To resign because my job suddenly requires me in 3 days a week?

[Earlyflash]

We got told on Friday that we would be required to do a minimum of three days a week in the office from monday.

I’m new at the company (4 months) and this was never mentioned in the recruitment phase. That said I didn’t push them for a written answer.

Given we’ve spent the last two years working 100% at home, this seems like a massive overreach, and I’m intending to tell them to do one.

It’s going to have such an impact on me, my partner, and my children (from previous relationship).

I already have interviews for fully remote roles.

So, AIBU for reacting to such a request?

I think a mix is good - some will want permanent wfh or otherwise but as someone who can see benefit of more flexible working I’d go for hybrid

It's far easier to avoid people you don't like at school than it is at work

It is not. You can be stuck with the same people from 4 to 16! It depends where you live but my ds went to school with the same people all that time. He only got away from certain people when he went to sixth form because he chose to go to a sixth form further away.

Much easier to switch jobs to get away with people you don't like - in a larger organisation there are internal options too.

@missfliss

I would type more but I'm at my desk - working from home .. and have been since 8 .. a full 60 mins of my contracted and paid hours because I don't have a commute.

Boo boo for my poor employer eh!!

Maybe your employer isn't keen on paying you to be on mumsnet.

Using the office as a form of control and discipline is a very poor long term management or retention technique

Quite. The better employers already know that, and will attract the best employees - including those who prefer to work in an office.

The ones who want to micro-manage their employees whether remote or office-based, will lose their best employees to better employers.

It is that simple. Too many MNers think employers are doing employees a favour by hiring them, and then should treat them like naughty schoolchildren. No. If you employ person you trust them to do the job. If you find they are not doing the job, you manage that person's performance. It's really not difficult.

Maybe your employer isn't keen on paying you to be on mumsnet.

The employer wasn't paying at the time of posting on mumsnet!

None of mine have stated where the work has to be done.

Interesting. Just had a look at my last few, and they all start with some sort of "Your place of work is ...." and an address. Maybe an IT thing ? I guess some roles are genuinely mobile ? I can see sales and service employees not being tied.

(Makes note for future use )

I have location on my contract. It's my home address in this job.

@NoWordForFluffy

I have location on my contract. It's my home address in this job.

I assumed it was standard. Thus proving the truth about assume

The reason I know about the HMRC thing is a friend works for a big financial institution and they had a relocation a few years back. One senior manager had just bought a house near the old office. When they moved this person was made a home worker. However they only ever travelled (the 100+miles). After just over a year HMRC picked up on the repeated journeys to a single location and called it a disguised benefit. Ouch.

When I was WFH at my address I used to go around the 7 sites my company operated, plus the odd trip to London.

It may have changed now, lifes too short to keep up with HMRC billet doux .But having tangled with them in the past, it's something to be avoided at all costs.

You also used to be able to claim a tiny tax rebate for extra costs at home. When I was first switched to home working a colleague did it, and reported it was something like £10/year

Also, (goes back to 2010 policy) "true" homeworkers should have a separate broadband connection. A lot won't. But be careful telling your employer "sorry I can't work for a 3 days because won't fix it for 3 days". I have a strategy paper I wrote back then suggesting looking at whether any big suppliers could put together a homeworker deal.

Also, (goes back to 2010 policy) "true" homeworkers should have a separate broadband connection. A lot won't. But be careful telling your employer "sorry I can't work for a 3 days because won't fix it for 3 days". I have a strategy paper I wrote back then suggesting looking at whether any big suppliers could put together a homeworker deal.

What do you mean by separate broadband connection?

I don't tell my employer that I can't work if the internet is down. I just do what I can without the internet and/or use my phone to send emails, communicate on teams etc.

What do you mean by separate broadband connection?

One that the employer pays for and which has a decent SLA. Domestic broadband (clue in the title) can take a while to get back up with no comeback.

I had a separate VM broadband at £30/month.

@liveforsummer

*i wasnt trained when i started at my company 19 years ago and obviously i am now , but the company still take on new recruits to the business and train them up *

What about the ones doing the training though. You can't replace them with untrained new recruits. There are more difficult to replace.

And who is going to train the new recruits if all the experienced staff are working from home?

I trained "on the job" nearly 40 years ago (accountant), and that training consisted of being in a small room with two experienced staff who I shadowed for a few years. At first, they'd be very "hands on" supervisors who literally handed me bits of work to do for them, and then over the following weeks, I started doing my own small/simple jobs from start to finish, and after a couple of years, I was on a par with them and was self sufficient, and started training other staff. None of that could have happened if the two experienced staff I was working with were at home and I was either sat at home or sat on my own in the office.

@JuergenSchwarzwald

It's far easier to avoid people you don't like at school than it is at work

It is not. You can be stuck with the same people from 4 to 16! It depends where you live but my ds went to school with the same people all that time. He only got away from certain people when he went to sixth form because he chose to go to a sixth form further away.

Much easier to switch jobs to get away with people you don't like - in a larger organisation there are internal options too.

Indeed, my school years were horrid due to persistent bullying, verbal and physical abuse. I couldn't "avoid" them because some were usually in the same form or class, and some lived near me, so I couldn't even avoid them when walking to/from school. A couple were either side of me in the alphabet, so lazy teachers would always allocate us on the same table or in the same work group, which made matters even worse!

Avoiding people in the workplace is a lot easier as it's easier to change jobs than to change schools.

And who is going to train the new recruits if all the experienced staff are working from home?

Maybe, just maybe, different ways of training will emerge ? In tandem with the requirements of roles changing ?

Remember in February 2020, homeworking was impossible for a lot of firms that suddenly found they had to homework or die. Mysteriously we discovered that "impossible" had actually been used to shut down debate and the real word should have been "can't be arsed" if English had such a word.

So people should take a lot of "can't be done" with a barrel of salt.

One thing you learn in strategy very quickly is how much "it's all about me". When it isn't. It really isn't.

@DGRossetti don't think you can claim to and from one place of work
My dh cannot claim if he goes from
Work to office but if he goes client office then he can

@DGRossetti

What do you mean by separate broadband connection?

One that the employer pays for and which has a decent SLA. Domestic broadband (clue in the title) can take a while to get back up with no comeback.

I had a separate VM broadband at £30/month.

I think they would only reasonably have to pay for broadband if the employee had to work at home and didn't have the option of going into the office. I don't think my broadband has ever been down for more than a couple of hours and I have always been able to do work that doesn't rely on the internet or use my phone in the meantime.

[quote worriedatthemoment]@DGRossetti don't think you can claim to and from one place of work
My dh cannot claim if he goes from
Work to office but if he goes client office then he can[/quote]
There is a reason I'm not a tax expert

Generally you can't claim mileage for commuting. However if your place of work is your home, then every journey is a work one.

Everything is role specific really. In that role I wasn't operational - it was Strategy & Planning around the company (technically companies) at different sites.

I think they would only reasonably have to pay for broadband if the employee had to work at home and didn't have the option of going into the office. I don't think my broadband has ever been down for more than a couple of hours and I have always been able to do work that doesn't rely on the internet or use my phone in the meantime

Horses for courses.

One colleague who lived out in the sticks lost their domestic broadband for a week. The whole village did. A drunk driver managed to hit a junction box and there were 3 different companies needed to fix everything.

You need to think of this things for disaster recovery and business continuity.

(These days you could probably get away with tethering your phone.)

Generally you can't claim mileage for commuting. However if your place of work is your home, then every journey is a work one.

I think that would only apply if you had to work at home and going into the office was not an option.

[quote worriedatthemoment]@DGRossetti don't think you can claim to and from one place of work
My dh cannot claim if he goes from
Work to office but if he goes client office then he can[/quote]
You can if your permanent place of work is your home and if your visits to your employer's premises are infrequent and non habitual.

So, if you go for a meeting on the first Monday of every month, you can't claim because it's habitual.

If you go in one day per week, random days, you can't claim because it's frequent.

However, if you go in one Monday in January, then a Friday in February, then a Wednesday in March, all for different reasons, i.e. a training course in January, a meeting in February, an appraisal in March, you can claim because the visits are neither habitual nor frequent.

@DGRossetti

I think they would only reasonably have to pay for broadband if the employee had to work at home and didn't have the option of going into the office. I don't think my broadband has ever been down for more than a couple of hours and I have always been able to do work that doesn't rely on the internet or use my phone in the meantime

Horses for courses.

One colleague who lived out in the sticks lost their domestic broadband for a week. The whole village did. A drunk driver managed to hit a junction box and there were 3 different companies needed to fix everything.

You need to think of this things for disaster recovery and business continuity.

(These days you could probably get away with tethering your phone.)

Work paying for a separate broadband connection wouldn't have helped in that scenario though. I would use my phone or go into the office if it was for a whole week.

@DGRossetti

I think they would only reasonably have to pay for broadband if the employee had to work at home and didn't have the option of going into the office. I don't think my broadband has ever been down for more than a couple of hours and I have always been able to do work that doesn't rely on the internet or use my phone in the meantime

Horses for courses.

One colleague who lived out in the sticks lost their domestic broadband for a week. The whole village did. A drunk driver managed to hit a junction box and there were 3 different companies needed to fix everything.

You need to think of this things for disaster recovery and business continuity.

(These days you could probably get away with tethering your phone.)

There are ways around it now, such as, as you say, phone tethering, or mobile dongles. Some broadband providers promise to send you a mobile dongle by next day delivery if the wired broadband system fails.

The industry is well aware that people work from home, or need their home broadband for other reasons, such as home shopping, accessing healthcare, online banking, etc (especially for the vulnerable due to covid, shielding, etc)., so have made great strides towards keeping people online, whether business or domestic.

A decade or so, broadband was a luxury for most households rather then a necessity, hence the need for enhanced protection for "business" connections, but these days, broadband is pretty much a necessity for everyone, so there has to be faster repairs and better alternatives when repairs take longer, for both business and domestic customers.

I trained "on the job" nearly 40 years ago (accountant), and that training consisted of being in a small room with two experienced staff who I shadowed for a few years. At first, they'd be very "hands on" supervisors who literally handed me bits of work to do for them, and then over the following weeks, I started doing my own small/simple jobs from start to finish, and after a couple of years, I was on a par with them and was self sufficient, and started training other staff. None of that could have happened if the two experienced staff I was working with were at home and I was either sat at home or sat on my own in the office.

What a load of bollocks (last sentence). Literally the only part that couldn't have happened in a WFH setting was the physical handing of bits of paper - and that's long dead in all but the most ridiculously outdated workplaces now.

@Belladonna12

Work paying for a separate broadband connection wouldn't have helped in that scenario though. I would use my phone or go into the office if it was for a whole week.

"Business" connections are more likely to include alternatives such as delivering a mobile dongle, and do include faster response times for outages as part of the business contract (which is why business tarriffs are higher). Domestic contracts are starting to include things like a mobile dongle as an alternative though.

Personally, I worked from home during the pandemic (running my own business which I moved from a rented office to home). I already had a BT copper cable broadband connection which had always been slow and unreliable, so I got a second cable connection via Virgin which the business contracted for. So, I've now got two broadband connections, simply for reliability as the Virgin connection has never lost connection and is many times faster than the antiquated BT copper cable system. Hopefully, if there was a "box" damaged, then it would be one of the other - it'd be very unlucky for the same vehicle to wipe out two street boxes at the same time!

Work paying for a separate broadband connection wouldn't have helped in that scenario though

Which was the point I made in the DR.

Maybe it's an IT thing, but I certainly know some products and services are strictly "for domestic use only". And getting arsey because "I run my business on it" doesn't cut any mustard when you've been paying for a consumer version.

Also working in insurance, and being well aware of the people who take out a SD&C policy, only to be "fuming" when it turns out that running their business as a mobile not only isn't covered by, but invalidates the policy.

That said, as a domestic situation I've had VM full fat fibre since 2002, and it's only gone down twice. And one of those times was when my router packed up and I got a new one 3 days later.

@DGRossetti

Work paying for a separate broadband connection wouldn't have helped in that scenario though

Which was the point I made in the DR.

Maybe it's an IT thing, but I certainly know some products and services are strictly "for domestic use only". And getting arsey because "I run my business on it" doesn't cut any mustard when you've been paying for a consumer version.

Also working in insurance, and being well aware of the people who take out a SD&C policy, only to be "fuming" when it turns out that running their business as a mobile not only isn't covered by, but invalidates the policy.

That said, as a domestic situation I've had VM full fat fibre since 2002, and it's only gone down twice. And one of those times was when my router packed up and I got a new one 3 days later.

I think it is an IT thing. Not everyone who works at home is "running a business" that can't survive without an internet connection for a couple of hours. I pay for VM "full fat fibre" too and also have a mobile dongle. A separate broadband would be a waste of money. Domestic connections are fine for many home working employees.