Those who WFH or partners do

[Horseskeepmesane]

Many people seem to still work from home, I’m intrigued by this.

if you do what is your field of work, and what do you actually do most of the day working from home productivity wise?

there seems to be so many ‘meetings, calls’ scheduled from home and what else?!

I work in Accounts for a small business, office based.

I did WFH for a while before I retired, I was a facilities manager and did 75% of my work time from home. My personal experience is that it is very nice not having to commute, not having the distractions of the office, and having the flexibility of setting my own working hours. But the downside was that I was less productive overall, and struggled to motivate myself to start my working day, and remove home distractions - it is very easy to carry on watching breakfast TV, and keep delaying starting actual work. I also found it harder to manage suppliers, and contractors, as something was lost without the face to face contact, it just felt any rapport was not being developed. It was also more difficult to manage work intrusions into my home life, such as emails and calls creeping into my evening downtimes. So overall for me WFH wasn't the best of fits.

Today I oversaw an inspection in another country (via Teams).

Tomorrow I will be finishing off a presentation for a conference.

Thursday I will go into the office (and probs have an easier day than I have working from home). I can choose when I go in. I keep it to 3 days a week in the office for my own mental health. I'm a social creature plus my managers need to be on-site due to their role. I like them to be present for them too.

Spelling - I like to be present for them too.

Aka: lead by example.

I work in marketing for a global tech company. My days are mostly spent:

Writing stuff
Editing stuff
Approving stuff
Leading calls/meetings
Participating in calls/meetings
Facilitating calls/meetings
Researching stuff
Analysing campaigns
Briefing other departments
Attending workshops
Fighting 'fires' that aren't really 'fires' - we work in marketing after all.

I just plod through my tasks

Sorry quoted the wrong person!

I'm a bit of a stickler for ensuring that I'm logged in by 9 on the dot and taking my breaks like I would in the office.

I've a long commute so the time saving (and petrol saving) on my two days WFH is an absolute godsend. I use my lunch hour to stick on a wash or prep dinner, add in my commute time saved and that's nearly 4 hours each day that I gain to put towards home stuff.

All my work is calls/computer based. The only thing I do at home that I don't do at work is get dog cuddles.

My DH WFH. He starts at 7.30 in the morning and finishes around 8pm at night. He works flat out - often back to back meetings with people in different countries and dealing with all manner of stressful stuff. I get really irritated by the 'WFH? What a skive!' brigade - he works really hard, all the time. There's no popping out for lunch or hanging out the washing. He's working.

It strikes me that some people are bone idle and they think others are the same.

A typical day for me is exercise before work (run or swim) and be at desk by 9 or 9.30am. Sometimes 10am if I don't have a meeting until then but I am online via my phone from 9am.
I usually have meetings from 9.30am until 5pm, sometimes back to back which is horrific, sometimes 4 or 5 with gaps in between.
When I am not in a meeting, which can either be with a customer or an internal team about a customer, I am reading and actioning emails, writing up the meetings I have had/updating the system we use to manage customers, or reading material/watching videos to learn new things we are required to do for our job.
I am a Customer Success Manager for a large Software company.
Everyone is based from home, and travel anywhere, even to see customers, is discouraged due to cost cutting measures.
I love WFH and have a lovely office my husband built for me in the back of our garage, with a great office set up, corner desk, 3 screens, proper chair, Sonos speaker, TV and my dogs sleep in their bed under my desk all day.

Have not been office based for 20 years and never will be again.

Wow. This sounds fascinating. I would love to know more
About what you do. Also love the 3 hour lunch break

I'm a teacher for an online school. As such my day is very structured as we have a typical secondary school timetable to follow with live taught lessons and free periods are used for planning and prep plus the usual staff meetings after school. I do hang a load of laundry after my kids leave for school in what would have been my commute time and stick the dishwasher on during my lunch break. I don't, and could not take the piss - I have a full timetable and all the associated marking and prep.

It's nothing like most people's experience of online schooling during the pandemic as this is an established school designed to function online with staff experienced at this method of delivery.

I love it. Like others I gain my commute time back, I don't need wrap round care for DC as my lessons are all within school hours. I don't have to deal with the progressively challenging behaviour that makes real life teaching so demoralising and I get to focus on teaching the subject I love.

Saying all of that. I'm glad I had an in-person career first. I needed that experience to be as confident and competent as I now am delivering it online. Also socially, I think that's more important in your twenties.

I work from home 3 days a week. Customer service job, so answering calls and emails all day. Sometimes we have meetings or training.

Currently work in IT, no need to be office based and can do everything I need to remotely.

Can be a pain though as I can be called on 24/7 rather than the old 9-5.

AirGapped That sounds very interesting.
Not quite the same thing but I know somebody who writes government speeches. Hands them over and they deliver them.

He’s is a very very clever guy. I’ve sometimes wondered if he agrees with what he’s writing.

If I have less than 5 hours of conference calls in a day I consider that a quiet day. So in the 2-3 hours I’m not in meetings I’m trying to follow up the questions raised, answering emails… occasionally I get to write some actual documents. I also usually have at least three people at a time firing questions at me on Teams. This is exactly the same as what I do when I’m in the office. The meetings are still virtual because I work with people at multiple sites, as well as third parties, and even half the people based in the same office as me aren’t there because they’re at home. The only difference is that in the office it’s easier to get lunch, and at home I can do the laundry and am spared the hour each way commute. And it was exactly the same pre-covid.

I started my job 18 months ago, it was advertised as a wfh role. I live in the north Midlands and the people I support are down South

The content is always something deathly dull. Even the expert/fact checker who knows and loves the subject doesn’t much like reading it. I sometimes wish I could write about topics that matter to me but maybe that’s what my free time is for?

That really does sound interesting. Does he have a legal background? Not trying to identify him, but during law school (only completed the academic stage, never qualified) I discovered that I wrote my best essays when I was arguing against my own beliefs.

Does he have a legal background?

No.

But he has studied for years and years . Afraid of outing him.

I'm a contract supervisor. So I read contracts, monitor kpis and have meetings with suppliers which are generally online because it eliminates travel time.

I have a better and more consistent internet connection at home than at work and it's easier to have an online meeting at home than in the open plan office...

I like going in once or twice a week to have the opportunity for informal unplanned catch ups and information sharing but home is better for focused work!

I wfh full time and dh does 2 or 3 days a week wfh too. I work in a customer care area related to social care. All digital work lots of client calls, but also some care planning etc. We work on g drive so files are easily shared and we have Slack for instant messaging.We have a daily huddle in the mornings with my smaller team and a company all hands each week with everyone. I do nothing that I would need to be in an office for.
It's not as lonely as I thought it would be at first. And I have lunch with dh when he's
Home which is nice.
Dh's job is much more senior than mine and he just has meeting after meeting. He also does a lot of client entertaining which is what he goes to the office for

I was pretty lazy at home tbh when I was a bid manager. I'd roll out of bed at 08:45 and stay in my dressing gown most days as our meetings were never over video.

I'd log onto the system to show I was online and reply to a few emails, then I'd have a nice long brekky whilst watching tv. Sometimes even a bath with my work phone next to me just in case. 😂

The best was when I'd just finished a bid and was about to start a new one. The deadlines tended to be quite long and the BDM's usually worked on several concurrently, so for the first couple of weeks they'd usually focus on more urgent deadlines.

My boss would tell me to 'familiarise myself' with the new bid whilst waiting for the salespeople to be available but I generally didn't do much as I knew we'd all be sitting down and going through it with a fine tooth comb in the second week.

I'd usually spend a day pulling some old bids of a similar nature, I'd crib some text and tweak it, and just note down the key requirements so I could sustain a 5-10 min chat with my boss if he called to check up on me. Then I'd kick back and chill.

Going into the office was shite as I had to try and look busy. Often I'd end up doing stuff like tidying up the bid library and adding/tagging decent bits I'd written which might be of use to others.

At home I honestly did literally sweet FA. Tidied the house, went to the gym at lunchtime, and watched Netflix with my work phone next to me. 😂

I never got pulled up as I managed the bids well, but when I was in the office I helped with so much more and was far more of a team player. Offering to proofread other people's bids etc in the times I was at a loose end.

I've worked mostly from home for over 20 years, and attend meetings, mostly in the evening, two or three times each week. Most of my meetings are now face to face again, but not all. I spend most of my day writing reports and minutes. I've got a lovely office upstairs but I much prefer sitting on the sofa with my laptop on my lap, and having the TV or talk radio on in the background helps me to concentrate. I've always been able to work the hours that suit me, and often used to work until 2 in the morning and then have a bit of time off in the garden or to do some housework during the day. When I first started this job, I worked for a local authority, but became a self employed consultant about five years ago. Now that I'm nearing retirement, I've reduced my hours by about 50% and am really enjoying the extra time to myself.

I have to consciously put exercise in my day because it's too easy to let it slip. So I do a short yoga routine first thing in the morning. Try to walk late afternoon/before dark.

I get up about 90 mins before my first meeting. Tidy a bit, unload the washer, sort the odd thing out. Get dressed etc. Family all leave together at 6.45.

Lunch tends to be leftovers in 20 mins.

Today first meeting was 8:15 with colleague in Oz last ended at 8:15 colleagues in the US. 80%+ of the company are remote.

I've worked from home since I graduated, way before covid. I am a writer and proofreader and it just makes no sense to be office based when a quiet environment is where I work best.