Are the days of WFH over?

[MerryMarigold]

Dh been working from home since Covid. Been 1 FtF meeting a week/ fortnight for past year.

Work have said everyone needs to be in work in central London for 3 days per week after Easter.

Not too bad for us, we live in the same place we lived before. Still a 1.5hr commute each way (plus associated costs). Not so good for others who live in the middle of nowhere.

Is this a trend or just his global company?

Oh I do hope so.

I could write a book about the kitchen saga going on at the moment. Different person on the phone each time, they don’t know their colleagues even though supposedly based in the same store so can’t just be transferred to the person ypu were speaking to 30 mins ago.

Its been dreadful from the customer side

Teams chat solves pretty much all of these problems.

If you are at home all the time, do you feel a connection to your colleagues? Do you feel part of a team? Loyalty to the company?

No less than when I worked in an office.

Do you feel isolated? What if you need help with something?

No. If I need help, I have supervision and there's a culture of people in my organisation approaching each other for assistance. The most unsupported I've ever felt in a job was one where there'd have been about as much chance of working from home as there would've been of working from the moon. There was a very, very tight network in that office... but I wasn't included.

Isny part of working creating a network, a bit of work chat, a bit of social chat, as well as doing the job?

It is for some people. For others, that expectation excludes them from many jobs, and we should talk more about that.

How do you keep up with training, learning new things, if you are not next to a colleague who can show you things, or tell you about something interesting they read that is happening in the industry?

I have access to loads more training opportunities since more of the sector started working remotely. This is because I don't live in the south east. Geographical privilege is actually less of an issue in my sector now than it was three years ago, which is an unequivocal positive. Our newest trainee also lives nowhere near London, and it's a brilliant thing that these opportunities aren't limited to those young people who can afford to live closest to the biggest job markets.

In terms of the more informal stuff happening in the sector, we discuss that lots in team meetings. There are also online networking opportunities that there weren't a few years back, which again benefits people who live outside London.

Teams chat solves pretty much all of these problems

Is that proper chatting, or just typing on the screen?* *
I always find that so difficult to actually have a cohesive conversation due to the time lag and the other person doing other things at the same time

I’ve been working from home since circa 2013, going to the office once a week. Now my company downsized and we have a small satellite office where we meet once a month. Main office is too far and we don’t go there. I work with people in the entire world so it really doesn’t matter where I am.

Words on a screen is chatting. You know, like we're doing now?

Not the slightest bit interested in wasting time with in person conversations

I do one day a week in the office some weeks none.i also only started 6 months ago.

It's hard, there are things that had I been in the office I would have probably known about before it happens. My training has been very much this is how you do it and I was left to it, but I now do inductions for new staff so I know what to show them as it is what I would have liked to be shown. Questions I would usually ask as they come in to my head I now write down so when I do speak to say my boss I haven't forgotten them. Our weekly 121s always start off with a little catch up and always overrun.
I'm in an odd position though, I'm a PA so whilst the department is made up of teams I'm not in one. I sit within the department with the director but the only team we are part of is the leadership team with his managers.
I would love someone I could talk to about how I feel a complete failure at times. If I make a mistake I make it ten times worse in my head. Instead of if I was in the office I could talk it out with someone. That's the sort of thing that you only get with office contact.

As a sociable person I do get lonely and can feel quite isolated at times. I also live on my own. So I don't even have anyone to unburden to at home.

I think whether or not you think you can have 'real' friends or relationships entirely through text is a big personality division (and I don't think it maps neatly onto introvert/extrovert, though to be fair I don't fully believe in that division anyway). I think this is part of the reason why fully WFH works for some (and all power to them) and is really lonely for others.

I just find trying to explain things to people, or understand a new process etc, it's easier for me to speak face to face, with all the nuances and body language that that brings.

E.g. much easier to point and say 'click here' than type 'click on the third icon down on the left hand menu in the screen which you usually use to book the widgets'

But I guess it's just such a different way of doing things that I can't imagine how it works.
But it clearly does for many people

There are also people who turn up for work daily (in person) and under the very nose of their management are minimally productive and get away with it.

@Hardbackwriter

It's a bad idea to solely rely on work for your social life.

We live in a highly connected world now. It's so easy to find clubs and interests to physically go to now.

I have work mates, mum friends, old school friends and friends through a hobby.

I'd also add that there are people who don't regard 'remote' colleagues as a real relationship or friendship and aren't bothered by that. One of the divides here is about what people want and expect their work to provide. For some people that's a social network, for others it's not. You can be extroverted whilst not prioritising close connections to colleagues.

Yes, and I wouldn't suggest that anyone needs to see work as a social space or that it would be their sole social space, just that this is a big and perhaps under acknowledged divide. I think it's also quite dependent on circumstance. I do value work as one of my social spaces partially because I have two very young children and my time for socialising is reasonably limited - I didn't like being fully from home because for me spending 32 hours a week alone did feel like a loss, and I couldn't easily replace it. That doesn't mean anyone else should feel the same, but I think it is why to some people it feels obvious that you can do everything via teams chat and to other people it feels obvious that that's a really poor substitute - and neither are wrong.

A lot of companies want to cut office costs and are allowing people to stay at home longer in my industry

I was never forced back since Covid ... still home!

Lots of companies are now asking people to return to the office, my friend needs to do 3 days in the office and they have moved it from the Shires to central London, no payment to help with costs of commute.

I don't know that it's underacknowledged, some people wanting work to meet social needs comes up every time this subject is discussed. It's more that until three years ago, few jobs were fully remote and so your work/social preference was catered to pretty much by default. Outside a few niche industries, you'd really need to have been looking if you wanted to be a primarily remote worker before March 2020.

Whereas now, there are some people who don't find that full or partial wfh suits them who've ended up in jobs where that's now the norm, without necessarily having chosen it. Significant socialisation provided by work is something that people in many sectors would now have to actively look for, rather than being able to assume was on offer. That's a big change.

I don't think the need that some people have to meet social needs through work is under acknowledged, and nor is the wider need to feel part of something, in a wider team, supported etc (which I'd say is much more widespread than the need to socialize per se, though still not universal). But the 'solutions' that people come up with are often things like teams chat, zoom socials (shudder) etc, so I do think it's under acknowledged that for a lot of people virtual contact will never cut it, and it's not about finding the right facilitation tool or whatever.

What do you think the appropriate level of acknowledgement would look like?

Search on Amazon for usb mouse jiggler. Plenty of options. Mine was about £10. It’s a teeny thing that plugs into usb. Press a button and it moves the mouse 1 pixel every few seconds. Keeps you ‘available’ on Teams when you’re busy away from your laptop doing housework, watching tv etc

I work in a contact centre so there isn't really any time for much social chat/networking!
Yes I feel part of the place as I'm actually the longest serving

Training is done on teams or I go in for one day if we have a meeting/training
If I'm stuck then I message my manager, or we have a team WhatsApp group

It's actually helpful that I WFH, as well, my work has burned down this weekend

do you feel a connection to your colleagues? Do you feel part of a team? Loyalty to the company?
perhaps not as close a connection - in my last (in office) job some of my colleagues became my closest friends whereas now they are 'just' colleagues, albeit ones I like and are friendly with. Yes I feel part of a team, we meet online at least once a week. Not sure about 'loyalty' to the company - I've never felt that particularly anywhere I've worked. I don't bad mouth them or anything but it's just a job - I turn up everyday and do the work to the standard they expect and they pay me. If I won the lottery tomorrow I'd be gone!

Do you feel isolated? What if you need help with something
occasionally if I'm a bit stressed but then just vent to dp/family/friends. If I need help there's always someone I can teams message or video call - might not be as immediate a response as if I was in an office and could just turn to the person next to me but due to the nature of the job there's very rarely anything I need immediate help with that can't wait a few hours/days.

Is any part of working creating a network, a bit of work chat, a bit of social chat, as well as doing the job?
We do have a bit of a chat over teams messaging or video calls/meetings, social and work related, but obviously nowhere near as much as if we were in the office. I personally find it enough.

How do you keep up with training, learning new things, if you are not next to a colleague who can show you things, or tell you about something interesting they read that is happening in the industry?
We have a set amount of hours we have to spend training, so we have the opportunity to research what will be most beneficial to us and get time to do that, which I think is better. We can have 'industry development chat' as part of our team meetings, or management send around emails if it's something they think its relevant for us to know.

re: it being harder if you're a new person rather than taking advantage of previous relationships established in-office - I started my current job as a new person in the middle of covid and managed to pick everything up fine and have developed good relationships with colleagues. I'm now mentoring a new person who also seems to be doing fine - I've offered several times if they want to meet in person in the office I'm happy to but they keep insisting they are happier wfh and doing all their training online so can only assume it works for them too!

I can certainly see how some people might not like WFH and how some jobs might suit it. All I know is that my job gave everyone the opportunity to work from the office full time, work hybrid or WFH, but 90% of us have chosen to WFH full time.

OTOH there are some people who have left and have cited WFH as one of the contributory factors but they were all older and were planning on retiring anyway rather than being young new grads - the younger people in our offices seem happy with WFH.

My work has kept the same balance if wfh and office when suits the business. No changes planned

I think that's a really weird question - I just think it just needs to be acknowledged, rather than pretending that teams chat is exactly the same.

I find people who hated working in an office and like working from home are often strangely aggressive or alternatively gleeful about people who like some aspects of face-to-face - there's an odd 'ha, your turn to suffer now!' undertone.

Haven't been in my office in 4 years.. it sure there is one ..

I find that rather odd in turn, considering you raised the issue of not thinking it was being acknowledged enough and obviously felt the mentions of the issue on the thread so far weren't doing it. There's only one person on the thread who raised Teams chat as a solution, the rest of it has generally been in the different strokes for different folks category.

As for the glee at others suffering, it's interesting that there've been a number of posters on this thread who've said something to the effect of wfh should stop, everyone back into the office etc, but people who like working from home never do the reverse. There's no equivalent societal assumption or discussion the other way. Telling.