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.

• junior employees aren’t learning from watching more senior employees - things like : - managing communication with difficult clients, team communication in external meetings, learning how to brief senior staff appropriately in advance of meetings etc

indont think wfh rules this out tbh, I’ve learnt that by watching in a remote role, I think it’s very much company dependent, a bad company won’t necessarily teach you that even in an office environment.

I genuinely cannot grasp why you think it's OK for private sector employees to WFH if the role is suitable but the public sector cannot.

My work is in the charitable sector but funded by HMG. I take phone calls from people who need to claim benefits, check their entitlement and walk them through the claim process. I have to answer n calls per day and meet quality standard as assessed by a manager reviewing my cases. I'm 100% WFH. The office is on the South Coast, I'm in the Midlands as are several colleagues, and one is in the far north of Scotland. Managers can see my status on the call handling suite and listen in to my calls either live or later.

I don't have a cat or dog but working with either around me would have zero impact on my performance.

Why should I be forced to spend and hour a day travelling to an office that costs money to rent, heat and clean just to satisfy what seems no more than an urge to control?

I think it's a clash between the authoritarians and those with a more flexible open mindset. Working from home has allowed individuals to continue working despite life challenges or illness. It also allows a separation from work and the obligations of life.
Some live for work some don't. That's where the angst is.

I genuinely cannot grasp why you think it's OK for private sector employees to WFH if the role is suitable but the public sector cannot.

Because... muh taxes, obvs. She pays your wages, dontchaknow?

Its basically like the SAHP vs. working parent thing.

I know people in both camps and while often people say they need to work financially (although almost all their wage is swallowed by childcare, in fact many I know lost money to childcare) the truth is they WANT to work socially.
Some people just can't take their own company and being alone (or with a baby who doesn't really interact) at home 24/7 is like a literal torture to them.

In the same way those same people also struggled to handle lock down and can't see WFH as anything other than their personal nightmare.

Then you have other people who would happily not interact with another person for days and is content alone but equally gets stressed in fast paced, noisy, people interactive environments.

The world has always been geared for the 'social' type (same way its always been geared for early birds etc...) those people now feel threatened that the world is starting to challenge that they might not be the only 'normal' (introverts or ND etc... no longer being forced to conform) and this their social world is getting smaller and they fear they will end up forced into what they fear most (which they won't plenty of equally social people still exist the world is just 'balancing' more fairly).

Also forgot to mention - lots of people find it extremely isolating to WFH.

And also, it's very different WFH when you have a house of your own and a dedicated space. Imagine being a lodger or just having a room in a house, so you're living and working from one room, possibly never socialising with anyone? Never able to get away from your workspace? People complain about not being able to work from home, but then they also complain about feeling isolated and like they have no social skills, no friends. I'm not saying you necessarily are friends with your colleagues, but it certainly helps keep your social meter "filled" (as it were!).

A hybrid option is the best - although I say that as I'm currently fighting my work on the fact they want me at an office 30 miles away rather than the local one less than 3 .

There was a thread recently with the op panicking that her dh would have to not work from home and I really felt for her that the comments were so extreme in - you’ve had it easy until now. If the dh is getting his work done why should anyone care?

Definitely! I had some awful experiences being trained 'on the job' in person before remote working. I also was once expected to teach someone the role whilst being very busy and having no reduction in what was expected of me otherwise, which is when I realised the senior staff who'd previously clearly resented the extra work of training me weren't the ones in the wrong. Strikes me that a lot of employers were taking the piss in that regard.

Aaaaand it took me so long to type out my posts even though I'm WFH that others have already mentioned my input.

A better deal? I’d hate to work from home. I love my colleagues and we laugh a lot together and just share life together. We’ve become good friends. When I leave work, I leave work to go home to my home and my family. We talk about our day. Our home is not a work place, it would be awful.

And for younger people it’s a bad idea.
UK seem to have a lot of people with MH problems, you can’t even open the door when someone knocks on it. Younger people need to get out and actually talk to real people. Get some social skills.

Hybrid works for me.

I do think new starters need in person contact to get going properly. I've hated starting new roles totally remote.

Another down side is for addicts, I've had calls where I can tell someone is chain smoking through the call, which led me to worry about others drinking or more while working.
I know people can sneak drink and drugs into their work day but there's so much less accountability when at home with no one watching.

I think its mostly jealousy and an idea that WFH means you're not doing your job properly.
The first is just daft, the second isn't an issue in any business that is properly managed. I'm a manager and I know whether my team are working based on what they produce, not whether they are in the office or not. Occasional days in office are a good idea but most people are more productive at home IMO.

I'm going out on a limb here and will say that I see fulltime WFH as a bad thing. I've worked from home for over 15 years running my own business and 10 years ago got an a part time Christmas role working in a retail shop because I realised that I was missing basic social interaction with people. I've managed large teams of people and my skills in doing that came from working in an office, many years ago, with an experienced manager who could guide me and I could watch and learn. So much I learnt from them, just seeing how they dealt with people. Also what is missing from WFH is community, I had a team of 40, and even to this day I remember the support they provided to one of their colleagues when she can make from lunch in tears having been mocked for her bald head (she was recovering from cancer treatment). Has this happened with someone working from home, I supect their collegues would never have known. The fact you can learn across the deak, ask for help or just share a good/bad experience.
There are many benefits for working from home, but people are social herd animals and I think it is bad to just live in a bubble where the only actual interaction you might have is with the amazon delivery man.
This does lead into my other pet peeve, why don't people just speak to each other anymore, everything is done hands off via social media and I think this is very bad for society as a whole,

I've recently started a new job and I must say that working in an office has helped my learning and progression so much more than if I was at home. I think having 1 or 2 days at home where you can really focus on your individual tasks is great but I don't like jobs which are completely WFH. Furthermore, we are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic atm and WFH is only exacerbating this.

And for younger people it’s a bad idea.
UK seem to have a lot of people with MH problems, you can’t even open the door when someone knocks on it. Younger people need to get out and actually talk to real people. Get some social skills

I think this is really key. Ultimately I guess we all like the idea of being ready for work five minutes before and not having to get up, but the reality is, WFH is hugely isolating and is NOT good at all for those who are just starting their professional careers or who are young and inexperienced or just live in a share house or something.

A lot of the push back I see is from that cohort, however, and it's clear from their metrics that they are taking the piss, probably just lounging around watching TV or whatever between calls and doing the absolutely bare minimum. Obviously these people would do the absolute bare minimum in office as well; it's just more visible and easier to deal with if that's the case.

In my company certainly I'm not seeing the "everyone should be in office because that's what I had to do" kind of mentality.

The problem with this view is that it assumes people will not only have more social interaction whilst working in person, but it will be beneficial. Neither of which are necessarily the case.

Workplaces can be positive and supportive social environments. They can also be the location of bullying, racism, sexism and a whole host of nasty behaviours. Even the existence of close relationships in the workplace can cause issues for those who for whatever reason aren't included.

Ultimately, you can't assume that relationships with other people who happen to share the same employer are innately valuable. It also needs to be factored in that some of us the time not wasted on commuting to see other people too, ones we've actually chosen.

Fully agree. My son suffered badly enough when at Uni during the covid lockdowns and none of his lecturers/teaching staff were on campus for the entire first year of his uni life, he barely left his tiny Uni flat as there was no where to go, even the library was closed for several months and all the subject buildings were locked, as was the student union etc. Even in his second year, half his modules were still online only. It was only the third year when it was anywhere near business as usual, and even then, one of his modules was still online only!

He had to leave home and move to a new city for his first graduate job, so living alone in a flat which was away from the city centre due to lack of any affordable options closer to the centre, so his life would be pretty miserable if he didn't get out to go to work a few days per week.

As I say, Uni was bad enough, but having to work from home for more than a day or so per week would probably make him suicidal. All for no reason! As it is, he goes in every day - even days he "should" work from home - with the odd exception if, say, there's heavy snow, or torrential rain, etc. or he needs to be in for a delivery or for a landlord inspection etc, which is maybe once every month or two.

At least he knows he is better off leaving his flat and doing something so he makes the effort even though he doesn't have to. He just finds it a shame that so many of his "colleagues" wfh so he says he doesn't get to build relationships with them, either in the workplace nor socially.

But you absolutely cannot start your working life thinking like that? You have to assume that your work relationships WILL be valuable, WILL be positive etc. and if they're not, deal with it accordingly. You can't start your working life with the attitude of I might not like people and they might not like me therefore WFH is the only option I'm willing to consider?

Every single anti-WFH colleague I've had was the type who spends all day in the office walking around chatting to people and doing nothing.

I think there’s a fair few employers on here, slagging it off. Other people are envious. However there was a thread recently with lots of people saying they used wfh to skive, which must have stirred the pot. I don’t think all the people on that thread were genuine though.

It's been great for sickness for me
I can ask my manager if I can take 15 mins instead of going off sick, I take my morphine, get a heat pad, whatever else I need and then come back to work
The pain relief means I would struggle to drive and I don't really want to be rolling round yelling in pain at the office

My only issue with it is the knowledge sharing, particularly with new staff. Otherwise it's win win.

because of our experiences with people working from home, the issue often is many people do not have a proper set up at home and this impact how they work others thir work ethic is slacker when at home

colleagues who hold things up as they have not got the information to hand or they keep dropping out in meetings or they are uncontactable at times you expect them to be or they are not focused as dealing with whatever is going on at home (of course this can happen at work)

calling services and the operator is cooking while discussing your account, countless times are distracted and more often than not, not fully recording information given I always now make them repeat to me what they are putting in the notes

its poor work ethic that I encounter with so many wfh employees. I should not be aware someone is at home when i call a company but so often I am. with work many have been called back into the office because so many slack when working form home so that isn't fair on those who remain just as professional

I love being able to work from home two or three days a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I could probably work from home all the time if I had to.

I see though that what is good for me is not good for society. We know isolation and loneliness is a killer. Lots of people living in isolated households, without social contact, is not a good idea. Fine for those with established families or living in communes, probably not ok for everyone else. Not 24/7 for their whole working lives, I don't think.

My experience is that some people will work hard whether they are in the office or at home and some people will skive likewise. It's much more about the person than the location.