To think that everyone WFH thinks they are more productive but this view isn’t necessarily shared

I've been in the office this week and it was crap. Struggled to hear my customers, someone had the heating on saying it was cold so I was sweating. Way too much noise, kept getting interrupted by questions
Back WFH now! The people that aren't productive at my work aren't productive anywhere because they're shit

It's not just popping on the laundry though is it? You said you worked out and cooked the evening meal too. If you were in the office would you work out at work? Or is that just kept for when you should be working at home? In between popping on the laundry and cooking an evening meal. In your opening post you said you have to catch up when in the office implying not much gets done by you at home if you always do other things and fall behind.

I also put the laundry on occasionally, but you sound patronising as fuck here.

Oh shut up, don't be ridiculous. I'm putting on a wash for five mins in the same way I'm talking to a colleague for 5 mins, or making coffee, or all the other things you do in the office that aren't tapping away alone at your desk.

And my employers are well aware I'm putting the washing on, and am not stealing from them.

I can only assume that people who think this way have very low level basic jobs that can only be monitored in actual minutes actively typing or something. In grown up jobs our performance is easily monitored by outcomes!

If you are at home putting on laundry, working out and cooking the dinner you are not really working from home. You are stealing from your employers.

My DH is contracted to work 7 hours a day. He loves his job and is a bit of a workaholic. When WFH he regularly works 8 1/2 hours a day. On days he goes into the office, which moved a year ago further away from where we live, he takes 1 20 mins on 2 trains. It used to be 1 train of 50 mins. Another 1 hour 30 mins to return home so he only works about 5 1/2 - 6 hours on days he is in the office then on days he WFH he has to catch back up. It also cost £16.60 return per day on the train whereas his old journey used to cost £9 return. He goes to the office 1 or 2 times a week. He has told his employer he is happy to go in to the office everyday if they want him to, but they need to recognise he will get a lot less work done.

LadyGrinningSoul85

Sorry to hear you’re struggling but stay at home parents through the ages have had to manage at home alone. Previously without all the modern day help we now enjoy.

Your struggles are not the responsibility of any company and as a consumer and user of services I really wouldn’t want to be dealing with professionals whose mind and time clearly won’t be focused on the job working in that environment .

May be this was the reason he’s been required back at work. No way would we allowed that in our organisation. We work from home to work. Not for child care, school events, dealing with house hold admin and looking after our partner.

For example, a team of people I have liaised with for years, who all used to work together in an office. Now those same people are all working from home and don't seem to communicate with each other which makes my job harder. I recently had a Teams meeting with them, all in their individual homes, and it was a shambles. It was clear they hadn't prepared, one of them had kids at home, one had a dog barking constantly and they were unable to help me with a specific query because they needed to talk to a senior manager (also working from home) who wasn't answering her phone or responding to emails. One of them actually said they hadn't had a chance to discuss the issues we were meeting to sort out as they're only in the office one day a week and all in different days.

@neverbeenskiing that sounds dreadful and would never be tolerated where I work. We are expected to prepare for meetings, whether we’re at home or in the office

What you're not factoring in wrt short staffing is that it stems from the labour market, meaning organisations have fewer staff options, so workers who are thus inclined have more opportunity to take the piss. Whether they're in an office or not.

Basically, you're making assumptions. Let's say you're right that remote working has increased the capacity for piss taking in your organisation/the small number you work with. You're turning that into a universal principle.

The claim that it's easier for people to take the piss where they're not seen is very oversimplified. It assumes that people in office environments are in a setting where there's someone managing them who's bothered about it and also some mechanisms to improve their performance. The fact is, none of this can be assumed. Before 2020 did you really never work with or hear about people who did fuck all but got away with it because they were mates with the boss, too hard to get rid of or too much of a pain in the arse, for example? Never seen people who use the office as their social life and impede others in their work?

It's not that there's no piss taking by remote workers, there certainly is. And the labour shortage exacerbates people's ability to do that. But some of you are really bad at noticing and acknowledging that office workers use their work environment to swing the lead as well. To the extent that we could just as easily have a thread about how office workers think they're more productive but this view isn't necessarily shared...

I haven't failed to factor that in, believe me, I work in a sector that has been chronically short staffed for years. I'm talking specifically about issues arising due to WFH.

For example, a team of people I have liaised with for years, who all used to work together in an office. Now those same people are all working from home and don't seem to communicate with each other which makes my job harder. I recently had a Teams meeting with them, all in their individual homes, and it was a shambles. It was clear they hadn't prepared, one of them had kids at home, one had a dog barking constantly and they were unable to help me with a specific query because they needed to talk to a senior manager (also working from home) who wasn't answering her phone or responding to emails. One of them actually said they hadn't had a chance to discuss the issues we were meeting to sort out as they're only in the office one day a week and all in different days.

Where I work, the HR team now work mostly from home. They have always been somewhat inefficient and slow to respond to emails, but before you could overcome that by simply walking down the corridor to talk to them face to face, and things would get resolved. Since they've been WFH you've got no chance. Their capacity has actually increased so this is 100% not a staffing issue.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who genuinely are productive and trustworthy when working from home, but a significant number of people who have probably always taken the piss now have a greater opportunity to do so and this is contributing to people getting a substandard service.

I feel really uncomfortable working a whole day in the office. I have more space to walk around, stretch, catch my breath at home. In the office you're glued to your desk ( except for occasional toilet breaks). I also really dislike open plan offices. Luckily I only have to go in once a week. I would very actively try and avoid a job where I had to be in the office more if I had a choice.

It's amazing how many people complaining about wfh completely fail to factor this in.

I work in a billable hours profession. I know I learnt so much from overhearing conversations in the office and ad-hoc conversations.

I now lead a department and note that it is the juniors who are most keen to come back to the office. It's part of our job to support them and ensure we are visible for them. I get that they can message on teams or whatever for help but it isn't the same at all.

Balance is key, I am sure most places will settle for some hybrid pattern eventually.

I note in my organisation I am already hearing little snipes and jokes about the senior people who rarely show their face (I don't participate, but I have overheard them)

Most industries are woefully short staffed now and sickness levels are high. This is more likely the reason.

I work to the billable hours, I routinely get an hour or more billed from home. Many of us are the same and resent the push back to the office at all costs.

No objection to going for meetings or to train new staff but for day to day work let me save my commute and work undisturbed

I work in an industry that is often mixed home and office and have for decades. I've always been more productive st home.

I have self discipline.

Unfortunately employers and employees without self discipline struggle to trust that those of us with it work harder at home.

It's a shane.

Good teams and bosses recognise we're all different with different strengths.

When people don't trust others to do something... it tells me how good (or not) those people are . They jutge others by their own poor standards

I know on MN people insist that they are more productive WFH, but I know quite a few people in real life who admit to taking the piss. They're resistant to going back to the office and have a million excuses at the ready, but the reality is they're spending their working days going to the gym, running errands, watching Netflix, pottering in the garden, looking after their kids during their working hours and know they can get away with it as long as they're "keeping an eye on emails".

My job requires me to liaise with several organisations whose staff used to be office based but now WFH since covid and the drop in responsiveness, efficiency and accountability from these organisations is significant.

You can put this down to poor management but the reality is that its got to be easier to skive when no one can see you doing it.

For me, I time record (every bit of my day is recorded in 6 minute segments) and I have measurable outputs (my manager can see how many of X task I do each month). They can (and do) run the stats to see how much of my time is spent actively working, how long tasks take me (this goes to profitability of each case). There are outliers - complex matters that will always take longer, but taking those out, I get more outputs in less time when working from home and more of my day is spent working when I'm at home (and less being distracted by colleagues, chatting in the kitchen, attending in person meetings that should have been an email)

You missed the word ‘subset’ in your rant about someone’s lived experience.

I am very much in favour of hybrid working. I'd not want WFH every day as it would be lonely and it would be easy to get stuck in a silo and as an organisation we need more cross division elements, not less.

That said being in every day would limit the number of hours I can work because my commute is 40-45 minutes Vs 5 minutes to school for pick up (I'm part time). I go in 2 days out of the 4 I'm supposed to work, 1 is fixed, one is flexible, some weeks I might be in 3 days and other might be in just the fixed day... I also have the flexibility to add meetings on my non-working day and lose hours from a normal working day if it suits me. Adding a meeting on a Friday when I don't have better plans can mean I can fit in a run or a gym class while the kids are at school...

Absolutely agree!

I WFH either one or two days a week and I do think I am just as productive on those days. When I read about people only wanting to go into the office once a month (which I have not come across much in real life), I think the damage is more to training, informal learning, building working relationships, rather than short term productivity.

My role is like that but monthly. I deal a lot with others ( also wfh) where I woukd previously have had a lot of time travelling to workplaces I now eork on Teams. If I don't do my job then there's no one else to do it so I'd have to do it the next day ( even when I've booked holiday, I come back I still have the same volume of work to monthly so have to double the volume) I have also worked when otherwise I'd have been off sick.

I have dyslexia and dyspraxia and working in an open plan office guarantees a total write off of a day for me in terms of productivity. It even says on my psychologist report that my productivity will be massively impaired by working in an open plan office.

I am in a lovely, almost entirely WFH role now, and getting the best feedback of my career. However, there will always be ignorant people like the OP, who equate productivity with presenteism. Thankfully, I can choose not to work for them.