To feel relieved that flexible working might be on the agenda again?

And the hundreds of thousands of downloads of mouse wiggling software does rather suggest people deliberately take the piss.

The one person who WFH in my team is an utter waste of skin. He's slightly better in the office because there's eyes on. We can't sack him. The only hard work he does is to make sure of that.

Can I just tell you - pension companies are often landlords. We love the notion that landlords are remote baddies. In reality they might be your pension scheme. So clearly everyone has an interest in pension funds succeeding.

Then there’s office support services. No one wfh ever ever thinks about the lowest paid cleaning offices and replenishing water coolers and supplying lunches. Of course not - they are expendable aren’t they? One person’s freedom is another persons lost income.

I think it's the right thing for young people at the start of their careers - they need that cameraderie and mentorship - but for older people who can work autonomously, commuting to an office (other than for occasional meetings) is just an expensive and pointless hassle

The trouble is that those two things are incompatible. Who’s going to provide mentorship if experienced workers aren’t in the office?

People who WFH (or want to) always claim that they are far more productive at home, but many, many corporations have now looked at the actual data on this given the time that has elapsed since it was widely introduced and the data overwhelmingly shows otherwise. It’s not just a few slackers ruining it for everyone, despite what you might claim. WFH has huge benefits for employees but not employers, hence those employers that can are now insisting that everyone gets back to the office. Other than the government obviously, who continue to waste tax payers money and tolerate the bare minimum level of productivity in their employees.

I think you need a year.

I think there is a balance to be struck.

New staff and junior trainees really benefit from being in the office and learning first hand from other staff.

Staff can also really benefit from the flexibility to manage their days a bit more - financially, time-wise, mental-health wise etc.

I think a hybrid approach of 2-4 days (depending on seniority and performance) in the office is the best one.

We actually find productivity goes up and people take fewer sick days if they can hybrid work. If you have to be in the office, you're much less likely to travel in if you're feeling a bit poorly, especially if you have a longer commute, so we lose a whole day. If you can stay at home, have a lie in, wear your comfy clothes, dose up, make yourself plenty of tea and lemsip and have reams of tissues to hand (I speak from experience!!), then you're still likely to be doing some emails and bits, even if you're not firing on all cylinders. Hybrid working tends to mean people only take sick days if they are feeling really quite ill, whereas they power through bad colds or period pains which they may not do if they had to be in an office.

i hate hybrid working as the only flexible working option too, if you're disabled like me, my disabilities aren't part time! I can't tell you what day I may be best placed to be in an office as every day has its challenges!
So I look for fully remote jobs (and don't get me started on the jobs that are advertised as remote - local to london. That ain't remote!). Remote jobs are much lower paid too. Its a f*cking joke.

Flexible working has meant I can be a full-time mum to my kids AND work full-time (and yes I put the hard yards in! Just had another glowing appraisal). Getting rid of it shuts women out of work.

There are loads of great things about working in an office, and I think it's the right thing for young people at the start of their careers - they need that cameraderie and mentorship - but for older people who can work autonomously, commuting to an office (other than for occasional meetings) is just an expensive and pointless hassle.

I read this and thought the same.

The Daily Mail etc seems furious about it. I guess it's because landlord rents are down in the City

Spot on - commercial property values are down about 40%. To be fair, it's not just fat-cat landowners who are urging BTO - back to the office. It's local councils, who are missing out on business rates as rateable values fall. Though some of the London councils where lots of office space exists - eg Westminster, Tower Hamlets (Docklands, Canary Wharf) - are really rich.

It's just very interesting to see what takes precedence in our society, isn't it?

• A once-in-a-lifetime chance to abolish loads of time-wasting, expensive, often uncomfortable, sometimes polluting commuter journeys & give workers back some control and flexibility in their lives, or
• The financial interests of people and institutions that are already very rich.

2 of my 3 DCs are 100% WFH. They work really hard, they can't "skive" all the time (but office workers have always skived to some extent) and they don't want to. They do miss out on the social element, but friendships are done differently these days. On Discord, for example, with regular meet-ups.

As for not being able to get hold of anyone on the phone, that kicked in at my company a long time ago - late 90s - as soon as they upgraded the internal telephone system to one which allowed voicemail. Practically overnight, people wouldn't answer their phones, you'd get a recorded message asking you to leave a message. So I'd walk round to their actual office, to find them - as often as not - having a tea & a natter with a colleague. Now, of course, nothing moves without a looong email chain, so the utility of face-to-face meetings is much reduced as everyone descends into email straight afterwards, disputing what was said at the meeting. 🙄

At my work it's tacitly considered an advantage over other employers that there's no real pressure to stick to the 40% office rule. Some teams value the 40% office time, but my team is very flexible on the requirement because WFH is a norm in that skillset.

It saves me about 2-3k per year as well as SO MUCH time and mental energy. I'd want at least a 15k pay bump to move employer.

As an employer, I personally found the sweet spot to be 1/2 days a fortnight mandatory for the whole team together.

We were all in together, submitted meeting requests and the organised those with at least 15-30m breaks between each to check emails and make to-do lists off the back of them. We all stayed until the last sets of meetings were complete, usually between lunch-mid afternoon on the second day. If we only had a day's worth, we did that.

This was complemented with a whole team meeting on the off week, and people generally planned in person or online catch ups whenever they needed too.

A fortnight gave people lots of time to actually deliver the work and get the biggest productivity boost from being at home too. Weekly produces too much 'calendar clutter'.

At the end of the day, it is the business owner who should decide whether it is OK or not. Don't like it - find another job, I suppose, it is a free economy, not bonded labour. But what must not happen is tail wagging the dog and employees, having started working, bending the whole team to their will, so there is not teamwork as such or it is so encumbered with email correspondence, that it becomes counterproductive.

Flexible working, eh? That bloke in charge of air traffic control was such a big fan of flexible working. What could possibly go wrong?

I think reason needs to be applied - my ex SIL decided to change jobs so she would be there for her children all the time - so decided to be a medical secretary (audio-typing) working from home. The NHS said no because it would be handling data in her own home, not on the NHS premises, they said she could only audio-type in situ, be it a hospital or any other NHS building. However one a private hospital allowed her to work from home, which makes total sense.

I think some jobs are just made for working from home, other jobs working from home - GPs - is criminal. Negligent and criminal.

Can you really get up to speed in six weeks? You might be able to do a competent job, but surely there's loads of nuances to be learned after that, and intangible things to pick up, developing towards the next job etc.

When we get new starters I do go in more often to help train them, but in my team there is another team manager who is 100% office based as that’s what he prefers. He lives a 5 min drive away, so he tends to do any in office training. We currently have a new starter, she’ll be office based for about 6 weeks until she’s up to speed, and then can WFH when needed

Flexible working is great, but doesn't just mean working from home. And generally speaking, I don't think solely working from home is good for most people. It's much harder to feel connected and part of a team when you're never physically with your team and you miss out on the conversations that just happen.

There's no issue if I nip out for a couple of hours to deal with something, walk the dog, have a lie down or whatever, because flexibility means give and take. It doesn't work when it's only take. If my status shows away or unavailable then I'm unavailable, just as I am if I'm in a meeting or on do not disturb.

Being able to have a mix of working on site and from home, with earlier/later starts and finishes is what suits me. I don't need more of a push on home working, but think it's great for those who would otherwise be unable to physically work.

Yes, but if you don't go in who are they collaborating with? You'll say that's not your problem, but you benefitted from it when you wanted it.

It depends hugely on the job you do and your level of seniority.

For career starters I do think some requirement to be in an environment with peers at least some of the time is important: it's much harder to get that peer learning which is so vital if you don't talk to anyone other than via Teams. The post COVID generation of starters at my place have taken longer to adapt to some of the 'soft' elements of work than people did in previous generations. And that's before you get to the social anxiety which seems to afflict people.

BUT: for senior people it's a very different ballgame. I work from home as much as possible (typically I go in twice a week) for the simple reason that I can get about three times as much work done at home than in the office. The office environment has its social upsides but for me it's not conducive at all to the sort of thinking that you need to do for big projects. The endless distractions of being in the office (IT glitches, chit-chat about last night's TV or someone's holiday, tea runs) drain a vast amount of my time and I can work much longer hours without a commute. We're always being told people who WFH are skivers but I promise you I work from about 6am to 7pm most days: if I'm going in I lose at least an hour and a half of that commuting. Senior people who don't need guidance tend to do much more and better work when left to get on with things on their own.

This has become a silly political football which is used to make people who need flexible working (such as people who parent their children) feel that they are skiving. And honestly I think a lot of it is old-fashioned misogyny.

Generations of blokes have worked flexibly under the guise of networking (golfing, afternoons in the pub etc) while their spouses kept the lights on at home and are now crying foul because their partners take ten minutes to put some washing on every now and then. Honestly I think it's hugely hypocritical.

Needs to be case by case, always.

I go in once a week. I am expected in once a month but I like to go in once a week.
Regarding moaning about a 40 minute commute, my commute would be 40 minutes without traffic. In peak times it’s 1.5 hours. I will moan about that because I’ve seen (and others) that we can do what we do at our desks at home, the same as our desks in an office, but at home. Therefore that can be 2-3 hours of my day, sitting in my car !
I do agree that young people going into the workplace benefit from office working and collaborating but I’m 46 and don’t want to impress anyone so I’m happy with what I’ve got at the moment.

ʻIt's the "chatting" that the homebodies are convinced is such a waste of time where such a lot the training, learning and business is done.

YANBU, I'm looking into my next move at the moment in a fairly skills-short type of work and one sector in particular seems to have a lot of roles that are 5 days in office, which seems nuts to me when the skillset is quite hard to find. I've already said no to one agent about going forward for a role like that because most are still flexible.

WFH allows me to eat better, go to the gym more and not to worry about things like keeping up with the laundry and I need quiet to concentrate on my role.

And it's been over 15 years since I worked in office full time, so I am not going back, especially when it's DS GCSE year and he will need a lot of support so there's no way I'm moving to a more demanding job and losing 6 hours of my week to a commute at the moment.

I'm in two minds over this, as I can see how the demand for flexible working has been to the detriment of some businesses, and if the business needs people on site, then they should be able to "summon" their employees.

My DH can WFH up to 2 days a week. He works for an engineering company, and obviously if there is practical work to be done, he needs to be on site.

The other day he was at work and had a huge IT issue. Not a single IT worker on site and it took 2 hours to reach them by phone, as both appeared to be doing the morning school run (they weren't meant to be - the company clearly states no childcare when working from home). No doubt it will now be made clear to IT that one of them needs to be on site every day, which I think is fair.

On the plus side, it takes traffic off the road, and can make childcare more affordable.

The problem is that too many people take advantage of being able to WFH. A company needs to be able to have staff in the office when needed.

All of my team wfh - we get plaudits all the time for our hard work. Half of team is in India and the other half in the UK. We can deal with things at different times of day.

I also think London Weighting needs to be scrapped for those not actually commuting to London. I know of far too many people still getting a London weighting despite moving away and barely ever going into their old London office. It's just piss-taking.