latest trend of 'work from home'
Businesses tend to be cautious. I think physical spaces will retain a foothold, at least for the moment.
i can easily see america not wanting call centre staff to work from home at $15/h
when they can just remote hire british staff at $10($8.90) to ensure they have cheap english speaking staff
I'm in the UK, too. We already have many call centres and outsourced IT jobs in India in order to have cheap English-speaking staff. I imagine this trend will continue, and will promote levelling of opportunities between nations...
i live near a call centre and their 'clients' are mostly american pre 2020 year. i could see the office was lit up 24/7 with the 'peak shift' being 2pm-11pm. (50% of carpark leaving at 11pm) and no they didnt get double time for unsociable hours(that was for the midnight+ shift)
during covid. the office was dark and looked abandoned. the carpark was empty every day. but atleast the streets were quieter so +3 for that
what i see happening is british businesses subcontract their support system to india and america subcontract their support lines to the UK
as for office space. the WFH people only 'meet up' at a local/regional 'rent-an-office' place once a month so they can celebrate their best employees and spank the worse employees.
it was like a 3 day event. 1/3 of employees per day to spread them out for 'covid security'
(my neighbour works from them and instead of a 600m walk to the office its now a 3mile drive into town once a month)
so far the excuse for not using the home office they still pay for, it was that the office was not 'covid safe' so they had to use another location
i can see this continuing even after covid because its cheaper to rent a conference room for 1-4 day a month, rather than maintain an office all month just to be used <10% of the time
i can see the benefits of uk call centres seeking clients in america.. their population is 5x greater meaning 5x oppertunity to seek work than they would get 'staying local'
but i dont see companies that do WFH maintaining their current office space. they will just end their lease and downgrade or just 'rent-a-room'
i can see many leases expiring in 2021 not being extended. because many in 2020 were not extended