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?

Only the lonely, the desperate and the sheep will be flocking back , despite the Daily Mail dogma. Interesting take on the current situation - our recruits who are clever, hardworking and ambitious have been concerned about being asked to wfh, they have been keen to point out that they want to get back into the office and be with other people, sharing ideas, getting off video conferencing and getting back into the real world. We have been at pains to point out during the interview process that we are not open to permanent wfh - we have nothing against it as such, when it works for employee, company and client it's great - when it doesn't, they'll need to be in the office and should not expect that childcare is a reasonable excuse to stay at home.

If you were actually informed that it was one day a week then you need to calmly ask to see the change in policy.

And then put in a flexible working request for four days wfh

@Pyewhacket

The more people who search for fully remote jobs the lower they will be paid as well so it's a balance really.

Only if the number of vacancies doesn't match the number of applicants, which at the moment is the opposite. Salaries are accutally going up. FOMO !.

If there's an influx of the can't be arsed with the office brigade of course wages in many jobs will fall, as well as not requiring a fixed region means that wages don't need to be competitive for the location. There aren't that many jobs that require skills and experience that very very few people have.

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

What is the impact it will have in you? Are you thinking longer days /commute? There are benefits to being in & around colleagues.

As long as those that serve the general public get their arses back into the office pretty damn quick, I don't really care who WFH. Banks, insurance, utilities etc, I'm looking at you 👀

I think a year from now working from home will be a dim and distant memory for most

That may be the wish city centre property owners and weak middle managers unable to manage staff outside their sightline but pre covid flexible working was already the trend.

Flexi reduces office costs and improves staff retention. The main blocker precovid was poor digitisation in the workplace. Covid forced rapid digitisation and now many of our clients have permanently reduced their city office footprints. They are enjoying the benefits of staff providing their own offices and reduced costs around staff travel where applicable and it helps with retention. Lets stop pretending that homeworking is one way benefit - employers do quite nicely out of it as well.

So not the OP isn't unreasonable to quit but for me the issue would be lack of notice of change. If they are too dense to acknowledge that wrap around care and nursery care and other services are still pretty flakey in many areas then I wouldn't want to work for them.

I'm intending to tell them to do one.

This sheds a great deal of light on your professionalism and attitude to your working life. Tbh if this is your modus operandi your company would be better off without you. Good luck with the resignation letter.

@lagerandcigars

Only the lonely, the desperate and the sheep will be flocking back , despite the Daily Mail dogma. Interesting take on the current situation - our recruits who are clever, hardworking and ambitious have been concerned about being asked to wfh, they have been keen to point out that they want to get back into the office and be with other people, sharing ideas, getting off video conferencing and getting back into the real world. We have been at pains to point out during the interview process that we are not open to permanent wfh - we have nothing against it as such, when it works for employee, company and client it's great - when it doesn't, they'll need to be in the office and should not expect that childcare is a reasonable excuse to stay at home.

This is my experience too. Most of my team, if forced to stay fully remote much longer, would be leaving for employers offering more office time.

@User387598621

As long as those that serve the general public get their arses back into the office pretty damn quick, I don't really care who WFH. Banks, insurance, utilities etc, I'm looking at you 👀

I agree with you - customer service has been absolutely awful over the last two years.

I agree with you - customer service has been absolutely awful over the last two years.

Out of interest why do you assume this is due to location rather than the increased levels of sickness, isolation or simply companies using it as an excuse? Large numbers of customer service staff were working remotely (aka providing their own offices) before the pandemic.

@Noshowlomo

We’re having problems getting staff now because people want to WFH.. as do I. We’re currently in once a week and I’ll be ok if they go to twice but 3 I’ll be looking for a new job. The last two years have changed a lot of things. People know they can do EXACTLY the same thing from their home office as they can in the office but without up to a 3 hour commute. It’s not wrong for anyone to want to do what’s best for them, their family, mental health, finances etc. OP.. you’re NBU. It’s too short notice. It’s not black and white and people have to organise their lives as things have been so different in the last two years.

But they can't always do EXACTLY the same thing from home. I've had nightmares trying to sort out problems with my gas/electric supplier as when you contact them you get someone working from home who can't access the right information.

I also had a problem with a govt department, I got someone who was giving me what was clearly incorrect information, on line I sort of fell between option 1 and option 2, she insisted I do option 3 and when I read out the conditions for option 3 which meant it clearly didn't apply she got shirty. I wanted to speak to her supervisor/manager but I couldn't as she was at home and couldn't transfer me but I was promised a call back within 24 hrs, 3 months later I'm still waiting but I took a chance and went with option 1 and it was fine.

So no working from home hasn't always worked very well and sometimes it has been a dismal failure. If my gas/electric supplier continues to have customer service working from home I will move to another supplier because it isn't just employees that have choices, the customer does as well.

I can't believe so many people want to go back to the dark ages.
Spending so long commuting, killing the planet with pollution, eating boxed sandwiches, kids in endless after school clubs, train overcrowding, rail replacement services. Working parents barely seeing their kids.
Now I have never been able to work from home apart from in exceptional circumstances. I would never begrudge anyone the chance of a better quality of life just because I once heard a dog bark when I was on the phone to British Gas!
I don't see any difference to work output from an employee playing with a child for half an hour when they get home from school and making up the time later and the same employee having a coffee break with a colleague for half an hour. Personally my colleagues who are WFH respond just as quickly and efficiently as others in the building.
Vote with your feet OP

Only the lonely, the desperate and the sheep will be flocking back , despite the Daily Mail dogma.

What a contemptuous way to talk about people who want human contact in their working lives.

It's all very well for middle aged middle class people who already have established friendships and relationships to wax lyrical about wfh. My 18 year old cousin started an apprenticeship in the civil service. Her experience of working life so far has been sitting in her underwear on her bed staring at a screen.

Covid rules were not mean to last forever obviously. If you are employed and the employers want you back in the workplace then that is where you should go. Stop being a dramalama .

I found training of new staff and problem solving to be slower while working from home.
I think a mixed model is better. I do some stuff better at home but generally I feel decisions are made faster when together in the office.

@AlternativePerspective

I think a year from now working from home will be a dim and distant memory for most.

At the moment many companies are being flexible but IMO the more companies who call their employees back into the office the more companies will do so, And WFH will go back to being a luxury rather than an expectation.

And I’d love to know where all these permanently work from home jobs are. I’m currently looking for work and trust me although there are some jobs which state they are remote, almost all of them state that they are “temporarily” remote, with maybe a few stating that there will be some time in the office required. But permanently work from home jobs really aren’t out there, because companies still want to have the choice.

Not in my sector (solicitor). So many firms have closed offices / reduced office space during the pandemic and there isn't enough room for everybody in the office at once. While some firms will want / expect a hybrid model (and some are still living in the past believing that presenteeism is best), there are some of us who now have permanent WFH contracts. I have to go in about once a quarter (8 hour round trip), but that's it.

I don't know anybody working (in a fee earning capacity) for a law firm who expects to be anything other than hybrid at worst from now on (admittedly WFH was more prevalent pre-pandemic than some industries, it certainly wasn't as widespread as it now will be).

I certainly won't be changing firms to one where I'm expected to go in more often than once a week / fortnight in the future.

@User387598621

As long as those that serve the general public get their arses back into the office pretty damn quick, I don't really care who WFH. Banks, insurance, utilities etc, I'm looking at you 👀

Can I just add government departments to the list, the person I spoke to was giving wrong advice and her grasp of information for her department was appalling.

With that addition I absolutely agree with you, the customer seems to have been completely forgotten in this and the novelty of 2 year olds interrupting calls has worn a bit thin.

@C8H10N4O2

I agree with you - customer service has been absolutely awful over the last two years.

Out of interest why do you assume this is due to location rather than the increased levels of sickness, isolation or simply companies using it as an excuse? Large numbers of customer service staff were working remotely (aka providing their own offices) before the pandemic.

Because they frequently said they didn't have access to all the systems when they were wfh because of security reasons, their internet was frequently down. I had conversations with children screaming in the background so loudly I couldn't hear the person speak.

The narrative around only the desperate and lonely will want to go back to the office doesn’t hold water.
If you are in a mainly processing role then WFH full time might make sense. Similarly if you work mainly globally and your team are scattered then there is no need to be in the office. However, if you are in a role where your team collaborate and discussion of ideas / projects involves a creative element, then it’s likely that a couple of days per week in the office will produce better outputs.

WFH advocates can be zealot like when they are asked to consider an alternative

Actually, you don't need ask for allowances in quite the way I've suggested. You could tell your line manager that you will come in once a week as agreed in your interview, and leave the ball in the manager's court. They're not going to to sack you on the spot, worst they wll do is say "sorry you need to come in three days like everyone else".

You can also kindly offer to wait a week or two while they organise the existing employers, before they have to take time to settle you in as new staff. They quite likely haven't even allocated a deskspace for you yet. If you really want to get up their noses say you are happy to carry on at home for a while before your "induction" to the workplace.

"Back at you" often works better than "do one"

It's bad luck, OP, that shit Johnson is in such shit he decided to lift all covid measures now. At the same time, it would have happened sooner or later, and this just shows you how your company is likely to operate: bums on seats. So if you have a better option, go for it.

@C8H10N4O2

I agree with you - customer service has been absolutely awful over the last two years.

Out of interest why do you assume this is due to location rather than the increased levels of sickness, isolation or simply companies using it as an excuse? Large numbers of customer service staff were working remotely (aka providing their own offices) before the pandemic.

They didn't have kids and dogs in the background and apologies for strange background noises and a load of blah about taking longer because of wfh but we are keeping you safe. How dreadful customer service is keeping me safe, god only knows.

@ontana

Only the lonely, the desperate and the sheep will be flocking back , despite the Daily Mail dogma.

What a contemptuous way to talk about people who want human contact in their working lives.

It's all very well for middle aged middle class people who already have established friendships and relationships to wax lyrical about wfh. My 18 year old cousin started an apprenticeship in the civil service. Her experience of working life so far has been sitting in her underwear on her bed staring at a screen.

Exactly. Posters like that forget that actually not everyone has a cushy home with their lives well established already. It's a stupid way to talk about people who may prefer working in an office than to home. Hybrid and home working doesn't work for everyone and there is nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make anyone a sheep for going back, which is frankly a pathetic saying.

Her experience of working life so far has been sitting in her underwear on her bed staring at a screen

what prevented her from getting dressed?

@Buttermuffin

I think they should have given people at least 2 weeks notice to arrange pet sitters , childcare etc. Their attitude would put me off.

It's an employees market from what I hear. I don't think people will stick around in jobs that don't offer a significant amount of WAH, although maybe not all the time.

People should have childcare in place anyway, working from home is still working, not half watching Peppa Pig and half watching your team meeting at the same time. I have formal childcare in place for every day I'm working, if I was asked back to the office, I could go in tomorrow without having to re-arrange anything. Your childcare is your problem, not your employers.

Regards the OP, like everyone says, your contract will tell you if it's a remote working position or not. And if that's a deal breaker then you should have made sure it was clear before starting and not just assume.