Long office hours & flexible working?

[Jadefeather7]

Just curious to hear about flexible working practices in other companies particularly where roles require working outside 9-5 hours and there are long commutes involved (eg if you work in the city). It’s hard to find much information online and most of my friends are in totally different careers eg medicine, teaching. I have three friends who work in similar jobs who work flexibly but I often wonder if they are just super lucky- one is in Legal for tech company, one in Banking and one works for the Big Four.

Do you have working from home options or flexi time and if so what’s your arrangement? Is it common in your workplace for people to choose when and where they work? Do you work for a large or small employer? Did you change your job in order to get more flexibility? Were you with your employer for a long time before you requested flexible working? Did you find it a challenge to convince management? Is it a company culture thing or down to who you get as a boss?

At the moment I’m trying to figure out whether to stay in my current role where my employer doesn’t seem to be very keen on flexible working (is this still common or are most companies progressive about flexible working?) or take a role closer to me (these are very rare, would involve a 30%pay cut and involve establishing my reputation as a newbie).

I would love to get a feel for what it’s like out there with different companies.

Civil servant, London based. As has already been mentioned, we literally don't have anywhere near enough desks for everyone so have to work flexibly. I currently work (in theory) 37 hours compressed over 4 days, most weeks at least 2 of those from home. Have a 1.5 hour commute each way. In recent months has been more like a 60 hour week but there's give and take - and is generally accepted that they'll get more out of you when WFH as you don't have to take time out for the commute

DH in IT in the City - he can WFH or from any of their offices in London. He can also start at 9.30, leave at 5 and do a bit more in the evening - was brilliant when DC were little. All hot desks and lots of colleagues WFH most of the time. Downside is that there is quite a lot of travel in his role and long hours around deadlines so we tend to see the flexibility as the pay back for that (eg when I was expecting DC2 we had the conversation about did he want to know if he was abroad and I went into labour in the evening after the last flight had left....)

I work for an engineering consultancy, with roughly an hours commute each way. I do compressed hours (40 hours over 4 days) with two days a week at home. The company I work for now is incredibly flexible and I negotiated this working pattern when I started working for them. In previous roles within the industry I've managed to get the compressed hours but not the working from home, other than the occasional day in an emergency.

I think it helps that there is a massive skills shortage in my area of expertise so I've been able to negotiate some form of flexible working at most places I've worked, but appreciate I'm incredibly lucky with the company I work for now.

Working for a large, global MedTech company (similar working culture to Pharma industry as pps mentioned). Flexible working culture is very much the norm here.

I live 3 and a half hours travel away from my office base and so work from home 4 days a week and have 1 (long) day in the office each week to connect with colleagues face to face.

My situation is common at our regional office base, with about half the employees living in a different region to the office location and working remotely most of the time. One colleague has an elderly mother in Greece and works remotely from there for about 3 out of every 4 weeks. Another colleague is Canadian, and worked remotely from her parents' home in Canada for about 2 months while her father was dying.

The office set up is exclusively hot desking - no-one has a fixed desk or office - not even the CEO. Working from home for 1 or more days a week is actively encouraged as they basically don't have enough desks!

But most of the work is global, with projects requiring regular connections with partners in US, Asia, etc. So while flexible working is encouraged, it is to enable people to join meetings across time zones at anti-social hours. There are high performance expectations, and joining 6am calls with Japan and 7pm calls with US west coast is the trade-off for being able to have so much flexibility during the rest of the day.

spent ages trying to fathom what gel bike working was.

have been watching/listening to election results all night post christmas party.

Big 4 here, long hours but a lot of autonomy. I can work from home without seeking ‘permission’ as long as I let my team know my whereabouts - also can work from other offices.

A lot of working parents in my team either finish early or start late due to drop offs and typically work from home at least one day a week. Part time working also readily available (4 day weeks, annualised hours so only work term time)

I can also choose when to take my holidays, there is no sign off needed, I just put them in my calendar which is a huge perk.

There’s an expectation to be available at short notice for conference calls etc out of hours, but otherwise very flexible. There is also less flexibility at junior grades - you need to have been there awhile to build up your reputation and junior people need to be in the office to get work / learn on the job but this is slowly changing.

I work in corporate affairs for a bank.
I work a lot of hours, but generally they don’t mind where I work. I go into the office maybe 3 days a week on average. Always work from home on Wednesday, travel quite a bit and am often on calls late at night or early in the morning due to managing projects in different countries. We use a lot of tech and things like zoom. I pretty much always have my laptop with me.

Flexibility works both ways. I didn’t have much to do today so was online for all of two hours but on Tuesday I was physically at work from 6am - 7pm.

I’m well paid and people at my level expect flexibility (because if you don’t trust me not to take the piss with my hours, you can’t trust me to handle confidential information)

I’m well paid and people at my level expect flexibility (because if you don’t trust me not to take the piss with my hours, you can’t trust me to handle confidential information)
i think that sums it up. i make the decision if we can launch a product or not. i’m also capable to decide if i need to be in the office or not (including some early/late shifts)

I work in investment banking for a high street bank in the City. Long hours are the norm, I should be in for 7.30am but have agreed that I can be in for 8am so I can drop the DC. Usually leave around 7pm. I wouldn't be able to go part time or WFH, but my boss is very good if I need to get in later or leave earlier for whatever reason. Just as if I'm needed to work until midnight from time to time, I'm happy to do so.

I have a very flexible working arrangement and usually work from home one day a week. It has only been the past 5 years or so where this has been accepted. The hours are great to fit in with family life but I don't get any time to myself and I have had to let opportunity for promotions (internal and external) pass me by as I realise I wouldn't get the same opportunity.

Ideally i world I would work 4 days a week and either have 1 day WFH or be able to leave at 4 each day and make up the extra hours in the evening. Hope I can find an employer that will accommodate that.

Multinational law firm in the city.
Commute is 1hr40 door to door. I do that 3 days a week and work one from home.

I mostly shift my hours so I start or finish late to suit home life, no issues with this. Flexibility in general is pretty good.

Finance in central London. Worked for two firms now - one Big 4 and one a medium consultancy firm. Both allow working from home with no explanation needed. I work from home one day a week and have for a few years. I decide on the morning if I want to go in or not!

@housebuyer101 Is only one day a week allowed or do people ever do more from home? Thanks

I work for a university in the midlands. There is flexible working and the option to work from how as and when you need to eg: need to wait in for a plumber - can work from home.
I also request term-time working when DS2 was born and they changed my job so they could accommodate it.
However, that's all because I have a very good line manager at the moment and a good relationship with upper management (I've been here a long time). If I'd put in the request 5 years ago, line manager at the time was awful and had a personal dislike for any flexible working, ("I don't need it so don't see why anyone else should") so it would have been a no.
Although all these things are on offer to everyone to request - it is very much dependant on your line manager as to whether you get a yes or no to your request.
So in that sense although it's worked out great for me personally, it is pretty unfair especially when requests are denied even though there could be a work around to accommodate it.

Government (not central or executive so our rules vary from standard civil service). Everyone here automatically works flexi, we work on average 144 hours a month. They can be done at any time, our office is 7am-7pm but we can do work at home outside of that (though officially they're not keen on weekend working I believe). We can compress our hours so for example work longer days to do a 4 day week or 4 day alternate weeks. We don't have core hours so can literally come and go as we please, this was very new to me, other place I've worked had core hours usually 10-12 and 2-4. We can roll over up to 3 days of flexi entitlement/deficit every month.

We can work from home so long as we are in the office 1 day per week and live a commutable distance though this is flexed by some managers, some people will come in for 1 week per month and home the rest.

We are a very flexible company where it is common for there to be remote participants in meetings, we all have laptops, head sets and Skype. I was a bit curious as to how it would work, whether people would be hard to track down or meetings difficult to set, but I've not had any issues thus far.

It's absolutely amazing, I fear I will never want to leave.

Although just to add our policy very much stresses that working from home should NOT be when you are taking care of children. We can ad hoc if children are sick and we are able to continue working, but not for permanent replacement of childcare, and rightly so of course.

@orangeteal Of course. It just helps with childcare if you are wfh and can pick up from nursery, school etc rather than wasting 2+ hours commuting every single day (like I do) and not making it in time

Oh absolutely, and getting to school assemblies and events and that kind of thing, and medical appointments!

@Jadefeather7 it is entirely down to project work. If you're busy then it's unreasonable to be out of the office when people need you. For example I was on a project alone and I worked from home for 3 weeks... for me it is down to the work load!

Oh and some people who have children (I don't) have set work from home days and it's just what people know so they save their questions for days the person is in.

My work sends you a monitor and keyboard so you can have the same set up

I work for a LA. Flexi mobile working. Office is hot desking. I WFH about 70% of my time. We also have 'touchdown' centres around the place, as I visit people to do do assessments etc.
Travel from a 'base' can be claimed.
I can do my hours from 7am to 7pm and record them electronically. If I work too many I can then take flexi time off. They just trust us. I have computer/mobile phone and it is pretty awesome. Highly recommended. Love my employer

Property sets the standard for gel bike working quite often because office leasing is such big business.

That’s not really my experience. Most of the big agencies have only recently (last 2 years) started flexible working or embraced it in a very soft way. Their tech is generally pretty ancient. The property industry are definitely the laggards in terms of flexible working, to be honest!

I currently work for an asset manager who is 100% agile. I work very long hours and we are flexible with family commitments because of that. I wfh once a week and am currently doing IVF and haven’t even bothered to mention it as I don’t need any formal leave except for one day.

Unfortunately it also largely depends on your manager. We have certain dinosaurs who insist on office attendance.

Personally I think that if you wish to wfh then you need to commit to ensuring a good work environment at home, the minimum being a screen/mouse/keyboard. Otherwise you cannot be as productive.

I work in probation (interventions team) and due to nature of the role we have flexible working. We do day and evening groups so some days you can be in from 9am until 10pm without a real break. We also have to arrange our own appointments. The general rule is that as long as we're in for groups and our appointments and team meetings, we manage our own time. That means that some mornings, particularly when I'm not in group, I'm in work at 10am. It also means most of us go home by lunchtime Friday!
We can work from home if neeed- for eg if we have an appointment in our areas local office, we can 2ork from home there. We can do feedbacks and reports at home. Of our 3 managers, 2 are very flexi time which can make it hard for staff who are in ft. For example, working at various offices, working from home, working part time. But I am grateful for flexi

I took a massive paycut to get non City location flexible hours and wfh to see me through the child rearing years. It has turned out well for us. I could go back but I don't need to.