AIBU To Think Remote Work Isn't Sustainable?

In what world is a 40 mile journey a “super long commute”? That’s just ridiculous.

Yes and no. I feel at my time of life the negatives of WFH outweigh the negatives of commuting and working in an open plan office. I start my working day feeling more refreshed and I hated working in an open plan office.

But I miss day to day simple work friendships where you just start chatting about last night's TV or dinner or your latest health kick or get recommendations for places to eat, films to watch, someone notices your new glasses or new shoes, ..... that kind of thing.

It must be hard for young people. My DD is in a new graduate role and things have got better for her since her employer mandated everyone being in the office the same 3 days per week.

Couldn't disagree more, the organisation I work for is over 20 years old and over 3/4 of our staff are fully remote - I have been fully remote since 2018. I would never choose to go back to the office WFH makes work way easier to compartmentalise for me as I always found office politics stressful.

"we think we are happier"

Glad you're here to let us know that we are not actually happier working from home, we just think we are.

Yeah I think it’s really personality dependent. I get my social fill outside of work. I have a lot of friends who I see on a weekly basis, I volunteer, I do exercise classes with friends. I don’t really feel the absence of face to face social interaction of work as I have so much of it elsewhere. I am also more on the introvert side so work is a chance for me to recover socially!

But for other people work is a huge part of their day to day social engagement. I have colleagues who choose to work full time in the office for that reason (whereas I work always from home).

I went from a hybrid role with super long commute (40miles each way) to fully WFH and I do think I will look for something else hybrid once DC is in high school. I don’t think that’s typical of WFH. All my colleagues really enjoy it but it does make me quite lonely and this is now translating into none work life where I don’t like leaving the house some days. Being fully remote for me isn’t sustainable but at this point of my life I am just muddling through while DC finishes primary school. The WFH benefits for my family at this time are good. Ive joined the gym to motivate me a bit. Also not spending hours on the motorway each week commuting is a massive bonus. For now im sucking it up. OP you aren’t being unreasonable if you mean unsustainable for yourself but you are BU if you mean across the workforce. Remote working can make working more accessible

I have said a couple of times that I am talking from my experience and with no authority. I have made that explicit. So I will step away from answering you now as you seem intent on arguing with me about things I haven't said.

It’s perfectly sustainable for me, I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. I can get far more work done working at home in the quiet than o could in an office. I don’t use work time for socialising, I do that after work.

Which is fine. You are allowed speak for your experience of WFH and what works for you. You have no authority to speak on others' experience and what does or doesn't work for them.

Work from home is amazing for my autistic sister. Its allowed her to flourish in her career, where working from the office would destroy her. The lighting, the noise, the people. Its too much alongside her workload.

Plenty of disabled people find working from home life changing. I think a future where what works best for the individual employee makes sense.

No. I'm not. I wfh and personally have no problem not having much contact with colleagues or other people. As I said, I have made it clear that I am talking generally about isolation and with no authority on the subject. I can see that for some people it is a much preferable situation. There is no arrogance involved or intended in my answer. I am giving my opinion on a site for opinions and chat.

Thank you Dr Freud.

Could you provide your link to your research study that demonstrates that a reluctance to be in the office is due to having mental health issues?

Of course nuance goes over the head of most!

What do you mean by this?

Speaking for myself hybrid is perfect. We have one day a week where the whole team are in so we can have a proper in person catch up and tbh that’s the day we get the least done because we’re all nattering

Then we totally the other days so there’s always a couple of people on the office and the rest at home. Our contracts are 50% in office 50% at home so it’s 3/2 with alternate weeks being 3 in office then the other weeks 2 - it’s worked perfectly for 5 years and no plans to change.

it’s very frustrating doing a piece of work needing someone’s input to find them not at their desk and no idea when they will be .

And thats just as likely if not more likely to happen if people are in the office?!?

At least with Teams or Zoom you can pop a message in, or an alert for status change and you'll know when they are around

I completely agree with this.

There is merit in some facetime in work and I would not want to work in a wholly remote environment.

But there’s something very ugly about the way certain groups of men are weaponising remote work to basically reinstate family unfriendly work practices.

Thousands of women have been empowered to work in a way that suits their family life and have thus been allowed to remain in their jobs. Why would you want to take this away just for the theatre of making people go into an office?

There’s a clear business case for remote work improving productivity in many industries.

The only plausible reason for wanting to remove this is because certain sorts of men don’t want women to have the flexibility to compete with them in work. I’m looking at Farage and his henchmen. He worked in the City at a time when sexual discrimination was rife and normal and obviously he wants to turn back the clock. Don’t fall for it.

I am in the office 100% of the time (unless logging in outside working hours), some people do hybrid and some are also in 100%, one is fully remote and some are not far off A few years down the line from covid I can see that for some people it is healthier to be in the office all or most of the time and some people are more productive in the office and some wfh.

However, I know my strongest relationships now are with those who are in the office. It is about a shared experience. The only ones with mental health issues are the ones who are reluctant to be in the office whether that is cause or symptom, I can't be sure. It is also about learning from one another and there are more missed opportunities for that now.

Working from home does not = isolation. Maybe for people who live alone and don't have any friends, but I would say it is a minority of people who rely solely on work for their relationships and they could seek out non-work from home roles if that is what they needed.

But without realising it, you are still being arrogant.

Isolation is a thing some people want, rightly or wrongly.

You are essentially saying everybody is a social being.

Introverts draw their energy from their own company for example. Are you suggesting your blanket statement applies to them also?

I absolutely agree it’s not sustainable. I really worry for young people, as so much of how you learn is observing others.
I also wouldn’t want to go back to where we were when my kids were in nursery and I wasn’t allowed to work from home at all. I think we need a better balance.

Personally I am so much better off socially and emotionally without the enormous drain and pressures involved in office drama and politics. I'm quite a people-orientated person and it's only now (a few years on) that I can see how much of my 20s and 30s were diverted from their 'proper course' because I allowed my choices to be influenced so much by the people around me.
Because I worked full time, 'the people around me' meant 'colleagues' (i.e. people who you spend very intense times with, but who ultimately have no long term investment in each other). Now working part time and remotely, the people I spend the most time with are family and friends, which is so much better for me and I've been able to pursue the things that have always mattered to me instead of them being a tiny part of the week.

@Betterbeanon78 I said being isolated isn't generally good for people's mental health. I'm not claiming any higher authority on the subject, but I think social isolation is usually not considered ideal. Read my whole post, I've talked about the positives of working from home as well as the potential negatives; there is nothing authoritarian about my post just a balanced opinion. You, of course, can counter that with your own one.

Indeed. It is also an extremely arrogant post by the OP i.e. "WFH doesn't work for me so therefore it isn't sustainable".

Don't you just love those who speak for other people?

Have put YABU as it depends on the job.

I can see why it could impact mental health if not seeing or speaking to colleagues at all and if that’s the case in your role then would you consider finding a job that is more office based?

I work mostly from home but at least a day or sometimes two a week in the office but in my job I speak to people all through the day on teams and then have coffee on the office days or sometimes meet colleagues at a cafe if we’ve not got anything confidential going on that others could hear and we work together there for day a morning then work from home

We are very productive and actually rented out a chunk of our office space to other businesses so we couldn’t all fit in the building full time now if asked to. It saved lots of money for the business which has been used for other things.

I could see this working in the long term as we work hard and if anyone were to slack off at home it would be very quickly noticed!

I know everyone who enjoys WFH says they are “more productive” etc, but that is not my experience. We trialed it for 6 months and productivity fell off a cliff. Wasn’t sustainable for us so we brought everyone back to the office. Problem solved.
That said, a lot of our client base still WFH and without being too outing, key markers of productivity and response times from clients are STILL about 40% less than they were before WFH started. That is just a fact. So I agree, it isn’t sustainable.