SERIOUSLY??? People may quit if forced to work from home, Rishi Sunak warns ?

[R2221]

No Mr Sunak. Working from home saves me 2 FUCKING HOURS of daily commute + rush hour stress + travel costs.

I work from home now. I am more productive, less stressed and happier.

@TheKeatingFive

I think also if you took a job on the proviso you would work in a office then your employer has every right to insist you do so . If you dont want to , there are a 100 people willing to fill your space

Basically this.

Lots of people seem to think they can call the shots on this. Erm, no.

It is fair enough.

But I now also think if you want me to spend time travelling somewhere where I don’t really need to be to do the job, then you pay me for that time.

Good employees are not always that easy to find. If I’m that unimportant to them I’ll find somewhere else that values work/life balance and employee wellbeing more.

Ha! I love WFH now that I have teen children and a reasonably sized house in the suburbs with my own office, but I would have been devastated at being forced to do it in my 20s when I lived in a house share in the city and loved going to the office and hanging out with my hilarious colleagues.

@TheKeatingFive

I think also if you took a job on the proviso you would work in a office then your employer has every right to insist you do so . If you dont want to , there are a 100 people willing to fill your space

Basically this.

Lots of people seem to think they can call the shots on this. Erm, no.

But it doesn't work the other way around, does it? My contract says I work in the office, but my employer has the right (and the obligation, but anyway) to keep me out of the office?

@BluebellCockleshell123

Ha! I love WFH now that I have teen children and a reasonably sized house in the suburbs with my own office, but I would have been devastated at being forced to do it in my 20s when I lived in a house share in the city and loved going to the office and hanging out with my hilarious colleagues.

God yes. It's so privileged to insist that WFH is best. Such people obviously have the space and mental preference for it.

I hate WFH. I can't wait to get back out there. I would quit/not take a WFH job, now.

Gwenhwyfar

Yes. I will consider getting a job in a shop or something if it means not being at home all the time.
I'm not stupid enough to have a two-hour commute. That's on you!

I meant two hours a day, one hour one way. Welcome to London, where most of the lucrative jobs are and where (in your opinion) most of the morons reside

OP hasn't bothered to come back anyway

Is it really necessary to split people in two and decide 'extroverts' like one thing and 'introverts' like another? The majority of people will be in the middle (bell shaped curve and all) and like some time mixing with other and some time alone.

And believe it or not Londoners the average UK commuting time is under an hour a day (i.e. less than half an hour each way, which some people drive, some people cycle and some people walk) not 2h each way. I'm sure people with extreme commutes on the train are happier WFH because they've realised what the rest of us already knew, commuting for over an hour a day is soul destroying. But I'm also sure some people hate living and working in the same room and never seeing anyone. And others need their time at work to escape the domestic violence. It's really not unreasonable to miss the social interactions and buzz you get from discussing your work with your peers. I'm in a reasonable sized group at work, we all do the same job and so don't work with each other, we all work on different projects. It's really useful to have the corridor chats about your current project with the woman two offices down the corridor who had a similar issue a couple of years ago and can suggest a useful person to talk to. You can't replicate that WFH and the vast majority of people do not enjoy being isolated. I get the point that WFH normally is not the same as WFH in lockdown but when I WFH before Covid I didn't spend my time having lunch with friends, I hated it even then. The only advantage is the saving in petrol costs.

@Moomin12345

What's so different about the office that makes a person so much more 'productive'? You can buy a cheap desk, a comfy chair and two screens.

Good office chairs aren't cheap though and many people don't have space for a desk in addition to the kitchen/dining table. I don't. I'm more productive in the office because I get to talk to people and be human. I'm less productive when I'm depressed because I'm totally alone, funnily enough.

There's also things like getting inside info from colleagues. The informal chats don't happen as much by email/teams or whatever.

Totally agree with that @Gwenhwyfar. I get far more done when I'm around people. There's more of a buzz, and less sinking into gloom.

It's ironic that people call preference for WFH 'being privileged', and then state their intention to promptly quit if forced to WFH. Isn't that privileged? Most people can't afford two just quit on a whim. If that were the case, all the introverts stuck in open plan offices would have quit years ago.

@whetherpigshavewings

I'm really quite sick of being told that because I don't enjoy staring at the same four walls every day with no real life interaction means I have an attitude problem.

neither do we, but again, that's a lockdown issue, not a WFH issue.

No. It's a wfh issue. Where I live, we are allowed to visit one person, but day-to-day most of us are still staring at the same four walls.

If I’m that unimportant to them I’ll find somewhere else that values work/life balance and employee wellbeing more.

Well go for it then 🤷‍♀️

@Umbivalent

Totally agree with that *@Gwenhwyfar*. I get far more done when I'm around people. There's more of a buzz, and less sinking into gloom.

I get really down and have no interest in anything, same as being unemployed for a while. Sitting there in my tracky bottoms, getting up one minute before 9 and wondering if anyone would notice if I went back to bed. It's awful. OP is SO unreasonable.

But he's right, presumably? (Not read the article).

There are people that won't want to work from home - and who will look for a job that provides them the 'sociable' side of working with colleagues.

And equally there are people that have enjoyed wfh and will not want to go back to the commute - and may well look for work in the future that allows them to continue with this.

Horses for courses.

@Moomin12345

It's ironic that people call preference for WFH 'being privileged', and then state their intention to promptly quit if forced to WFH. Isn't that privileged? Most people can't afford two just quit on a whim. If that were the case, all the introverts stuck in open plan offices would have quit years ago.

I'm sure that by quitting what they mean is look for another job. Unfortunately for me, there's not much else I can do. Also, people who don't like wfh never call it a privilege.

Is it really necessary to split people in two

How else will the Tories stay in power ?

@Moomin12345

Ideally, yeah. But we don't have bloody time machines, do we? So how about making our dear husbands pull their weight and do their fair share of childcare and housework NOW?

I don't disagree but I don't think it's anything like as simple as just saying, right from tomorrow, everything's fair. I'd love it if that's all it takes but of my friends who are married with kids I can think of one, maybe two, who has a relationship in which the childcare and housework is evenly shared. I can't see all the others being able to change it overnight.

I'm yet to meet a person who'd pick socialising with colleagues every day over a much higher salary, if given those two options.

"I meant two hours a day, one hour one way. "

That wasn't clear. Also, London jobs may pay more, but costs are also higher so I'm not sure it's that much better.
45 minutes is my max for commuting.
I usually try to make sure I can walk to work so losing my commute means being much less active and is really bad for me.

And believe it or not Londoners the average UK commuting time is under an hour a day (i.e. less than half an hour each way, which some people drive, some people cycle and some people walk) not 2h each way.

A 2-3 hour round commute is by no means uncommon though, for London or otherwise. It's also from when you leave your house to getting in the office door. Anyone up north whose had the joys of Northern Rail in recent years will know you have to get an earlier train to account for their unreliability, as an example.

You might have a 10 minute walk to the station, be on a train for 30 minutes and then have a 10-15 minute walk to the office from the station. That's a 2 hour round commute every day and that's when the train turns up on time both ways. A lot of people have to get two trains, or two buses.

@Moomin12345

I'm yet to meet a person who'd pick socialising with colleagues every day over a much higher salary, if given those two options.

Really? Have you done a survey and included people who've been wfh for a year? Because I know plenty of people who are desperate at the moment.

@tentative3 not overnight, but gradually. The key thing is to work on it. I refuse to be victimised and forced to effectively do two full time jobs while my DH living his best stress-free restful life,playing Xbox, having a pint with mates every other day.

@Moomin12345

It's ironic that people call preference for WFH 'being privileged', and then state their intention to promptly quit if forced to WFH. Isn't that privileged? Most people can't afford two just quit on a whim. If that were the case, all the introverts stuck in open plan offices would have quit years ago.

And it's harder for introverts to find work that suits them. Retail work, customer service, hospitality etc are more for the outgoing personality.

When I met DH he had a good job that he enjoyed. It was at a small company where most of the employees worked from home at least some of the time. The nature of DH's role meant that it made more sense for him to be at the office however. Then they decided that to save money they'd move to everyone working from home. It did not suit DH at all. The impact on his mental health was huge. He struggled with being able to stop and get any separation between work and home. Because he was answering calls from clients all day he said it felt really intrusive to him on what should be his space, that is wasn't working from home so much as living at work. It was a horrible time and he was horrible to be around, nearly broke us up. He actually left that job and even took a slight pay cut to be where he is now mainly because it was office/ site based.

So it's been horrendous here basically! Not helped by the fact that his workload has massively increased. It's not a case of working with his laptop at the kitchen table or whatever, he needs several screens and a fair amount of equipment so has a huge desk. He's working on equipment for others and having stuff sent constantly, oir second bedroom is entirely taken over by it. We didn't get to turn it into the.planned nursery for our baby born in lockdown one. She's in with us for the foreseeable it seems. I'm ok with this but worried if she's ever going to have her own room and we are so short of space. It's also not fun trying to keep a young baby quiet in a tiny house so she doesn't interrupt his work calls and likewise making sure he is quiet enough that she can nap - can't attempt upstairs naps in bedroom as noise of him on calls would wake her. But downstairs the 35 couriers that seem to arrive to deliver/ collect equipment every hour wake her up anyway. Meanwhile it's all I can do to get him to eat dinner with us because he's so so busy and because his desk is just right there he can't seem to switch off from it whereas when he's in the office he may do an extra hour here and there but nothing like this. His mental health has suffered again although we were prepared for it more this time with lots of coping strategies and some help from the GP.

Genuinely if he's told he needs to work from home much beyond this summer then he absolutely would quit I think. I get that wfh is a massive perk for many people but definitely not for him. Wouldn't work for me either but if I manage to get another contract after mat leave it's not a sector where wfh would be an option either.

Saying it's a great advantage very much supposed.that everyone has the space and home environment conducive to making it work and we know that's just not true.