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?

It’s quite chilling. Hope nobody was hurt. Many years ago my workplace in Belfast was bombed, at night, but I was the only key holder available that night!! Was I fuck going down there on my own in the dark! It was bad enough in daylight the next morning!!

@letthemalldoone nobody hurt thankfully but the building is a write off

Thank you, never knew there was such a thing! Definitely getting one. It’s not to cover slacking just micromanaging where I get ripped a new one if not available practically constantly other than lunch and even that is monitored.

wouldn’t maybe be so bad if I was the office junior but I am a qualified professional with years of experience!!

It pisses me off that people think everyone wfh is lounging on the couch not giving a sh*t! When I worked in the office there were plenty of people who were good at making themselves look busy all day. Get up for a coffee disappear into the kitchen for 20mins, walk back into office gas bagging with another colleague. Place coffee down then go the loo. Stop for a quick chat on the way back to desk! Meeting after meeting that could definitely have been emails. People need to stop making out people were Uber productive in the office, believe me some were not!!!

Have you raised a grievance with your manager about this, or are you just going to accept it and continue to work around it?

Unscientific survey of 3:

Have a friend in the U.K. who is still WFH full time, goes in for an occasional meeting. He's not slacking - there's no one else to do his work if he doesn't. He has a very autonomous role.

DH is back 3 days a week in Switzerland. We are frontaliers and the Franco-Swiss agreement on WFH doesn't allow more than this without changes to tax/social charges status. There is a variety of arrangements in his company. Many of his meetings involve people in cities 4 hours away so they have been online for a long time. (OP said they work for a global company so thought this might be interesting.)

I am self-employed and have WFH since the early 2000s.

I've def seen people who went from saying they were never going back into the office, go in once or twice a week.

Hybrid seems to be the most common amongst those i know.

My husband works for an IT company they have no plans to go back unless its for some random meetings, they have permission for the workers to move abroad as well if they wish.

Hybrid seems to be the most common amongst those i know.

@lap90 definitely. Although the media doesn't seem to get this, they seem to think people are either totally in or totally out, whereas hybrid seems to be the norm, and people seem to like it.

Some of the media coverage has an angle, which explains a lot about what's being written. Papers used to get huge sales from commuters and then of course some of them want to support the governments clear desire for people to go back in. So even if they all know full well that hybrid is the commonest model, that still leaves a great deal less commuting and office occupancy than we had in Feb 2020. With a significant impact on the business models that relied on most office workers being in the majority of the time. Hence woke from home civil servants etc, despite the fact that many of them don't have desks to go to anyway.

Plus also, hybrid covers a lot of arrangements. Someone who goes in once every two or three weeks for meetings and someone who does one day a week wfh only are both hybrid, but there's a big difference between the two. And someone who's in once every three weeks is essentially remote, for some purposes.

We are hybrid, was 1 day a week and now 2 days.

I wfh equally as good as I do when in the office, as both have me alone as my team are based nationwide so I am Billy no mates in the office and have an entire wing of the building to myself.

I don't mind either way, home or office. Makes no difference to me.