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"

Honestly, it is very easy to skive in an office. I actually think easier than at home if you have a decent manager.

Sponsored by the patriarchy…

[quote Wizzbangfizz]@chipsarnie you are basing your assumptions on your own experience as I am on mine, I'm glad it has worked out so well for you and fwiw I don't disagree with a hybrid wfh (pref would be 3 days in 2 off) model but in my own lived experience I know and work with many people who take the piss. I also think the office is more productive, just by being face to face and asking someone something instead of e mailing or setting up a meeting and is especially important in a mentoring younger colleagues way. [/quote]
I get far more done at home than I ever did in the office. Partly because complex deep work is very hard to do when three people next to me are talking about the football results and two people behind me are discussing Strictly. Also I’m not running around to different meeting rooms or tired when I arrive from a pointless commute. It’s all killer no filler at home for me, and I can do the school run.

Appreciate this may not be the case for everyone, but offices are hotbeds of skiving and there’s no point pretending they’re not.

I know someone who works pretty high up in the Telegraph and they don’t let any of their own staff work from home either. Even during Covid they wanted her in.

I get far more done at home than I ever did in the office. Partly because complex deep work is very hard to do when three people next to me are talking about the football results and two people behind me are discussing Strictly. Also I’m not running around to different meeting rooms or tired when I arrive from a pointless commute. It’s all killer no filler at home for me, and I can do the school run.

Yes!

Why is this to hard for people to understand? WFH frees up vast amounts of time. Unless you're totally lacking in motivation, in which case you'll be next to useless in an office as well.

It isn't hard to understand but then neither is the fact that a lot of people aren't working more effectively

"offices are hotbeds of skiving and there’s no point pretending they’re not."

Agreed. This whole conversation seems to be driven by the pretence that offices are models of productivity. In reality, I have been in loads of meetings in offices where half of it is general chit chat. I have travelled to meetings at other venues and dropped in for a bit of shopping. I have seen people chatting for ages at the photocopier or in the office kitchen or at desks.
Good managers measure what staff achieve. You should be able to do that wherever they are working. If you cant its because you cant do your job properly. And simple busyness is not the same as productiveness.
In my current job I work with someone else who does a similar job. They are much busier than me, they also achieve less.

@Wizzbangfizz

It isn't hard to understand but then neither is the fact that a lot of people aren't working more effectively

No but the people who WFH are the ones accused of being the skivers. While people who spend hours dicking about in the office chatting about Eastenders and sharing football memes tend to get the benefit of the doubt.

Honestly, I can fake busyness with the best of them in an office. If that is what is required I will do it. But it achieves fuck all.

I don’t think anyone is saying everyone who works from home is a ‘skiver’, just that in a lot of cases, what people might think of as more effective isn’t.

Which is a reach, really.

@manysummersago managers need to look at outcomes then. What are staff achieving. If you can manage someone effectively in an office, you can manage them effectively working from home. If you are a poor manager you cant.

@manysummersago

I don’t think anyone is saying everyone who works from home is a ‘skiver’, just that in a lot of cases, what people might think of as more effective isn’t.

All I can do is point to my own experience.

If I'm at home I'm working straight through from 7am to 6pm without a break. I can get four or five major pieces of high quality written work done in that time.

If I'm in the office I wouldn't start work - if I was lucky and my commute had gone smoothly until 9.30am. If I have a couple of calls plus a guaranteed half an hour of chit chat in the morning and another in the afternoon I've compressed my morning down to about two hours maximum with maybe another two in the afternoon. I am literally twice as productive as I am in the office.

The biggest problem by far is the commute which is just an hour and a half of dead time.

But there's a vast amount of time-wasting in offices on top of that. A lot of people basically tread it as an extension of their social life.

@julieca I think part of being an effective manager is being in a room with people you are line managing. It is particularly difficult with introverted members of the team to get them to speak up and participate on bloody teams - they get so much more face to face by spending time with other team members. Also work isnt drudgery what is wrong with having a social conversation in the office?

It's not a case of "I'm alright jack because I don't have the time and cost of a commute to worry about" it's about wider issues.

@Wizzbangfizz you would probably see me as an introverted colleague. I am not really, I just rarely have much in common with colleagues. And no I don't particularly enjoy socialising at the office although I do it to be polite.
I get that socialising at the office suits some people though. DP loves it and misses being in the office. I would rather have zero commuting time and talk to friends after work.
I don't want to talk to my line manager in a chit chat way. I raise issues and talk about work. But I have zero in common with him and would never in a month of Sundays choose to socialise with him. I am also not looking for promotion so I don't care about that. I just want to do the job and get paid.

@Wizzbangfizz I know some employers want you to socialise with the team as they want to make your job your life. To hell with that, it is not. It's what I do to earn money.
If I am not meeting expectations I expect to be pulled up on it. I don't accept any idea that I should be friends with those I work with.

I'm 53, and an introvert.

The social aspect of work was important when I was a lot younger, it's not any more - although I am fond of my team and we do meet up for a pint about once a month.

Pre-covid we had an "ideas meeting" at least a couple of times a week where we spent most of the time eating biscuits and talking about music and films. Great, but not productive. Now we do it all by email. Straight to the point, no messing, and I can get on with what I'm paid to do.

Another benefit of WFH is that 'H' could be literally anywhere in the UK with a decent internet connection. If the stars align, in a couple of years my 'H' could even be a houseboat in the Netherlands. My quality of life has dramatically improved. There is not one single thing I miss about being in an office.

We are going to have a blended approach going forward which I think is great. I have enjoyed working from home but also enjoy being in the office. Productivity I would have thought depends on the job and the team. Ours has worked well as we have been fortunate to have the equipment to work collaboratively from home, and if the work wasn't getting done, due to the nature of it would be found out pretty quickly!

@julieca it's not about forcing people to go for a pint or anything to do with friendships or making work your life fgs it is about the learning opportunities, giving the people the opportunity to present/be present in meetings which just isn't the same over a goddamn computer screen.

And also again focussing once more "well it suits me and my life goals" so it should suit everyone and no one can force me to come back in. And I support a hybrid approach, did it before do it now. Covid really has shown the best of everyone.

It's a very simple reason and is to do with money. The tory allies have massive wealth tied up in the office rental income in the city - these newspapers are run and supported by eachother. They simply want to retain that income and people working from home will prevent that.

[quote Wizzbangfizz]@julieca it's not about forcing people to go for a pint or anything to do with friendships or making work your life fgs it is about the learning opportunities, giving the people the opportunity to present/be present in meetings which just isn't the same over a goddamn computer screen. [/quote]
I agree with this, we had a new member of the team who wanted to be in office learning face to face so I went in for a fortnight no issue and then they were happy to do a mixture. I think flexibility is important.

If you look at the property-worshipping-and-owning, money-grabbing, money-munching people who own most of these "WFH is the Work of the Devil" spouting rags, that'll give you a clue as to why they take this editorial stance.

I've recently moved into a different role where I work (still WFH). And despite my having successfully worked from home for almost two years (since before the pandemic), the ghastly recruitment and HR people (and they ARE ghastly - they all seem to have gotten much, much, much worse in the last 18 months and much more power-hungry, in their little kitten heels and totally impractical fashionista getups) are refusing to allow my backfill to be a "remote" worker. There are outputs they can measure, actual things (in the form of documents and other information results). It's not like I'm sitting in the pub drinking gin all day. That's quite apart from all the meetings, presentations, and training sessions!

I think it's a bit o a power thing, generally, and some of them are gradually feeling (what they perceive as) their power over others slipping away (that's what I tell myself on the days when they're being more idiotic than usual, anyway).

[quote Wizzbangfizz]@julieca I think part of being an effective manager is being in a room with people you are line managing. It is particularly difficult with introverted members of the team to get them to speak up and participate on bloody teams - they get so much more face to face by spending time with other team members. Also work isnt drudgery what is wrong with having a social conversation in the office?

It's not a case of "I'm alright jack because I don't have the time and cost of a commute to worry about" it's about wider issues. [/quote]
I work for an international company (the only person in the UK with my specific role) so all my direct colleagues are overseas. The entire job is remote, Covid or not. There's been absolutely no problem managing or being managed remotely, nor in building social bonds with colleagues by chatting online.

You can't generalise about a mode of working being best for all companies, all managers, all staff across the board. Companies will end up choosing the people who can do the job best in whatever their chosen format is. Sure, not everyone thrives on WFH. But plenty do - easily a majority of people I know - and they will therefore thrive in what's obviously the future of the labour market.

For companies in the city i.e. the civil service the London weighting is being removed for many jobs where people work from home, so while they may not be commuting, they will be financially Worse off.

Civil service London weighting is £4k, so less than £3k after tax/NI. An annual season ticket to London from my Sussex town is over £4.5k, so for a lot of commuters it's well worth losing the London weighting for.

Not to mention the 2+ hours a day you lose, crammed into a cattle truck and standing for over an hour in the morning, and the joys of the train terminating at some tiny station in the middle of nowhere because the track further down floods during periods of very wet weather.

Everyone I know who commutes to London, even if not central London, vows they'll never go back to it.