When Do You Think We Can All Go Back to Office Like Normal?

As per title.

Before covid, modern office are designed with small hot desks they called worksmart (not so smart now is it?). As a result they cannot afford arranging permanent desk like it used to be or even distancing each desk 1.5m.

Is our only hope to go back to the office lies on the vaccine? That could be years!

Is that mean we will work from home longer? If so maybe it's worth investing on proper work setup, standing desk, ergonomic chair, smart speaker, coffee machine, better wifi, etc?

Edit: how do you think the young graduates who has just started their career will be like 3 years from now? Will they be as capable as their seniors?

Poll Options

  • 211
    Less than 6 months
  • 61
    Less than 1 year
  • 23
    Less than 2 years
  • 6
    Less than 3 years
  • 46
    Forever

Comments

    • +1

      LOL.

      If you look at international news, those cheaper outsource countries are severely impacted by COVID and have their call centres shut down.

      Fully Outsourcing is now less attractive, partly outsource would be the future while you have local employees where you have better control.

      • Ehh, the opposite has rung true for us in the Engineering space. We have thousands of resources in Manila and all across India among other countries. The initial logistics of getting everyone set up at home to work properly was a challenge but it has been a godsend for continued work and delivery helping maintain revenue generation. We would be in a much much worse off state without having outsourced design and engineering abroad. Not a single local redundancy has been required.

        Most offices will start going back to work in June with a staggered specific teams per day approach.

    • We're at a point now where technology is no longer a barrier

      Lol, it's Australia not South Korea or Japan.

      Our average fixed-line downstream Internet speeds are ranked 64th in the world, behind Kosovo, Montenegro and Trinidad and Tobago.

      So you live very close to your NBN POI, have a short cable run to your fibre node and live in a relatively modern home. Good for you.
      Millions of Australians don't have that luxury.

      That's saying nothing of the fact that millions of Australian can't do anything more technologically-involved than digitally fingering their smartphones to navigate idiot-proof, Fisher Price-inspired UIs, let alone troubleshooting webcam, microphone or connectivity issues during teleconferencing meetings nor have relatively modern, secure and well-maintained computing hardware at home.

      Your niche bubble, like so many others' on OzBargain, does not apply to anything close to a majority of Australian households.

  • We're at a point now where technology is no longer a barrier (e.g. crystal clear HD conferencing, no lag remote desktop).

    Not for everyone though, take me for example. I'll either get a blurry livestream that looks like 240p quality or not be able to connect at all due to "connectivity issues"

    • Where do you live?

      Buy a Telstra Sim with a decent mobile and tether.

      My workplace sent out 4g dongles to employees with poor NBN connections and now everyone has smooth video.

      A good internet connection is less than public transport.

      Unless your regional in valley it shouldn't be an issue.

      • Ah, if the company supplies the required internet connection, then I guess it's alright then…

  • Back to the office within 6 months, but it won't be like normal.

  • -4

    I wouldn't want a vaccine, it's not gonna cure you instead of trying to kill you.

  • never stoped going to the office… man I need a holiday

  • My workplace (a medium to large engineering consultancy) ordered us back to work three weeks ago to placate clients where we have a physical presence in.

  • more working from home - more casual employers taking great care to vary the hours of their zero-hours part-time casual staff so they don't fall under the aegis of the latest court decision that permanent casual staff with predictable regular hours should have paid leave as for permanent employees.

    so - more 'consultant/agent/associates' working from home on even more tenuous zero-hours contracts - while still being worked to the max like food delivery bicycles - 5 seconds to respond or miss the job !

    and insurers removing COVID from their contracts - so they don't have that risk anymore …

    and $3 an hour ? - jump for it ! $hitty job$ for you - and $hitty job$ for you

    oh sorry the director can't be contacted right now - he's on his private jet on the way to his other private island …

  • +1

    It's going to be much less than six months.

    In WA and SA you can essentially go back to the office now. The other states are not far behind.

  • lol, my work spent thousands of dollars to make an agile working environment just few months ago. Now we may have to undo everything.

  • I really wish NSW and VIC would stop speaking for the rest of the country and pushing their mindless one-size-fits-all recovery approach to the other states that are not the same galaxy in terms of COVID-19 threat level as they are.

    In WA we're already back in the office and "essential" workers like myself were never out-of-the-office entirely since February; at best I had 2 WFH days per week.

    Our company has basically left it up to the employee's discretion whether they want to WFH or in-office and currently we have one half of the workforce who were incredibly eager return to the office and the other half are continuing to WFH and likely will do so for the foreseeable future for whatever reason (better work-life balance, raising children, long commute times, etc.)

    I know of at least two dozen other big corporations with hundreds of staff (including big names like BHP and Rio Tinto) in the city that have made the same decision.

  • Back at work in June. A second wave in July. New lockdown in August.

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