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"

@icedcoffees

And silly dismissive comments about Pret really piss me off, people are employed by Pret, their jobs matter just as much as yours

Exactly this.

The Prets &co were there because there was a need - office workers wanted lunch. Now that a lot of people WFH there is less need. The answer is to adapt the services/shops, not to force people to use something they don’t need anymore.

In other words, service is driven by need, not the other way around! You don’t artificially force the need to be there because the service is there.

There's a lot of VERY poor customer service/support at the moment. Customers/clients won't put up with that forever. Short term, organisations could get away with it "because of covid", but now that excuse is wearing thin.

WFH will cause a lot of reduction in services, not just shops/cafes/takeaways. TFL are already talking about closing down an entire London tube line due to lack of demand/reduction in income. There is also talk of London bus services being scaled back. That's inevitable as it has only been huge numbers of commuters which has made public transport viable. Take away a large chunk of regular commuters and you're going to see a much lower public transport provision. London will suffer it first, but it will also affect other cities. That will have a knock on effect on tourism and leisure.

In other words, service is driven by need, not the other way around! You don’t artificially force the need to be there because the service is there.

That's true.

But there has been this narrative bubbling along throughout the pandemic that politicians are pushing the economy and jobs ahead of our health because that's just what the Tories do etc... which is kind of childish.

In reality the economy and people's jobs matter a great deal. While I would agree that the government has frequently been reckless about the health element of COVID, you can hardly blame people from wanting to keep the economy afloat I think the narrative that the economy doesn't matter is not helpful.

@CaMePlaitPas

Big business protecting big business again. They don't give a shit about working conditions or the risk of falling ill and/or dying as a result of the pandemic. They want you back in the commercial property that is being rented for £££ each month and generate their £££ on your £21K a year salary.

Except a huge amount of commercial property is owned by pension funds, providing funding for pensions for millions of "ordinary" workers. If commercial property values fall off a cliff, millions of ordinary workers will see a fall in their future pensions. Likewise, a huge amount is owned by local councils, so council tax payers are likely to see further hikes in council tax or reductions in services to make up any shortfalls/losses in property income/values.

genuinely curious to know what anyone gets out of the telegraph these days

@ManicPixie

DH does the cryptic cross word, never reads the rest. When I first knew him, I sort of discounted him even as a friend, because I assumed the paper reflect his own views. Couldn't be further than the truth. He enjoys the crossword so much, he shrugs at my idea they are spreading filthy propaganda.

Honestly, the productivity angle always makes me eye roll. Open-plan offices are shit for productivity. Research shows the average productive working time for an employee in an open plan office is 5 and a half hours a day.
If you were starting from scratch to design the most productive way of working, you would not choose open-plan offices. And yet suddenly according to the media, they have become hubs for creativity and dynamism.

[quote Mittenmob]@requiredusername women are going to be worse off because although WFH allows you to be more flexible (sometimes) it means you're not visible at work. Women already have slower and more challenging career progression because of this and it's amplified in an environment where women are at home and men are in the office. It also means women start to take on MORE home responsibilities than before. Dr Heejung Chung writes about this in her 'flexibility paradox' book, it's worth a read.[/quote]
We hear this said a lot, but the other side of the coin that isn't being advanced is that there's significant potential benefit for women not having to work in workplace structures designed for and around men, with male as default. I can well believe promotion opportunities may go to those who are most able to be present. It was ever thus (there's that male as default thing again). But women's interests in the workplace boil down to much, much more than getting the next promotion.

There's also quite casual dismissal of the benefits of flexibility inherent in this approach too. Sure, we all know why women are the ones who benefit more from it. But identifying that need as stemming from sexism, which it does, isn't actually making it go away!

It's infinitely more complicated than 'women are going to be worse off'.

@Badbadbunny

There's a lot of VERY poor customer service/support at the moment. Customers/clients won't put up with that forever. Short term, organisations could get away with it "because of covid", but now that excuse is wearing thin.

WFH will cause a lot of reduction in services, not just shops/cafes/takeaways. TFL are already talking about closing down an entire London tube line due to lack of demand/reduction in income. There is also talk of London bus services being scaled back. That's inevitable as it has only been huge numbers of commuters which has made public transport viable. Take away a large chunk of regular commuters and you're going to see a much lower public transport provision. London will suffer it first, but it will also affect other cities. That will have a knock on effect on tourism and leisure.

If the centre of London was less crowded it would actually be more pleasant to visit.

People will still drink coffee and eat sandwiches, just in their local area instead. So shops and cafes in suburbs can thrive. That might be quite nice for those of us who can't afford to live in Zone 1.

They sound jealous. WFH is the dream for many!

People are very willing to assume their experiences of poor customer service stem from home working. But since March 2020 we've also experienced the great resignation, abuse of furlough by some organisations, millions of people having got covid and some being quite sick plus months where a whole cohort of the workforce had to look after their children at the same time as working. Obviously all these things have an impact on productivity. There have been many fewer hours actually worked during the pandemic than previously. Think about their cumulative impact.

@julieca

Honestly, the productivity angle always makes me eye roll. Open-plan offices are shit for productivity. Research shows the average productive working time for an employee in an open plan office is 5 and a half hours a day. If you were starting from scratch to design the most productive way of working, you would not choose open-plan offices. And yet suddenly according to the media, they have become hubs for creativity and dynamism.

I think they are more productive for some workers than others tbh.

For senior people who need minimal supervision open plan is a pain in the arse, frankly. You spend so much time getting distracted by questions, chit-chat, people offering tea etc its bloody impossible to crack on with work. This is my experience. The COVID hot-desking thing adds to the frustration because when you do go in you waste a lot of time faffing about getting IT set up. Much easier to be sat at home, powering through it all.

For junior people who need support and mentoring open plan can be very useful because its much easier to learn from an experienced person by looking over their shoulder or sharing problems with a colleague than it is talking to them on a Zoom/Teams call. I think people starting out in their careers probably really suffered during lockdown.

Like all these things there's some balance needed and people need to be pragmatic.

But the claim that WFH damages productivity overall is completely self-serving bollocks. My productivity has probably doubled during COVID.

@thepeopleversuswork I think different things suit different people, so I am not pushing one way of working.
But the 5 and half hours of productive work research is based on your ordinary office worker, not senior people. People new to the role may learn more, but they aren't as productive as some claim on here.

I agree hot desking wastes so much time. And you don't even get the benefits of help from others as you can be sat by people who know nothing about your particular area of work.

Because the want to appeal to the landlords of commercial/office premises, companies like Pret, Starbucks and others who usually make money out of office workers, train companies and so on. T

Their readers also are the type of rigid, old fashioned business owners/managers who think that unless a staff member is the office, they are skiving.

Basically they don't value the average worker's well-being, only the financial interests of the few.

To understand the ‘line’ a newspaper takes on an issue, you have to consider that paper’s target demographic. For the Telegraph, it’s older, mostly retired white people who vote Tory. For the Guardian, it’s university educated public sector / academic workers & students who don’t earn their livings in the commercial world. For the Sun, it’s working class men who are interested in football. For the Mail, it’s middle-aged & older working & lower middle class women who are interested in celebrities. Etc etc.

@ClintBartonsWife

Owners probably have a lot of money invested in commercial property.

Yeah probably. Just another way to divide people's opinion so we argue amongst ourselves (which doesn't work). Yawn.

I think PP are right, it's because lots of wealthy people own inner city real estate which will be fucked if no-one goes back to the office, as will chains like Pret. For big businesses it's best that we get everyone back to commuting and working in offices, no matter if that's what people want (and pretty much every single survey says that it's not what people want - hybrid working is almost universally preferred).

@Libertaire

To understand the ‘line’ a newspaper takes on an issue, you have to consider that paper’s target demographic. For the Telegraph, it’s older, mostly retired white people who vote Tory. For the Guardian, it’s university educated public sector / academic workers & students who don’t earn their livings in the commercial world. For the Sun, it’s working class men who are interested in football. For the Mail, it’s middle-aged & older working & lower middle class women who are interested in celebrities. Etc etc.

I think we should combine all of those into one succinct paper and call it the Daily Biased Fear-mongering Propaganda Bullshit.

To be fair, if you combine all of their hard left and right values, you may actually end up with something that is rational, sensible and empathetic, as opposed to the usual biased rubbish.

Lots of the readers are boomer landlords who have a vested interest in people living and working in London and paying extortionate rent on their multiple BTLs.

olivehater going for a grand slam of horrific takes is quite amusing. Keep it up.

Although here's a quick hint: the parents working from home with 3 kids are not the ones making your situation shit.

The odious John Humphrys the other day was criticising those who are keen for a 4 day week. He was calling those who think it's a good idea lazy, feckless and all the other names under the sun.

I don't think John Humphrys has ever worked five consecutive days in his entire life!

@FelinaDaHousecat - but I’m not talking about you personally.

Individuals are always insistent on these threads they are more productive. Maybe they are. I’m not their boss and I don’t know. I do know that customer service from companies still based at home has not been great.

I really am not sure where I stand on it. I suppose I dislike the way it’s assumed to be OK for a home to be a workplace.

It's difficult with manager imposing their own beliefs and preferences on their staff.

We have a hybrid working policy at the moment, with a 50:50 split requested, but fortunately my manager is fine with his team WFH and asks for two days in the office.

But there are managers a few desks away who are dragging their staff in as much as they can. Demanding they commute for hours a day just for the sake of presenteeism.

Hopefully hybrid policies are stronger than these poor managers and they end up getting rid of poor management.

On the other hand, I work alongside many women who are clearly thriving WFH, and it's showing through their work and productivity, and it hasn't been unnoticed. Those saying it poses a threat to women's progression be speaking too soon.

Because the owners of the newspapers also own most of our cities' big office spaces. Wfh means commercial rents will plummet.
It has nothing to do with productivity or any concern for our well being, believe me.

The people who are really rich - ie. big commercial landlords/chain sandwich shops
leech off us

They don't give a crap about people having a better life balance

What is it - 3% of the population own 95% of the wealth ?

Of course those fuckers want you to go back and line their pockets a bit more

They're fucking leeches - the leeches ARE NOT benefit claimants, the working poor, the disabled

It suits my DS and DiL, they work in London but live in the west country with me. They don't have to go into the office yet can afford a much bigger home.
Their work is monitored so they can't get away with working less and actually do more work because they can log in any time they want not just in the office.