To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

Absolutely.

@reesewithoutaspoon this is true for a tiny minority of businesses - those leasing office space and/or hospitality. For most businesses (like mine) it would be much cheaper to give up our office and let everyone work from home. It would save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. But we don't do it, because we get better results from some in-office interaction.

The true impact of all of this will be seen in 10 or 20 years time rather than now. And people will make different choices based on what they want out of their careers. But for those who are ambitious, I don't think the future business leaders of 10-20 years time from now, will for the most part be people who have chosen to entirely WFH. I think office-based or partially office-based staff will still have a huge advantage. That's fine, because not everyone is that ambitious. But I believe (as with so much that initially seems a benefit to women) the 'benefit' of being able to entirely WFH around childcare is something of a double-edged sword.

Its the DM, it's owned by billionaires and their ilk. Who no doubt have investments in commercial buildings and their rents etc.
WFH has hit the people who rented office spaces, it affected businesses close to large office spaces which relied on lunch and passing trades, etc.
Maybe I,m just a cynical old bitch, but there's a reason the DM will be pushing this narrative to whip up hate and cause divisions like this. and it's not because working from home is bad. It's because somewhere someone's pockets are being affected and they want popular support to reverse that.
Follow the money

I have to disagree with this.

MN is a great platform to have discussions like this, but it's a platform that's going to be more common with certain demographics, for example, people with young families and children. These will have different needs to university leavers sat in crowded house shares.

My government department's stats show a much larger percentage of younger people choose to attend the office more often than the minimum requirement.

However, the feedback is that whilst it's a change of scene (and for some an escape from crowded living conditions), because the offices are so empty there's far less value in it in terms of development, networking and organic learning. Often they're sat in large empty offices, alone on a bank of desks.

I can vouch for this- last summer my office was a short walk away and as I was on a talent programme, I was encouraged to attend more. Honestly, I had so many days sat in a huge empty space alone, like being in a zombie film. In the end I agreed with my line manager that I'd travel to a much further office away office once a week as it was much busier.

Wow. So much bitterness in one post. Why should anyone have to "suck up" bigotry like this?

As well as the cut in staff numbers, I've also heard that a fair few staff have been redeployed to work on stuff to do with Brexit, which has created a lot of work on the customs side of HMRC.

The Mail et al would never mention that though, they're still clinging to the myth of unicorns and sunlit uplands where Brexit is concerned.

Indeed some younger people prefer WFH and it has definitely been good for opening up things like internships for people outside of London or people with disabilities.

However as a counter point I have experiences of some young people working with me who often prefer to WFH a lot but it is not to their benefit. Often they can struggle to mange the freedom properly and do not understand the additional proactive communciation that is needed when you WFH. It is a big issue for early careers staff.

I have also found some use it to avoid challenging meetings or situations or to avoid problems they are having with work. I recently had to crack down and insist someone came in for three set days a week (we operate a very flexible hybrid system) as we were so cocnenred about their performance.

Just becuse some younger, less experiencedpeople prefer it doesn't mean it is actually good for them.

Everything in my life is better WFH. And it's the same for most of my colleagues.

We have a flexible employer team so people can choose WFH, hybrid or office based.

But still some people are vocal about wanting to force people into the office more. And they cite the 'peer support, the off-hand or overheard comment that leads to something important, social aspects' theory.

They're usuallty he same people that pre-covid were the ones spending hours a day chatting, complaining and distracting others. And who sat in virtually empty offices during covid because as front-line workers, they could say they needed to keep their kids in school.

Just to add that from my POV, the biggest problem for employers is they've been caught in a lie. And there's no rowing that one back.

Best illustrated by once place I worked that actually (and rather foolishly) wrote an entire statement to staff about why flexible working "sadly" wasn't possible for their business model. (I do keep in touch with old colleague).

Except when lockdown hit, all of a sudden it was "essential" for their business model if they wanted to stay solvent (which it seems they did).

Bit hard to use the word "impossible" after that, isn't it ?

This doesn’t surprise me actually: I’ve long thought the “5 in 4 days” type model was going to get a long hard look at some point.
The issue is that many others were also doing discretionary extra so “deserved” the benefit but hadn’t formally applied or been approved . Some firms have been challenged on it by other workers who didn’t have the same perk.
Fixed irregular hours also caused issues because some people had to cover the unpopular shifts (e.g. weekends or before/after hours).

I also think it's easy to discount how many non profits (in particular) no longer have an office to go back to because the costs of office space can't be justified on tight local authority contracts. When you are running a shoestring service, people working from home is a cost saver.

Excellent post @gannett - don't seem to be able to quote you.

When young people themselves post on here, often they're saying quite different things about remote working than some of those who are concerned it disadvantages them. I know the stuff about younger workers is mostly coming from a good place, but there's a massive blind spot there. Like, if your young staff are all choosing to be in the office more, by definition they're not going to be those young people who are disadvantaged and excluded by in person work!

... I also genuinely think that people who WFH full-time have lost sight of what has been lost. Zoom/Teams meetings work in a bare necessity kind of way. You can share information and get the necessary stuff done. But they in no way replace the human interaction, gestures, and creativity that can be sparked in person. The off-hand remark that happens as you're leaving the meeting, the small gesture that you pick up on in the room that shows you how a person is feeling that could so easily be missed on the screen.

It's just not the same, and it was only when I got back to doing more in-person meetings that I fully realised what we'd lost.

I do, however, accept the point that some people exercise more and are healthier whilst WFH. But I don't believe statistically this is true for the majority. Most people exercise significantly less because you need a disciplined exercise routine to make up for the 'by the way' exercise you do when commuting. Some people have that, but most don't.

@lavender2023 That is a interesting thing. I have noticed that full time WFH people, to thrive and get on, need to become more not less on the office and "office politics".

On a slightly different note, recently I have been looking to procure a service from a London based company. Pretty much all of their back office stuff - admin, clerical, accounts was outsourced to South Africa (not to a third party company like IT - direct employees are in South Africa) - basically all the jobs that can be done "from home" - it is becoming moee common apparently - similar time zone and English spoken very well either as first or second language makes it very attractive.

@Eleganz A large part of the success attributed to Midland house prices is the high speed link running into London St Pancras, this development cost was met by tax payers to improve access and therefore average salaries for people living in this location - who would be able to benefit from larger London salaries. It’s dangerous to feel like you’re in a bubble, the UK economy is entirely symbiotic.

I think that argument is valid in respect of lockdowns @cathyj77. Those sentiments certainly existed.

That being said, I don't think it can be framed as a luxury issue, because NHS consultants clearly have a lot more options than someone who's on minimum wage or not much more in a call centre, and who can't afford childcare while they do their job.

WFH has ruined my life, marriage, parenting and home. I fucking hate it.

The narrative on here is that the person WFH can be stuffed into a bedroom upstairs and largely forgotten about is really not what happens here. I have a DH working in a study downstairs. From 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening all I hear is ‘Yeah … Yeah … I’ll tell James to do that … But we’ve had issues with that before … I think we need to …’ It drives me batshit. He is in and out, out and in, kids see him and get all excited, try to follow him into the study, tantrums when stopped.

So we go out. Fuck all gets done in the house, kids get tired and probably over stimulated, IT IS HELL.

I wish every fucker working from home with someone else living there would fuck off back to the office!

@PinkCherryBlossoms Yes, I wasn't suggesting that WFH itself literally requires Amazon and Deliveroo but this has something that has bugged me since the pandemic started - people fighting desperately for their right to hide at home, while an entire other class of society goes out to work to serve them and their children and make that WFH lifestyle possible. It was more extreme during the pandemic - people wanted to hide at home away from shops, and this was only possible because online delivery drivers were out delivering their shopping parcels. Not to mention NHS workers caring for the sick. The 'can I work from home or not?' debate is a luxury debate only available to some, and I think that needs to be acknowledged more often than it is.

Wfh is fab.

It means I can work for a London company, helping to address the national skills shortage, without having to move to the overcrowded south east.
It cuts emissions
It saves money, otherwise wasted on train fares
It means someone else gets a seat
It means I can put supper in the slow cooker at lunchtime so we eat better, and more economically
It means I can do afternoon school run easily which reduces my stress levels and means ds is safe

This morning I was on-line working at 6.02am. I've written a presentation and the copy for a brochure. I've set up two mass emailers to go this week. I've sorted my assistant's work schedule, and supplied my boss with his management stats. I've just finished, because today I am actually on annual leave, but because I am equipped to work from home, I don't mind keeping the plates spinning for a couple of hours. I like my job ! If I couldn't work from home I would be out of a job

Anyone who buys the DM and takes it seriously just doesn't have a clue. You can only feel sorry for them being so out of touch.

The other big thing no-one says during this debate is that what middle-class WFH staff want is for their white-collar jobs to stay comfortably at home. Obviously the Amazon and Deliveroo drivers who make this lifestyle possible for them still need to go out to work every day? As do nurses, doctors, teachers etc. So that's the other negative in my mind - a two-tiered society where people in certain roles hide away being catered to by service staff.

You overstate your case a tad here bearing in mind that remote working doesn't require Amazon or Deliveroo. I don't ever use either in the course of my work, and working outside the home inherently requires lots of other people to support it too. Couldn't have got to my last office job without public transport, for example. It isn't just wfh roles that require the labour of others to sustain them, the same is true for the nurses, teachers etc that you list. If we're going to talk about this, we need to talk about all of it.

However, it's true that lots of jobs have to be done in person, often with little flexibility. With the way our labour market is, a lot of these jobs are either going to have to be paid more and the conditions improved, or we'll have to cope without them. We'd all do better to acknowledge this.

Sadly it won’t be your local caff propping up the UK economy! If many businesses collapse in central london, not only would that be very sad from a cultural and tourism point of view (London is famous for its restaurants, galleries, museums), we would see millions of jobs disappear along with these closures across industries. A housing market correction is something attractive to many, but a central London property crash, huge recession and contraction inwards of the jobs market? Sounds like all we bloody need.

Stop reading the DM?

Agreed. I think it's notable that all the juniors in my team are in the office pretty much every day through choice. I've gone back to the office almost full time because I could see they benefited from me being physically present.

To work as part of a team in an organisation we need to think what works for others as well as ourselves

I don't think it's 100% sinister beyond being clickbait.

Many people now WFH at least part of the week. Many people can't WFH at all.

So articles about it provoke an emotional reaction that garners clicks and as revenue.

I've no doubt that some staff passionately hold anti-wfh opinions, but either way, the articles will get commissioned and printed.

I know a few current DM journalists as it happens, and to a large extent, they write what they're told to, for the clicks.