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

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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. 🙄

I read this and thought the same.

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 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.

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 think you need a year.

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 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?

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.

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.

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

Our admin team work from home a lot of the time and it is bloody annoying. Half the time there’s nobody in the office so you can’t stick your head round the door to ask for batteries/book a visitor parking space last minute/find out who’s in charge of events in a different department, etc. People do their tasks, but not the glue that makes the place run more smoothly.

Nail on the head. Especially the point re "the glue". There's a small firm where I used to work where there was a receptionist who'd literally been there since the year dot - she racked up 50 years service before she retired. She'd seen all the staff/owners come and go, and most of the clients come and go. She was the ONLY constant in the place over those 50 years. Literally everything else had changed including office location, computerisation, etc. At first she was one of several receptionists/typing pool, but over the years, with computerisation, she ended up the only person in admin/reception. The owners at the time of her retirement decided they didn't need a receptionist as they believed her post was well covered in her lunch hour and in her 6 holiday weeks by random other staff answering the phone and going to the door when the bell rang. The place virtually fell apart within weeks of her retirement. That's no exaggeration, I still did ad-hoc work for the firm, still knew some of the staff, some of the clients, etc. She was very badly missed as she was indeed "the glue that held the firm together" and it was only when she wasn't there keeping things moving that they realised the void that she'd left behind. They took on a new receptionist, but due to the time gap between the old one leaving and the new one starting, so much had been lost as there'd been no transition/cross training. The owners merely thought she answered the phone and opened the door, and remained blissfully unaware of everything else she did that was "invisible" and done without fuss nor fanfare simply because she'd been doing it for decades! She wasn't "missed" during her lunch hours or annual holidays because she'd been pro-active to get ahead with things like ordering supplies, job planning, diary organisation, etc. i.e. to "cover" short absence periods, but that all fell apart when she retired for good.

Is it beyond the realms of reasonable to expect people to be able to have conversations and agree on what days they'll be in the office?

How frequently are people being recruited into office roles with no experience whatsoever?

Literally everyone is without experience in their first job.

Loneliness, social anxiety, depression all on the rise and this is being touted as a solution to that. Rather than often a cause or exacerbating factor.

Hard agree X

Well, most firms have two graduate intakes each year, so that's some new trainee staff every 6 months, who each take longer than 6 months to "train" - some training can take 1-5 years in professional roles.

Continuity and Consistency when training raw recruits is essential - you can't have 5 different people training up a brand new raw recruit - a different person on each different day of the week. It just doesn't work.

Firms are reporting that new trainees are taking longer to get up to speed, taking longer to learn "soft" skills, etc. It's not surprising if the more senior staff training them are located somewhere else or they have a succession of different people trying to train them.

Even "experienced" new staff, i.e. who've been recruited from other firms, still need training in the new employer's systems, ethos, structure, etc. I've moved from one accountancy practice to another a few times, and each time, despite me being experienced and qualified, it's been several weeks before I was fully up to speed with different software, different filing/admin systems, different staff/management structures which has necessitated lots of "questions" directly at the staff on nearby desks over many weeks. When you're set next to others, you can choose the right moment to ask questions, i.e. you can avoid when they're stressed, clearly busy, etc or ask someone else - try doing that remotely and you're just going to annoy the person you constantly interrupt and start being reluctant to contact them.

That's not answering my question. I asked how often is it happening? In most workplaces it will be a rarity, as most employers aren't going to be actively recruiting people with no work experience.

When it does happen, for the most part it's quite easily managed with a bit of communication and organisation.

But that doesn't mean a new recruit needs someone there holding their hand for 1.5 years. I'd be really concerned if someone lacked capacity to work independently on assigned tasks, with hands-off guidance.

How do you know the away person is working from home?

I’ve been “away” for 4 hours now on Teams. No one messaging me would know where I’ve been for that time (it’s travelling to and attending a client meeting). In fact, working from home is the only time I get back to every response within the hour.

Tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of school leavers, college leavers, graduates, etc are taken on by employers every year. It's happening usually at least twice a year. It isn't a "rarity" at all. Where do you think all the youngsters entering the workplace get their "first job"???