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

Completely agree.

I'm the same.
Have mostly wfh for over 15 years and am an extremely sociable person.
I'm out and about many times a week in the evenings and at weekends.
But I like to concentrate when at work, and I like the fact I gain about 2.5 hours a day by not having to travel to the office (therefore freeing up more time for socialising with people).
My friend wfh and meets up with a group who all walk their dogs together over the lunchtime.

Completely inaccurate thing to say @TodaRythm

I manage a team who are office based and who wfh. I fully support the flexibility we offer but it’s not for me. I really don’t enjoy wfh.

Or work in a global role across multiple timezones and being home based makes it possible in a way that being in an office doesn't. If I go to an office, I am not booting my laptop back up again to get on any evening Teams calls when I get home. Nor will I be working beyond my core hours. The company get a lot more out of me this way.

It also allows me time to have a second community based role, which requires a lot of in person meetings.

But, yeah, we are all asocial weirdos.

Couldn't be further from the truth, i'm the most sociable person you can imagine, i'm out 5 nights week engaging in people focussed hobbies.
I just don't want to work in an office with people I wouldn't chose to be with or get up 2 hours earlier than I do now to spend hours a day sitting in traffic to get there.

I work from home about one day a week and rally love it - because it’s a little treat. I get an extra hour in bed, get to stick the washing machine on while I work and get to schedule parcels etc for that day.

Any more than one day a week would start to drive me mad though. I hear a lot more about what is going on if I am in the office. And so many meetings are going back to in person it’s just not possible for me to be home more than one day a week.

I would feel very isolated being home all day every day. But I guess we are all different

I'm a hybrid worker but WFH 95% of the time. I love it; sit in my pyjamas, can just crack on with my work and don't get sucked into office politics or gossip. Suits me as I am quite antisocial.

I’ve been fully remote for over 15 years now. I was hybrid before that.

being a fully remote worker has not hurt my career advancement. I am a preeminent expert in my field.

I had a private office when I was in the building. I was still constantly in a state of fight or flight. I hated every single minute.

In person meetings are not more productive than zoom. they are stressful torture sessions where you can’t control the temperature, have to worry about every aspect of your body language, not just what shows on camera, and have to deal with more sounds.

something as simple as walking to use the loo or going to get some water means thinking about the million little social niceties that one must consider while encountering other people.

if you haven’t guessed already, I am autistic and offices are hell on earth. I put up with them for years because it was a necessity, but life fully remote is so much better.

I'm sure I read somewhere that it's possible to engage face to face with people who don't work at the same place as you.

We have had lots of new starters since. They learn by having processes in place to help them learn remotely? I guess it depends on the role but we do a lot of working together on calls (not just for newbies) sometimes for the entire day. They have a structured learning path, a buddy, slack, regular check-ins. If someone was left to just sit at home and expected to ask when they needed help then of course they wouldn’t cope - but that’s what I mean by processes not being well thought through

Think your 3rd para is very right. I know a lot of MN tends to favour hybrid, and I can see how that suits the people it suits. But it can sometimes be the worst of both worlds as well.

You still have to live within commuting distance of work- once a fortnight admittedly means you can be further away than daily, but it still means both employees and employers shrink their pool. It excludes people with structural barriers to working in person, so the recruitment and wider societal benefits don't kick in. But it's still insufficient for the ones who really want to be physically around others when they work.

Absolutely love it, have WFH flexibly for over 20 years with last 2 employers, although I do client visits in health and social care settings.
I couldn't waste years of my life sitting in rush hour traffic just to do a job
I go to the gym in my lunch break, get jobs done at home that i'd have to take annual leave for. I dont miss office life at all.

It suits DH but I did it for a few months during COVID and hated it. It wasn't early lockdown either. It was at the point where you could go out to eat or socialise in 6s or something - not a case where if I'd been able to get out I would have liked it more!

I hate WFH, it was OK in Covid when my husband and I worked in the same room, but working from home I find it too easy to get distracted and barely move.

I am so glad I can work in the office every day, I walk in and have lunch with colleagues, or go for a run. I couldn't work in a cafe or a library because I need two screens, my sit/stand desk and a proper chair!

"It’s annoying because I have an office 10 mins away that I could (and do!) go to, but nobody else goes so it’s pointless!"

I work from home 80% of the month, so one office day a fortnight mandated by the very outgoing social butterfly that is the managing director at my work.

I do think forcing something through that some people like and others don't like will lead to resignations either way. Team A wants office days, team B wants WFH, then the managing director decides to mandate an office day once a fortnight in an effort to appease enough people but piss off a small number of other people. That's the democratic way (ignore the other people who disagree because they can always leave and probably will, we'll replace them), instead of the populist way (let individuals decide where they want to work because we care for our employees).

I've been at my place of work for 11 years. 8 of those years spent commuting and sitting in an office for 8 hours a day. Pure drudgery for a bit of money each month. No life. Go to the office, push a few buttons, listen to a buzzword bonanza, try not to nod off, come home, eat, sleep and repeat the process again the next day. Then lockdowns hit, remote work became mandatory. Massive relief for me. Bit of a nightmare for the people that made my job miserable.

How will new starters and those in their first or second job learn? They need in-person interaction which means other people need to be there.

Remote works fine for those who’ve been there for ages or who are very experienced. How did you learn? Through the others around you.

I pay for a co working session ace once or twice a week. I pay for it myself so I obviously think it's worth it.
It's a small place so you see some of the same people and everyone is always up for a 5 minute chat over making coffee so I get some socialising

I’m fully remote and it works well. But the nature of my job means I go to in-person meetings a couple of times a week.
We do have an office but the CEO announced only last week it’s got to go because it costs a fortune and no one uses it. Not even her!

But collaboration and learning together is SO important! It’s how most of us learned our trade and expanded our experience beyond our job description.

The problem with saying you can go in 2/3 times a week is that people go on different times and days so you end up working alone in a building which is a waste of time.

I think they should mandate teams to go in on set days to make it work better.

I’m introverted but don’t like WFH much. What do you get out of a co-working space? If you do completely different jobs, with different schedules and confidentiality, I’m struggling to see how that’s not just like WFH but in a place you can’t concentrate in.

For me, despite being introverted, I miss the opportunity to build relationships, where you can then have a joke and hear about Sallys husbands woes and her aunts latest holiday (for example). I don’t think I’d get anything out of sitting with strangers in a cafe environment.

My job became fully remote just over a year ago. Hated it. Left and now do 3 days in the office, which I think is ideal.
I've had mixed remote teams most of the last 20 years and, as a manager, it's hard work to keep those teams going well

I love remote working, but we have monthly get together and I think it’s the perfect combo. I would hate to be forced into the office because of the commute and time missed at home with kids, hobbies, friends etc. However, there are people who love being around people and that’s fine. I think hybrid should be an office available for people to go in as they choose and remote practices to allow those how work best at home to do so. I really dislike enforcing people in 3+ days per week just to fill the office or for ‘collaboration’ as I just think it’s a lack of thought put into remote practices which are the way of the future surely.

YA neither BU nor NBU.
Individuals feel differently.

There are lots of positives for so many people, but others don't enjoy it.

That's going to depend on combinations of all sorts of things - including your job, you household set up, your self discipline, your personality, your (previous) commute, your social life.

I'm in the office one day a week and that's enough for me. Some weeks it's more than enough. I get much less work done in the office but I suppose it does force me to socialise. In the sense that it forces me to listen to my colleagues talk solidly about their kids for 8 hours.

If you're someone who needs more face to face contact then of course YANBU to not understand the appeal of WFH. I think the media is very all or nothing about it, rather than accepting that it works for some of us and not others.

Exactly. I left a role because my employer was making changes so that my position would be WFH in the mid 2010s. Fast forward to lockdowns and was forced to WFH, it was absolute hell for me for a myriad of reasons but the critical ones are that it doesn’t suit how I work, what I do, and my personality. Each to their own.