To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

Flexibility and hybrid working are incredibly helpful but people who deny the issues with the extent of WFH we have right now are kidding themselves slightly I think. Also hate the DM but have a lot of sympathy with them on this.

There are a number of measures of ‘productivity’ - my husband for example claims he gets more done WFH and in one sense he does, he spends more hours at his desk. At the same time, he has put on weight, and his back issues are worse. He also is relatively senior and experienced in his role and has contacts so the fact that he WFH most of the time doesn’t matter. For younger, new starters, it matters hugely.

In my workplace, we work hybrid - in the office 3 days a week, at home 2 - and this was enforced from Jan 2022 onwards. There was a lot of moaning at the time but almost everyone (including those who were originally reluctant) now concede it was a good thing. It is not physically or mentally healthy (for the vast majority of people, not including neurodiversity and disability here) to work all alone in your home full time. You don’t learn the same skills or achieve the same results.

Ahh, now I know why this comes up in conversation with my Dad. Honestly, he benefits from the greater flexibility I have by hybrid working and access to flexible working arrangements. WFH fir part of the week is also much more efficient for me and many others who didn’t do this pre COVID

I believe it was actually 60%.

I have some connections who work in the DfE. A while ago they were given the three line whip to come into he offices in London, even permanently remote workers following Jacob Rees-Mogg's campaign to demonise working from home. After clogging up all the meeting rooms and working in corridors and break areas I think senior management lasted a couple of days before convincing the minister to back down.

Its the Mail so what do people expect? Manufactured outrage to provoke people who are easily outraged. A right wing agenda backed by unscrupulous people.

The point is that people like your dad are being told to hate public sector workers. They are encouraged to see them as lazy, incompetent leaches wasting tax payers' money. WFH is just one of a number of tools used by the right wing press to hammer public servants. I've also seen articles bashing the public sector for paying for training courses, retirement gifts, business travel, etc.

This narrative is utterly corrosive to society.

It also explains why MIL starts random conversations with me about exactly how I work from home and says things like “you look relaxed” when she pops by unannounced.

I doubt if many are wfh in another country.
In France at least there are many rules regarding working for a foreign country whilst on french soil. A British employer would have to agree to pay french social charges to start with.

The odd thing is the civil service has had flexible hybrid working for years as many offices in London were 7/10 to save space.

It is the corporate world that was often behind on this sort of thing.

Our company is hybrid working and saved a fortune by closing offices as they only need 40% desk capacity. At the sake time they have upgraded the working space to encourage the office to be used for collaboration - so you use your wfh time for deep concentration work and meetings held with stakeholders across locations (no point traveling in to be sat on teams calls all day) and use the office for face to face and collaboration work.

Telegraph is the posh version of the DM - it's where my dear mother found her Brexit ideas.

My dad too. Telegraph reader. I have seen him work himself into a rage about civil servants using Peloton bikes on their breaks when wfh.

The odd thing is when he was working his employer was extremely flexible and doing hybrid years before it became standard.

I am also very anti WFH except very occasionally. It's wrong it has become the norm. IMHO.

I die a little inside every time I see someone pick up the DM in the shops. I am this close to saying each time, 'you shouldn't read that you know, it's full of lies and spiteful racist shite'. But I'll probably get a big mouthful.

The telegraph is just as bad, spewing hatred of the public sector and WFH on a regular basis.

The reason why you can't get through to the public services you need is that the Tories have not funded them properly, not because the staff are ignoring your calls at home. Most civil servants I know have Microsoft Teams linked to IPT and their mobile phones.

You touch on a really interesting point there. Lots of things have got shitter in the past three years, service is often objectively worse despite extra costs, and WFH is the most easily visible target for people's frustration.

There are a lot of complaints on here about poor service from companies and organisations with wfh staff, with the assumption that the problem is the wfh and a magic wand needs to be waved to get them all back into the office.

Hear hear.

I don’t think getting people back to the office is a capitalist conspiracy to support commercial property.

For every owner of commercial property, there is another company that benefits from reduced property rental costs. It is a zero sum game as far as capitalism is concerned.

Many benefit from WFH. However, I would venture that more suffer from it. As a PP said, it is a balance. Some flexibility is great but too much is a negative. Most new studies support this, both in terms of productivity and emotional well being.

If you call what was my desk number, it will come up on my computer wherever I am working and I can answer it. I don't have an actual phone on my desk any more.

WFH isn't the problem. Failure to set up the phone system to route calls to Teams is.

How do you think working at home is affecting this?

All HMRC post is received centrally, scanned and distributed electronically.

All the files and notes are online.

So how is where they are sat affecting it?

HMRC delays are because the workforce was slashed in half since 2005.

It is definitely possible to create a good team atmosphere and develop new staff in a hybrid setting.

I would also say that what the new hybrid and remote working has done is enable people who live outside of London and city districts to further their careers so it has allowed talent in deprived areas of the country to work in sectors previously inaccessible from a geographical perspective.

@UnfortunateTypo not just their pension fund - probably yours and mine too.

The owners of these papers are huge, real estate-owning capitalists. They need central London to stay profitable, which WFH puts at risk. COVID normalised WFH, which many of us had already been doing for years, but it killed off city centre sandwich shops and cafes. There's an opportunity now for small businesses to open business cafes so WFH-ers can have a change of scenery - but that will not become as hugely profitable as, say, Prêt was, or at least not for a long time.

The Telegraph is exactly the same for ridiculous anti wfh stories. I’ve just assumed their pension funds are invested in office blocks, and places like Canary Wharf.

On commercial property values, TBF it is more likely to be your pension fund that has an interest in commercial pooperty keeping its value rather than Telegroph journalists. Pension funds like commercial property for the historically stable and long term returns.

Our council are working from home still. Council tax went up 10% this time. They're in a financial hole after six months of £ thirty million. Their new £fifty million office is empty, their old offices lie unused. As do other council properties libraries, a cafe on the seafront. A huge industrial unit they built and can't use because the floor is unsuitable, it's full of ppe from covid at the moment.

So as you can imagine there's a lot of simmering resentment here and WFH gets thrashed as the cause.