Why are (some) people so against WFH?

[thistimenextyearwellbemillionaires]

I see so many threads on here about why people shouldn't be able to WFH and I don't really understand why people would be against it

For most people it seems make sense with their home life & financially as saving on commuting costs. When my children were young I was 5 days in the office and had to rush back from town to collect them and it was so stressful, it must be great for people not to have to do that now.

I know some people might take the piss a bit, but this happened when people were in the office full time too, there would always be someone always in late, leaving early etc.

I am lucky that my company is hybrid and no plans to change that. I've been offered another role recently which was a big pay rise but 5 days in the office and have decided to stay where I am. Where I work, whether you're in the office or at home you're expected to produce the same work and results and if you don't you'd be out so they're no slouch in terms of expectations of their employees.

Interested to know people's honest opinions.

Absolutely but, and this is obviously not in anyway an accurate reflection of the entire young workforce, I work with quite a few young people and they are all hybrid and like the days at home.

I work in a creative industry and am in office 2 or 3 days a week, the days I WFH are by far the most productive and the hour I would spend commuting is now spent working. I manage a large team and my expectations are the same whether they are in office or at home, poor performance is still managed. Personally I wouldn't work somewhere that didn't offer hybrid

They like the days at home because they also have days in the office. It's a very different experience for those who are completely WFH.

I agree. Why? I’m public sector and I get far more done when I WFH.

Yes I think hybrid is a good balance.

Other godsends of working from home - if you've got a bit of a cold that would usually stop you coming into the office (or you'd go in then everyone else would catch it) you can WFH if you don't feel that terrible.

I have to admit I love being able to use my own loo as well, and make whatever I want for lunch.

Oh wait, I forgot. Public sector workers must be tortured at all times.

I don’t understand the posters who think public sector workers can’t wfh or have some responsibility to the public to do their role from an office. Hearabouts, the County Council downscaled its ginormous county hall to smaller premises so that forward facing departments had dedicated office space and everyone else hot desked when they were in office. Saved a fortune for the tax payer. Plus, why do public sector workers need to justify themselves more than say someone trying to sell you a holiday you don’t want etc.

Green to the gills jealousy. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Following as interested to understand. I think it’s generally a good thing for older workers, less so for new entrants, who don’t have the social side and it is harder to be mentored remotely.

They’re not going to get this from sitting in an office surrounded by people on Teams calls.

It really frustrates me when people say WFH is bad because you need to be in the office to learn. Sure, if you’re really lazy about training and onboarding and expect people to learn solely by chance encounters. Or you could actually put together intentional plans for this stuff and not leave it to chance.

My husband and I run a small business, I work fully from home and love it. My youngest two children are 10 & 8 and it gives me flexibility to be able to manage the school run.
However we've just let yet another person go for absolutely taking the piss, in a small company it's very noticeable if someone isn't pulling their weight and it's shocking how quickly this starts.

unfortunately due to this it's looking like our next hire will be officed based which means I will be also.
Even when interviewing the expectation is that they'll have toddlers to deal with and no intention of using childcare. We're not allowed to ask at interview about plans for childcare so we wouldn't entertain people with young children.

I find a lot of the MN conversations on this topic are very capitalist. It's a bit weird. The idea seems to be that you are lucky to have a job, that your employer can call all the shots and you just have to do it because it's "entitled" to want your work life to suit your home life.

This seems to me like the wrong approach to the world of work. I think that a better way to approach a career is to work as hard as you can to make yourself well qualified, well regarded and valued. And then, when you a hit a point in life where you want to make room in your life for other things (usually in my friend circle this is when they have DC), you leverage that expertise to negotiate working conditions that work better for you. Examples include compressed hours, work from home, flexitime, project based contracts, buying leave. All of this is reasonable. We don't have to behave like we're cogs in a machine and so grateful to have the opportunity to work all our lives. We contribute a service in time, effort and experience.

Of course, all of this requires transparency. If you flexi then you need to actually work, even if you work outside of normal hours. But in most cases people aren't stupid. They work hard, but have put themselves in a position where they can negotiate better conditions and better terms for that hard work. We should be encouraging this, not siding with the employers who are crying over losing their peasant class of workers.

This generalisation completely excludes all the young people for whom remote working opens up new opportunities. And it comes up on nigh on every remote working thread. Being young doesn't mean you can even access in person work, much less that you're better off with it. But people who make that claim completely lose sight of all the young people who don't fit into the particular box they've decided to focus on.

mumsnet is a strange place

Men - we will support you like your best friend, you deserve more!

wfh - you’re entitled and lazy. You must be dragged down to the same shitty situation that I am in.

I'm not against it's a great option to have what pisses me off though is people now refuse to come i to the office when we need a face to face workshop/ meeting / get some work done especially of they have done their 2 days for the week. The whole point is you work where it's best to get your work done so if you have to go in for 3 days in oen week, 4 days the other week, 2 days one week don't moan and complain about having to come in more.

I’ve only ever wfh, because of a disability, so I’ve been the junior having to learn the ropes and I don’t think it’s the case that you can’t learn well from home, it just depends on the company same as in an office, I’ve had some truly amazing training and the option for career growth from remote first companies, the ones where I’ve had the worst are basically companies that went wfh during covid and didn’t really have the ethos/plan and never expanded on it afterwards either.

I haven't worked for some years and I am not "envious" of people who wfh. I'm sure it works very well for some jobs and some people. But, as a customer, two words - customer service. It became terrible after Covid. It has improved since then but it's often simply not great. Dogs, kids etc.
Far worse though, are the overseas call centres. I'm looking at you O2. Reeling off a script, nothing available in writing and, yes I'm sorry to say it, unintelligible accents.

People don't like that at ours either but they can't refuse, it's in their contracts. If they refuse, they'll find themselves out of a job.

It does sound like that. I never get this because public sector workers have important roles and get paid less for doing them than many more commercial endeavours. Why are we obsessed with big business and who do we expect to step in when it invests our money badly or markets a dangerous drug.

Of course, all of this requires transparency. If you flexi then you need to actually work, even if you work outside of normal hours. But in most cases people aren't stupid. They work hard, but have put themselves in a position where they can negotiate better conditions and better terms for that hard work. We should be encouraging this, not siding with the employers who are crying over losing their peasant class of workers.

This last sentence is very interesting @AshCrapp, because in a lot of cases that's exactly what's happening.

The UK until the 2020s had for a while been a society where we had plenty of competition for low paid roles. A looooot of people got very used to a poorly paid service class who didn't have a lot of options. And now that class isn't there in the same numbers. We also used to have more competition in many professions than we do now.

There are a great many threads on here now that are basically people who miss that and don't understand why it's no longer present. Sometimes it's about why their school can't get wraparound care staff, sometimes it's about poor service or limited options in hospitality. The remote working version is usually complaints about customer service staff who are clearly working from home. Then also there's a lack of understanding that more skilled people might very well be in a position where they can dictate to employers as well. It's because of an underlying idea that there'll always be someone else available when actually, there isn't.

See, this is the other thing (referred to upthread) is that it does seem to really benefit women too (unlike lots of work policies),

Poor management and people taking the piss makes it a pain for me.

I can work from home but live relatively close to work so I prefer to come in. My issue is that I often find myself covering for people who have restructured their home lives around being able to work from home up to 3 days a week as per the university's policy. Some live more than 2 hours away.

As a result they save any jobs that need them to be on site (receiving deliveries, dealing with IT updates or estates issues, helping students) to the days when they are in. However, if their travel is disrupted or they are ill or on leave, people like me end up having to "just" meet X from IT/ the stationery delivery/ be available for queries from their students.

Since COVID, both a dd and SiL work from home - she all the time, he for much of it. And since they don’t have a spare room to use as an office, one is at the kitchen table, the other at a desk tucked into the youngest dc’s little bedroom - and that will have to come to an end soon. They can’t use the kitchen table together - both have long zoom meetings.

Unless they move, from a house and location that are otherwise fine, in an area where anything bigger is going to be completely unaffordable, it’s going to mean a loan for an office in the garden - but at least they do have the space for it.

It really frustrates me when people say WFH is bad because you need to be in the office to learn. Sure, if you’re really lazy about training and onboarding and expect people to learn solely by chance encounters.

There are some jobs where learning “by chance encounter” is really important. I’m a social worker, it’s so important for student social workers and newly qualified workers to be around more experienced staff. There are many things that are best learned by co-working, or by observing how an experienced worker approaches a conversation or situation, it all can’t come through text books and training sessions. It’s not about laziness so much as the complexity of a job working with unpredictability and risk.

Which would be fair enough if the people talking about the importance of this sort of thing caveated it, made it clear they understand it's about specific roles rather than across the board. Like your example does here. Because of course it's going to be relevant and vital in some jobs.

They seldom do it as well as you have, though, and the posters that @starrymidnight was replying to were making the usual wild generalisations.