To be so glad WFH became a thing (and to absolutely hate anyone who tries to curtail its availability)

100 per cent - well said @pinkpony88

In which case, the situation has nothing at all to do with wfh so isn’t relevant here.

Screaming is antisocial though, no matter what time of the day and regardless of wfh, night shift workers etc, unless you’re in danger. Don’t think most people want to curtail kids, but constant screaming isn’t a must.

In this situation you either suck it up and close the windows, or you go to an office. A co-working space if your employer doesn’t provide somewhere. It’s completely unfair to expect families to curtail their children’s play outside their own homes because you’re choosing to work from yours.

Currently on the train. Some unfortunate has been sick and I am hypervigilent because of a shouting man. The boy beside me stinks. Carrying a heavy laptop bag and a cold packed lunch. I have period cramp. It’s 45 minutes door to door and on my home days I’d be having a peaceful cup of coffee in my clean kitchen about now. My screeching colleague is also in today so I’ll be wearing Loops. Our boss likes the office freezing so also I’m in a big scarf. None of the above is beneficial to my working day, in fact the opposite tbqh. So thankful it’s only twice a week.

You can’t police other peoples noise during the day though!

One thing Im dreading when WFH during the school holidays on a dry day. As there are two families of kids that ride their bikes and microscooters up and down the residential car park outside my home, screaming all day.

A colleague on my team asked the children opposite her to keep the noise down. Their mother yelled at her saying that her DC have every right to scream. I think the mothers of the kids near me look like they have the same attitude problem.

What a nasty response. I wfh and love it but I don’t get the opportunity to do anything other than work. My workloads are too high. I get less done in the office because people chat there. The people who aren’t working wouldn’t be working if they were in an office either. There will always be people like that. They need managing as individuals not everyone punishing because of a few bad apples.
The issues with the public sector are largely to do with staffing levels due to cost cutting.

I work hybrid but really would like to work from home all the time. I enjoy the office but I struggle with the idea of commuting. It's so wasteful in time and resources.

I think it’s wonderful and remember saying this is making better financial sense for employers too back in 2016, while I was sitting next to my colleague who spent all her working hours on FaceTime and web browsing.

I stopped working before covid because I had dc and never went WFH though. I get judged by family who think it’s so easy nowadays with remote work you don’t need to stop working because of school runs and whatnot… However, whenever I looked it seems to be something available to existing employees only, not new…

call centre delays are rarely because of people wfh but rather cuts to staff. Call centre wfh jobs for the vast majority use strict tracking software, there is no nipping to put the washing on, you have to log out when you go to the loo and even that is timed

Has anyone mentioned how WFH can be invaluable if you're working internationally? In the past, monitoring or working with Asia or America entailed being in the office at truly unholy hours. Now, I can be at my desk and ready to hop on a call within 10 minutes of waking up. Or I can do my own thing, have dinner etc, then hop on a call with LA in the evening. It opens up so many more possibilities for international working.

(And rest assured that no one is taking the piss by making me work 10-hour days - the other benefit is that if my working day is centred around an American time zone, I'm probably not logging on at all until the UK afternoon. And if I've woken up in the small hours to talk to Japan, my working day ends at lunchtime.)

Heavens no, it can't possibly be anything to do with funding cuts!

But yes, it's interesting how many people's conception of remote work starts and ends at customer service. There are so many of us whose jobs simply do not involve taking phone calls from random members of the public.

@socialdilemmawhattodothe government are hoping to replace lot of these public sector jobs with AI in coming years so they will have plenty of time to do their washing when they’ve been made redundant.

Could it possibly be that well-publicised funding cuts in the public sector have a greater impact on efficiency than WFH?! Or are we doing that British thing of never blaming the system if someone, somewhere might be slacking off slightly.

Not that any of this is relevant to me as I don't work in any of the roles you mentioned. Please feel free to explain how my private-sector role - which both myself and my employer agree is best performed by me WFH - is an affront to your professional ethics.

How much more would you be willing to pay for the office based staff that you want? That's in tax for public sector, and in extra costs for private sector services that you use.

I agree with @Viviennemary. To answer your curt reply. What is immoral is the large number of employees who claim to be "working" from home, yet are clearly doing any thing but working. The delays in the public sector to DVLA, Tax, Land Registry etc outputs are disgraceful. No accountability or responsibility. The recent case in the Police with faking of keyboard activity. As a customer I would like the person I am talking to to deal with my call, not their dog, children, parcels etc. You , like many others on this thread, want wfh because you are doing house/life chores at the same time as your job. I don't want to pay for that - your convenience, not my service.

Agreed. If it’s been proven that the work can be done remotely, I struggle to take it seriously when leadership insist that office days are “necessary”. Why is it necessary? So that the Team Leader can go around leaving a packet of Haribo’s on everyone’s desk to celebrate 10 years since Julie from HR joined the company?!

They’ve presumably hired us as they trust us as a functioning, productive and professional adults. In my cell centre role, I answer 70 calls a day whether I’m at home or in the office. My stats and customer feedback are among the best in the team. Why the insistence that I come in twice a week when I’m already proven to be a reliable member of staff? There’s no operational need for it, Our department is so busy that even on office days we don’t have time to chat to our colleagues- we’re all snowed under with phone calls. The structure of the day is exactly the same on office days as it is on home days - you log in, take calls in between your breaks and then log off. Any team meetings or trainings are held over Teams with everyone wearing headsets, even if we’re all sat next to each other in the office. When I need support from a manager on a complex call, I have to message them on Teams, even if they are sat next to me in the office! This is so we have a “record” of everything. It’s fecking ridiculous.

Then you have incidents with people running in who come in 20 minutes late breathless and looking disheveled because the train got delayed, and they get bollocked and told “you need to get an earlier train” (despite already leaving the house well over an hour before the shift starts, and if the train is only once every hour like mine is then they’d have to leave the house 2 hours before and hang around to avoid being late). This reduces morale because the staff member knows damn well their job can be done from home as they do it 3x a week without issue.

In a business where there is a genuine operational need for some days to be in office, then I understand it completely. I also understand if companies want people in during the probation period. But I think in cases when the work can be done from home, and there’s no genuine operational need for people to be in the office, the apron strings should be cut somewhat. If the person’s performance drops (this can be monitored through systems), then by all means maybe call them back in for a bit.

If you want me in once a month to touch base and make sure I’m still around and haven’t buggered off to the Maldives and trained an AI to do my job, then fair enough. But you don’t need to see me twice a week.

Employees appreciate being treated like adults, not schoolchildren.

Do you know why there is an 8 hour day?

Employers used to routinely make people work for much longer shifts. Limits to work days were in large part in response to workers rights campaigns and advocacy - that was deemed long enough for workday that an employer could afford to pay an amount that could support a person to live, while also allowing workers to have reasonable home and personal lives.

Employers are generally paying for your time. If you work less, they will then want to pay you less. No one wants to pay a full days wage for 4 hours of work.

You are speaking like a child.

Do you think bean tinners love that work and chose it because they really feel fulfilled by it? Dreamed of tinning more beans than anyone ever, in their youth?

Most of them do it because it's the work they can get, it's regular, and factory work is usually reasonably remunerated with pretty good benefits. But it also typically involves boredom, a lot of standing, very long shifts, among other things.

Similarly, you can take any job available to you that meets your preferences, but if there is not a job that meets your preferences, then you will have to take what is available, unless you are very lucky and don't really need the money.

And employers do not need to offer wfh jobs if they don't think it is good for their business.

If you think you can run a company better, you can become self-employed and set your own terms. But you can't make someone create a job according to your personal preferences.

So very true and agree fully! My role involves travel but my diary is mostly mine to plan. I try to condense my travel into a couple of days, which means they are fast paced, and then have my other days WFH to record everything and write up etc. it’s life changing for me. I wouldn’t be able to work full time otherwise. I’m so much more productive, my work life balance is much better, I eat better etc.

YABU.

It's great if this has worked out well for you.

But the person who pays you to work is entirely within their rights to have the job located in a particular place according to their own preferences and what they see to be the best interests of their business.