To think working from home is becoming a skivers charter

[Viviennemary]

Of course I know there are a lot of people who work from home very conscientiously. But it seems more and more people when they have childcare problems, house needs cleaning, traffic bad, staying in for delivery or they just need an easy day. Work from home. Anyone come across this. I know it's a bit of a risk putting this in AIBU but I just wondered.

I just remembered a lady at our place who WFH, you could never get hold of her between 2.30 and 3.30. It was clear she was doing the school run but had assured her boss her three kids under 10 were at after school club until 5pm every day so she could work.

Why make it so binary?

Because in the example above a half day’s sickness absence is being misrepresented as working from home

Because in the example above a half day’s sickness absence is being misrepresented as working from home

And to me that’s fine if there’s trust, and give and take between employer and employee. The ‘swing’ is that I work longer hours than I’m strictly contracted to most of the time; the ‘roundabout’ is that i could spend a day at home doing some work when I’m ill but still functioning but not be expected to be workng at 100% capacity.

Dh’s work has just scrapped sick and holiday entitlement for all but admin staff. You take it as you see fit. His targets are very clear ( and individual) though and his comp. is bonus loaded.

There was a good article on Linked In re. when WFH is beneficial and when it’s not. Basically it works well for senior people with clearly delineated boundaries to their role but compromises the development of junior staff because they’re less likely to get as hoc development opportunities or to learn by osmosis.

@johnny - my organisation paid several big 4 consultancies for a study that found for this particular global brand, wfh amongst junior staff results in far more productive hours as they are more likely to ask for help (and go on training courses) than when in the office.

“Because in the example above a half day’s sickness absence is being misrepresented as working from home”

But plenty of people who should be off sick “struggle in” to the office and make like they are heroes while spreading their germs around.

Plus I have tight deadlines on high profile work. I expect my organisation benefits more from me meeting those deadlines than from policing every runny nose I get.

OP are you my ex-manager? She used to say that when we work from home it has to be "proper work" (yes she used air quotes) not the usual working from home that people are used to

I used to manage a team of 15 under her and never, ever had anyone abuse the WFH policy. My team used to work longer hours when they were at home.

I left that job because of her BTW. It was like working in an office in 1985.

If you have a bad cold or a heavy period or diarreah or an immune condition that prevents you from commuting but allows you to wfh, why should you call in sick?

When I work from home I use the opportunity to catch up on little bits of housework. But I've also done more actual work by 10am than I usually get done in a day at the office. Even if I am still in my PJs

This was tech/engineering. Think it contrasted Tesla and Air BnB. I imagine it varies by industry. I know I learned a lot from just getting pulled into meetings a lot as a junior. Yes, you can ask questions on the work you’ve been delegated but at the same time you don’t know what you dont know.

I work from home a lot and I am more efficient but I do sometimes miss out on nuggets of info that might be useful.

I have been working at home, literally as I am at the house I grew up in, for the past 2 weeks. It generally means that I log in between 06:30 and 07:30. Yesterday I did not log off until nearly 20:00. I am productive and present, either online or in meetings.
When I work at my house it is the same, although I might log off at a more normal time. I may put a load of washing on or run the dishwasher and I did once dust my bedroom during a telephone conference, but usually I am in front of the screen for the lion's share of the time.
Unlike one of my colleagues who actually went on holiday whilst working from home and is not having his contract renewed next year. Had he been productive and communicative it would not have been a problem, but he wasn't, so he is out.
I will be in the office Tuesday to Thursday next week though, as we are all in and will be having our Christmas bash. We generally all work at home if there is a trade fair in the city we work in because hotel prices rocket. If I am required to be in the office during that time I can be as I only live 75km away, but sadly, increased traffic over the past 10 years means it is no longer commutable on a regular basis.
It would be very obvious if I were not doing my job!

WFH is the future. Our office no longer even provides enough desks for all of the staff. As others have said, there is just as much a culture of skiving in the office than those WFH and rewarding presenteeism rather than productivity is stupid and counterproductive.

If someone can combine WFH with taking a delivery what is the issue? I also believe, that there is legal protection for needing to take emergency child care days off - so if they wish to also work from home on those days, again, I don't see the problem.

I work from home 14 days out of 15. I go in to the office one overy 3 weeks just to show my fact. It is an utter waste of my time. Technology provides all the interaction tools I need and if I am missing deadlines or failing to meet my KPIs it would soon become apparent. No-one cares whether I work 5 hours, 7.5 hours or 10 hours. Caring about hours worked rather than outputs for the majority of jobs that are compatible with WFH is just old fashioned.

I disagree. On the rare occasion that Dh works from Home he claims he gets a lot more done: writes up all his staff appraisals/ gets through tonnes of reports in 2 hours rather than 4 etc etc, because he isn't disturbed by constant phone calls/ people popping into his office.

I come home to a dinner and the washing hung out, which he's managed to fit in. He works like a dog 🐕 anyway, but he seems To work even harder when he's at home in order to prove to everyone he is actually working.

If one of my team asked to work from home because they were ill I'd say no, because that should be a sick day.

That's a bit harsh. There are loads of things that make you feel too unwell to commute and go into the office.

Where I work, there's such huge pressure on managers to reduce sickness absence that when you phone in sick, our manager's first words are "Have you got stuff you could do at home?" Staff love it, it means they get a quiet day to catch up on reporting and recording, Management love it, it gets stuff up to date and stops a lot of people ending up on absence management.

The only times I've been completely up to date are when I've had a WFH because of a cold or a bad back. Mind you, now we have titchy Chromebooks instead of proper laptops, I can't do my thing of typing while I lie flat on my back with knees bent and perch the laptop on my legs.

I work from home when I really need to get things done that require intense and uninterrupted focus (eg write a report). I work across three bases in my workplace (and do have an office at one of them). My work place has a reactive aspect to it and it's hard to avoid issues if they flare up. Writing at home helps me keep on top of stuff.....

WFH is the future. Our office no longer even provides enough desks for all of the staff

I suspect you're right. A friend has recently retired from a local council where staff were positively discouraged from coming into the office unless they had meetings. They were expected to work from home most of the time.

There are issues with this imo. Why should people be expected to run their heating all day at their own expense just because their employer has decided to save money by having smaller offices? Not to mention all the other stuff - electricity, water etc.

As my friend said on being told not to come into the office unless she had meetings/appointments "I don't see why I should stay at home using my own bog roll just to save you money"! They then tried to say that any costs in terms of heating, lighting etc would more than offset by her savings in commuting costs.

They looked a bit sheepish when she asked them how much she would save by not walking the 100 yards from her house to the new office.

She ended up having to go in anyway. The work mobile only worked at home if she was standing halfway up the stairs and her internet was so slow that she couldn't download anything bigger than a one-page letter without it timing out.

YABVU.

I get double the amount of work done when I work from home & get an extra two hours to work from when I’m not commuting into town

I work from home one day a week. I work far more productively alone on focussed tasks that day. I also diarise my work in brief so I have something to point to.

You say 'just' want an easy day - but my work is so stressful that my easy day is essential for my mental health. A little oasis of calm concentration in a busy working week.

I've had the oposit experience. There are people at my work who blatantly skive in our office. They go off to make a drink/ go to the loo and bump into someone they know and then instead of a having s short chat they stand there for ages talking to them While the rest of us sit there working. There were two girls who used to have really long conversations at their desks it was really distracting. Some of them go for a fag break at least every hour if not more. Yes I do wonder if these people skive when they work from home but they do it in the office anyway. I think it would be quite obvious from your work output in my line of work if I were skiving. It's the thought of other people thinking I might be skiving which puts me off from wfh to be honest which is why I always put in extra work when I do.

I think WFH and flexible working is a good thing.

Has anyone questioned why we think 9-5 is the appropriate way of working in today’s world? Or why we feel we need to work 5 days? Or all in the office?

In London certainly, people have to commute further and further which does not aid productivity and is a waste of time. Let people be more flexible where they work.

With open plan offices and small desk spaces , it’s harder to work effectively in an office. Yes it’s better for people to see and talk to people but that’s not 100% of our office jobs. Unless workplaces provide better quiet spaces etc then wfh is a sensible solution.

WFH is fine if I need to for some reason but I'd much rather be in the office.

I get far more done at home. I have the extra time I would otherwise spend commuting, plus I don't get the distraction of people talking to me.

My DH works from home half his time now, and while he probably has more breaks than at work he also starts pretty much at 7am and will go on until 7pm. His commute is almost 2 hours each way into London so he can have a couple of hours around lunch without reducing what work he does. I thought it was a better pattern to have longer breaks to refresh yourself anyway, rather than sit for hours in an office while your brain slowly switches off!

Oh, and when it comes to working when sick - that makes perfect sense on occasions.

I had swollen glands earlier this year. Any physical effort made them throb, and I lay on the sofa with ice packs for four days, but I could still keep on top of vital emails those days.

My last workplace had a binary attitude to working when sick or not - I was told to stay at home until I was better (well, except for the one thing they couldn't manage without me). I kept on offering for them to drop me a laptop (I lived 100yds away), so I could not get too far behind, knowing I'd probably still be drained and ropey when I returned. Nope, no deal. Then they absolutely blasted me for being behind when I returned.

I tend to associate hard line thinking on these things with being pretty thick, tbh.

I've been working from home full time for over 10years. My job is fast-paced and I need to be able to respond to calls/emails quickly. It would become apparently very quickly if I wasn't fulfilling my hours.

Yes, it offers flexibility when sudden childcare issues arise (childminder was sick once, and I had to keep toddler home until grandparent got here) or when there are school meetings/shows during the day, but I always make up my hours. I work way more hours than I'm contracted to anyway, and I don't grudge that at all. I don't have the 1hr each way commute that I used to have, and am fortunate enough to be able to take kids to school/childminder almost every day, so repay this benefit by doing extra work at night when kids are in bed if I have to.

I've been with my company for over 15 years though, and have built up the trust to be this flexible. I would never have disappeared to a school meeting (or the hairdressers ) without asking my boss first. Now I just tell him

My productivity, results and appraisal report prove I am doing a good job, not my office environment.