To think people who work from home don’t get it?

Everything you've said is correct but there are negatives,

• losing a room/space for an office or having work papers out in your living room/bedroom/dining room
• never being away from work
• lonely
• HUGE heating costs during the winter

There are pros and cons to everything!

This is a very good point.

I’ve often ended up working when ill because I work from home and feel I should just push through it.

Why would we not get it?

I have been WFH since I started my current job almost 11 years ago, because it’s a field based role.

Prior to that I worked in offices so had to do the daily commute, book time off for appointments, take physical time off sick etc

Whilst I do WFH, because my role is field based I do also have to attend meetings 100+ miles away and can end up doing 14+ hour days with the travel included. I also end up working more hours, because it’s far harder to switch off at 5pm. Unlike my previous office work, I’d switch off the computer at 5pm and go home. However now, as I’m already at home, I often end up working longer hours.

It’s not the half a job, glam lifestyle you think it might be.

This can come as a detriment though. I recently had two bouts of illness where I was really unwell but felt because I was at home I should just plough on and not the days off sick. I ended up making some mistakes during that week at work (nothing I couldn't fix, but still caused some issues), and I actually ended up more unwell as I hadn't rested. If I was office based I wouldn't have gone in that unwell, and would have rested.

We get it. Not all office jobs were WFH pre pandemic. We've done the commutes. We've done the sick days. The days off with the kids.

There might be photos of lunches in gardens. But that's doesn't mean we aren't grateful we can do that now. It doesn't mean we don't appreciate it.

Also, thank you for working in the NHS. Those jobs, and many others that require being on site full time are important and we also appreciate those who do them.

On the other hand, it's not a race to the bottom. Some jobs can't be done from home. Others can. Why should we be putting more people into commutes and ruining their mental/physical health, which in turn puts more strain on your roles?

Of course we get it! Most of us worked out the home first. I left a customer facing career to have the opportunity to partially WFH, then Covid hit and I've been predominantly WFH since. I won't go for a job without at least some WFH, and intend to stay put until at least my youngest is in high school. I'm
in a sector where that shouldn't be too limiting, but think I would take the hit right now anyway if needed.

I hated working from home for the month I was recovering from an operation but it was that or be off sick on SSP and struggle to pay my bills. I’d much rather work in a nice cool air conditioned office that at home where there’s way too many distractions not to do any work

I think you’ve already touched on this by saying it’s unfair. You’re jealous, and that’s understandable. There’s probably some people who are jealous of your office based role and find remote working harder to deal with, isolating maybe.

I do both, 3 days in most week and 2 days at home. If I’m honest, I’m not mad keen on working at home. Yeah, I can pop a few loads of washing in, go straight to sorting dinner when I finish work or have a trades person in the house whilst I’m working, but I just don’t really like it. I’m in my depressing home office, not leaving the house until the afternoon.

I spent all of working life up until 2020 working in an office pretty much 5 days a week full time, sometimes with hefty commuting. I appreciate the difference working from home has and can make, but you’re wrong to think that people who work from home don’t get it

I've chosen to go self-employed and wfh. I earn substantially less than I did, don't get paid if I'm sick, often work odd hours because I go where the work is and am responsible for my own tax matters. Yes, I have a lot of freedom but I don't have any certainty. You have to decide what's important to you.

I also work for the NHS. I am hybrid (assessments out and about, report writing from home).
OP, can you not utilise your experience in the NHS to find a WFH/hybrid post?

Also, surely, in the same way someone in India could do a job from home just like someone in the UK, surely any UK company could set up cheap offices in India just as easily as hiring someone to WFH there. Idk why WFH poses a specific risk, unless the owner typically works in the same office as all of his employees.

WFH is amazing for those with kids. I WFH and can go into the office whenever I want or not at all. I have compressed hours, can spend more time with my kids and get paid the same. I’m not paid well for my role but I stay for the perks. I do feel for those in professions that can’t have this flexibility, it is very unfair.

Oh we do get It and appreciate it. I spent 23 years in an office and through Covid, so when my role changed to WFH I was delighted.

I do sometimes miss the "office family" I had as we all got on well.
However it is a huge perk to be able to do what your OP states and also be on hand for teens and have a chance to do a few jobs in your lunch break.

The down side to the not calling in sick thing I have found is that even when I was really ill recently it was almost expected I would check emails and answer calls, whereas back in the day sick meant sick and shut off from work.

Also sometimes I do miss the division between work and home.

I work from home because it allows people with a disability, like me, to work full time - whereas otherwise i'd be on benefits.

OP if you arent happy, retrain - you are not too old to do so x

That's why I suggested op looked for a role that could be done hybrid, if it was important to her?

I obviously didn't say all NHS roles can be, that would be ridiculous.

I do get it, because I do half and half. Full on days in the workplace and then half my days at home. They're both challenging in different ways.

The hybrid/flexible model has great advantages, but the big killer is that you still need to be commutable to your office, so you still have to live close enough to your workplace, which is a real barrier for people who live (or want to move to), the regions rather than close enough to one of a handful of major cities. You're almost no better off that full time office working if you're stuck living in or around London when you'd rather be living in the Yorkshire Dales or Northumbria. That aspect continues to limit the options for both employers and employees, especially in places with poor public transport (and I don't mean a hamlet on a hillside, I mean all the smaller cities and towns with poor public transport compared to London and other major cities!).

My son got his first job in a city only 84 miles away from our city (in Northern England), but it's impossible to commute, even for 2/3 days per week. The trains don't start early enough and finish too soon so he couldn't physically do a 9-5 day there. The train journey takes 3 hours with two changes! (That's without the frequent cancellations of Northern Trains and Transpennine Express). In theory, a relatively short distance like that should be perfectly commutable for 2 or 3 days a week, but it's simply impossible by public transport (not to mention expensive as it's £50-£60 per day). That's city centre to city centre, not some sleepy hamlet on a hillside! As a result he has to pay over £1k per month in rent, utilities, and bus fares, to commute from the only flat he could get on the outskirts of the other city, when with good public transport, he could have saved that and commuted. We have a relative who does a similar length rail commute in the SE and that takes half the time and costs less, and trains start much sooner and finish later too!

That was supposed to quote an earlier poster who asked why people were in the garden if it wasn't lunchtime.

I often go into the garden to have a break away from the screen for 5 minutes.

we have a little garden area and tables where my office is, so staff can sit and work out there if they want to enjoy the sunshine.

Now that’s a company that cares about their employees, how lovely. I took my laptop into the garden yesterday and worked there all day. It wouldn’t always work, I wouldn’t attempt it if I was creating diagrams or presentations, but yesterday I had 13 conference calls with about three half hours in between. Anyone who thinks that isn’t working can piss off.

My Employer isn’t bothered who comes into office and who doesn’t.

It is very common to see staff block out time in their calendar from 3 - 3:30 for example stating “school pick up” and that’s the same for the most junior to the most senior staff.

Nobody cares who is doing what so long as the work is done. I wouldn’t work in any other environment.

OP you have the option to get a job within or outside NHS where you can wfh so I don’t really understand your point.

Remote work can definitely reduce childcare costs, that's a given. It can also mean being able to work whilst looking after a sick or recovering child, where there wouldn't be childcare but an in person worker would have to stay off, with the corresponding loss to their employer and possibly themselves.

For me, what's more interesting is the way we talk so much more about that than we do about other advantages some employees have over others. OP isn't trying to present herself as reasonable, so I'm not having a dig here, but it's interesting that she's not given any consideration to the way in which she as an NHS nurse will have eg much better pension contributions, sick pay and maternity pay than the average worker. Some of whom will be hybrid or fully remote.

I think it's because we were already used to wild inequality in lots of aspects of work already. Wages, pensions, annual leave. That's essentially accepted. But more flexibility is a new one.

It seems though from these pages that many try to juggle both or at least are able to go out for the school run or look after a sick older child at home.

This is a popular view on MN, but I have to disagree. It's a sweet spot for some people with particular characteristics and preferences. No different in that way to fully remote or fully on site, which also occupy sweet spots for some people. There's so much variation in the best way of working for people and organisations that there's no hard or fast here.

And hybrid can sometimes be the worst of both worlds. A two or three day a week split still means people have to live close enough to the workplace that we don't get the societal benefits that arise when geographical barriers to work are reduced. It means the employer doesn't significantly widen their recruitment pool. Two days a week is enough to still be a problem for a lot of people who struggle to work in person due to health, caring responsibilities, lack of structural support such as childcare and reliable public transport etc. Meanwhile it's still not necessarily sufficient for the people who thrive on being around others, especially if the days don't have to be set. I know it works very well for a lot of people, but so does every type of work pattern.

Of course we got it, it's why we wfh