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

It should definitely be up to the business to decide
We brought everyone back in after COVID
A few left ,I could have guessed who would leave and I was glad to see the back of them
We all had to work hard to get things back on track otherwise the business would have gone down the pan and nobody would have been working from anywhere
We do offer the flexibility but for WFH it’s very limited

I've WFH for the last 20 years. I set my own diary, so could be away 6 nights a week or WFH 5 days a week. It varies. I'm trusted to do this and I can easily turn my laptop on at 5:30am and shut off at 11pm. My dc are adults so no childcare issues, I don't have a pet. But I honestly, hand on heart, am way more productive then if I go into the office for Meeting then hot desk for the afternoon

The pay just doesn’t cover a traditional commitment to full time in the office. City adjacent housing is too expensive, commuting is too expensive, and too long, childcare too expensive relative to salaries to expect people with children to devote that much of their personal resource for so little. Now if you could keep a spouse, who didn’t have to work - then who cares if you can’t make 6pm nursery pick up, you won’t be struggling to get a meal on the table at 8pm as your hungry kids scream as they are already fed, you won’t have to be ironing for 6am next day at midnight. But that’s what full time office presence means, and it’s a shit life.
maybe it does work better in some jobs. Do they want to pay for it?

I agree. There have been people, usually women, in every workplace I’ve known that quietly run the whole business (much more so than the CEO). They’re usually badged as ‘admin’ and paid a bare minimum, where really they should be on a fortune because they are irreplaceable.

The government can’t expect us to just forget how well wfh worked during Covid.

I know there’s a narrative that the push back to the office is all about control but there are perfectly legitimate reasons for it.

I learned my job from working alongside senior and more experienced colleagues. That was working side by side with them, as ad hoc and unplanned things happened. They were also physically there when I had small questions to ask. It was invaluable.

Our trainees now have none of that. They’ll see the odd senior person once a week, on the off chance their office days marry up together. It’s piss poor in comparison; absolutely shit in fact. They can’t learn in isolation, sitting in their spare room, and no, video calls are not an adequate substitute.

Yes I’ve always know people who do fuck all in the office, and distracted everyone else. Flexible working is great. Managers just need to be more smart in identifying the pisstakers

It didn’t. Lots of things didn’t work at all or were inefficient. We just put up with it because it was an international crisis. It “worked” for some, but on a bigger scale we still havn’t recovered and havn’t regained the lost productivity/efficiency.

Nail on the head. It’s another way in which our young are being shafted. MyDS is the same, he goes into the office virtually every day but is often disappointed that there’s no one in his team there despite them saying they would be, meaning his training is very slow and often there’s literally no one “free” on Teams for him to ask for advice/help etc. When I was a trainee, if none of my immediate colleagues were around, I’d at least have passing acquaintance with other depts and have an idea who they were, what they did and I’d know who was mostly likely to help me. In my sons office, everyone other than his immediate team are complete strangers - he doesn’t know if they’re trainees or bosses, doesn’t know what team they’re in as it’s all hot desking. Over the months he has asked random workers but they have turned out to be in completely different depts doing very different things so couldn’t help.

That article conflates having work flexibility with permanent ongoing arrangements to work from home. I don't think there are many employers who won't agree to flexibility around nativity plays, caring needs (to a reasonable degree), etc. That is very different to agreeing that employees should permanently be mostly based at home.

There is a happy medium between where we were say 20 years ago with people feeling guilty when home commitments collided with work, and Covid lockdown. There is a huge loss for young people if they are not around other people in the workplace - not that they would agree, most of the ones who work in my team are the most reticent at coming into the office. Yet they are really struggling with learning the social skills required to move into more senior positions. They seem to feel like promotion should be inevitable once they've completed their tick-box set of tasks, when in reality to become more senior they need to be able to influence, read social cues, deal with difficult stakeholders, and be comfortable engaging with a range of different people and situations. You just cannot learn that on a Teams call.

Agree with you. I work hybrid but have full wrap around care in place because it's not possible to look after them and work effectively.

I was working from.jime during Covid. I hated it because I live alone. I stuck to my contracted hours but there were loads of people who treated it as extended leave. I am afraid that people have spoilt it gor the genuine people. I am baffled how anyone can be working from home and looking afrer a child. Speech therapy need is already on the increase- this will no doubt continue to rise.

I agree with WFH being vital for people with caring responsibilities. I’m part time hybrid so I can do the school pick up. My office days, I have to leave the office at 2 to guarantee I can definitely make be at school for 3:20. WFH days, I don’t leave the house until 3.

On my WFH days, I can easily stay if a meeting runs over, I need to finish a task or someone comes to me with something at the last minute. We have excellent policies about TOIL or adjusting hours so it’s no problem. Whereas in the office I can’t do any of that, and it has caused problems for colleagues.

I’ve never known anyone take the piss though. Very occasionally a school aged child might be home sick or on a half day while parents WFH.

the problem in many workplaces is that senior staff used to be well paid - well paid enough to be able to have a spouse work part time or to afford wraparound or an au pair.
Pay bands have flattened to the point where experienced staff with 20 years on the job are often paid not much more than new graduates, so there’s not that freedom for them to be in an office every day, pay to commute etc.
While they’d happily share their experience, they may be less willing if it involves paying for childcare to cover their commute.

I have no doubt that happens in some workplaces, but at my DS's, which is one of the UK's biggest insurance/financial services firms, the senior staff are on very attractive pay bands/scales with very attractive bonuses on top. My son's direct manager is on double my son's pay, so for his firm, it's nothing to do with the senior staff not earning much more than the graduates.