Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home

What is wrong with being the following:

1. OLD
2. WHITE
3. MALE

ABSOLUTLY NOTHING!

My dad is an old white male and one day, my husband and son will be old white males.

Should I start despising them now?

Yes, everyone who has a white male in their life-treat them and their opinions as if they are worthless. Use things they cannot change against them. Listen to anyone, anyone at all, who is not old, white or male. Despise your own family.

I sincerely hope people won't do this-apart from few self haters.

There is nothing wrong with white. There is nothing wrong with being old. There is nothing wrong with being male. In fact, hooray for all bloody three!

It isn’t just about output.

We have young people who are now socially isolated because they never make friends in the office. Plenty of MNers who now feel stressed or anxious if required to go into a workplace,

Lockdown turned many people into anxious recluses and in some cases WFH had exacerbated it.

Young people and junior employees also miss out on the wider experience and learning that is gained from being in the same environment, hearing conversations , seeing how more experienced people handle things etc.

It’s lazy and simplistic to dismiss concerns about WFH as jealousy / grumpiness.

Yes

I thought he'd called for an end to the 'WFH culture' which is quite different to the end of WFH. That leaves it up to the employer to decide on the best option for the business.

How could they do that? HMRC have no way of knowing how many staff work from home.

Apart from the half a million civil servants they have control over and the possible implications to mental health.

For what it's worth i am completely in favour of wfh/ hybrid working

We can expect all we want, but as it stands women do the bulk of childcare and domestic tasks and are usually still expected to work. Forcing people to commute into the office is going to make women break sooner.

Perhaps first get men doing their share, and then come for working from home?

People wanting to avoid their kids and cheat in peace making up tall tales about wfh.

no one’s stopping you from going into the office if you want, there’s just not going to be as many in the captive audience to listen to you witty tales while they get on with their work.

everyone’s being so absurd. I’ve only worked at one 100% remote role and it was extremely lean and efficient and the got every single bit of their time out of people.

This in spades 👏

But again, this is where more flexible workplace policies help support that. If a man is able to wfh then he's maybe more able to do cleaning on his lunch or do the school run or take in the grocery shop at lunchtime etc. All of which would otherwise predominantly fall at female feet.

The flip side to this is that more often than the reverse, women are disproportionately let down by men and left in single parent circumstances. I'm a lone parent- I don't have the option to lean on a man to do his fair share, nor does any other widowed person, person who's partner is ill/disabled/ works away.

Most jobs are tracked, via KPIs, SLAs and Quality Assurance. If some jobs are not, that's a management issue, not a WFH issue.

I wonder what my Farage Fanboy husband thinks of this. He is currently sitting at his desk in the house in his dressing gown with the radio on comfortable as can be. He'll have just enjoyed a lunchtime nap...

Or are we putting women further behind in society by expecting yet more of them? Why are we not putting the same expectations on men with children?

I agree to an extent, however, we also need to recognise that things aren't the same as they were years ago.

It used to be that people could reasonably expect to buy a home near their families in the area they grew up where they had grandparents or relatives nearby to lean on for emergency childcare. Young adults now are no longer able to do this because of the ridiculous inflation in housing costs, meaning they've no choice but to commute for longer and move to areas where they've no support network and no village. So while paying through the nose for childcare fees (because of rising costs and in some areas lack of funded childcare hours or childcare strategy) they are left to manage any short notice parental caring responsibilities between them. Which is even harder for single/widowed parents. They still need to be able to sustain a job to pay their rising bills and keep their family out of poverty.

Obviously some jobs will lend themselves better to wfh than others, but in those situations I do think companies SHOULD prioritise staff care since staff are their best resource and can't pretend people to perform the way they could have years prior. My child was sick the other day and thankfully I did have a grandparent who could step in for the morning so I could complete all my morning tasks, but then I had to be available to my child all afternoon and once they went to bed I continued working until near midnight to ensure I got through everything I needed to and that I kept myself right with my hours.

Thankfully I have a wonderful staff support system within our smt who are very flexible and who look to my performance, kpis and overall performance rather than the minutiae of how i (as a sensible and capable adult) structure my day. As a lone parent I'd have to leave a job if they couldn't work with my flexibly. You can't expect people to work like they are child free and parent like they're a SAHM at the same time. No wonder we're all burning out!

They go hand in hand.

You literally just wrote humans can adapt back to on-site, ignoring those who cannot which are people with disabilities.

Every workplace does not consider those with wheelchairs or those who struggle with their mobility. You can become disabled at any age. Such groups still need to be able to make money and survive for obvious reasons.

Why are you choosing to believe they are not part of the conversation when they are likely one of the biggest groups effected if wfh wasn’t an option?

Then this would be a hybrid role which many if not the majority of wfh jobs are?

or choosing to work in a hybrid firm. WFH isn’t forced on companies it is a choice that each business makes themselves. It’s not a national mandate

I would think that for anyone who really thinks WFH has a detrimental effect on their roles then they would go into the office?

You say they can and are not restricted from doing so so why not?

If you feel they need to be forced to then that raises a lot of questions about the workers to be honest.

Public sector workers have statutory obligations to adhere to, as well as professional obligations to maintain their registrations which include self-awareness, seeking appropriate training, supervision etc.

If, as you state you are, a public sector worker who can go into the office but are not doing so but complaining it is affecting your roles, you need to take professional responsibility and go into the office that is available to you. Same applies to all of your colleagues.

You're held to a higher standard than many private sectors and should be doing what you need to do, not complaining that no-ones forcing you so why would you bother?

He also plans to review employment rights, my bet is that the mandatory minimum annual leave entitlement will be reduced. He will turn us into little America. He's already talking to anti-abortion groups to put this into place. I'm not sure why, (if he loves their system so much) he doesn't just fuck off over there!

Farage can GTF.

I never said it did. But there’s lots of data on the internet if you could be bothered to Google. I do think there’s a lot of nuance and it’s very complex though.

I don't think that decision is a Politicians call, its the employer. There are always people who take advantage of the system either working from home or in the office and they need to be routed out, and not spoil it for others.

I was a Civil Servant and the nature of my job meant my team were spread out nationally, I couldn't go into an office and sit with them. So I sat in my local office like Billy no mates. Most of the offices were open plan and the nature of my conversations was normally confidential so I had to book meeting rooms for most of the day when I was in office and so there was no socialising or team building from office attendance for me. I was supposed to spend 3 days in office and 2 working from home but the reality was that I was on site visits for those three in office days so wasn't with my normal team anyway.

But the government wanted us back in the office where possible to set an example to businesses and to support the local infrastructure i.e. shops, cafes, public transport etc. Well I was supporting shops and cafes, just in my own home neighbourhood when I worked from home and the public transport system isn't sufficiently funded to meet the workforces needs.

"People are only productive when working face-to-face in the office. "

Really? I'd like to see some reliable data on that. (But I doubt there is any).

WFH for a disability should be accommodated where practicable imho as it keeps people in work

Fuck off Nige

Nigel Farage is the perfect example of a career politican who is only interested in population demographics who he thinks can provide him with influence and lined pockets and he forgets that he's a public servant who lifts a salary paid for by the rest of the working public whom he is supposed to be serving. He doesn't bother to inform himself of how his theories could affect the rest of the population.

If more people were put out of work due to him ending working from home, he would absolutely advocate for cutting those same peoples benefits and then put blame on them for living in poverty as a result.

The man literally stuck his face on a double decker bus advocating all the money brexit would pay into the NHS and then the very next morning after it was announced he was on the morning news saying he never said that. And it makes perfect sense he's now weaponising asylum seekers and minority groups to scapegoat the blame for the fallout from his campaign.

He is an absolute piece of work who is too good at preying on social fears to turn people against each other because they're struggling. And meantime he grew up privileged, went to private school and was handed a job in the stockmarket at 18. Its beyond me how people are so willing to allow themselves to be led by someone like this.