To think if you moved out to the countryside during Covid, you can't demand remote working?

I don't think it works like that. Very few minimum wage people (which is where the real deprivation lies) would be in a "work from home" role. Most would be cleaners, maintenance workers, window cleaners, canteen staff, self employed food vendors etc. In fact a whole blue colour infrastructure would thrive if an office block or factory unit was opened in their area. A few people WFH in a highly paid role in a desirable village aren't going to help the local economy.

@CarpetKnees I shared my experiences of people taking the piss earlier this afternoon.

Do you have any evidence that 'many people abuse it' or is that just a hyperbolic opinion ?

You literally said though that you 'negotiated the salary' - so you decided what it would take for you to work there.

London weightings are for people who are on a fixed salary scale but the imbalance of living costs (particularly housing) means that you won't be able to find anyone to do the job in London for the same salary as someone doing the same job elsewhere.
So a teacher or a Police Officer who could get a mortgage in most parts of the country with 2 adults on their salary, probably can't in London, hence the London weighting is in theory there to help. London weighting aren't old fashioned, they are there for the many, many people can't 'negotiate their salary'.

@Steelworks a complete minefield! I have to be stricter than I would like to be because of a few CFs. I have an 8 year old, so I get I really do. I try to accommodate sports day, class assemblies etc but I can’t pay people to be contactable 9-5 for our customers when they do school runs and aren’t contactable for 90 mins a day and have young children present 4-5pm. There are some roles which are much more flexible and as long as the work is done I am less bothered by the hours they choose to work.

True! A good example - I was working for a publishing company in the 2010s, and the company started outsourcing the proofreading to a company in India instead of using local freelancers, to save on costs. But then the publisher would have to send it to me to re-do the work as there were so many mistakes!

Sounds like a minefield, with people abusing the system.

I’m responsible for about 250 people as
part of a much bigger financial services company (household/high street name). We have offices in London, a Home Counties city and another big UK city. We state 2 days a week in the office, the rest can be at home.

-I have a few very specialist senior people, maybe 5 in total who do not come in and are so niche it would take more than a year to replace them.

-I have a few we are having to have informal conversations with that they cannot be ‘busy’ during every school run as part of the role is being contactable by customers 9-5. There’s a few we’ve had to go down a more formal route about not being able to work whilst doing childcare (for under7s)

-I have more risk events happen at home

-I have some wonderful employees who work hard and are an asset to my department and WFH 90% of the time due to health issues. They do not try to look after young children at the same time.

-I have about 20 people who live 20 min from one office site who came in 5 days a week before Covid and now say 20 min is too far. They have dogs and don’t want to leave them or pay for afterschool club. They are starting a performance management route for this.

-I am offshoring some roles to India because if it can be done remotely I can do it abroad. Not all roles are suitable but certainly our admin ones can.

It’s a mixed bag and I do find some people are very entitled and also don’t want to pay for commuting/dog care/childcare but are happy to be paid our London/south east salary!

2 or 3 people from my work moved away during COVID, but they had it agreed with our employer and had their contracts changed to reflect the fewer visits they would be obliged to make to the office per week or month.

I don’t like going in (2 days a week) but in spite of this, I have done, and my manager is very pleased that I have supported him in running the department by complying with the general rules.

If I was thinking of applying for another job, I wouldn’t have the nerve to argue that I could WFH - the new Employer might not have as successful an infrastructure as my current one, for a start!

It's the same with me.

I work for a great employer who allows remote work, and I think it'd be hard for me to get the same conditions if I looked for a job at another company.

It is for this very reason that I don't goof off while working from home. I make sure I'm productive and add value, as I want to stay with the company long-term. Why would I risk losing such a good set-up?

If a role can be done remotely, and the worker is productive, why do you have an issue? Surely everyone should be pushing for better conditions for everyone? Surely having good roles outside the likes of London is a good thing? I'm happy when someone has a role that fits their lifestyle, making things easier for them. Just because people were once chained to strict working conditions location's and hours doesn't mean it has to be that way forever.

We work remotely. If our contracts were changed, the team would lose its only women workers for a sector where female representation is terrible.

Then there are those who realise I'm in the office & pop up to just asking for 5 minutes about to ask my specialist advice about a difficult case that they have.

See and I think these on the fly chats are important and I consider them work.

For years I managed a team about 250 miles away from my office location and would spend 1 week/mo at that site. It shocked me how different my workday was when I was in that office. It was filled, as you describe, with impromptu chats by the coffee maker, ‘hey can you pop into this meeting’, someone dragging other people into my office to talk about something, and random ‘hey do you have a min?’ chats. I feel like I barely touched my computer those weeks.

It finally dawned on me that if there is even a minimal effort required to contact someone most people won’t do it.

Don’t get me wrong I enjoy working WFH. 90% of my workday is spent in meetings. I like that I’m able to transfer my TEAMS meetings from my computer to my IPad and make a sandwich. It’s way more convenient for meetings with global colleagues at odd hours. I ended up being classed as remote because I don’t ‘work’ with anyone in my local office and I found myself going to the office and spending my day with my door shut in meetings.

• I manage a team spread across 2 countries and 3 US states. My closest team member is a 5 hour drive away.

All that being said if my company told me I was no longer remote and to get back to the office, that’s exactly what I would do.

Pre-covid, I did a mix of wfh and office, based on what was most sensible. This might mean wfh one week and going into the office f/t several weeks. It might mean 4 days a week in office at other times or wfh or working away with a bunch of people for a couple of months. Blanket rigid policies don’t always work. People going into the office when they’re on headphones all day to people in other offices seems daft. People who want to go into the office more, but can’t as there’s not enough space is also daft. As for productivity, why do so many firms expect and accept wfh once you finish your working day in the office and go home? Plenty of firms will be more flexible once you’re through the door, so I don’t blame those people for asking around, just as they may ask around what the realistic expected hours are or what the culture is like, genuine scope for progression etc.

i personally found those that took the piss in the office took the piss at home too and vice versa.

However, if you’ve agreed to a set number of days in the office/location, then you can’t really complain, even if it seems nonsensical. I can understand employees wishing they had a more progressive employer if they can’t see the benefit and acting on that. Firms that say ‘you may be required to work outside your hours occasionally’ also shouldn’t complain when ‘occasionally’ means ‘always’ and ‘many hours’, but it’s another unwritten expectation that many of us tolerate.

Presenteeism culture also costs alot in productivity, especially when you have a job you can wfh in, but need to fill your quota of inperson days so e.g. feel like you have no option go in when unwell to mess up colleagues productivity too.

We are in yet another covid wave right now. I think people may mean during lockdown, rather than during covid. There are millions with long covid in England now, more and more after each wave. It is on a trajectory to become the number one chronic illness in children here too (it already is in America). How many on here assume they would know if a colleague is struggling with post-infection health issues trying to hold onto their job, hoping that they’ll magically recover? How many are becoming more susceptible to other infections?

People retiring there would certainly do that, less so those of younger working ages. In some areas schools are closing due to not having enough pupils.

You're so predictable aren't you.
I was expecting this comment and bullseye here we are, you're the lucky winner. Congratulations.

Thats not what I meant.
It's the added pressure on services - mainly Doctors and Hospitals that I'm talking about.

There was also that poster on here (and similar ones on Reddit) who applied for multiple remote jobs at a time and then just… didn’t do them. It would usually take about 3-6 months for them to sack her, in which time she had collected a full salary.

She had a “main” job which she did do, and used that on her CV to get these other jobs (multiple secondary jobs at a time, so drawing 2-3 full time salaries at once). Pretty clearly fraud, but obviously her sector was big enough that word didn’t get about (that would work for about 5 minutes in my sector, we all talk to each other).

This. It's all about bargaining power.

One of the less palatable truths here is that if this keeps happening to an organisation, the package they're offering doesn't buy enough people who are willing to come into the office. Market forces are doing their thing.

I realise this isn't much consolation if you're the person lumbered with recruitment whilst having bugger all influence on the wage packets, of course.

Ive struggled with this. We hire people who claim they are happy to do 3/week in london. Then it emerges they live in shropshire and never actually planned on coming in that much - they assumed they could turn up one day a week at most.

😆

The Civil Service is insisting on 60% of time in the office from 1 September(up from 40%) The trouble is that they have disposed of many offices so space is limited. I know many of my hybrid colleagues are unhappy . Another friend who used to do 5 days in the office of a large company ,before Covid, is complaining that she is now being asked to go in one day a week. She doesn’t like driving ! X

What an utter pile of nonsense. I think you are probably new to mumsnet, you certainly aren’t an original 15-year plusser anyway.

This. I’m about to recruit for a specialist role. It will be fully remote because I know I can get the skills I need for a lower salary in places where we don’t have a physical office. I also know that there is a skills shortage in the role I need and fierce competition for talent, and offering fully remote work will get me someone who is less likely to move on for higher pay a year from now.

Never in the history of MN has a thread proved OPs point as much as this one does. The entitlement is off the scale. No wonder employers are doubling down on return to office.

No there does not need to be a concrete reason at all. The employer does not need to justify you as to why they actually need to you to attend a workplace. If you want to dictate where you work, then you have the option of being your own employer: