To wonder why some companies/managers have such a problem with flexi working?

[MotherOfDragons90]

My team, and the department it sits within are super flexible. Working from home is encouraged, we use Skype a lot for meetings, core hours are 10-2 but people’s hours vary immensely depending on workload/personal life etc. I think this is great, as it means I can finish a project late into the evening without having to worry about getting OT approved, or leave early on a Friday if I’ve got a weekend away booked or something.

DHs company used to be similar but they’ve recently revoked pretty much all forms of flexi working. He now has set hours of 8-4, and even that he only got because he’s been there a long time, new starters must do 9-5. No working from home except in unusual circumstances.

I get that in certain industries it isn’t possible, but I’m talking office type environments. It’s made things very awkward for my DH and I because he commute together and in the past have tried to align our flexi working and wfh days to save travel costs (AND the planet!). Traffic is hell at 4pm too!

AIBU to think this is absolutely bonkers and not conducive to a positive working environment at all? Please could I ask what your jobs policies are towards flexi working and any good reasons for banning all together?

Flexible working is accepted where I work, and generally used sensibly as there is someone in the office during core hours.

I agree with some others about flexi-time which is a separate matter and my limited experience of it is of people sitting about to get a few Fridays off.

@KatherineJaneaway it doesn’t work like that though does it? I have one member of staff who has flexible working- compressed hours, so they work 9 hours 4 days a week then 9-1pm Fridays. What happens when an urgent piece of work comes in for her at 2pm on a Friday?

It makes so much sense to let people manage their own time rather than clock watching. My department has unofficial flexitime and people don’t abuse it but I’ve recently recruited a new manager who cannot get his head round it. He wants to micromanage everyone’s time and even sent someone who arrived at work 30 minutes early to the canteen for half an hour because he didn’t want her to leave work 30 minutes early at the end of her shift. There was no need for it whatsoever, it made no difference if they did 8-4 instead of 830-430 that day but it’s a stupid power thing with him.
I’ve had to pull him up on it so many times and creates real resentment with his team.

I work in a very flexi working friendly place. We can all work that way, lots of WAH and different work patterns. However, some people are not allowed by their line managers to work flexibly. Not because of any work related difficulties, just that their managers don't agree with it. It is corporate policy to work flexibly so can't understand why the individuals who ate denied it don't pursue it.

A PP said that it was a middle aged man policy not to agree to flexi working. In the instances that I have mentioned, middle aged men are their managers.

I have one member of staff who has flexible working- compressed hours, so they work 9 hours 4 days a week then 9-1pm Fridays. What happens when an urgent piece of work comes in for her at 2pm on a Friday?
The same as what you’d do if an urgent task came in for someone at 7pm an hour after they’ve gone home. You manage your work around the teams availability if you know someone isn’t there at a particular time you don’t assign them work for that time. It’s up to you as a manager to plan your resources. In a big project everyone pulls together and does the hours needed but no one can do work which arrives 1 hour after they’ve left in any job.
Fwiw it’s worth i work flexibly and often on big projects where certain tasks fall on my day off and are unmoveable. If this happens I change my hours to accommodate the task. Flexibility should work both ways.

It’s not the same though. The urgent task has to be done. At 7pm it wouldn’t happen- no one would be available to take the details or do it. 7pm is outside of working hours.

2pm is not. Not doing the work could have serious reprocussions for the company. So what happens? Someone else has to step in and do it.

Sorry meant to add your solutions only work for pre planned, scheduled tasks. Not unexpected and urgent ones.

A lot of it is simply poor management (and there’s a lot of that about). It’s easy to identify piss takers and relatively easy to deal with them at the time.

There was a comment upthread about some kinds of work being ‘unquantifiable’ which intrigued me.

What kind of work cant be measured? I don’t understand that.

your solutions only work for pre planned, scheduled tasks. Not unexpected and urgent ones.

But what happens if there are staff working, all caught up in other ‘urgent’ work and the request comes in at 2pm?

2pm is not. Not doing the work could have serious reprocussions for the company. So what happens? Someone else has to step in and do it.

But it's your job as a manager to, well, manage that situation.

I have a member of staff who leaves early twice a week to collect his son from nursery. I know it's going to happen (because it's. E same days each week) so we plan around it accordingly. I agreed to his request to leave, so it's my job to make sure that I have enough staff available to cover his absence.

Similar to you - the company has agreed flexible working and has allowed her to finish at 1pm. If a piece of work comes in at 2pm then that's not her problem - she's finished for the day. It's your job to make sure someone is available to take on that piece of work. Her leaving at 1pm isn't a surprise or an emergency so you just need to plan around it.

the point is the work hours have changed. So there's just as much chance of someone being there at 7pm as there is someone not being there at 2pm. And as Laurie says, there's just as much chance that staff might not be able to take the work on anyway.

It's a change of mindset but a lot of companies and managers are proving that they are very much of a fixed mindset. Where I work we deal with a lot of suppliers who are not UK based so working in a very different time zone, so the situation mentioned here doesn't arise - and still they don't want flexible working.

Because people take the piss. You see it on here all the time, people who want to 'work from home' so they don't have to pay for childcare, people whose partner or spouse believe they should do all the house work whilst their employer is paying them to work (and plenty who think why, yes, totally possible to do all the house and lifework on top of being as productive as you would be in an office).

I think flexible working is great and as a mother I’m very grateful for it. I’ve stayed at my company because they are open to working from home and flexible hours.

It does seem to be an old fashioned view that you get less done at home. In reality I spend less time chatting to colleagues, don’t cost them a desk space and manage my own time. I also work hard and get a lot done. Flexibility works both ways though so if something urgent comes up I will deal with it even if I have worked my hours and take the time back at a quiet period.

@passthecherrycoke

By that logic, should nobody ever take annual or sick leave in case something urgent comes up?

Most workplaces have an element of contingency for that kind of leave, and I know I’m always happy to answer a fastball query for a colleague if they have to dash off as they would do the same for me. I’m also normally happy to log on from home or take a phone call if it’s hugely urgent. As previous posters have said, it works both ways.

In actual fact it’s far worse for my partners business now because he won’t be prepared to stay an extra hour to answer a query that comes in at 3:55 when he leaves at 4, because why should he be flexible when the company won’t? They’ve not given an official statement as to why they’ve done it but it’s filterd down from the top that they are not a flexible working company. It seems that things like home access and flexible working patterns have been authorised by middle management without the knowledge of the man at the top, who noticed and isn’t pleased.

no you don't, what bullshit. Give me some examples.

Everyone I know who works from home ends up putting in more hours, precisely because they can access their email etc all weekend and so end up doing work just to get a jump on the week. They might take a couple of hours out in the middle of a work day to get stuff done but it's more than made up for.

The idea that the work day is 9-5 Mon-Fri and the rest of the time is non-work time is simply not the case for more and more working people.

it smacks of poor management. If people take the piss, deal with them. remove the ability for them to WAH. same with expenses, most people are sensible and honest, so trust them. for those who aren't, deal with it. It's like saying 'we're going to give everyone a poor performance rating because some individuals are under-performing' . you wouldn't do that as it's total nonsense - so why the stupidity on working patterns?
Drives me nuts. corporate fuckwittage.

I work part time and two days of my four are from home, and reasonably flexible. I'm public sector but reasonably senior, but I'm very grateful for the flexibility. I find if i get flexibility, I will repay it or do more just to make sure it is even. I'm logging into my laptop now at 8am - although my official hours begin from 9:30 on a wfh day - to make sure I'm ready and set up to hit the ground running in case there's traffic on the school run, or an emergency that I need to see and plan my work hours, or whatever.

I had a childcare Plan A fail where my Plan B needed me to leave at 4:30 instead of 5pm on a Tuesday for the spring and summer terms. When I told my manager and expressed concerns about being seen to duck out early, she rolled her eyes and said "everyone knows you work really hard, don't worry about it, just go". And it's true. There are wfh days I get a lot of laundry done. There are also, less often, wfh days where I stop at 5:45 to go pick up the kids from childminder and then resume at 7 and keep going til 10pm. But all of my team are like that in the sense that we often put in more than we are strictly paid to do. There aren't many jobs in our industry where you would be allowed so much flexibility, so I suppose we are very grateful to our employer, despite occasional complaints about public sector pay.

I had a visitor from the US recently who was gobsmacked when he saw me drop my kids to school, come home and do a quick tidy up after breakfast, and go straight into leading a 9:30 conference call on Brexit planning. He seemed to say that the culture in America is so focused on presenteeism the very idea of letting someone who works part time or flexibly, progress in a senior role, is basically seen as rewarding laziness, regardless of their skill, output or experience.

I left my last job - that I loved - because they cut down wfh and flexibility. (As part of a cost cutting exercise they fired the call handling centre, and you couldn't log in to their phone system to do phone shifts from home.)

Flexitime and WFH aren't the same thing though. It's much easier for an employer to have a system whereby you're allowed to come into work any time between 7 and 10 and leave any time between 4 and 7, as long as you do the same number of hours over a month.

WFH is a totally different matter. Very much depends on the role, obviously useless for customer facing roles and even for people working with customers/suppliers whose hours are more conventional and expect to find you in the office.

But they both fall under the flexible working legislation, which lots if employers seem to think is something that other people have to adhere to, not them.

It’s possible that had a bad experience with people taking the piss. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t actually work properly when they work from home. That definitely shouldn’t preclude everyone from forcing working but if it’s a small business managers are prone to overreacting, especially if they are inexperienced. Then there are twats who think that employees should be made to suffer as much in the pursuit of fulfilling their contract. These people are usually men over 50 who don’t realise just how out of touch with reality they are.

Yanbu. People who are going to slack off will do that in an office the same as working flexibly.
When I worked in an office I found it really hard to concentrate with all the chatter, cake eating and people coming and going. There were always a lot of people on Facebook too...interestingly managers were allowed to work "agile" ...not so with the lower levels. Apparently you can only be trusted once you hit a certain pay grade!

people who want to 'work from home' so they don't have to pay for childcare
We have it written into our flexible working policy that you cannot look after children while working from home. On the days I work from home my DD is in childcare. Employers and employees need clear guidance on what is and isn’t acceptable when flexible wiring is put in place if it is to work properly. A lot of these problems come about when people haven’t planned properly how flexible working will work in their organisation.

In my last but one job, unless I was delivering training I worked from home like all the other learning and development department. In my next job, I had to be at my desk even if I wasn’t delivering training, ‘just in case the director wants to speak to you’ ummmm yes that’s what phones are for! Ffs. No word of a lie often I would be falling asleep at my desk by 3pm as I had nothing to do!! Funnily it didn’t matter if I was still there at 8pm helping a support staff with their QCF when they finished shift- they never said as you’ve worked 3/4 hours over, leave tomorrow at 1pm as nothing is booked in. I managed almost 2 years before I had to walk. They had no idea how to manage- probably why I seen over 15 managers alone leave in that time.

What happens when an urgent piece of work comes in for her at 2pm on a Friday

What can be that urgent at 2pm on a Friday? It's highly likely to be a false deadline - so it can wait until the Monday. In nearly all cases.

And people don't want to work from home so they don't have to pay for childcare, in my case it was so I could avoid a 3 hour daily commute and the ridiculous rail costs.

In terms of twiddling your thumbs "once your primary work is done", if you have done your work why does it matter? Getting the work done on time and to a good standard should be the key thing, not how long you sit in the office. If I am at home and I finish my work I can go off and do something else useful. If I am in the office I am stuck there until 5.30 playing on the internet. What good does that do?

And I agree the 9-5 is a very male way of doing things. The workplace has evolved beyond that - and as someone else said, it is also much more eco-friendly to allow people to work from home and not have everyone clogging the roads at the same time.