Why do companies seem to hate wfh and flexible working?

[numenor]

I really don't understand it so many companies bringing in stringent return to the office policies and curtailing flexible working.

I'm a single working mum and really couldn't work without these things and I don't think I'm alone in that.

What is it about these things companies don't like 🤷‍♀️.

Surely it's a good thing to encourage work and to be able to hire the best candidate

Totally team dependent

Our team is more productive at home

If we have quotes to prepare, the proof is simply in the pudding: is it done or not??

That's all our boss cares about. The work getting done

I can take a 3 hour lunch break if I want to, as long as I mark it in my calendar and get my hours in around it. We have annualised hours and targets and as long as we hit those and are available for scheduled client meetings and team meetings noone minds how we work. We just shown when we are out in our calendar. I picked my nephews up from school today then worked till later in the evening

Afraid as a boss it's the few that ruin it for many. We had WFH for years prior to covid and you'd get some amazing workers and some piss takers, so I just got rid of the piss takers.

Any business should be able to see and do this and the. We can all get the benefits of WFH.

My ex-piss takers are now someone else's problem!

Some of the reasons for return to office:

1. People being unavailable for scheduled meetings, ad hoc calls and queries between 2:30pm and 5pm because they are picking up children. Annoying when you are dependant on the people who have disappeared for the school run but you want to finish at 5;30pm and you either have to remember to contact them before about 2pm or wait until next day, which might block your own progress. Doesn’t happen in an office (unless they are part time). People don’t care how annoying this is for their colleagues who just want to get their work done as quickly as possible. In the office everyone is guaranteed to be available 9-5:30 with a max hour away for lunch (although most people stay in office anyway).

2. Much easier and quicker to ask questions when sitting together in an office, don’t have to IM / call and wait for a response cos they’ve not noticed IMs

3. Knowledge sharing by osmosis within teams, overhearing work related chat.

4. Noisy children in the background of calls (even if being looked after by another adult) after 4pm or the school holidays, or cleaners or other trades

5. People leaving early without telling colleagues. Annoying when you have a problem at 5:05pm and don’t get a response on IM. Again in an office you’d have seen them leaving and know that you are on your own for rest of the day.

Loads of full time jobs aren't... I took over from a guy that did the role full time. 40+ hrs per week he did. Everyone told me how busy he was and it was full on etc. he would bring the data systems down for a week, not have time to develop it... It's just so complicated and difficult. And the hiring manager was seriously considering keeping him on as a contractor in case the work was too much for me all that shit.

I do more than him, developed more, linked more systems and improved efficiency for all staff, increased data knowledge, centralised data

.. and I work part time and term time only. (25 hrs per week)

I have been working from home for 15 years and I am lucky that I am able to work from home pretty much full time with very occasional trips to the office (quarterly). I have definitely noticed employers pulling back on remote working more in the last 12 months and fewer roles are advertised as remote. It takes a lot of discipline to work from home and some staff also need a lot more supervision than others. In our workplace the reasons given for a move to ‘hybrid’ working - part time in the office and part time at home - were staff morale, the need to maintain the office space (bums on seats basically) and better face to face meetings which are preferred by clients.

We hear a lot from people who love home working and don’t want to go back to the office. I think we hear less from people who really struggled with home working e.g. because they have a rubbish internet connection, live in overcrowded accommodation, value the separation of home and work, need colleagues around to feel part of an organisation, need a lot of supervision to do their job well or to learn the ropes or just get easily distracted at home. I think employers are trying to balance the needs of different workers and the needs of their business.

I think there is an element of ‘everyone else is calling their staff back in and we should too.’ This is particularly the case in public sector roles like local authorities and the civil service which are responding to criticism from the press. There is also the added complication of expensive office space and rents. There is no point having an office space and associated costs if nobody is working in it!

Agree. There's another thread on aibu where pps are happily informing us of gadgets to make it looks as if your computer is being used, etc, while doing the washing or chatting to a neighbour

Piss takers
Terrible for team bonding and work culture
Absolutely shocking for developing junior staff
Consequently bad for staff retention and recruitment costs increase

Because people are less productive and can ‘hide’ from my experience.

A lot of managers aren't good at managing the work of their department.

If there is an issue with the work of a department (quality or quantity) very few managers look at themselves and wonder if they are the problem.

It's easier to end WFH, bring everyone back into the office and hope that sorts managerial problems.

We hired someone and she did next to no work for 2 weeks and thought that it was okay because she hadn't lied about about it when we asked and had been honest. She thought it was fine to say, "Sorry, my neighbour knocked on the door so I was chatting to them for an hour" "I ended up going Christmas shopping for 3 hours" etc. She had 10 yrs previous experience of working in an office, but none work from home.

How bizarre that she thought being honest about it made it ok? How would she have answered, ‘we pay you for 7.5 hours a day, why did you only work 4?’

It depends on the job of course, and the person. If it's a collaborative, team based job, if you need in-person meetings, if you ever need to sketch something or demonstrate something, if you have junior staff who need to learn or experienced staff who need to pass on skills, if you are a manager of someone, working in a F2F team is often best and it was the default before COVID.

You can sort of do those things remotely, as we have been for 4 years but it's a drag, not everyone performs well and it's less efficient.

If your job is completely self-contained just you and a computer and you dread seeing/hearing other people, are mature and reliable and don't need development, it's different.

I've worked remote since before covid, and only ever seek out roles that are fully remote. My performance is constantly praised and I meet deadlines consistently with a high standard of work.

My current team is spread over the world and I only overlap with some of them by a couple of hours a day. I'm not expected to work outside of my core hours and everything ticks over just fine.

Although remote roles are less common than they were a couple of years ago, there are still plenty out there (profession dependent). It's never going away.

I would just say part time and flexible working are fine as part of a plan, it enables people with other commitments to keep contributing. Regular full-time working from home won't work for everyone though.

Because people take the piss. My dp brought his staff back in 2021 because 2 members of staff simply weren't working. You are paid from 9-5 or whatever so you should be working bar a lunch break however 2 members of staff just weren't working at all, claiming they were but no productivity, and as the labs, production staff and warehousing were all in it seems unfair to allow office staff to work from home anyway. Interestingly the main culprit quit 2 weeks after back to the office was mandated! (He's not an ogre, there are staff who have flexible working for family reasons but they proved themselves reliable first)

I do project work with lots of different companies so I see a mix of wfh and office based teams. Without exception, all of the office based teams are noticabley more engaged and more productive.

Why do so many employees hate going to their place of work to….. work?

People taking the piss
Lots of employees say they produce more work at home but from an employers point of view that's is seldolm
the case

I wfh before the pandemic and would always be at my desk by 9am and often finished later. During the pandemic they bought in all these flexible things and tbh it just gives too much choice.

Also with wfh there is very little awareness of the detrimental impact if you are single and live alone. It's extremely bad for mental health to wfh full time and be single and live alone. You get what I call cabin fever from being at home too much and organising skills which often include spatial reasoning decline from having an unvaried environment.

Noisier so I can't concentrate as well
Pick up illnesses more easily
Commuting time adds hours to my day which means I'm wiped out due to disability
I don't need to be at my place of work to work

For me there are several reasons:

We saw a decrease in the speed new joiners learn, it's really difficult to teach someone a complex system remotely. Lots of skills are learnt by sharing work, seeing others doing it and also being drawn into discussions by just being there in person, nobody links you to a teams call just because.

They also don't really get the social interaction between departments, it's not about having drinks, it's chatting at the water cooler or during the catered lunch we have once a week. Work is about knowing others and being able to know who to go to for questions outside your own bubble and it's easier to do this if you met a person before.

Then there are the ones who do take the piss about childcare. Nobody says something in an emergency and we definitely see a decrease in time off for things like parent evening or other child related appointments as it means you can log off 10 minutes before, not 1.5 hours because you don't commute.
My HO had a policy that you could only apply for WFH if you showed proof of childcare arrangements for any child in primary school. I am pretty sure that rule still exists and so far we don't have it in our branch as people are being sensible anyway.

Because SOOOOOOO many people take the piss!

I imagine it’s in part about how motivating the job is. If it was drudgery I can imagine it’s much harder to motivate people and I may want them in a room. If it’s fun work things would be different.

I've seen threads on here where people talk about WFH and how great it is because they're able to:
Not get childcare for a young child or baby
Do yoga
Go swimming
Have a daytime nap
Get jobs around the house done.

Now none of those is an issue if you also get the work done but I'm guessing that too many people aren't and productivity is dropping.