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

I have a feeling AI could be one of the reasons for this, as more and more businesses adopt the technology (which is exceptionally good now ) employers are going to be looking for alternatives to the traditional 5 day 37.5 hour work weeks, the framework of full time work is hopefully shifting…

I used to be in office every day. We deliberately bought a house 10 minutes walk away. For 7 years everything was good. Then Skype and Teams came in and suddenly people starting having meetings online. The noise level rose. Nobody left the room to go to a meeting anymore. Within a year we had multiple people in back to back meetings all day long and I couldn't hear myself think. I work with spreadsheets and I need to concentrate but found myself with people opposite shouting into their headsets, people behind and beside me doing the same.

Then Covid hit and we had peace and quiet for a while, but everyone came back to the office and it started again. I have tried everything to get a reasonable place to work in but it seems it is no longer possible. Apparently it's "the way we work now" and it's perfectly reasonable to be trying to work in what resembles a marketplace most days. There is no sound proofing and no private offices. We all just sit in a large open plan office and listen to 8 hours of chat that in most cases could have been dealt with by email.

I was told bluntly "if you don't like it, work from home". We moved house so that I had space to work from home. Now I'm being told I have to go in. Make your bloody minds up. I have a 45 minute commute in the morning that can be anything up to 3+ hours in the evening because the roads are so bad and there are crashes daily that shut down the entire area. Or I can sit at home and work a long day completely uninterrupted. Makes zero sense.

I am often a lone voice on this kind of thread so won’t say too much. But I can say that there is a generation of young people who are starting work and really struggle without being able to consult managers easily in the office. They need to learn and have role models there sometimes. They have queries which they feel embarrassed to put in an email or a teams chat but could be easily answered by a quick question face-to-face. A lot of skills are learned by face to face interactions and watching others work together, communicate and negotiate.

I support hybrid working. But we do need senior people to be in the office so that young people can learn from them. Yes some young people can’t come in and have to wfh so flexibility is needed. But many others want to come in and learn. We already have a generation with anxiety who are scared of even answering calls. We are letting the next generation down again.

@Badbadbunny Yes - I agree. Young people and their training in the work place is compromised by home working. They find it more difficult to socialise and can fail to form work friendships. Teams via a screen aren’t the same as being in a physical team and learning from the team. Yet again, older people get what they want and young people are abandoned.

Most new graduates.

I totally agree.
I hate working at home (when I’m able, or when necessary) but understand it works much better for others.

It's interesting, i am starting in a new role and some of my colleagues in an adjacent role have the option of WFH, they have to work for 12 hours, have to be available at all times other than breaks, would be properly in the shit if they walked away mid shift, have to maintain strict GDPR and deal with complex clinical scenerios where it can be handy to bounce off another person, as a consequence most of them choose to come in to work premises to do their shift. So it would seem that for many it is the flexibility rather than the working that makes WFH attractive.

WFH definetly needs robust management and disciplining of staff taking the piss.

I completely disagree with you. I don't think it's the role of the state to interfere in the relationship between company and worker (except of course where there is exploitation or rights being abused). If a company wants their workers in the office because that's the way they want to run their business then that's their decision. If people don't like it they should work somewhere else but they can't demand or expect it (I'm not talking about people with ill-health or disabilities).

I work in an industry where more work and more is being offshored - if it can be done remotely then it can be done remotely in another country for much less money. Young people are already suffering because of the NI and minimum wage increase, the new worker's rights bill and AI. Yeah let's just cripple their opportunities even more by adding another layer of governance which business needs to adhere to. Madness!

Exactly! At a previous workplace, our bosses complained about people being late due to traffic/train cancellations and delays/weather issues, etc. But then also hated us WFH even though we were always on time. Make it make sense.

Rest assured some of us agree x Some learning needs to be face-to-face.
Plus some of us prefer being in the office. Very grateful DH works well at home (unlike me) and his role suits remote working.

That’s good to hear. When I last mentioned the challenges for new young workers on a similar thread, I was quickly told that I was being ableist.

If someone needs accommodations to be able to be onsite, that’s the company’s responsibility (and help from Access to Work).
And yes, I’m someone with protected characteristics which require some accommodations.

Yep I’m happy to stay online at home and finish something off but in the office I leave sharp as I have a train to catch.

Well, not very often. It's one of the many reasons the UK has a major NEET problem. I do accept it's not the only reason, and not the biggest reason.

I used to be involved with training new graduates in a business. Being able to see and hear the way other colleagues did the job role was absolutely key.

Agreed.
Has anyone actually tried to call HMRC recently? Don’t try and call at 8.30am or 3pm. Calls simply go unanswered.

Also had recent problems with John Lewis customer service. No answer after 15 minutes so I emailed instead.

Who will mentor them if all the senior members of staff are at home?

Sadly in my experience the biggest ‘abusers’ of the WFH flexibility are those avoiding childcare costs and looking after children whilst working. Mistakes happen because of poor concentration, and when challenged (however professional the management approach) is followed by tears and cries of high childcare costs, all having consumed significant amounts of management time to try and manage /investigate.
Productivity drops are not made up in the evenings etc.
I think this may damage the reputation of working parents.

As an employer, is it really my responsibility to subsidise a working parent by tolerating substandard word output?

Going forward - the option of offshoring jobs to lower cost countries or greater use of AI agents will definitely reduce the number of jobs available in the UK … and if a job can be done WFH, it really can be done anywhere in the world.

So the unions / government requesting greater workplace flexibility in UK would do well to remember that global organisations really can choose where they employ people and the UK is looking increasingly unattractive.

This really get my hackles up as the conversation around working from home is always very selfish. Generally its 'I' work well from home, 'I' get great performance reviews and work from home. 'I' get so much more done at home.

I genuinely care about my profession and firmly believe that there is so much about office chatter, over hearing phone calls and general discussion that is so incredibly valuable. Not just at the start of your career - although I think we will end up letting down an entire generation, but all the way through. Discussion about new regulation, gossip of an incident that you realise means you need to tighten up something on you own project, its all important stuff and is just completely lost if everyone is operating in their own silos at home.

I'm not against flexibility, or some home working but I do genuinely think that people need to be in the office for a few days each week.

This!

I’m afraid I would argue it still isn’t that simple. Knowledge transfer is a permanent process; it doesn’t stop after six months. I see long-standing staff who are far less efficient today than they were pre-Covid so everybody is affected.

I completely agree with you. Our productivity is going down in this country which makes us far less able to compete on the global markets. This is a major problem and particularly at the moment with a burgeoning national debt we need to do something about it.

My bugbear where I work (very large company) realised during COVID that people can be located all over the country and still collaborate with Teams.
Now post COVID we are being pushed back into the workplace but NONE of my current team are based in my office so guess what, we communicate on Teams.
Pre COVID working in IT your whole project team was one place, but not anymore. Oh and they don't encourage travelling as that costs them money.
Bloody hilarious

I would agree with this.

I have recently had a career change and am in a corporate job for the first time ever. I am a middle aged and experienced and even I find it hard to know who and how to ask for information. BUT I still find WFH better as when I'm in the office there is such a fragmented team there it can also be hard to get info. So I am sitting next to my boss, but he is on teams mtgs all day, at least when I am WFH if I book a 1 to 1 with him I know I have x time with him. If I was younger, less confident and just less experienced in the workplace I think I would really struggle to integrate and get the hang of things.

I think what would work better is hybrid but everyone one on the same or similar schedules so proper communication could happen in the workplace, being in the office feels like a formality box ticking exercise rather than a useful constructive situation.

I will say though that I am delighted with my current role and its fairly senior and not something I could ever have done it it was full time in the office, I'm disabled and just never dreamt I'd be able to do a full time job again.

I am glad your job is working out for you!

Yes, there is no coordination. My child is at one of the ‘big four’ firms in London. And she goes in most days, hoping to see a manager there. But even if they say they are coming in, they often don’t. Then she feels she has come in for nothing as there is nobody to speak to her about a particular project and she is sitting with people from other teams who can’t help her. It’s very frustrating and I can see it is affecting her morale. She feels quite lost. If there was more coordination, then it would be much better. and despite being Gen Z, she doesn’t love staring at a screen all day.

In my job, I see it as my priority to look after my trainees. I try and meet them in person as much as I can. Our meetings are face-to-face so they can learn and understand all the issues and also the subtleties of communication, teamwork and negotiation etc.

I agree!