Why are certain newspapers so against WFH?

[Circlesandtriangles]

AIBU for seeing a persistent agenda in The Telegraph against working from home? It also has a completely misogynist undertone. Not everyone has to be a massive fan of it, but why work so hard to stoke up opinion against it??

Example headlines from November:

"If you want to lose your job, work from home"
"Just one in ten women working from home plan to return to office"
"Take it from a mother, working from home is a disaster for women"
"HMRC spends millions so staff can abandon offices"
"Afghan allies ‘left at the mercy of Taliban’ while civil servants worked from home"
"People working from home do half an hour less each day, study finds"
"It's high time staff returned to the office"

The people saying that people working from home "think they work harder but they're not" - why don't you just come straight out with it and say "I don't like people working from home" ?

I suspect it's for all the reasons outlined above, but mainly pandering to a reactionary, elderly demographic who regard working from home as "not proper work" and who hark back to a bygone golden age of deferential workers calling their bosses "Sir", and accepting their lot in life.

Not at all. I used to be a massive fan of working from home, but I’ve just had awful customer service too many times now.

I don’t think my own husband works any less hard in the house but I also don’t think it’s good for him and I don’t think it’s good for or fair on families.

Anyone I know who has said that working from home is not really working has never had an office job or is a manager. I think people should have the choice whether to wfh or not. But anyone who has worked in a number of offices knows how inefficient most open-plan offices are. I have found it amusing to see them being typified as a hub of efficient working practices full of dynamic colleagues helping each other out. Its fantasy land time.
And most people decrying working from home in terms of customer services are dealing with call centres. If you work in a call centre everything is measured from the length of time you spend on a phone call to the dead time in between calls. It does not matter where you work, if any of your measurements look poor, you are at risk of being sacked.

@manysummersago

Not at all. I used to be a massive fan of working from home, but I’ve just had awful customer service too many times now.

I don’t think my own husband works any less hard in the house but I also don’t think it’s good for him and I don’t think it’s good for or fair on families.

Bad customer service has nothing to do with WFH.

And if it's bad for your DH to work from home he can go into the office. My husband's employer sent an email out to say people should work from home but can go in for business or wellbeing reasons and I suspect I will receive something similar. Plus the fact that we're not in lockdown, so libraries, co-working spaces, even a cafe is an option depending on if you need two screens etc.

As for conversions to residential, that's usually prohibited by local planning regulations, hence why so much is left empty in city centres - it takes a lot of time and effort to get through planning approval stages for change of use

I am not sure it's that difficult, quite a few office blocks in our town have been converted to residential use. Some look quite nice, but they are all flats with little or no outside space and I also don't know what the quality of the build is like.

When I was a journalist in a local paper they were managed by low paid editors who had no management/people training and were obsessed with bums on seats. Even in the first lockdown our regional team had to be in the central office in the city (an hour and a half away) as their local office was closed. It’s nuts but they don’t trust their low paid staff to do a good job unless they are in an office chair. It’s a bizarre old fashioned world where mums are (were) particularly looked down upon. I left when dd was 18 months old.

@riceuten

The people saying that people working from home "think they work harder but they're not" - why don't you just come straight out with it and say "I don't like people working from home" ?

I suspect it's for all the reasons outlined above, but mainly pandering to a reactionary, elderly demographic who regard working from home as "not proper work" and who hark back to a bygone golden age of deferential workers calling their bosses "Sir", and accepting their lot in life.

If WFH is so efficient, why is virtually every organisation struggling with customer service etc? Nearly every time, it's always "due to covid" when phones aren't answered, simple things take weeks, etc. Look at HMRC, DVLA, etc - huge delays and really crap customer service at the moment.

@fakereview

As for conversions to residential, that's usually prohibited by local planning regulations, hence why so much is left empty in city centres - it takes a lot of time and effort to get through planning approval stages for change of use

I am not sure it's that difficult, quite a few office blocks in our town have been converted to residential use. Some look quite nice, but they are all flats with little or no outside space and I also don't know what the quality of the build is like.

Depends on the council and their "local plan". If their "local plan" cites areas of the town/city centre as commercial, it's virtually impossible to get change of use.