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

My job is a bit like this. Most of my tasks have to be completed, or at least started, the same day. Any slacking would be visible very quickly. Hybrid works well for us, 2 days per week in the office, most of us seem happy with the arrangements and I haven’t encountered any p*ss-taking.

I WFH and am definitely LESS productive! You end up faffing!

In my workplace, our performance gets measured in three ways: quality, productivity & utilization.

All three factors are higher at home than in the office. I do think however going into the office is important at least once a week though

That's nice and in the context of your role works for you and your team.

In mine it doesn't. I would have been in zoom calls all day in a quiet booth (cupboard) so wouldn't have been chit chatting to anyone in the office. I would have lost time because I had to go out to queue for lunch in the excuse for a cafe in our building. And I wouldn't be willing to join the zoom call I am due on with America in 5 mins (7:30pm) because I had to leave home at 6:30am/leave office at 4pm to commute outside peak hours, instead of just powering up the laptop in my slippers at 8am. We can make quick decisions and progress on the call tonight, instead of days of email ping pong and waiting until the next day for a reply.

Every role/person/team is individual and needs to be taken in context. Working in the office can be good, WFH can be good, hybrid can be good. It just needs to be properly assessed and managed by a half decent manager.

Productivity is measured by either profits, output or achievement of measureable targets. I don't know enough about it to articulate it properly but I feel this is an outdated concept. We can't keep measuring productivity by GDP because it is unsustainable to keep aiming for constant growth. We need to look at another model, Automation and AI will make some jobs obsolete, and will be far more 'productive' than humans.I read somewhere ( I think it must have been in one of the only economics lite books I've read- utopia for realists) that measuring GDP has only been done since the 50's and there are other ways to measure the wealth of a country that are far more effective, but we are wedded to GDP because the US calls all the shots, as the dollar is the International trading currency. As I said I don't know that much about it though and others will probably know more. I just have a gut feeling that it's not the only or best way.

Can I ask how they measure productivity, I am really interested in how we define productivity especially as its something we keep being told as a society we are really bad at.

My current and previous job have easily measured tasks for productivity and I am (and my colleagues are) more productive when working from home. The only people in either work place who seem to disagree are the ones who either take the mickey when working from home themselves, so think everyone does, or the people who are extroverts and want everyone in the office for the social aspect.

The issue is poor peopie management either way. It is detrimental to people who are foingvthe work efficiently to deadlines when they are interrupted by people chatting and pretending they are working, and then staying late so it looks like they are working harder than everyone else who went home at 5. If people are doing the work they should be doing, then their wellbeing is improved by wfh, they are saving time and money not commuting and can work flexibly what is the issue?
Otoh I agree that wfh may be detrimental to new staff, who will learn better from being around more experienced colleagues and may not have a proper workspace at home. But that can be solved by hybrid working, where everyone in the team has to he in a couple of set days a week. It doesn't have to be 100% home or 100% office. And I dont believe its detrimental to productivity.

I learnt enormous amounts in my first jobs not from formal training but just by watching and listening to more experienced colleagues. You hear someone else dealing with a challenging phone call and think; 'I'll try that next time' or sometimes some one will suggest you sit in on a short notice meeting because its something new or exciting for you , or someone hears you doing something and points you in a different direction , or congratulates you on dealing well with something etc All those informal methods of learning just aren't happening.

Only last week I spoke to someone in their early career and looking to move who said that they just want to be in an office with people more senior to them and not just a load of other confused juniors who don't want to, or can't, sit at home in their shared house with no space. I would say 90% of the people I am seeing under 30 are looking for hybrid roles no one wants full time WFH, that doesn't mean that they don't want some flexibility.They want the training and the social side of work and also the networking opportunities, the chance to get noticed and meet new people and have new experiences. Time and again they say they have come and gone from organisations barely meeting anyone in person and feeling like they are just a name on a teams call.

I work form home , I love it , and can see many benefits but I am in my fifties , I work independently, and for myself but there has to be a middle way .

@kitsuneghost indeed and it is part of a more senior persons job to give advice, guidance and support people.

We have got our new grads in the offce this week - a lot my day today has been "chit chat" getting them settled in. That is not pointless work at all. it means the two new members of my project team feel valued and welcomed and will hopefully have a happy start to their next six months with us.

This ⬆️

I dunno, aside from the fact that it would've been phone meetings not Teams, that sounds like a pretty similar setup to my first graduate job, and there'd have been as much chance of people working from the moon as home there. People were always in different offices, in and out for meetings, there was no continuity. Having to badger already overloaded senior staff for help when they clearly didn't want to take on any responsibility for training (they were overloaded tbf) and that was if there was any help at all.

I really sympathise though, it's awful when you're not getting the training you need.

Yes, indeed, it needs to be looked at on an organisational scale not individual.

My son started his first graduate job last week, along with several other graduates and a few interns on their Uni "work in industry" year as part of their degree. They're basically muddling through themselves most of the time because there are so few experienced/supervisory staff around who are often engaged in meetings, on Teams calls, etc., so not available to guide/support them. The staff who do come into the office seem to do random/occasional days, so there's no continuity with training/support etc - some of the staff who've looked after them well for a day havn't been seen again. They don't know who they're reporting to or who is responsible for their training etc. Yes, I know a lot of this is poor on the part of the employer, but it wouldn't be a problem if so many staff weren't WFH.

Yes, that comes up in pretty much every thread about remote working.

The answer is that the idea it's easier for less experienced staff to access more experienced staff whilst physically in the office is an assumption. It will no doubt be true in some cases, and not others. Plenty of us have experience of appalling or non existent training whilst we were in office environments.

There is also the fact that more remote work has increased the training opportunities for some of us. I have access to much more now it's generally online, what with not living in the south east.

Has anyone thought about it another way

If you are experienced you may get more done as you have no interruptions
Whereas if are less experienced you may be less productive as you haven't got the experienced person to interrupt to answer your questions.

Perhaps it's not about you
Perhaps its about overall team productivity

@LadyGrinningSoul85 You’re obviously struggling so I’ll try and be as gentle as possible, but surely your husband could not (or shouldn’t) have been doing those tasks anyway - he should have been working.

Inhave no skin in the game (I’m a teacher, PT, today is my day off) but I don’t understand how someone can WFH, do school runs, go to school events (btw, some us have never been able to do that, not the end of the world), care for children and their poorly wife.

I'm just as productive at home as I was in the office.

What has happened WFH is I'm no longer longer involved in pointless, inane 'enquiries' from colleagues which would usually degenerate into them moaning about their job, life, DC, weekend etc.

So to some, it might seem like I'm doing less. When in fact, I'm just not being bothered by pointless s* which wasn't part of my job in the first place.

@LadyGrinningSoul85
As much as I sympathise, work from home does not mean in order to help you out with the kids
Was the company OK with this?
Was this maybe the reason he has been asked back to the office?

My partner has just returned to work full time in the office and I have never been so miserable in my whole life.

He's gone back to the office and with him went my only support during the day, the only adult conversation I get in the day, I'm in immense amount of pain due to an injury caused by an epidural and having to walk to and from the school whilst pushing a double pram and using a baby carrier at the same time (I have very small age gaps between my youngest three) which means I am spending every day topped up on painkillers, he's missing all the little ones 'firsts', I've had to miss one school event already due to not being able to get into the classroom with my buggy and not being able to hold and supervise two non walkers at the same time out of a pram.

The month before he went back to work, out delightful landlord handed us a section 21, so now we are also having to leave our home of 8 years and struggling to find anyone willing to take us on with our young children.
I have had to make all the phonecalls, send all the emails and sort everything to do with our current homelessness, something he would have been able to have chipped in with had he been working at home, and no, it wouldn't have affected his productivity to have sent the odd email to try to help us seeing as he spends enough time on team meeting calls joking around with higher ups.

My partner tells me the call back to the office has resulted in them losing half their staff, as people don't want to be full time in office anymore, so are looking for a new WFH job, or at least a hybrid.
They have already had one data breach since being in office, yet had none WFH for three years.
He says nobody wants to be there and productivity has nosedived.

The call back to work doesn't just affect the workers, it affects those around them too.
It shakes up their whole work/home balance.
We were able to do doctors appointments, school events and other important things without him having to take one day off, because I could just leave one or two little ones with him and he was able to work at the same time.

My mental health is utterly shot to pieces now I'm alone again.
I genuinely hate his boss for it.
Luckily, my partner is leaving them in November for a new WFH/hybrid job, so they can shove it.

Tiny, because it's capped.

I'll never know, because I've always been fully remote at my current job. However, what I do know is that my boss is a millionaire and we're all hideously underpaid. So I'll do what I'm expected to do, enough on top that I get my tiny annual payrise, and I'll keep on enjoying my work/life balance.

businesses should be keeping an eye on productivity of all employees wherever they work. forcing people to work in an office because of some gut feeling about WFH that somebody has really isn't the same as effective business management.

Oh yes I forgot how loud the office can be with teams meetings and general noise, i have had customers complaining about the noise ….not much I can do about it mind

I am definitely more productive at home - no distractions, comfortable, no messing around chatting or having unnecessary coffee breaks or toilet breaks where you have to walk to the other side of the building.

When I go into the office I get pretty much zero done. I get there at 7.30, spend 15 minutes getting a coffee that would take 2 minutes at home. Spend 15/20 minutes putting my bag, coat down and getting my stuff out and logging on because the work computers are slow. Already been there 30 minutes and done no work.15 minutes then spent talking to the people around me because if I don't I'm seen as rude. 45 minutes gone and no work. The work computers are rubbish and the floor to ceiling office windows just glare onto the screen all day. The fluorescent lighting is painful and the air conditioning that's either freezing or heating that's too hot is distracting everyone. Everyone's talking to each other and getting distracted. People next to me are talking loudly on teams meetings virtually despite everyone being in the office. Constantly hyper aware of people around me so I'm thinking about that instead of being able to focus on the computer.

Mmm, that's how you end up with staff who have options looking elsewhere.