To feel sad that the world of work as we knew it has gone forever?

[Youngatheart00]

My work confirmed today we are moving to 100% remote working and will only get together a few times a year for team meetings. I find this so sad. I loved my working life - I know realise so much of that was down to the people. Now all I do all day is stare at screens and give myself a migraine.

They are justifying it by saying ‘most people’ want this despite me never seeing any such survey. It’s a blatant cost cutting exercise.

Anyone else fed up and lonely?

Another point I want to make is as a customer of organisations where their staff are working from home I am not getting the same quality of service.

Good point. At some time in the future we will raise our expectations of customer service to what they were previously

There are already issues with youth unemployment. Older people staying healthier, living longer, working longer, not retiring, has already resulted in a shortage of jobs. Now there will be a trend towards employing older people who already have experience, because there won’t be people in the office to train the newbies. More youth unemployment.

This situation is also rubbish for less senior employees who need day to day support from senior team members. Training can be harder when done remotely.
People who got hired during the pandemic received less pay as part of their package (I only have anecdata on this, I admit) compared to people who changed jobs or were in jobs since before pandemic.

Everytime there are changes, people protest and complain it was better before.

Hopefully it's no longer a case of "if", but "how" do we make it more efficient and more cost-effective.

It's simply not true that companies will stop employing younger people, that you MUST be in the office to do the training, and that WFH means closing all offices for ever.

Even if you get rid of the official building, nothing stops you from renting a serviced office for a week, a month, do your training there for the face-to-face you want.

Phone interviews have been a trend for a long time (or zoom or whatever), they have never stopped doing the final rounds face-to-face.

We manage to work with offices across the world, have clients around the world, (pre-covid) we still manage to meet without needing to settling in their office permanently.

Hopefully this will also be the boost most high streets needed.

WFH has been life changing for me. I don’t particularly miss people they’re mostly colleagues not friends. The 2 that are friends I have continued to speak to outside work just like before.

Quality of life is better without the commute. I hope to be mostly based at home with one or two days per week in the office at most. I find the monotony of both the commute and being in an office quite unpleasant actually.

I’m not lonely as I have virtual meetings every day and that is enough. I am more introverted than many on this thread it would seem though.

We're also moving to permanently wfh. I'm really pleased as found the commute stressful. I like my colleagues but not so much that I want to be in the office with them all the time. A face to face team day once a month, along with catch ups on Teams is fine.

I get that not everyone feels the same though. Some of my younger colleagues really miss the social interaction.

I think things will feel better though once lockdown restrictions end and you can go out evenings and weekends and see people in real life - gym classes, going to the pub with friends, new hobbies, etc. We'll have more time for social interaction in our personal lives that will hopefully make up for the lack of social interaction at work.

Even if you get rid of the official building, nothing stops you from renting a serviced office for a week, a month, do your training there for the face-to-face you want.

Some training takes months and years, not just a week or two!

For many people in the south east this is a change for the better. I get 10 hours a week with my children back. I save £3,000 a year on travel and a further £5,000 on childcare costs.

My work have made it clear that the choice isnt cost cutting. They will facilitate staff who want to go in to the office going in, but the reality is 80% or so don't want to, so that bustle some people were after will be lacking.

I genuinely think this will just be a factor in how people choose job roles going forward. If you are a people person you will choose the roles where you can't work from home. I think theres a segment of people (among my colleagues it seems to be mainly those over 45 or so) who will find the change really hard but for younger workers flexible working has been an expectation for a while already.

When the issue was about working in an office, the reverse didn't bother many, did it?

No because people have always had the choice to avoid office work. This is about people who had chosen to work outside their home now having WFH imposed on them. It’s exactly the same as if someone had chosen to WFH and made their career decisions based on that and overnight they were told they now had to be 100% office based. They’d be equally entitled to gripe.

I’m not sure those who knew they’d hate office work, did hate office work but then continued to take jobs working in offices and hating it have quite as much of a case.

@user1497207191

Even if you get rid of the official building, nothing stops you from renting a serviced office for a week, a month, do your training there for the face-to-face you want.

Some training takes months and years, not just a week or two!

we are talking about jobs that CAN be done from home for a start.

And what stopping a regular office meet-up, for years?

Some offices have ended up having MORE catch-up during the lockdown, even virtually, than before. A daily team catch up, when before half the team would have been out, busy and not seeing each other for days or weeks.

And again, WE ARE STILL ON LOCKDOWN.

The current set-ups are not real life. You can't imagine the next few years based on the current state of restrictions.

I understand the feeling probably five years ago I would’ve been horrified at the prospect of working from home I had a team around me good people to see every day five years before that Pre children I had a good social life with Work. I would not have wanted to lose that

Now there is me and one other member of the team who barely see each other from one week to the next our lives are dominated by after-school clubs and school pick up and football training and actually being able to work from home has meant I can get a dog, the house is much more together and I don’t miss the commute at all

Some training takes months and years, not just a week or two!

I think we’re in a similar field and I completely agree. “Training” isn’t just sitting through a few PowerPoint presentations, it’s an ongoing process over a few years of learning and developing skills through experience, and we’re finding it so much harder to give new recruits that experience remotely. They’re young and tech savvy but some are still struggling.

I'm retired now, have been for almost 10 years, but I can fully understand how you feel OP. I would have hated having to work from home just staring at a screen all day.

Most of the enjoyment I got from the jobs I did was the interaction with work colleagues in the workplace and/or the public.

I even enjoyed my journey to work on the London tube most of the time when I was a young woman.

@JeanClaudeVanDammit

When the issue was about working in an office, the reverse didn't bother many, did it?

No because people have always had the choice to avoid office work. This is about people who had chosen to work outside their home now having WFH imposed on them. It’s exactly the same as if someone had chosen to WFH and made their career decisions based on that and overnight they were told they now had to be 100% office based. They’d be equally entitled to gripe.

I’m not sure those who knew they’d hate office work, did hate office work but then continued to take jobs working in offices and hating it have quite as much of a case.

Qualify "office work". You can perfectly love your job, be very good at it, prefer private offices

but you end up in open-plan nightmares.
You chose a job, but fixed hours, an unpleasant work environment are imposed on you.

Your decisions were not based on the office environment you are now given. Plus the simple fact that it reveals as more efficient, more cost effective to be home, why go back?

If your only requirement is to be out of the house, the choice is huge.

At the very least, people should have the CHOICE. It was a fight to grab a few days a week WFH. It's a good thing it's a valid option now.

Wonkycactus I am totally with you on this. Really hoping I'm not back in the office full time from 21 July. I could probably manage one or two days but hate the idea of five. All that social anxiety and commuting coming right back into my life. Op please let me know where you work, sounds idyllic. Perhaps we can swap roles?

Fwiw I have never been in a job with an active work social life. Think that happens mostly with the banking/ legal/ insurance sectors with graduates on corporate training schemes. Tbh with family commitments, second job etc, a work social life sounds like a not really optional at all time consuming and expensive nightmare to me!

I love working from home, it suits me and my role. I am moving house though as my desk is currently in my bedroom and I’ve had enough of being in the same room nearly all day!

I work for a large organisation but my role means that I am often the only person working on a particular project. The amount of times I commuted in to the office (1 hr 20 each way) just to sit a at a desk and spend all day working at my computer, not speaking to anyone, because I had to be seen to be in the office.. complete waste of time and money.

We hot desked so I had to carry all my stuff each way, not enough lockers for all the staff so had nowhere to store things.

I find Teams a great tool, everyone I work with is used to it now and meetings are just as efficiently as face to face, people always have cameras on etc.

I am due to have a new graduate start soon though who I will be managing and training and I will definitely go to the office more aften if they are in as I can see that being a new starter, and a graduate is difficult enough and that face to face contact will be needed.

I think you will like it more once summer rolls around.

I'm baffled that so many people seem to depend on their workplace to build up a social life. It must be quite a boring social life. I've enjoyed drinks with colleagues on occasion, of course, but I can't imagine a life where those were the best parties on offer. Socialising with colleagues was always a bit fake to me, you have to be mindful of being professional and that mask doesn't slip. With actual friends I could actually cut loose, be myself, be intimate, be hedonistic.

I don’t and never have relied on work for my social life. But I’m there (or at my desk now) for 8 hours a day. My friends are doing their jobs for 8 hours a day. It was nice to see and talk to different people and go different places during that time.

I don’t see any evidence that people ‘rely’ on work for their social lives.

Certainly some enjoy spending time with work colleagues and that can apply outside of work hours, but to imply that makes people boring is a bit

It must be quite a boring social life

We moved here 12 years ago for work, 100s of miles from family. I've been close to some of my friends from my first job here ever since, although we have all long moved on to new roles. One of them used to be my boss, but when she wasn't we started a weekly film and takeaway night.
It is really hard to make friends as an adult, especially if you don't want to take up a shit hobby for the sake of doing so.

@gannett

I'm baffled that so many people seem to depend on their workplace to build up a social life. It must be quite a boring social life. I've enjoyed drinks with colleagues on occasion, of course, but I can't imagine a life where those were the best parties on offer. Socialising with colleagues was always a bit fake to me, you have to be mindful of being professional and that mask doesn't slip. With actual friends I could actually cut loose, be myself, be intimate, be hedonistic.

I have social lives both within and outside of work, but, as I said upthread, I have very young children and so limited time to socialise. When my working life became totally solitary this time last year it made a massive difference to how much social interaction I had on each day, and that in turn massively affected my mood and happiness. It would have been better without all the other changes around Covid, but still worse for me than before.

You seem to really struggle to understand that not everyone is exactly like you. If you find virtual communication and connections exactly as good and valuable as in-person then good for you but I'm not sure why you're taking it as some sort of personal attack that some people don't.

but you end up in open-plan nightmares.
You chose a job, but fixed hours, an unpleasant work environment are imposed on you.

If you’ve taken a job in a lovely private office with flexible hours and then have fixed hours and “an open plan” nightmare imposed on you then yes you can grumble, because it’s been imposed on you and wasn’t what you chose. If you took a job where you knew the hours were fixed and then complain about the hours being fixed; or where you knew you had a 90 minute commute (probably in return for £££ London/SE market supplement - people shouldn’t expect that to stick around if full WFH becomes the norm!) and then complain about the 90 minute commute...that’s different.

This wasn’t what OP chose. She gets to mourn what she previously enjoyed and can no longer have.

Even if you did rely on work to have a social life, WFH will give you the opportunity to rely on other things and have an even more interesting social life.