To struggle to see the appeal of full time remote working?

I don’t think its as simple as extroverts love working in the office and introverts love working from home.

I’m somewhere in the middle but sociable and with extrovert tendencies but I love working from home.

Career starters need some face to face interaction but otherwise I think office life is generally wasteful and draining.

I get nothing at all done in the office due to incessant chatter and shonky technology. Add in a commute of an hour each way its just an incredibly inefficient way to work.

The supposed “sociability” of office life is vastly overstated in my opinion. It’s pretty low grade social stuff and the faff and stress isn’t worth it.

I think it depends on your phase of life. We never went back after the pandemic, and I really enjoy being able to hang a load of laundry over lunch, to put together a healthy lunch from the fridge, the reduced cost on transportation, the time saved in the mornings and evenings by not commuting, being around for deliveries or tradespeople, and being home when the kids get in from school. I’m an introvert, so it suits me well. I’m also not young, so I’m not relying on learning from older colleagues. I can go into the office if I want to, and I have done when our internet went down, but I sat in an empty office space by myself all day, which was horrible. So even if I wanted the watercooler chat, I wouldn’t get any if I went into the office.

Bottom line is - I don’t want to find a new job where I’m in the office, so I’m staying put.

yanbu. Each to their own.

I love home working. I drop my ds at the school bus, no pressure to be in two places at once.
No time wasted commuting. No £260 a month train ticket. No stupid money wasted buying a sandwich. I can put supper in the slow cooker at lunchtime so it's ready at 6pm. More time saved.

I'm £400 a month better off and have 4 hours a day more free time. And I am much less stressed.

i dont think it is healthy

Well yeah, if you need to collaborate accross countries i am sure its more efficient than getting on a plane everytime..but as someone who experienced the way things worked before the pandemic and thevway they worked after i can see that there are real problems with this satellite way of working.
I dont mean that people are sat home slacking on purpose- most arent. It’s more a question of communication. As another poster mentioned, it’s about nuance and relationships.
I’m managing a project, and have been chasing something from a notoriously taciturn member of a digital function.
I happened to bump into her in the kitchen at work, had a chat while we were making tea, and mentioned the specs she had promised to look at. We found some time to sit at a desk and look them over. If we had both been at home I would have sent a Teams asking if she had had a chance to look at them. She would have said “ not yet” and I would have had to escalate to get it done. Delays and faffing waste vast amounts of public money.
I think a lot of things that people like about remote working ( being left alone, not having to interact) are damaging to effective running of organisations, and damaging to our ability to connect as humans.

I do think hybrid is a better option

2 days in the office

I work from home permanently and have done for 3 years. Previously I travelled a lot and would spend a good 2 hours on the road going to and from offices, I never even considered WFH until this job but I absolutely love it, I was an extrovert but now I've gone the opposite way (I've also learnt to enjoy my own company and not feel the need to be around people all the time) and that suits me perfectly fine. I still see my friends handful of times a month but I love being at home. My partner finds it crazy that I sometimes won't leave the house for 5 days but it hasn't impacted my mental health or anything. I have flexibility and I just really really love being able to get up at 7:30am, enjoy a coffee in my pjs, get showered and dressed and start my working day without getting up at 6am, rushing around and driving an hour to work to have to spend 8 hours talking to people I have nothing in common with. It's not for everyone though.

I do however, think it's awful for building friendships and learning to socialise for youngsters. From 18-25 I had some brilliant times working in an office surrounded by different people, a good 8 years but I've had my time doing that. I think that's why now young adults struggle to form friendships and are so socially awkward because all they've known is working from home and being shut away from society.

I worked for a huge global organisation- we had better collaboration across countries because of modern technology.

Our public services are not performing well because of constant cutbacks, not because some people work from home.

that is very rare. Only for an all hands sort of thing. For project meetings, no one bothers to book conference rooms anymore. Even if people are in the same building, they stay in their individual offices and attend virtually.

I didn't realise you were talking about huge organisations. I've only worked for smaller organisations, usually with academia, with many overseas workers.
WFH hasn't been problematic at all from what I've seen.

I much prefer wfh. I don’t have any problem switching off between work/home. I don’t have teams or e-mail on my personal device. When I log off for the day/weekend/time off that’s it done! I don’t log back in unless it’s urgent.

I’ve always found fully remote (unless the entire dept is) are always at least a step behind. With all the best will in the will, unless your team have the exact same access points, they will miss out. It bugs me. I have two team member, one which I know would be the best team member and my replacement when I’m promoted, and another who is good, but still needs work. Needs work (who I adore and is capable) is absolutely the one who will be promoted because of things he’s picked up by being around people. Remote chap, with the same access as ‘needs work’ would be simply amazing. But he misses out on nuance and relationships.

Surely the argument to bring public service workers back into the office is because the taxpayer is funding them? The fact some civil servants have admitted anonymously to using mouse jigglers to keep the performance stats clean is pretty damning.

Public services were never meant to run efficiently anyway, but that's a different subject altogether.

No huge organisation can be properly managed when its workers are siloed, sat in their houses and only interacting on screens. Do you think our public services are running well?

Your business doesn’t seem well managed. Hybrid working can and does work very well for a lot.

I hate hybrid working, it really is the worst of both worlds. Being in the office when most of my colleagues are elsewhere, stupid meetings when some of you are there and 3 people “couldn’t” come so they are on a screen (but everyone forgets they are there anyway).
Silo working when you need decisions/ answers from people and they go “ let’s take this offline” so you don’t actually get anywhere.
Endless emails and Teams chats instead of just walking up to someone’s desk.
Work anxiety infiltrating your living space, eating too many snacks, getting fat.
Also, aside from what works or doesn’t for individuals, I don’t actually think business or organisations operate effectively this way. I work in the public sector and I think it’s part of the reason public services and projects are so inefficient. Add to that the multiple people disappearing during school holidays because they wfh and don’t think they need childcare.., it might be marvellous for them, and they might think they are doing a great job, but they often really are not!

That aside, if home working isn't for you that's fine too.

I love remote working. It's great not wasting an hour and a half driving every day and I love being able to make a 'real' coffee and not worry about leaving the dog. Our team all prefer remote working and we make good use of teams chat and meetings.

I really hate going into the office now because our team no longer has our own office and this means when we do go in, we can end up sat with other teams which generally means you loose that benefit of chatting/bouncing ideas off each other and everyone is quiet. Also as a lot of meetings take place via teams, so lots of people are having meetings with headphones on trying not to disturb anyone else.

Sounds like you need the human interaction. I’m kind of the same - much prefer being at an office sometimes though enjoyed Mon/Fri at home.

The main advantage of home working for me was the lack of commute though… it gave me so much life back. My commute was 80 mins each way so I gained 3 hours of my day back when I worked from home. And it cost me £16 a day to go in… so I saved there too

I have done it for over 5 years now and I hate it. It has ruined my MH and I am changing careers to get out. I am not particularly extroverted either but humans are made for social connection. Especially if you are doing a more stressful role.

I have been WFH for a year after 20 years of commuting. There are positives. I have more energy to do things in the evenings and I can sleep in later and exercise more, so I feel less stressed. But even with that I’m not sure it’s good for me. I’m quite introverted but I need more interaction than my new job gives me. It is very difficult to get to know colleagues in more than a superficial way over Teams.

I WFH and love it. I had a horrible commute and every day I’m thankful I don’t have to suffer that any more. My job is quite flexible so I get to take the dog out for an hour, or pop to the gym. I’m far healthier WFH.

I prefer hybrid, even though I would call myself an introvert.

I was 40% in the office until recently, now 60%. I thought I’d hate being in the office more but actually I like it!

Same. I love it. I get so much done and at the end of a stressful day, I just go sit on my couch.

I go in to the office from time to time, but it’s exhausting.

I love it but I’m only a few years from retirement so it’s great to slow down by missing the commute , I feel I get more work done without ‘office’ interruptions. Also guess I’m getting more anti social as I get older