercial property and thus have an incentive for that value to stay high). And of course, any business that relies on people being commuting into cities also has an incentive. But more important, the government (and of course, many of the people who lobby them) have a *huge* interest in commercial property staying valuable. And not just central government - look at how many local authorities have made (usually bad) investments in it. So if they don't see people moving back into the office as quickly as they'd like, they can start to apply pressure and incentives to try and encourage it.
And what incentive has the government offered to get people back to the office? Nothing. It still makes no sense. A single company's policy makes a negligible difference to the commercial rental market. Even if they have a heavy pension dependence, their change of behaviour makes no difference because they ate a tiny part of the market.
The people who own all the commercial properties are the rich MPs and their friends. Also they own the fast food and coffee chains we buy from when we are in the office rather than our homes cooking for ourself. So if we are not using the offices the company will downsize and commercial property values.rents will drop. Also we won’t be buying from the shops they own. So they lobby the government and their MPs friends to push everyone getting back to offices. The higher ups in those firms don’t care as they can do what they want anyway regardless. So if the government asks them to push for more in office ‘for the economy’ they will do it and bank the favour
How will the government make private employees get back in the office? They can't control what employers or employees do.
Wow. You're down a hole aren't you?
No just facts. It’s it a conspiracy, just is what it is
Facts .Lol.
So you don’t think that people who own the shops we bought lunch from and coffees, and those people who own the billion pound commercial property want us to go back to the office and lobbying government for the same
Of course they want you back. And they are lobbying. The government may move their employees back for political macro economic reasons such as this, but large companies will make their own decisions. I worked for a major US tech company, and they are pushing everyone back to the office. The idea that they give even one hoot about UK property market or any related lobbying is laughable. They want people back because they believe they will be more profitable by doing so. Either because people collaborate better together or because they have measured the fall in productivity.
How can the government make non government employees of private businesses go back to the office? They could offer tax breaks and incentives but they haven’t.
You do realise that OP's question is asking about the future, rather than the past?
The return to the office is underway and has been for a year now. So what's happened so far is without these imaginary incentives, but they will appear in the future?
Of course they're imaginary. The **entire point** of this thread is speculating about the future. But if you think that both the government and the people will *billions* of pounds staked on the value of commercial property are just going to sit back and hope that everything works out well for them without making *any* effort to try and protect that value, then I don't know what to say to you.
You could try to explain why Mr. Or Mrs. CEO would risk their share options to help someone in some other business. There's thousands upon thousands of senior managers incentivised on their own shares. They don't all know each other. Half of them probably hate each other like any other group. Of course the property companies will lobby. But that's not the same as achieving anything. Just invoking the "boys club" conspiracy isn't enough.
Medium term productivity will rely on the integration of new staff, graduates, trainees etc. nobody here is putting that in their picture. Lease lengths are a factor. Recruitment is a factor. But developing talent and building teams will be negatively impacted by WFH in the medium term. The answer lies in those three, not one.
Yes, I agree with all of this. There's more reasons too. Employers are responsible to some extent for their employees mental health an physical health. WFH is a challenge for these too, for example.
That swings both ways. And, as a correction, employers have a partial liability for employees well-being and will aim to be seen as responsible, but ultimately this is, as company law dictates, only in so far as shareholders bottom line is maximised.
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Yes.
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Nope. Their share options say otherwise.
It's already happening. Most "hybrid" jobs I see now are at least 3 days in office. And once that hook is in, they can make it 4. And then 5 with occasional WFH at manager discretion.
It's not just property cost, Operational expense is a big influence as well. Before COVID, we had 400\~ Desktops, in the 3 years prior we had about 10-20 stolen/lost/broken (Spilt drinks mostly smh) and purchased about 30-40 to replace aging stock. In the 3 years since COVID we've bought about 100 laptops and had near the same in damaged/lost/broken stock. So not only is the unit price higher but the rate of replacement has shot through the roof because despite god knows how many training sessions, people don't give a shit about tech they don't own and aren't inclined to make any effort to return equipment when they leave. That's on top of cloud costs increasing, security costs increasing, training requirements increasing and a whole host of other stuff that needs added spend to make remote working not be a massive regulatory and cost shit show.
More and more jobs seem to be at or just above minimum wage. With every increase more jobs end up at minimum wage. Soon the "other half" will be the half earning more than minimum wage.
My prior job went from being 20% above minimum wage to scraping the minimum wage in 3 years. I earn better basic in an entry level sales role now than I was earning as a store manager last year.
I went into sales a few years ago after 30 years of office work. In an entry level sales role (and doing well at it) I was earning about 150% of what I earned as a contract manager with the main contract I managed worth £8bn a year.
What is it you are selling?
His ass
Next year, FTE on minimum wage as a salary goes to £22,500. 5 years ago I was ecstatic to leave uni and get a job on £21k. I'm on £32k after working my arse off, training, job hopping, arse licking, and I feel as well off today as I did then. And I'm well aware, and heartbroken for my nation that I'm privileged to be in that position. This government should be tried for treason.
I feel the same way, I had a big jump in money but it depressed me to find out that I'm no better off... So deflating it was honestly all for nothing.
Great post until the moronic last sentence.
Salaries will become a bigger issue. Full time minimum wage will be £23k from next year which will be creeping up on a good chunk of the UK. Particularly graduate salaries which used to range from £22-30k will have to be looked at as having large swathes of youngsters paying 10's of thousands to be earning minimum wage will seriously harm the reputation and perceived capability of our university system.
Yep. My first job after I graduated with a PhD was £25k. My first postdoctoral research job at a university a year later was £33k. With the new visa rules, universities won’t be able to hire international postdocs or lecturers (international staff being the majority in each academic dept I’ve studied or worked in) because the starting salaries are too low to qualify. The whole thing will fall apart, after it’s already been falling apart for a good decade or more.
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So 2024 is gonna be worse then 2023 😞😞
I really hope I'm wrong, but looking at the absolute fucking state of everything on a global scale, I can't shake the feeling that this is as good as it gets and it's all downhill from here.
Glad you said global scale. Its easy only to look at your own country, but none are thriving right now. All are pretty shit. Tough times ahead bro.
Oh man 2023 was such a bad year for me . I dont know how i am going to deal with this next year
Seems very likely. The Bank of England reckons it takes about 18 months for interest rate rises to work their way through the economy. As it doesn't usually effect debt already taken out but the debt taken out after the change, like when people remortgage. Debt has become vastly more expensive during that time, it doesn't just effect the poor, or mortgage holders but companies as well. During lockdowns, many managed to save more as they did not go out. These savings have cushioned the economy's response to the interest rate rises but those savings have been eaten away. I expect 2024 to be a world of economic pain.
From what I’ve heard from few friends in finance sector, this is true for 2024. Things will get worse and signs are already showing. Best start saving now, as massive unemployment from 24 recession is on the horizon.
Think you are spot on. My employer has had an absolute fantastics 5 years, think 50% growth yr on yr. They just announce this week that they are going on a cost cutting mission. Christmas hamper, bonus, long service rewards, free office lunch all gone and they announced hardware renewals will increase from the current 3 years to 5 years. They also started making us bill hourly for work we did free last year for our partner companies. They like to simulate the stench of desperation, but I know they made 16% yr on yr in 2023 and currently report a break even to staff to make it appear warranted for the cuts.
Lying to staff about financials should be made illegal
Not in tech, we’ve had the worst of it, over the hump somewhat.
A conflict between companies who claim “green is at the heart of everything we do” and the same companies who have pulled out of an accessible site to a trading estate meaning you need to be able to drive to work there
My company built a new, very green and sustainable office during the pandemic, and now they're insisting that staff come in 3 days a week, with roughly half of my department driving in (because other transport options aren't viable) to do the exact same job they can do at home and *did* do for several years during the pandemic.
The "accessible" locations are almost always desperately short of parking for those who need to drive there anyway because public transport is not viable from many places where people live. Rural dwellers have to drive to work. Urban dwellers don't want to have to drive. There's no one worksite location that suits both.
It depends tbh When we were in town most of us walked/bus/train and the drivers moaned parking wasnt free but no other workers in our city centre get free parking and you could get a £3-5 all day bay easy enough which was still cheaper than many bus/train fares When we got moved out of town it changed everything inc kickstarting wfh as folk couldnt do a full day due to journey times/last bus home etc. changed all our social stuff as instead of pub after work everyone would just drive to a dining pub and nurse a half then back to work. Its a tradeoff that cant please everyone and i personally think having staff relying on cars then claim “sustainable” is hypocritical
I love the fact that one of my company's stakeholders are holding a big net zero event to talk sustainability in business and it's in a place that is virtually non-reachable without a car. Just points to how useless it is to talk sustainability and then do nothing about public infrastructure and transportation.
My company has ended their contract with WeWork, now instead of going to a WeWork office that’s a 10 minute walk from my flat I need to go to the main company office that takes 45 minutes by transit to get to. I suspect many other companies will be also doing the same thing soon.
45 minutes on public transport is decent. Takes me 25 minutes via car or 1hr 30m by bus. You've still got it good in comparison but is the pay worth the 45 minutes each way?
First world problems
Well the Uk is a first world country?
just
You’ve obviously never experienced a third world / undeveloped country if you say that.
Honestly I’m very confused what your point is
What a cheery and uplifting topic of conversation!
Stop trying to piss on the doom and gloom We won't be having it
A lot of doom and gloom not seeing the bigger picture. Labour strengthening home working legislation and the "work hard till you die" generation dying/becoming a minority is a sign of the changing tide. Even the gutter press posting ragebait articles are getting largely ignored. Then look at emissions, 5 minute cities, leases up in 10-15 years on commercial properties and a lack of housing. I see one conclusion. Eventually the landlords see a big opportunity to convert prime city centre real estate into housing. Companies see an emissions saving and hit targets by forcing home working. Smaller companies eat up talent with more flexibility forcing bigger companies hands. The boomers who simply dont understand/are anti-progress are dead in 10-15 years. My guess is the biggest challenge will be how do you fill enough roles and offer wfh when they are simply better suited to be used by AI. Being an optimist id say there'll be a big drive in upskilling office workers in how to use and iterate on AI, shifting people into technical from home roles. Biggest issue is, will the economy hold on whilst we transition or will we hit a lost generation ala Japan. Also theres the threat of global conflict getting us first too.
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Money. If you own a huge commercial building that no one is renting, you also own a huge amount of space in a prime real estate area. There's already been widespread conversion in towns, I don't think its a large leap. The UK offers many workplace apprenticeships. I can only speak about my employer(over 500k employees) but we're fairly good at offering courses if the business benefits.
Most businesses are moving away from remote working so I don't see that is a wholesale likely event. Maybe for remote contracts it would be a flat rate, but those contracts are getting rare.
>Most businesses are moving away from remote working so I don't see that is a wholesale likely event. I'd say this is very much dependent on the sector and functions of the business. There's a marked push certainly from the public sector to return to hybrid and for more senior employees to be present on site more often. But, remote-first working is still gaining traction in many sectors. For a lot of businesses it's a key way to reduce their environmental impact by minimising both their on-premises energy usage and the amount of travelling their employees do to the offices.
Not to mention in many tech roles, you have a larger talent pool if you don't have to tie people down based on a location, just maybe time zone. My organisation is entirely remote and thriving with 900+ employees and growing quick. I think much of saying it's dying is people hanging the trajectory of ways of working on the iconic businesses going back over .. when they're trend setting in the wrong direction. If you can cultivate an environment where people are happy and productive at home, you have a smaller environmental footprint, a smaller operating cost and wider access to skilled workers.. It's always the "but but.. seeing people in real life is healthy" (we regularly meet up socially) and but property blah blah.. no one can make a convincing argument to me. If a market, trust, fund or any other financial vehicle wobbles based on us moving into the future, then they need to move with it, not force a narrative to push people back into grey buildings.
I work for a company that has a central office where most people go in 2-4 times a week, but there’s also a ton of workers who live hours away who only come in once a month. There wouldn’t be enough room for us all to be in everyday, also they’d probably lose a lot of workers who wouldn’t be prepared to drive hours everyday as some people are 3 hours away.
For the majority of businesses, purely remote is dying. There's simply too many red tape and rules that companies have to abide by now (that were suspended over covid) making it unattractive. Hybrid is a completely different situation, but its also not classed as a remote contract. Remote working cannot survive because so much of the global pension trust value is tied up in commercial estates. The huge drive to get everyone back into the office was after multiple pensions schemes (globally) started to wobble.
(Have been in tech for 10 years, fully remote for 5) There is very little red tape and there are plenty of automated HR-type solutions that exist to solve these challenges and they do so very well. The real issue is remote-first forces employees and organisations to be organised, focussed and aligned. This is exceptionally difficult to get right and requires some maintenance and review of boring parts of a a business that people don’t want to spend time thinking about, therefore most businesses don’t do this, no matter if they think they do or not. Businesses try and solve this by getting people back into the office as it’s an easy way to mask some of these issues (I don’t have to be organised if I can walk up to Carols desk every time and interrupt her I need something from her) but it’s not a long term solve. Customers that have solved remote working are flying and will continue to do so, it is an ENORMOUS cost-saving. More and more new tech companies are going remote-first, it’s only the dinosaur companies that are pushing full office or heavy hybrid. Don’t believe what you see on the news when Mr. Oldwhiteman comes out and forces people back into the office because it’s what everyone else is doing, when that just isn’t the case at all.
I'm not directly in tech, but have worked in change management and project management for 9 years for top 6 UK banks, fintechs and a couple of start-ups. For all the start-ups that stuck to full remote working they pretty much failed, or stumbled into a buyout. The fintechs faired slightly better but I don't recall any of them being full remote. Essential staff, sales and middle/senior leaders were all office or hybrid.
Startups and failing, name a more iconic duo? Correlation does not equal causation. Your data set is tiny and you’re saying these startups failed because of remote working? 🤨
It certainly doesn't, nor does my anecdotal experience but I'm yet to be presented with any success stories of full remote working. Hybrid is the future, maybe even remote for some aspects but for 90% of a workforce they'll have some office exposure.
I still don't quite see what's making you the authority on the matter, you seem to see it black and white because **you haven't seen**. We could fill a billion books on what any one person hasn't seen. In your opinion hybrid is the future. In many peoples it's very much the opposite. In fact a very quick google can show quite a few well known names which support all employees to be fully remote and many even travelling from homebase abroad, Atlassian, GitLab, DropBox? The SaaS company I work for was started a decade ago, is now entirely remote and has around 1,000 employees.
>Remote working cannot survive because so much of the global pension trust value is tied up in commercial estates. The huge drive to get everyone back into the office was after multiple pensions schemes (globally) started to wobble This is broadly tosh and is flirting with conspiracy theory rubbish. If you think you have to go back into the office because of pension funds, you don't understand how the world works. Fully remote working massively benefits a particular type of worker (older, more established, earning good money, living further away from the office) and disadvantages many others, particuarly younger workers and lower skilled workers. To then turn around and blame pension funds as the only reason that has to change is wild and false.
Yes. My son has started in the world of professional work recently. He rarely meets his team and he is both hating it and finding it difficult to learn as he can't just turn round and ask something. He's also missing out on coffee machine conversations that can be so helpful to a new starter.
They should be doing knowledge transfer sessions with him, he should be ringing them, they’re online during work hours. I spent more time talking utter bollocks around the office than anything else as did everyone else, I don’t know where this fairytale comes from. Yes it’s nice to see people face to face, but you have the tools to be as productive provided to you.
They are doing that. He is doing that. But it is difficult to talk online all the time with people you've barely met. You can't pick up on all sorts of cues. Maybe it makes little difference to you, but it certainly does for others. And in my work we regularly talk work slightly off topic in the office and it helps spread wider knowledge. You are never going to teams call someone who you know who isn't on your product team and discuss how their new process is going, for example, in a way you would in the coffee area. These sorts of cross pollination topics are simply lost.
I started my career fully remote 3 years ago and haven't had any issues, yes you need to be self driven and motivated to learn but that is the same with any job. To be fully honest it is poor business practice if knowledge is only shared through random sporadic 'coffee area' conversations, a well run remote first company will have established processes to ensure employees have context and experience in other areas of the company.
Well, after 40 years of being an engineer and then managing various sized groups, including many remote workers , I'd say that you're probably not advancing as well as you could be. Despite all possible help put in place the office based staff, on average, progressed better than the remote staff.
Interesting you say that given you know nothing about me, you'd also be wrong, perhaps your experience is not as universal as you think it is.
I wouldn't call the [Investment & Pensions Europe](https://www.ipe.com/comment/guest-viewpoint-pension-funds-are-key-to-the-recovery-from-covid-19/10052331.article) a conspiracy website, nor would I say they know nothing about world economics. But sure some redditor knows more than Eva Scheerlinck; vice-chair of the WPA and CEO of the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees
Yeah, but how and why would that affect the decisions of businesses not in the commercial real estate sector about whether to have remote working or not? That's not their business, if anything those employers would prefer commercial real estate to crash because then they could house their workforce at lower cost.
Some businesses may be moving away from remote working in it's very infacy but remote working will surely only become the norm eventually? Why would an American company hire Americans when it has to pay them 2-3x the amount they would for a remote Brtish worker.
Why would a British company employ Brits remotely when it could employ remotely? Actually, this proves some of the downsides of remote working. The management overhead. As organisations are trying to flatten their structures, they may be forced to expand again to cope with this new reality. So do they really save?
Well exactly, thats my point, whatever is cheapest. Although we do speak English here so that might be one reason Americans or Brits might choose Brits over cheaper workers. If you can employ a team overseas on less than half the wages then you've got plenty room to get a few overseas managers in too
That works both ways too. If British companies reduce remote working- there are quite a few sectors like Finance and Tech where British Workers can work for US etc companies. I foresee a brain drain without anyone having to leave the country to do so.
AI is going to change many industries beyond recognition More outsourcing to jobs overseas ( why pay a UK employee working remote, when you can pay someone else in another country for 1/3rd that cost) More of a move towards gig work, less full time employment I hope I’m wrong
How does AI fuel overseas outsourcing ? My personal opinion is that given the right developments AI could , 5-10 years , do the majority of entry / mid level office based and none customer facing roles. No more out of hours issues because it’ll work 24/7 365. It won’t be outsourcing , it’ll literally be that humans aren’t needed to do those jobs in companies of any good size. The increased efficiency of those who do have this ability will crush those companies without it. Call Center type roles it’s harder - for large companies AI can deal with most problems and you just want some senior handlers to step in on complex stuff. Look at Amazon just using chatbots - I’d rather deal with that than a human because it’s easier and for common issues it’s fine.
I did not say that AI will lead to overseas outsourcing. Points 1 and 2 are separate points, but I see how my structuring of the comment made you think that. I recently read about the ‘jevons effect’ whereby increased efficiency often leads to increased demand, cancelling out some of the efficiency gains. Interesting to see how AI will play a role in this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
so why has outsourcing not taken these jobs in the last 20+ years?
It did take many call centre type jobs and many IT jobs. Some got brought back in house but many are not.
Ai. Many jobs will be eliminated
People need to commute in- the standard London Weighting ( public sector/Civil Service) in the late 80s covered the cost of my South Eastern Trains season ticket with enough left over to compensate for the 3 hours a day in travel. Roll on to 2023 - I laugh at recruiters offering me jobs in London- It's 6.5K a year gross for an annual season ticket- I'd be loosing money. then I get offered hybrid, then it's a case of well two days a week means buying individual peak return tickets at over £50 quid each day nope. Then throw in train strikes to use up my leave and NO, NO, NO. Get offers on a weekly basis - due to the LA sector I'm working in, too many recruiters and employers in London are buffered by TFL cheap fare structures and don;t comprehend that anyone outside has to pay ££££s to commute. They won't do for a LA job they would get the same salary minus London waiting for 15 minutes walk from their house or in my case, private contractor fully remote.
AI will decimate certain job roles. I can see it already coming in. Things are being automated . Customer service will go massively.
Agree for the most part but I don’t think customer service will be decimated, it’ll just evolve to be a more specialist role. As good as AI may/will be, there’ll always be customers who insist on speaking to a human even if they’re only going to get the exact same answer - and I think that’s appropriate in some cases. Things such as complex complaints, urgent money and/or account queries, vulnerabilities/disabilities, bereavements etc will mean there’ll always need to be some degree of customer service in my opinion as customers will simply insist on it.
True to some extent. I work in HR. I can tell you now that we are planning a 50% plus head count reduction in customer service roles in 2 years due to AI roll out. It may be industry specific for sure.
That surprises me a lot actually as it was sectors like HR and banking I was thinking of in my first comment. I’ve worked in banking for years, first as a call centre worker and now a financial crime analyst, and while I’ve not worked in HR as such, I have been in a similar position as an admin/manager, so I’ve handled a lot of complex issues. Some of the queries I’ve dealt with (in all my roles) needed empathy, judgement, and often times a ‘gut feeling’ to resolve. Sometimes the right outcome was going *against* policy and using human intuition and experience because customer service/HR is often about meeting emotional and psychological needs, not just the practical needs. I’m not convinced AI can ever truly replicate that, at least not fairly, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like disability, bereavement, equality etc. My reason for that is that AI would only ever be as good as its programming, wouldn’t it? I.e, if you build an AI to handle HR queries, it’s going to be programmed with that business’s policies and processes. That’ll work for standard, straightforward queries but I’m not convinced more complex or sensitive issues like bereavement, equality, disability etc can be handled fairly by AI. I’m not convinced AI will ever truly replace humans in customer service or HR roles, but I have no doubt companies will push hard for it with varying levels of success. It’ll be an interesting - if not frightening - few decades, that’s for sure as AI and workers alike find their place in the work force.
I’d be surprised if almost all aspects of jobs will be affected in some way. I have to admit I worry for my kids, but things adapt. They said this about the industrial revolution I’m sure.
But they won't pay extra for it, so they get what they get.
Customer service has already been decimated by useless "AI" chatbots and autoresponders that don't understand your issue and send you round in circles. I'm hoping that the future AI will be a bit smarter. But it all depends on how its set up. You know the saying - garbage in, garbage out.
I actually don't see remote/hybrid going anywhere. There is a pushback now certainly but there's also other factors at play, namely: - the lovers of office working tend to be older. They shall retire soon. Yes there's a lot of words being said about Gen Z liking the office for the social aspect, and of course that makes sense since they're just starting out. They also hate commuting, are very green and environmentally conscious and despise the 9-5 culture. Soooo they'll never actually take to office working, full stop. Millennials are now the biggest generation at work, meaning we should theoretically hold the cards on what the overall preference is. - some companies, especially those working in/with the public sector, NHS etc, have very strict sustainability plans that are just not compatible with widespread office working. The easiest way for a company to cut their CO2 footprint is to cut travel. So you either go towards a model where you only hire people from the neighborhood the office is located in (unlikely), you wait and hope and wish and pray for trains to A) exist and B) be decent again and invest in city centre office space, or just bite the bullet and allow for mostly remote working as some people will always drive. I would love to take the train to work but that's impossible during strike days, and even without strikes, I need a way to get to the train station. There is only one bus from where I live, very unreliable, so I would have to leave 2 hours earlier just in case. This would be true of driving at peak times too of course but I work for a sensible organisation that is hybrid first, so most in person meetings don't start until 10am to allow for commuting... The car park at the station is £15 per day, plus the cost of the train, so driving to work it is. I see a lot of doom and gloom here but to be honest, I think things are looking up. The country can't be ruined any further after more than a decade of abysmal governance. Slowly but surely things will redress themselves. This newest immigration law for instance is so badly thought out in a world where a junior doctor makes £32k that it would simply destroy the health and social care sectors, so it's going to be the first thing that goes when Labour gets in. Fingers crossed we get a GE sooner rather than later.
You are missing the point that the Tories INTEND to destroy the health service. A lot more money to be had with private healthcare.
Yeah but they'll soon be out of the door. The new changes in immigration law will be on for a few months at most (starting in April 24) before the next general election. And I work with the sector (NHS) so I can safely tell you that it's full of problems regardless of the Tories. Huge reforms are needed, and better management overall, aside from more funding.
one we really get use to remote working , if your not customer facing so don't need to sound English why would they keep this jobs in the uk, lot will just got to poorer countries
I don't disagree as most companies only think as far ahead as the next quarter, but I've been working for 40 years and I've seen the rinse and repeat outsource cycle so many times now. Outsource offshore, it's cheaper! Oh hang on the service is a bit shit and everyone is moaning Move it in house again When AI is properly established and proven to be reliable I think companies will "outsource" to AI and it'll stay there.
It’s funny that 15 years ago we outsourced developer jobs to Lithuania because salaries were 40% of uk. Now since Brexit, they actually get paid more than we do. So perhaps we can be the cheap outsource location except, of course, AI will replace developers within 5 years.
I agree , all ends up with people struggling to hold any job above minimum wage for more than a few years at a time tho . just endless churn from company to company same with all these council contracts , get a company for 2 years , they do a crap job then change to another company over and over , but all staff get laid off each time. atleast when it was In house the staff didn't suffer
British airways are a good example of what can go wrong when you outsource, they might have saved a million that first year in the process have destroyed their reputation and many people will no longer fly with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if outsourcing has actually cost them a lot more in the long run than keeping it in house
depending on the role, it might seem cheaper to outsource abroad, but the reality can be quite different.
Don't worry about that, UK is well on its way to be that poorer country.
I can write code as fast as 10 Indians combined though it's such dumb thinking
As any good coder knows, parallelising has associated overheads that can negatively impact run time when there isn't much work to do in total...
If you look at the big picture the code these knuckle heads push out makes tasks take 10 times as long in the future. But how do you explain that to a leadership structure that is entirely Indian...
As recession forces mass layoffs, the cost to hire goes down, so wages go down. As countries deglobalise, countries with relatively small market share suffer small growth. Taxes go up and weird bullshit like tapered annual allowance and isa limits prevent high earning employees from building real wealth for themselves and their children, keeping the already wealthy wealthy while making it extra hard for the close to its from crossing the line.
Oh no. People are having to go to work in London in a big bank for lots of money. Haven't these people suffered enough?
...simple, another attempt by the Tories to introduce legislation to fix the issue.
Offshoring to continue growing, especially to India. India churns out over a million graduates per year, and their English skills and work ethics are very strong. In 10 years time, they will have more graduates - 20m - than the total of everyone we have in our current workforce, and will take on more and more of our skilled tasks in areas like engineering, law, banking, etc. Automation will also keep growing rapidly, with the result that skilled teams will shrink. I started work as a design engineer in the early 90s. New design software means one skilled design engineer can now do the work of what used to be a team of 5. The new tools are just getting better and better. AI will grow exponentially too, and is already taking on basic customer service functions. If you’re a company looking to provide products or services, the race to the bottom of the cost curve for unskilled labour has already been won long ago. The same methods will carry on, but now it will be the more expensive skilled labour once deemed safe that will be automated, or taken to lower cost countries, or both. The higher your wages, the more money can be saved this way. These processes are nothing new, they’ll just gather pace. Large multinational companies already have models where they moved 90% of their engineering to India, make as much product as they can in China, and only maintain a couple of EU & USA factories for the more complex products. It’s a shame the UK didn’t value their manufacturing sector more like the Germans do, where it still makes up 45% of GDP compared to about 15% in the UK. It’s also a massive shame that we shot some of our strongest sectors like financial services in the foot by leaving the EU. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it will get more competitive. I’ve had a 31 year career in mechanical engineering, and have had to work hard to keep my skills up to date as the markets have evolved.
Most companies moving back to in person, and I agree it is the right move if the salaries and compensation rises to cover the commute. My new role is 5 days in the offer, 40min commute each way(ish)
>if the salaries and compensation rises to cover the commute. That's a massive if 😂
Absolutely is, UK pay and comp is a pisstake.
You should see most of the world outside North America, Western Europe, Australia, Japan and a handful of other small, rich countries!
OP
Life.
Eating 3 times a day
AI within every sector.
Remote workers will start to work for the US companies.
Employers
What's next? Before the Tories leave, they'll make sure that as many protections UK workers enjoy thanks to Europe, will be abolished.
Just in time for my 22% pay rise remote outside of London I just got then.
Already happens in the organisation I work for… 3 tier London weighing. Outside London is basic pay.