To think that pre 9am and post 5pm meetings are just wrong??!

[Youngatheart00]

I’ve noticed this creep recently, working day extended by up to 90 mins / 2 hours especially as I am in a lockdown area so they pretty much know we can’t be doing much else but be available for work (🙄🙄). They are justifying it as no one is commuting so figure it should be acceptable and ‘there is a lot that is urgent and diaries are full’.

Looking at my diary this week I have 3 days with 8am meetings and 2 days with 5pm and 5:30pm meetings (working hours are 9-5). Also seeing meetings scheduled over lunch, they introduced a protected lunch hour at the start of enforced wfh but that seems to have gone out of the window too.

It seems we’ve entered peak zoom over scheduling and with no change of scenery of f2f interaction by 5pm I’m absolutely spent and just need to get out to walk the dog!!!

It’s a salaried role so there is no overtime pay.

I don’t mind the occasional meeting out of hours if urgent but AIBU to think they are unreasonable, not me, and start pushing back?

This is an impossible situation that I fear is happening in lots of companies right now.

@yelyah22 Sounds passive aggressive but I hate businesses like this. We don't contact our employees outside their working hours for anything other than a legitimate emergency and we expect them to take a full hours' lunch break every day. We don't own every second of their time and their jobs are just one aspect of their life.

Soooooo.... are you hiring?

I wish more employers were like you.

We use teams and I have put in lots of bullshit fake meetings just to make sure I get some time to do what I need.

What do other managers at the same level do?

Reading this thread makes me so grateful for my humble little autonomous part time job!

Spending 40 hours a week on zoom calls about insurance is my idea of hell! Throw in a background sound track of Beautiful South songs on a loop and only cottage cheese and cucumber to eat and it literally would be.

Why on earth do people want jobs where so much is expected of them? I would far rather have less money and a stress free job. Your employers are taking advantage of their staff.

I block out my time in advance, I don’t have a problem in theory with out of hours meetings but I do make sure I block the time out elsewhere and I won’t cause myself massive drama to accommodate them (eg if I can’t sway school drop off with DH to make the meeting), it’s not happening.

I find saying you’ve got another meeting booked will shut them up.

@eaglejulesk

Why on earth do people want jobs where so much is expected of them? I would far rather have less money and a stress free job. Your employers are taking advantage of their staff.

It's an employer's market at the moment. Most people who have a job are trying to hang onto it, to avoid being one of the thousands of people in the Covid redundancy pool.

Yep, decline invited unless the meeting is absolutely neccesary. People will get the hint and start organising meetings further in advance. I have blocked out my lunch so that it comes up as a "conflict" in outlook, which seems to discourage most people unless it is absolutely urgent.

My acceptable meeting ranges are 10-12 and 2-4 because I work in a very flexible office you can't be sure when people will start/leave, although we will have meetings outside of that if we struggle to get something in, never outside 9-5 though.

@eaglejulesk

Why on earth do people want jobs where so much is expected of them? I would far rather have less money and a stress free job. Your employers are taking advantage of their staff.

I think the point is that many jobs were fine when people were going to the office with obvious start and end times due to commuting.

Now because of wfh, many quick conversations end up being meetings meaning some people have days of back to back video calls that ends up encroaching before and after typical working hours. So people are finding work is taking over their life as a result. It’s not that the job was that way originally, and as OP said she is struggling to do her usual work because of all the meetings, most of which wouldn’t be needed in the office.

Acting like people signed up for this extra stress isn’t fair. Most people didn’t, it’s just wfh has changed the game.

I would decline the pre 9am meetings (because I'm on the school run), and accept meetings up to about 6ish. Those are my boundaries - yours will vary, but you need to decide what they are.

@Ohthatsgreat has described the situation well.

Sure I'm no longer commuting,but I used to walk to and from the car 1.5 miles away to get my steps in and listen to an audiobook, so it was an enjoyable part of the day. Also when in the office, there are natural breaks when you have a quick chat with someone.

Another bug bear is that our office has introduced teams, but as my laptop can't support it, I've installed it on my ipad. I can have 4 different people trying to contact me via teams, skype messaging, the phone and email.

I think once the clocks change I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to get out at lunchtime for some daylight and a break.

I'm another one who blocks out time in my calendar. My hours are 9-5.30, I book 8-9 and 5.15-6 as 'catch-ups' with the rest of meeting info private. I do a similar thing with lunch hours but vary the hour per day. It stops people lazily booking in a meeting without checking.
If they message me as I've come up as a conflict then I either move my lunch hour or say I can't do earlier than 8 or later than 6, which is easier to say (and definitely less frowned upon) as that would be significantly outside my working hours than saying no to 5.30 or 8.45 iyswim

I work 8am - 4pm and keep getting 4pm - 5pm meetings. I actually do go out at 4pm so can't attend regardless. Sick of the passive aggressive "i know you're finishing early, Hunter". Erm I'm not finishing early. I'm finishing at the time I have finished for the last 11 years!

I've started to respond, suggesting 8am the following morning instead.

@Ohthatsgreat has hit the nail on the head. At least busy office days had some variety. Some meetings over a coffee or with a bit of travel involved. It’s the busy monotony over a sustained period which is a killer

Sounds bloody awful OP. I work in a very flexible business so meetings tend to start at 9.30 (Daily stand ups) and last ones at 3.30-4pm. We have a lot of working parents (women and men) and no one would bat an eyelid if someone couldn't make something due to childcare. When I get pissed off for other reasons, I remind myself this is why I work here!

Your post reminded me of this article, worth a read:
The Five Levels of Remote Work and why you're probably at Level 2

I think a lot of businesses are struggling to adapt to working remotely and in effect recreating the office at home and a culture of wanting to be seeing/checking up on people throughout the day.

We're known for being a very flexible business, but even we struggled with this at the beginning. It has taken senior leadership to remind us to not overfill diaries with Zoom meetings, take regular breaks, get outside each day while it's light. They are also undertaking regular employee wellbeing surveys where we can confidentially feedback on any issues too. From your comments it sounds like your company has a long way to go. Their approach of regular early and late meetings is going to cause nothing but employee fatigue, not working smart at all!

As some short term respite, I would be looking at blocking out chunks of your diary during the day for task time. I tend to do this a week or two in advance and block out an hour or two here and there. You may not be able to solve the early/late meetings straight away, but you shouldn't be working after this.

You must also absolutely take a lunch break every day, even if that's 30 mins. I am assertive, and if I ever get a request for a 12-1 meeting when I've got 1-2 booked, I say no, it's the only time I can eat/take a break.

I think the only way to resolve the early/late meetings is to say no and/or raise it as an issue with your manager. I think every now and then is fine, but not a constant addition to your day. Also, the flexibility works both ways, so if you're regularly working late, you should be able to take extended time at lunch etc.

If you're relatively junior / work in a company which is limited to the UK market and your role doesn't require anything more than the work hours 9-5pm (i.e. there's no way something 'urgent' that needs your attention could come up), then you have a point to argue.

If you work in a company that's international, or even global or have any level of seniority then it's a really tough one to argue. You're probably doing yourself out of a job if you do...

I've WFH for 12 years, but in a global company. I work all hours of the day - a call at 9pm is as likely as one a 7am or over the weekends. What irritates me the most is never getting time for lunch. Lunchtime in the UK is when the US gets in and when they book all their morning meetings! I didn't mind doing early mornings to get Asia and late nights to get the tail end of the USA as they let me work flexibly in the day to do school runs - go to sports day etc... it's give and take. It was like gold dust when DD was little.

I think it's give and take.

I've certainly started seeing an increase in workload and the number of meetings in my diary over the last 4-5 months.

I work in IT Security within the Finance Sector in London and am paid pretty well for what I do.

Budget meeting at 8.30am with the Boss? no worries, as I've blocked my diary out today from 4pm to drive down to see my Mum. Security incident that lasts until 8pm on a Friday and means I have to reschedule a chat with a friend on the phone? sucks, but no problem as next week I'm taking a 1.5 hour lunch break to grab a coffee with another friend.

As I've pretty much got total autonomy over my diary and my Manager trusts me - I don't mind working longer hours sometimes, as I have the flexibility to work shorter hours when it suits me. If I was expected to work longer hours every single day and there was no flex - sod that for a lark, I'd not be doing it.....

Most of the big multinationals are being super sensitive about mental wellness and work life balance and there is lots of information and guidelines around not infringing into peoples personal time, respecting the need for boundaries and breaks etc etc. (I work for a global software company and exposed to similar comms approaches in competitors and partners too). There are lots of tips and tricks to do this - one of the simplest is just to approach your day with yourself as one of your non negotiable priorities....you know the way they say on payday pay yourself first, and transfer to your savings account as a priority? Do the same daily / weekly - whenever you schedule your work load. Block out an hour or however long you need, and schedule out those times. No need to specify walking the dog or anything else, just block it out and treat it as an appointment with yourself. Having said that, be flexible and willing to adapt to an alternative meeting time and recognise that sometimes there genuinely is a reason that something has to be done thats urgent or can only bring all the affected people together at an inconvenient time. Might also be a good time for managers to issue some guidelines around general meeting etiquette....eg only inviting key people, assessing do we really need a meeting for this or can we handle it on a quick ten minute phone call etc etc

It doesn't help that my manager has condensed her hours (without actually working longer hours on any day ). Now we're trying to squeeze 5 days of meetings into 4. I don't see why I should give up my 4pm finish to enable someone else a day off. I'm pretty useless in the afternoon anyway

Do you work solid 9-5? If you're getting 2hrs in the middle of the day to go for a walk then YABU. If you work 9-5 as though you're in the office and then additional time before and after then YANBU. Just decline the ones you think aren't worth starting at 8am, so if it is dead important then fine it has to be done. If it really could wait or doesn't really need your input, decline.

Just decline OP. Not really sure why this would put you at risk of redundancy as PP have said. It's called professionalism.

I think wfh suits people who don't mind being on a lot of the time. So they will happily take a couple of hours out mid afternoon but then work in the evening to compensate.
My brain doesn't function like that. I need a nice delineation between home and work so I can properly relax. It's difficult enough when "work" is in the spare bedroom and was doable when I could power through and log off, but now the hours are increasing I can't even with breaks in the middle. Ironically I've been given the big projects because I'm seen as a steady pair of hands haven't taken any time off due to stress during lockdown.

Haven't rtft but maybe try having a word with someone higher up about meetings. I pointed out once that the regular (pointless) two hour meetings with 18 of us in the room, only about four of whom needed to be there, was 36 hours paid for and effectively lost. I was spending around 20 hours a week in meetings and it was ridiculous - then pointed this out to my boss and suddenly there weren't as many meetings and they were much shorter.

I don't know why so many companies are obsessed with meetings but I do enjoy pointing this little snippet out. 8 of you in a half hour meeting = half a working day paid for and lost