To think the call back into the office is an example of the patriarchy very much alive and well?

Any employer who tried to force a disabled employee, as you describe, would undoubtedly be breaking the law by not allowing them to work from home. This is an entirely different situation.

Why should everyone have that choice ? Unless you are prepared to accept poverty ( eg UC - they won't ask you to seek work with a child under 3 I believe) it is a luxury- not everyone can do it.

Unfortunately, I have seen productivity fall with wfh.

Good points.

I agree with your last sentence. I do think it depends on the individual and things should be monitored.

Honestly, as a Mum WFH is great. I can hang the washing on my lunch break, tody the house in my commuting time etc.

However, as a worker, if I'm in the office I have a bond woth my team. I exchange incidental information, share ideas, learn from others. At the end of the day it's me as a worker they want and it's up to me to manage my personal life through getting up early, using my slow cooker and online shopping....

It's interesting that some women find working from home preferable, because they can also get on with household chores. I do wonder if men in a similar position would use this extra time on working for career progression, extra qualifications and working for promotion. Not making a casserole and hanging out the washing.

But at the aame time, you also have loads of people asking on mumsnet if they can look after their toddler while WFH - this is happening a LOT. I also have a lawyer friend who openly brags about how little she has to do when WFH and how she and her husband juggle school holidays childcare by them both WFH and somehow managing to look after their 5 year old. So WFH might improve productivity for some, but by no means all.

That wasn't just working from home, of course. It was saving by not going out for coffee and meals, to the cinema, theatre, days out, visiting friends and family, shopping trips etc. enforced thrift!

My output is easily measured, as I have a chargeable hours target. The one day I'm in the office, I rarely meet my target. The four days at home, I achieve usually 20-50% above target.

Many of my friends are lawyers and they say the same. After working well from home and achieving promotions and excelling in great client relations for the company etc they’re annoyed to be told to come back to the office 3-5 days a week.

I’d also like to point out in nearly every office I’ve worked in, its actually recommended you take regular screen/ movement breaks so actually there doesn’t need to be all this angst about someone putting on a wash or loading up a dishwasher or wiping their worktop.

In offices many people do take these regular short breaks except it would be to make coffee or drink water and chat to someone at the water cooler, smoke a cigarette, redo makeup in the toilets, chat with people in the kitchen etc.

That takes the same time as it does for someone to put on or hang up a load or load up a dishwasher. I tend to do my laundry on the weekend but I’m making a wider point about all the angst concerning people doing “domestic chores in work time”.

I work for my self and find dealing with some companies quite difficult as so many staff are WFH, a query I have could take 3 days to resolve with the accounts departments because of WFH.

Some business's not all are calling people back to the offices because WFH is no longer working as well as it maybe did.

If your employer wants you back in the office then there is a choice, leave or get on with it!

Yes but the point is we talk about fighting for choice but it’s interesting how that’s only for going to work and not for being a stay at home parent… it might be dad or the mother but we don’t have that choice and I believe people should.

I remember during the lockdowns there was a very interesting thread on WFH and the money saved. No commuting costs, no Starbucks, no lunches, no new clothes. Credit card bills were being paid off completely. Savings accounts being opened. The only increased expense being heating the room you worked in.

People moving house no longer tied to one area.

Society really did shift considerably.

I actually thought your post was fair and thought provoking

This happens here too when he has a break from meetings just as when I do. Also gets the washing out / emptied dishwasher whilst waiting for his lunch to heat in microwave.

I'm a solicitor too. It's essentially a very solitary job, unless something weird and wonderful crops up and you need to sense check it with somebody! At which point we use Teams.

Those who struggle to meet their billing targets will struggle wherever they're working, IMO. Same as those people who are slackers (and we've all worked with some of those) will be slack either WFH or in the office.

Snap! I said something similar upthread.
I think if you're intrinsically motivated, and can also easily measure output (e.g. with billable hours, I'm a lawyer) then working from home works very well. My job is very solitary and in a lot of ways it feels similar to when I was at uni revising for exams or writing up my thesis. I worked from home, I didn't get distracted with house stuff, I am lucky in that I don't find it difficult to focus because I enjoy my job.
But maybe for jobs that are more collaborative, aren't easy to measure output, and for people that are more easily distractible, it doesn't work. I don't know!

The era of ordinary families having a SAHP and a decent standard of living was a post WW2 phenomenon. Working class women have always worked.

My output is easily measured, as I have a chargeable hours target. The one day I'm in the office, I rarely meet my target. The four days at home, I achieve usually 20-50% above target.

We book desks, so always sit with our team, but dear god, the office is noisy and full of distractions (workmen, the wrong temperature, crap lighting, as well as other teams being really loud). It is nice to see my team in person, but it definitely doesn't increase productivity! I'm assuming this has been reviewed by management and why we do four days at home.

Our office size is reducing as well, as areas are mothballed and the desks etc removed. There's clearly no intention of getting us all back more as there's no room for us to do so.

My husband does most things relating to the washing, but I'll sometimes hang a load out (if I get a moment). I'm more likely to vacuum or prepare something for dinner in my lunch break, however, or do a bit of cleaning. I rarely do anything domestic when I should be working.

I think being able to wfh (excluding these who do so for health/medical reasons) is quite a privileged position to be in.

Not everyone has the space at home to have a proper work set up. Especially if there are more than one person in the house needing to wfh.

And it's really quite interesting to see a few posters say they work longer (because of no commute) if they wfh - that's great for the employer but not so much for the individual.

It's really not good for junior employees- they really benefit from face to face interactions and being able to watch others.

We are fully in the office unless there has been a flexible work request. My employer though is flexible if you need a wfh day, but generally we are in the office.

This is our set up, luckily DH is his own boss. He has also always done more house work than me, although I do most of the food shopping/ cooking.

This I love a day in the office ( especially if followed by an excercise class or dinner out) for this very reason my DC are 18 & 20 but still cause chaos at home.

I find the interminable back and forth discussions about wfh / working in office quite frustrating, it really is a broken record.

• it doesn't need to be all or nothing extremes - pre-Covid people worked from home albeit predominantly in office. People have had laptops for years and had the choice. It tended to be much more limited - people didn't expect to wfh all the time. It would be Friday or Monday and the remainder of the week in office (ft staff)

• There's nothing "strange" about flexible working. Just before Covid hit, my government dept issued everyone with laptops with permission to work flexibly according to business need. "Come to the office when you want face to face interaction and wfh if it makes sense to eg if you have a complex report to write and need to get your head down" Then Covid hit and we had no option but to wfh.

• post-Covid, there are many people who are happy to return to the office for 2-3 days and balance with some wfh (eg me), Others seem to have adopted the attitude I'm not coming back to the office, ever. I've moved 100 miles away and even though my contract of employment clearly states "normal location = [name of office location] I've got a set to my jaw and resent coming back into the office more than once a month".

Advantages = ability to focus on a specific task, ability to put a wash load on (in lunch break, not during work time), reduce commute expense. Not having to be "suited and booted 5 days a week, nice to be relaxed at home, but still getting on with your job.

im personally all for office and wfh balance, why do people need to be so dogmatic about it? What ever happened to compromise / give and take? It gets you a lot farther than locking horns with your employer,

There actually seems to be a lot of data coming out lately to suggest that people that WFH may be less productive. I'm sure it was the other way around originally so maybe people have just become complacent. However, it seems 73% of people still believe they're more productive at home.

It’s true that widespread studies based on standard measures of efficiency have found that fully remote employees are 10% to 20% less productive than those working on company premises. Challenges related to communications, coordination and self-motivation may be factors in the decline.

The new research that showed lower productivity by full-time remote workers also found that those on a hybrid schedule — some days at home and some on site — were about as productive as those in the office full time.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-01-04/2024-year-employers-clamp-down-on-remote-work-not-so-fast#:~:text=It%27s%20true%20that%20widespread%20studies,be%20factors%20in%20the%20decline.

We first find that the productivity of workers randomly assigned to WFH is 18% lower than those in the office. Workers who prefer WFH are substantially less productive at home than the office (27% less compared to 13% less for workers who prefer the office).

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515

WFH Research’s latest working paper, conducted by Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy and Research, delves deep into the question that has been looming over businesses and employees: Does working from home cause diminished productivity? The results of the study, pointing to a 10%-20% decrease in productivity for fully remote workers, have brought forth complex implications for employers, employees, and policymakers.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2023/08/02/working-from-home-leads-to-decreased-productivity-research-suggests/

We've all heard the arguments for WFH - including that by slashing commute times it makes people work more efficiently. But a major new study has revealed that remote working does not, in fact, make you more productive.

The first scientific experiment to measure the results of the Covid-era practice found that white-collar workers who are allowed to work from home for part of the week are not more efficient. The study, published in the journal Nature, compared the two groups after six months. The researchers found no evidence that workers became more productive by working from home.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13550055/WFH-does-NOT-make-productive-major-study-reveals.html

Home workers are 13 per cent less productive than hybrid workers and are costing the economy billions, an analysis has shown. The research, conducted by Vitality, found that home workers lost the most productive days (53 days).

https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1806750/home-workers-13-per-cent-less-productive-hybrid-workers-research-finds

Indeed, the most recent research is producing findings that are hostile to the idea that working from home is good for output. A study of newly hired Indian data-entry workers by MIT and UCLA economists this week identified a decline in productivity of 18 per cent when comparing office workers to home workers. Another found employees at a major Asian IT business were 19 per cent less productive when working at home, while a recent Stanford analysis of multiple studies reported an average drop in productivity of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/10/wfh-productivity-work-from-home-zoom/

OP quite apart from whether you are right or wrong, I find your posts where you disagree with somebody incredibly rude.