Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home

It is interesting how everyone seems to be a Farage fan (if you believe the media).

But when an actually policy is announced (which is less often than you think. I mean what are Reforms ideological drivers ?) it seems it's shit.

Are they still committed to rolling back the horror of metrication ?

Farage must be judging everybody by his own standards, assuming we all skive as much as he does, given half the chance.

That and his billionaire cronies are sore because they're losing out on commercial rent incomes from their office blocks.

He must be thinking that his core voter base will find this message appealing, as it taps into that resentful idea of somebody else is getting something I'm not, which he's so proficient at playing on - like white van man is thinking 'well if I can't work from home, why should anyone else'.

2020 not really a good year to focus on, given for many organisations they were effectively forced to WFH with zero notice or planning. In a global pandemic.

Nigel Farage is akin to Donald Trump and the ilk. Return to "traditional values" aka "get women back in the kitchen where they belong". WFH is an absolute boon for working parents, and a full time return to the office after all this time, when the childcare supports have mainly fallen away and no longer exist due to lack of need (be that formal, paid childcare, or families moving away from grandparents to cheaper parts of the country), would leave many parents (read: mothers) up a shitty creek without a paddle. Ultimately, they will be forced out of their jobs.

Nigel Farage and Reform are beyond vile and will work fast to crash the country for their own personal benefit.

Pot kettle. He rarely turns up to any of his jobs. He’s a workshy dinosaur.

I'm in a Civil Service dept and all our training and consolidation is office based. You only work from home with a buddy on teams when you're confident.

It works well.

Thing is, in the business sector, there obviously is doubt about whether the things you believe to be the case actually are the case. Because no business is going to operate a model that will essentially reduce its profit.
If banking is allowing home working, then its safe to assume someone has done a careful cost benefit analysis already and decided its a proftable model.
If big business suddenly decides office based working is in its interests, then WFH days are numbered in that sector. But unless that point is reached, what some members of the general public may believe or what Farage brays about is irrelevant.

This was my thought too

AIBU for thinking this idea is just bonkers and totally at odds with how most of the workforce actually wants to work now?

I agree with you here. Fuck Farage!

I can only think it appeals to the "pull the ladder up" generation. Don't give two fucks about anyone else as long as they are comfortable or those that are unable to wfh and want everyone else to be as miserable as them.

I do think this one is quite ironic though. The one major issue with WFH is not to do with productivity, or working hard or anything. It’s that we trained younger generations and mentored them informally by working in person.

IMO it’s actually the current working generation who are now becoming the pull the ladder up generation because yes we are choosing comfort and our benefits after benefiting from that arrangement - so it is us who are pulling the ladder. Right when AI is coming in an young workers being laid off left right and centre.

This is the man with the biggest double standards and largest lack of integrity ever to walk the earth.

No - he really is second rate in everything

This is where I am at. Totally outside the remit of government to dictate how businesses and their employees contract to conduct themselves. They can encourage more hybrid and office based working by lowering business rates on commercial properties, reducing the cost of commuting and increasing efficiency of rail/public transport - and indeed our roads - but to believe you have any power beyond that is farcical. Every time he opens his mouth he proves how unfit for government he is.

That said, I thought Trump had done the same and no one would vote for him again. Stupidity seems to be epidemic at the moment.

Nobody answered before WFH, it's always been the case for years and years that 'we're experiencing unusually high call volumes, and wait times are longer than usual....' - on repeat, every time you call, so just normal call volumes they should have accounted for, but are too tight and greedy to staff up properly.

I agree that for most places wait times are unacceptably long (especially HMRC), but this isn't new.

In any case, call centre staff are subject to highly intrusive monitoring and ambitious targets, this doesn't alter depending on their location, it can be done for those working at home as easily as those in the office.

My dad worked from home from 1997 until he retired. His multinational corporation got rid of its office in our home town because it wasn't financially viable to have it. He was very senior and extremely productive!

I don’t care what Farage thinks but companies are pushing for more people to go back to the office and they are not doing it because they are dinosaurs, they are doing it because productivity is down.

Hmmm.

3 companies I have worked for since 2020 have all openly stated they could not gauge what effect the pandemic enforcing WFH had on their productivity metrics.

I notice - with interest - that a lot of "productivity" (deliberately) excludes recruitment. Which disguises the fact that employer inflexibility is a driver in staff turnover. The magic of cost centres.

But isn't that something those companies should be performance managing? Why would a government edict about how organisations should manage their staff be the answer?

A man who was never in his office asks everyone to go back to the office. Also known as "Farage Fromage" the man who fought all his life to take us out of the EU while living in France with his German girlfriend, driving a Volvo, eating baguettes for breakfast and making sure his kids got European passports. Every now and then he flies to the UK, puts on his tweed jacket, calls the press and has a photo op in the local pub then flies home back to France.

This is the man with the biggest double standards and largest lack of integrity ever to walk the earth. And he wants to become PM.

I don't think it's a real policy, just a dog whistle to belligerent supporters who are either a) older and retired/near retirement or b) younger, but in squeezed professions that don't benefit from WFH.

I dont see what its got to do with him?

Businesses are free to run themselves how they want to attract to and retain staff. If it doesn't work for them, they wont do it.

If he wants to have an opinion on how government employees are employed - he probably needs afew more seats.

my first thought too

But he’s not saying it because he thinks it, he thinks his voters want to hear it. My dad would have been a reform voter I bet, if you did anything that was office based or not manual then it wasn’t a proper job in his opinion.

it’s just like the tories courted the pensioners vote and Zack thingy is standing on Palestine but obviously not because that way he will get Muslim votes, oh no definitely not.

I have a friend who hasn't worked for decades (used to have a wealthy husband, now a widow). She is an avid Daily Fail reader (we don't discuss politics), and she seems to have developed strong opinions about WFH. It would be funny if it wasn't sad she is falling for the propaganda she reads.

I remind her I am fully remote and flat out most days in my onerous job. If I were unproductive, my performance would be managed by my company and, if no improvement, I would be let go.

The faux concern and frothing around WFH is so transparently pushed by those missing out on a full workforce physically present in the office (landlords etc).

Presumably Fartage is playing on the prejudices about cushy WFH skivers to those who can't work from home while supporting his landowning mates - and people fall for it.

In fairness we accountants were told HMRCs move to working from home was the cause of long delays and backlogs in 2020. I don’t think it’s the case now though.

All this bullshit is the death cry of dinosaurs. We are living through the old guard VIOLENTLY rejecting change. They will die soon and the world will become sane again.

He's just an old, scared dinosaur.

I started working from home some of the time in 2011. When do you think working from home started? I had a completely WFH job in 2014.

Plus I haven't rung a call centre in ten years.

How much do you think the government would have to spend to make sure that everyone in the civil service has a desk five days a week? They started to cut desks so that people had to work from home some of the week in the 2010s.

With a lot less tax take as many high earners who WFH part of the time will have left the country to work somewhere which allows WFH and many women will have to work part time or give up work due to their caring responsibilities - particularly those with children AND elderly parents.

Don't kid yourself.