AIBU to think if your boss wants you in the office, they should help pay to get you there?

And there’s also lots of people abroad desperate to come to the uk for jobs.

Yes it may be a senior management issue and they are addressing it by getting people back into the office.

And you can introduce as much structured training as you want but it has to be in addition to learning on the job. Learning on the job is the best way to learn and covers way more than just the content. It all teaches how to be an employee, development of software skills. For example, you learn a lot more also being able to watch people before and after the meeting /presentation that just being able to watch the meeting itself.

That’s a senior management issue and a lack of structured training issue.

2/3 of the staff at the company I work for are located in a different continent, yet somehow we manage to train and work with them effectively…

Possibly not: some jobs require certain skills that not everyone has.

The point I’m making is that commuting in sometimes very expensive; if the government are wanting people to work in offices to stimulate the economy: they really should consider tax breaks on commuting costs.

They may meet their own targets but it may be preventing the company as a whole or other people developing in the right direction.

Junior colleagues need more senior ones in the office with them to learn and develop appropriately.

working together in person enables extra conversations and discussions to take place that result in new ideas and innovations

it creates a better sense of unity and enables people to spot people who are struggling better

Well it depends on the situation and the company set up but in my personal opinion in the majority of jobs (definitely not all) wfh only works in combination with days together in the office. Employees may think they can work effectively at home but they miss the bigger picture

@movingtotheslowlane sadly no, we are keeping him for the duration! He’s here to learn skills for getting back into the workplace after time out ( I don’t know why he was out if work, we don’t get told) so we have to suck it up. The organisation really does try to offer opportunity for people and if people come in on this scheme they could be offered roles in places where their are vacancies if they want to apply, obviously with some experience of the workplace they can speak from that experience, and stand a chance ahead of other candidates potentially .

He won’t get a good reference from me though unless things turn around. I feel he has been spectacularly tone deaf about how you go about getting to know the team, the role and how we can best support him. in week 2 wanted to work from home shows no motivation or commitment really.
Meanwhile tomorrow I’ve got to respond to an admin person who thinks that in spite of being paid in a full time role, they can leave at 2:30 every day because they have to pick their child up from school, again no asking for flexible hours or anything, just started doing it in sept!

Have you ever managed staff?

Oh for goodness sake. No wonder this country is going to shit.

That would be a question for the employer. They must have their own reasons because lots of companies require employees to go in to the office for a certain number of days

Meeting individual employee targets doesn't paint the full picture of how it affects the organisation as a whole. For example, my organisation has discovered that junior staff get less support if people wfh as senior staff focus on their own targest and don't provide the same level of training and mentoring as would happen in the office.

A lot of recent studies have shown a huge drop in productivity from people that wfh. So companies are getting less from their employees whilst paying them the same. It was unlikely to continue indefinitely.

Spot on!

I love WFH 2.5 days a week - it saves me money on childcare/commuting costs, gives me more time with my family, allows me to cook more nutrious meals (I meal prep/batch cook during lunchbreaks) and ultimately I earn more because I didn't need to drop as many hours as I would have done if full-time in the office to be able to do balance work and family life. These benefits are good for health, wellbeing and the economy.

I also fully appreciate that WFH can be very damaging to productivity. I've experienced that first hand - being in a role with not a lot to do and no real impetus for management to up my workload because that also means they'd need to do more work. I am a manager myself now, and as you say the role of managing hybrid or fully remote workers requires specific skills and also specific data. It is such a delicate balancing act trying to address potential "shirking" when targets and performance metrics just don't give you the info you need to be able to say very clearly "you are doing less on the days you work from home and that is a problem".

I would fully support much more monitoring of remote working. Its a price I would pay happily to continue to benefit from the extra 7 hours a week I have at home (commuting/lunch break time).

I am concerned that companies are instead pushing for a return to office; its an easier way to address the problem people, at the expense of those of us who can WFH effectively. And I do believe it will disproportionately affect parents, carers and those with health conditions.

And before anyone pipes up that not all jobs can WFH so its a "perk" office workers should be grateful they had temporarily - I fully support all job roles in all sectors providing as much flexibility as is reasonable to enable people to have a fulfilling career and be economically active while maximising their opportunity to live a good and balanced life. The point is office work CAN be done at home, at least some of the time, so WFH is reasonable flexibility; if your job can't be done at home, it's not reasonable to WFH, but other flex may be avaliable.

As to OPs point - no, companies should not be paying for commutes. However, there may be a wider picture whereby companies have watered down other T&Cs and/or not offered inflation-matching payrises and/or offered new employment contracts on the basis of remote/hybrid working. Those companies need to remedy those issues and not just tell employees to suck it up.

If employees have been meeting their targets and performing well for a number of years, what justification is there for changing working patterns?

It never...just entitled people seem to think it is...they are going to have to do a bit at work now where everyone can see them instead of at home in their own time so they kick up a fuss.

Surely it must depend on what their original contract says. People are being ridiculously selfish and entitled.

Except you can get tax relief for those things! And most employers do provide equipment for home working such as monitors, docks and chairs.

Thats like asking for your employer to pay for your electric, heating and equipment for at home, can't have it both ways

Entitled off the scale
There are loads of people looking for jobs
They will just get someone else

Yes - if that was the agreement when they secured the job. I doubt many actually need to be in the office for three days.

Ha, she gets a lot expensed as she travels a great deal for her role, so probably assumed commuting was the same deal!

I think it’s different with Barclays as many secured their roles under the understanding it was two office days a week.

I don’t work for Barclays but when I applied and secured a role (which I turned down) they really sold the “only required to two days a week in the office”.

If they suddenly changed that requirement I would be livid too.

The guidance the previous poster linked was that it can be paid for by the employer but the employee has to pay tax on the amount.

Surely people are required in the workplace for as many hours as the employer asks them to be?