Obviously no one's going to really know the answer to this until the announcement on Sunday, but what do we think the likelihood of the average joe returning to their day job fairly soon will be?
Basically, it's fairly obvious that my employer is pushing to get people back into studio as soon as possible, despite us working fairly well from home, and it's quite stressful really.
Very unlikely I think.
In the US' 3 phase federal plan, "unrestricted staffing of worksites" resumes in phase 3 (which is a minimum of 6 weeks from the beginning, and likely longer). Until then employers are asked to "encourage telework whenever possible".
Ireland's plan is one of the most comprehensive released and it's much more specific on that.
- In phase 1 (18th May) there's a phased return of outdoor workers (construction, gardening, etc.)
- In phase 2 (8th June) it's a return of workers that can maintain 2m distances constantly (e.g. people who do solitary work)
- In phase 3 (29th June) it's a return of employees with low levels of daily interaction
- It's only in phase 5 (10th August) when there is a "phased return to onsite working" for everyone
Ireland's is a particularly conservative timeline but I'd be surprised if the UK's phases differed dramatically from them. There will be ambiguity in there that allows employers to wrongly assign themselves to a particular business type and force their employees to come back earlier than the folks providing the guidelines would want, but we're a while away from that.
The likes of Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria etc. have all released some kind of plan and from what I've seen they've made no mention of work outside manufacturing, retail and leisure, which generally follows the principles of outdoor areas first and then small, unenclosed places next. That suggests they're expecting office workers to telework for months. The only occasional exception to that is some public offices opening earlier.