My wife works for the federal government. She normally works at home four days a week. (She has a whole setup at home with a dockable computer and two monitors.) Anyway, they just switched her to working at home full time.
My son and I are both engineers, me at a public utility and my son at a engineering consulting firm. Both of us are still going into the office. At my office, they did eliminate all in-person meetings at least – all meetings are now virtual or by conference call.
They also kicked all of the consultants out of my building, so it’s much emptier here (which is good). I’m basically hiding out in my office all day and maintaining distance from people to the extent possible.
Pretty much my entire office (I work for a small business) has the capability to work from home. In fact, a good percentage of employees work remotely, a couple even in a different country. I’m going in though until I have a good reason to stay home. I get more done at the office, having a lot of distractions at home. It’s good to know that I can work from home if I need to, though (and I did one time this year due to snow).
I have the capability to but choose not to until I HAVE to. I don’t like working at home because I’m way too distracted. Plus I just don’t have as good a set up at home as I do at the office. My office is small though - 9 people on site, and probably just as many who work remotely every day - and we’re pretty spread out in offices, so I’m not hugely concerned about getting sick through here. Plus, there haven’t yet been any cases in my city. When things change, it’s good to know I can stay at home and still get paid. But in the meantime, I’m better off physically going into work.
I normally work from home 2 days a week. Our contract leads usually don’t want us to do more unless it’s for reasons of illness or other issues that might keep us home. The last time I was at home for more than two weeks was after I had abdominal surgery and wasn’t fit to drive. One tends to get a little stir crazy, but the hours are more flexible.
I would love to work from home, at least for several days a week, but my immediate boss is old school (and an extrovert), and doesn’t really believe anyone can be productive at home. I am miles MORE productive at home, but <shrugs>.
I clicked “optional but I’m doing it” even though we have been strongly encouraged to stay home. My son is waiting for his COVID-19 test to come back, so I would have been self-quarantining for the next two weeks anyway.
As per Governor Pritzker’s executive order, all Illinois public and private schools close at the end of this school day. As I speak, we are in the process of early dismissal. There is a meeting for all administrative staff, support staff, and teachers at 1:45. Then we are all done until March 30th when the situation will be reevaluated.
I can’t believe the virus will have peaked by that time. I think there is a good chance that the hiatus will be extended. In our state, at least, these are considered “Act of God” days and will not be made up. School will end on the same day as scheduled without even using the 5 emergency days. We shall see how this all unfolds.
“E-Learning” will be implemented during the break. I can access what I need to access if teachers have connectivity/login problems with their students over the break. Other than addressing Help Desk tickets from home as needed, I’m completely off.
90% of my work I do from home anyway. I do offsite and on site investigations and audits, but I’m not scheduling any on-site until this is over. I used to try to make it to the office once a week or so, but I’m done with that, too.
Last week word came down that it was an option, and that individual managers could decide whether they wanted their staff to work from home. My manager did, so starting today, I’m home until April 15, according to the current plan.
I work in IT for a hospital group. My work can easily be done 100% from home, and my job is pretty much guaranteed throughout this crisis, so for me it’s just a bit of an adjustment to the new “work environment”; I’m lucky in that there is no hardship for me.
I selected “mandatory”, but that’s not quite right. For my job, work from home is strongly encouraged, with the caveat that some people do need to go in some days, and we’re coordinating so that we don’t end up occupying nearby same space at the same time.
Last week word came down that it was an option, and that individual managers could decide whether they wanted their staff to work from home. My manager did, so starting today, I’m home until April 15, according to the current plan.
I work in IT for a hospital group. My work can easily be done 100% from home, and my job is pretty much guaranteed throughout this crisis, so for me it’s just a bit of an adjustment to the new “work environment”; I’m lucky in that there is no hardship for me.
Seriously, I loathe it. It’s like being in prison. I’m only doing it because it seems like the responsible thing to do for the community. If it was just a case of protecting myself from catching the thing, I’d just be out there and damn well catch it, nasty though it be.
I spent most of last week at home for an unrelated illness (sore throat/runny nose), and have come back to work as normal; we’ve been informed that we’ll be sent home if the state issues a mandate on the subject and not earlier. Hopefully it won’t happen too soon, since things aren’t set up for us to telecommute just yet.
No matter how it plays out, I’ll be working from home as little as possible. My home is awash with distractions and my work would undoubtedly suffer.
I have to adjust my answer. The corporate edict that came out today is everyone who has the ability MUST work from home starting tomorrow. So I guess I will be.
I am one of the few in my department that has a desktop computer rather than a laptop, so as of now I don’t “have the ability”, but I assume it won’t take long to upgrade the software and I can drag the desktop home.
I am more productive in the office too but I have been told to work from home for at least the next 2-3 weeks. I suspect that this will last much longer than that.
I think the lack of a 45 min commute each way may make up for the lower productivity though.
i work int the basement where I have a large desk but I also have my nice personal computer so I turn the personal computer off from 8:30 - 5:00 each day. ( I usually end up working past 5 with stuff anyway)
I also have a TV but I hardly turn it on anyway. the only thing I lack is I cannot print out yet. I have to get some sort of arrangement to be able to secure print at home.
Either that or I will have to go in late at night and print out stuff that I need.
I checked “other” because we are on WFH until further notice, but I went in twice last week because I felt I should. Mostly all I did was check to be sure all of my precious boxes of files were OK and futz around a little. I’ll probably go in tomorrow or Wednesday for no other reason than because I feel I should. There are only 3 people who work in my warehouse and I told the other 2 to not come back until I called them, so chances of catching anything are very low.
Word came out at 4:30 today, work from home until further notice. So I packed up the computer and other bits, and headed home. Now we can only hope that the warehouse staff stays safe and healthy. They obviously can’t work from home, and if we can’t receive or ship, the company is going to have to shut the doors until this blows over.
On another note: the cat is ecstatic about me being home.