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

They'll have a bloody job getting us back into the office full-time - they've sold so many premises off we'd never all fit! Most of us go in first thing, go off to do client visits and then often WFH to write notes up or discharges or Teams meetings. I'm buggered if I'm going to sit in the office to sit on the chair that randomly sinks at points on a bloody Teams call.

Manager is perfectly fine with that and my performance is way above my pay grade.

If you are in the US you don't even get proper annual leave or maternity leave. US corporate culture was tried and failed in the UK and is definitely not wanted.

Agree - the fact that you've noticed some posts on Mumsnet about people trying to WFH while caring for toddlers or seen some people walking their dogs on work calls isn't proof of widespread unproductivity, and conversely just because you get more done at home doesn't mean most people will do. It's all just conjecture until there is clear evidence either way.

Whereas I'm fucking sick of hearing about companies pointlessly wanting their employees commuting five days a week and articles in the Torygraph about all these awful "slackers" working from home.

I've worked from home for some of the week for over ten years now, yes it had to be done en masse in 2020 but it should have already been a lot more common than it was. Some companies really need to join the third decade of the 21st century.

Which still means there are going to be so many jobs and organisations you've no real understanding of.

Here’s how it played out in my office.

• Pre COVID- WFH 2x per week Stated days (e.g. M,F) in reality HR didn’t really monitor, managers were flexible and didn’t really care, employees used common sense. Everyone pretty happy.
• COVID- WFH 5x
• Post Covid- Hey start coming back to the office
• Post Covid + 1yr- No really start coming back to the office 3x per week.
• Post Covid + 2yr - We’re serious about this and will start tracking
• Post Covid + 2yr6mo- Ok now it’s in office 4x per week. Oh yeah and your WFH day cannot be a M or F. We’re serious about this.
• Post Covid + 3yr - Layoff/redundancy oh and firing of X amount of people for not coming into office. Very strict weekly monitoring by HR

Basically everyone had a good chance of keeping the pre Covid policy that was way more flexible and really was policed that much. Instead, the majority of employees dug their heels in and created their own problem. And yes I am counting mangers as employees here. There was a fair amount of scrambling and grumbling by those that moved away from the office and now found themselves with a 4x daily 2+ hour -one way commute in one of the worst US cities for traffic. I was also talking to our tax guy who was telling me that there were more than a few employees who had moved to a state that we didn’t have a tax agreement set up with and of those a couple resigned/were terminated and a couple had to scramble to move back.

I had an employee who was ‘failing to thrive’ in her role. As I was discussing with HR about next steps (which would usually have been a PIP) they pulled her badge swiping data. Turns out she was swiping in, wandering around the office and talking to people for a couple of hours, then leaving for the day and not returning until the next day. Verified by video. Honestly to this day I’m not even sure if she was going home to work or was just pissing off for the day. To be fair I know she wasn’t productive when she was in the office. Hence, the failure to thrive. Anyway… she earned herself an immediate termination with no chance to improve.

Now to be fair we had a CEO that would always make a comment in his monthly town hall about how he wished we could all be like the Chinese who worked 6 days a week with no WFH 🙄 so who knows if the policy would have changed without COVID. But the employees certainly didn’t make the choice hard for him by ignoring the return to office mandates.

During all of this I was classed as a remote employee so none of the policies affected me. The whole thing was fascinating to watch from afar.

Two of the things that would help significantly with this issue is the price of train fares and childcare in UK v train fares and childcare costs in many EU countries which are subsidised. Tackling those two things alone would boost productivity.

And no one is mentioning here the savings that many employers are making by not having workers in the office every day of the week which should not be under-estimated.

Is this directly affecting you OP?

asking is fine, I’ve only ever worked remote and have asked this on occasions and it has paid off as they’ve been open to it. Getting hired/hiring is basically the negotiation of what each party wants. And that’s what most people will be doing essentially asking, just this is a none negotiable for me does it work for you? They can’t be demanding to be hired and have X, they’re just saying they won’t flex on wfh.

I actually had more WFH before covid than now because people didn’t have their knickers in a twist about it then!

I'm always amazed that anyone feels competent to generalise about what's more productive in work. There are so many sectors, so many jobs, so many people. Nobody could possibly be familiar with enough of it for their guess to mean anything.

Covid was 4 years ago now so it's 5.5 years since the last 'normal office working period'!

If your work allowed you to wfh during the pandemic but then asked you to return to the office as soon as it was over but you'd moved in that time and no longer wanted to. Fair enough, you'd been daft and would have to have found another job.

But if your work allowed you to wfh during the pandemic and then continued to allow if for the years that have gone by since - then it's not unreasonable to have shaped your life around those recent years and moved away from the office.

An employer is daft to allow a practise to become normal for more then 5 years and then try to change it claiming it was 'just' for the pandemic.

All of this.

Anyone can ask. The only people that could 'demand' would be someone in SUCH a specialist role they know that only they could do it.

Supply and demand is a thing.

But equally, I wonder why any employer would want to limit the pool of people they recruit from to people who want to commute in to an office every day if there is no real reason to in the role.

Of course pretending to work whilst looking after small dc is never acceptable.

I suspect you’re at least partially right - that the “I get sooooo much more done at home” crowd aren’t being 100% honest, or kidding themselves.

I wonder if we wont see more remote working in the public sector as an austerity measure. Which is what kicked it all off in the 2010s. Premises are expensive.

My dh has been job hunting. The majority of jobs now state hybrid working. Very few are fully remote nowadays.

Public sector are more in the office than most. Generally 60%.

In answer to OP’s question - no you aren’t remotely unreasonable.

Why people assumed WFH was forever and moved out of London - as you say, taking London salaries and paying countryside prices. Not to mention the lovely surroundings .

Its very annoying when you did what you were meant to do - stayed within easy travel distance, able to come into the office much of the time etc - and then people who just took it upon themselves to move now say “oh but I live so far away” - you decided to move there!

Yep! The rest is hot takes, frequently badly informed.

I agree with you @JacquesHarlow I work in a job which requires in person at scheduled times, but can be flexible in other ways. However, the team works best when we are all present, in person and can collaborate more quickly, more creatively and more productively in person.

But I have colleagues who are not only trying to maintain much more hybrid modes by living 2 hours away - some are living on other continents, and moaning about being expected to live in England 9 months of the year ...

I think people are taking the piss.

im in a minority but imo an office job is an office job and besides emergencies you should be at your desk in your office.

It's a question of the balance of power between employers and employees. That's all.