to be tired of the jealousy towards people who WFH?

So if all the more experienced people are now WFH who will provide the training and support that you were lucky enough for the first 20 years of your career?

Its the same principle as a hair dresser complaining about being on their feet all day!

Plenty of NHS workers and other public sector jobs can and do WFH.

Some full-time, others hybrid.

Including clinical staff.

And Police. Social workers. Education.

Not everyone works on wards or has to work in offices .

And many NHS trusts have seen the benefits of WFH/hybrid since covid so are advertising jobs as such.

NHS recruitment problems aren't because of workers leaving for WFH or hybrid jobs. In fact, it's making the professions more attractive and retaining workers.

Did you quote the wrong PP..? This response makes no sense. Also feels like you're protesting too much.

Well then I'm glad I work for my employer and not yours, as mine have a big focus on wellbeing, work life balance and flexibility, which is given both ways.

My employer acknowledges that by allowing me to WFH and do things I need to do, I have a better work life balance, and therefore my overall wellbeing is improved. If my wellbeing is good, my work is good, and if I feel like I'm allowed to take a break to do some "life" stuff I'm much more likely to stay on beyond 4pm (my finish time) to finish something off or answer a query, because to me that's time I'd be commuting home from the office and I may as well be productive.

I do think people confuse "WFH" and "flexible working" though. I do both, some WFH roles aren't flexible and some flexible roles aren't WFH.

Saying all that I am glad I had 20 years working in person in a team, I don’t think it’s a great thing to do at the start of one’s career. Learning communication and how to work as part of a team and an organisation and how to line manage people. All better learned in person. But I can do them all very effectively from home now.

This could potentially be a tricky one to balance as it seems feasible that more senior people are likely to have a) a better set up to wfh (bigger house, dedicated office space etc) and b) a workload that they can deal with/manage more independently, so wfh works better for them
....but being devil's advocate, who are the more junior staff learning (by socialisation, soft skills etc) from, if they are in the workplace and the more senior people are wfh?
Although I don't work in an office/corporate type environment so maybe it works out fine with hybrid or the "intermediate" level people being around for newcomers and juniors to liase with.

I'll walk over to someone to ask a question (yes, a positive of being in the office) and end up chatting to them about how their kids are or something.

I think part of the problem is that this isn't actually, from the employer's point of view, a 'waste of their time' in the way that hanging out the laundry is. People who know a bit about each other and have some personal connection do tend to work better as teams, are more likely to go out of their way for each other, etc. So while from my point of view chatting to someone in the office and chatting to my neighbour are both a 10 minute break in which I'm not working, there is some (intangible, probably small) work benefit to the former and absolutely none for the latter.

Skimming this thread is really interesting.

I am not more or less productive at home. I have always worked hard and beyond my hours to make sure my work is done. (Normal in my profession it’s not a 9-5 and clock off role)

However I absolutely can do XYZ at a time that works for me during the day and make the time up in the evening/weekend as my tasks are what they are and don’t fall to anyone else. If this means I can attend an appointment, hang washing, pop to the shop for milk or take an occasional long lunch but I make all the time up flexibly I can’t see the downside for my employer and there is only up side for me.

To the poster who called it golden handcuffs I 100% agree. Nothing on earth could make me change back to working out the house. My employer knows that and retention is high despite higher salaries for equivalent jobs not wfh. My salary is decent though and when I do the maths for a second car and commute I’m still winning financially, let alone work-life balance wise.

Saying all that I am glad I had 20 years working in person in a team, I don’t think it’s a great thing to do at the start of one’s career. Learning communication and how to work as part of a team and an organisation and how to line manage people. All better learned in person. But I can do them all very effectively from home now.

We can say that. Because for most of us, we're doing XYZ in what would have been our commuting time. Or on our lunch break instead of wasting it walking round the town centre (or wherever the office is) or sitting in the canteen.

It gives us time back in our day outside of working hours. And for a lot of us, not having the constant distraction of chatting means we are more productive. Some aren't, but then WFH may not be for them.

I go into the office once a week. I hear stuff then, but also have lots of people chatting around me (much as it was when we were all in) or I'll walk over to someone to ask a question (yes, a positive of being in the office) and end up chatting to them about how their kids are or something.

And some office/desk based jobs do have lulls where you're waiting for things to come back to you. Not all, but some. And if you were in the office you can't just stop working so you have to find a way to appear busy. Whereas at home, if I finish my paper and send it for review and the referrals are quiet and my big project finished last week and my next one doesn't start discovery til tomorrow, I can take twenty minutes to hang the washing out, by which time there'll have been a referral or two come in I need to handle.

Done right, both ways can work. People do it wrong, so then others get annoyed. But that's not the fault of WFH that's the fault of the employers and managers letting it happen.

I think people on here are being deliberately obtuse. It’s not one perk, it’s all the perks together. And I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say WFH is so great I’m able to do X,Y and Z and then also say you’re ten times more productive.
Ive always been NHS so I don’t recognise the ‘sitting in front of a computer trying to appear busy’ scenario. I do feel there is so much that you don’t see from home which you do in the office.
The other day I comforted a colleague who was in tears after a stressful visit, spoke to three or four other people in person (who I probably wouldn’t have rang) which alone saved about twenty back and forth emails, caught up with my boss which saved us both a meeting later in the week and checked in on the students to see if they needed any learning opportunities. I learn so much from being in, around my team, that’s just not replicated if we all work from home. And I don’t think that’s specific to health and social care.

Retention of people who can't WFH is it's own challenge, but not the fault of WFH. WFH jobs are in reality golden handcuffs. The wage would have to be really significantly high to tempt me back into a physical job full time. Anyone who does it knows the extent to which it improves your life, it gives back time and allows you to work from other countries. It's almost priceless.

Every single person I know who wfh finds time to do the school run/go to the gym/walk the dog/have workmen round to quote or do odd jobs/receive deliveries/go shopping/go to dr appts, hair appts

School run: I do find that, with children, you have to take them to and from school, yes. This happens whether you WFH or not.

Gym: I don’t go but I’ll go for a sea swim before work in summer, using the time I would ordinarily be commuting. People who WFH have more time in the day, you see. (Sea!)

Walk the dog: don’t have one but most people round here do it early in the morning or concurrently with the school run we’re apparently not supposed to do.

Have workmen round: for quotes, all the tradies I know do it in the evening or weekends to leave the days free for jobs. I do have workmen do work during the day and I am also at home during the day, not sure what the problem is here? They do XYZ on the plumbing, I do my job in my home office. Do you think we all stop working and go and help them do some hammering?

Receive deliveries: do you mean “answer the door”? Have you thought about creative copywriting as a career? You can WFH.

Go shopping: we get the big shop delivered during our lunch break on a day we both WFH. Two people unpacking, done and dusted, time for lunch too.

Go to Dr appointments: do people working on site not have GP appointments? They’re away from their desk far longer, I’d imagine, as most people have a GP close to their home address not their work address. NHS once offered me therapy at 2pm at my local practice – I’d have needed to leave work at 12.50pm and not get back till 4.10pm! Local surgery is five minutes’ walk from my house, so yes, unbelievably I will take a wild 15 minutes out of my day to walk there and back for a 5-minute face-to-face

Hair appointments: no idea, sorry. DP does pop to the barber round the corner at random times of the day, but he doesn’t take a lunch break usually, so it shakes out at the same thing

You're absolutely right, I should be a helpful human at work instead of doing the job I'm paid for. All so other people don't have to do theirs.

I'm helpful. I just won't be walked over. There's a difference.

And, if I'm constantly "helping" other people do their job instead of doing mine, I'll be labelled a lazy skiver. Can't win these days can you.

Wow I'm glad I don't work with people that are obsessed with process rather than behaving like a helpful human being

"DH is a nurse and when he's getting up at 5.45am and not getting home till 8.30pm you have to wonder if it's worth it. "

Well, yes, plenty of people would prefer to work 9-5. It's got nothing to do with working from home or not. Unsociable hours have always been unpopular and needed to be compensated either with money, job satisfaction or career opportunities.

I literally give not one single fuck where anyone works from. I do care when other people don’t do what they are supposed to, within agreed timescales. Since Covid and “working from home” became the norm, this so becoming more and more common.
I do not care whether you work from an office, your home or the fucking moon. Just do your job, because you not doing it has a detrimental effect on other people.

Yes, people who want someone else to do their job for them are.

Insufferable!

No, they can follow the correct process, which usually doesn't actually involve me.

Even when I was in the office full time, and part of their team, I would have people asking me questions that, while I could (and usually did) answer, were not actually part of my role to deal with. They would ask me how to do something we have process guides for. Or an email would come out with a change and the team would bombard me with questions despite the fact I only had the same information as them, because they didn't want to bother asking the right people themselves.

I'm now part of a totally different team with a totally different role and I still get regular questions that are that teams job to know the answers to. When I'm in the office and they can see me, they'll ask me rather than read a process guide. When I'm not, they'll read the guide.

thats down to companies to manage their staff better or offer better pay to recruit those staff

I feel sorry for the jealous people. They must be very unhappy.

meanwhile I have a fabulous career in which I wfh for which I get paid a lot of money.

DH also wfh so we get to have a great work life balance. And extra 😘

Yay they can go through extra hoops for the same result! Generally people get hounded more in office if they're infrequently in because people feel more of a need to 'catch' them in person rather than it being spread out.

No.

People can ask me things while I'm working from home as well. I can just manage it easier. So for example in the office, if I have a paper to finish, but people want to talk to me they walk over to my desk and it would be rude to ignore them. At home they have to call, message or email and I can respond when I am finished or when I need a break from it.

In the office instead of raising a ticket for an issue with the system, people will say "Ipsy, could you just look at this" because they think I can somehow magically fix their problem (despite me not being part of the application support team) and therefore they don't need to go through the 5 minutes of raising the ticket. At home they have to post that in a group chat or call me, instead of just calling me over, which means they'll probably just raise the ticket (or the group chat can be ignored because someone else will say "raise a ticket").

If I am actually needed for something, rather than people deferring to me because they know I know how to sort things out, people will book actual time in my diary to discuss it, as is the proper process regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office. And if it's something like a discovery workshop, they'll book it for a day we're all in the office or request we try and change our in office day if not.

People being too lazy to do their job or follow a process or read a guide, simply because they can physically see me does not make it crucial we're in the same space.

“People keep asking about things” - doesn’t that show how crucial it is to be in the same space as your co-workers?