I have been out but, I find some attitudes towards employees really quite odd.
No one cancels a meeting because amazon is coming. If they have accepted a meeting, they do the meeting. At home. Or wherever they are working that day.
If Johnny has a last minute school concert, they would look at their diary and see if they could go.
The difference is, when you are fully office based you are expected to be at your desk at set times. So my admin team were in tbe office 8-4. If they weren't at their desks they would need to book time off. I was already hybrid anyway.
Now, the MD realises that actually they don't need to be at their desk 8-4. So has now allowed flexible working. Because as long as the job is done, the hours it's done doesn't matter. So if Sue wants to wfh because she has an amazing package coming, that's fine. If John wants to work 8-2, the go to a school event then work that night or extra hours each day for the rest of the week he can.
Also, some meetings can be rearranged. Because we are flexible. If some asks if we can bump a meeting by an hour and we can, we do. If we can't, we don't.
But I have probably 4 meetings a week, at most. I speak to my people on the phone or video chat all the time, but that's usually adhoc.
I changed a meeting last week because one man needed to pick his step son up from school. I had plenty of room to do it, so I did.
If a company can't offer flexible working, that's fair enough. Our MD didn't think we could . Turns out we can. So we do. We have been wfh for 18 months and flexible for 12. No issues managing it all.bevause everyone is a grown up.
The piss takers were piss takers in the office and as I kept on top of it the office, the piss takers don't work for me anymore. So I have a team of adults, that keep to their deadline and are productive. I don't care wether they work in the office or at home or a cafe as long as the follow security policy.
Obviously, the tax implications of working abroad would cause issues there but no ones requested that yet.