To think it’s daft to make big life decisions based on WFH without checking it’s permanent?

[GoldenOmber]

My work used to be office-based. We’ve all been WFH since March 2020 because of government rules (not in England).

This week the government lifted that rule, and later that day our employers told us what the plans were to start bringing us back. This is pretty flexible - not starting for a month or two yet, will still allow a lot of WFH for people who want it (like 9 days a fortnight with one in the office). Most people are ok with this. Some people really aren’t.

Now we are having drama over email with a small but vocal group saying how angry/upset they are, because they have made big changes based around getting to WFH and it will now be difficult for them to go back at all. Even 1 day a fortnight starting in April. Changes like moving house far away from office; getting a dog and not wanting to leave the dog alone; selling car and not wanting to get public transport b/c germs (not just covid, all germs).

Work have ALWAYS said WFH was temporary though! I have some sympathy for how long it’s going to take you to commute from your new house in the middle of nowhere, but SURELY you’d factor that in when you bought it?

YABU - no, after 2 years of WFH working fairly well it was reasonable to expect it to continue without checking.

YANBU - yes, they should obviously have checked.

[Intheshit1]

I think it’s very silly of company’s to insist office based. For example, I saw a job recently I liked and would have been an amazing fit for.

It’s in slough, 2 hours away. I don’t want that commute and I also don’t want to live there. I have kids that need picking up at 6pm from after school club. I can’t be more than 20-30 mins away,

Insisting on working in office severely restricts your pool of decent applicants.

[MooseBreath]

YANBU. That said, if the work can be done 100% from home and the worker prefers that, I genuinely think it should be allowed.

[HardbackWriter]

She can, but she chooses not to because she feels it's more important to prioritize concentrating fully on her own work than what she sees as other people's 'silly questions'. She is very certain that she is much more productive at home - she's outraged at the ide of returning to the office - and I'm sure she is getting through what she sees as her 'actual' work much quicker and so to some degree she's right. It makes other people much slower, though. I think she's an extreme example but it's happened a lot in my organisation - lots of people think their team has been more productive from home but that all the teams they work with are less so. By which they mean that their team has concentrated entirely on their own priorities, but been hampered by other teams doing the same.

[SirChenjins]

@HardbackWriter

I think the 'it's harder to ask questions/it's great not having interruptions' is another one that's very dependent on career stage and how long you've been in post. My colleague who has worked in the organisation for 16 years keeps saying that no one interrupts her anymore because she can just ignore it and get on with her own work as a huge bonus of WFH - but it's not a bonus at all from the people who need answers to questions and now find them hard to get from her. She is very rarely in that position so I don't think it's ever occurred to her that for them it isn't a 'waste of time', it's essential.

Surely she’s at the end of a screen and can either respond immediately to a call if she’s able to? If not then she should be. It’s very much dependent on the role and organisation I think - not everyone is in the same physical location as their colleagues, nor do they have roles which can be immediately interrupted.

[OMG12]

At the beginning of the lock downs there was lots of people saying “ oh they will get rid of offices” “. “Wfh is the new normal even when this is over”. People believed it because they wanted to.

It will be interestingly how all this works out long term . We ar moving to 40 % office based which I think is good.

[Svalberg]

@sanbeiji as one of those brought in to put right things offshored, it's great

[HardbackWriter]

I think the 'it's harder to ask questions/it's great not having interruptions' is another one that's very dependent on career stage and how long you've been in post. My colleague who has worked in the organisation for 16 years keeps saying that no one interrupts her anymore because she can just ignore it and get on with her own work as a huge bonus of WFH - but it's not a bonus at all from the people who need answers to questions and now find them hard to get from her. She is very rarely in that position so I don't think it's ever occurred to her that for them it isn't a 'waste of time', it's essential.

[SirChenjins]

just chatting to your team and easier collaboration/coaching conversations where you can turn to someone and say 'can I run this by you?' rather than scheduling a call

For many of us, the days of being in an office with your team or colleagues disappeared years ago. My colleagues are all over the region and I work on projects with teams and individuals across the country. Teams has enabled far more effective team working for me and many others - and not all calls have to be scheduled, just as face to face conversations don’t. In fact, those ‘do you have a minute’ type requests can often be hugely disruptive when you’re focused on something - a call on Teams can be ignored if that’s the case, not so easy if someone appears at your desk or office door.

[wentworthinmate]

This was never going to last forever, if they can't get back to work due to their stupid decisions then they should quit.

[thedarkling]

@Intheshit1

But why do people need to go back? If you can work perfectly well from home then I think it should be a choice. It’s all about control, which is wrong.

I think it's also about getting back what's missed on video calls, just chatting to your team and easier collaboration/coaching conversations where you can turn to someone and say 'can I run this by you?' rather than scheduling a call.. I am more productive at home but I find engagement and relationship building more difficult over ms teams than face to face. I can see the value of hybrid working. Although I might prefer to stay at home, I understand why businesses want people back for some of the time.

[dorkfink]

Lots of people gave up childcare when they were furloughed. Cant blame them for that 
Er yes you can- working from home means working- not fitting work in when you're not looking after your children.

Furloughed people weren't working though

[Intheshit1]

But why do people need to go back? If you can work perfectly well from home then I think it should be a choice. It’s all about control, which is wrong.

[thedarkling]

@Cofifeefee

Yes, lots of people not able to come into work because of childcare - why did they give up childcare? And it's just said as a statement of fact, no apology, no expectation of repercussions for not attending.

I'm also hearing a lot of chat from people that say they have proven they can do the job from home. Yes, you may have but if company policy is everyone will attend the office 3 days a week, why do you think that you will be exempt from that policy?

I had after school childcare which covered my commute time which was an hour and a half, so now I just get my kids at my finish time from work. If I need to go back to the office on the same days as my partner I will need to arrange childcare to cover the time between me finishing work and getting home. It doesn't mean people are necessarily working with kids at home, it's the transition time.

[Mollymoostoo]

I agree. Not sure why 5% think you are being unreasonable. I laugh at the people who bought bigger houses, ended up paying over the odds for said bigger house and now have to go back to the office. Ridiculous.

[KimikosNightmare]

@karlakourt

Lots of people gave up childcare when they were furloughed. Cant blame them for that

Er yes you can- working from home means working- not fitting work in when you're not looking after your children.

[Tigerstripe20]

I am public sector and have WFH since 2018 and have a written contract to reflect this.
People who assume that they will give up their jobs and easily find a WFH job maybe unpleasantly shocked.
WFH roles especially in my sector are available but with caveats IE no London weighting etc.
The last tranche of mid manager role out vacancies attracted 1000 applications for 9 jobs.
The one before attracted 412 applicants for two jobs.
It is a fierce market and you have to be on your game and be expected to put the time in.
My office would be a round trip of 8 hours commute if I had to go back to the office and I would definitely have to look elsewhere.

[GoldenOmber]

@Bangolads

We moved during lock down to the middle of nowhere- partners job has gone 95% work from being 80% travel and 15% office and 5% WFH. His work have completely changed and quite frankly we’re having the time of our lives. Am sure lots of other companies are following suit too. Obviously not yours!

If your partner’s doing 15% of his time in the office he’s already doing more than my colleagues can opt to do. And yet, much upset about it.

I think like hardbackwriter said, if you’ve backed yourself into a corner in which you’re saying you just can’t possibly work in the office then it’s hard to go “oh okay then I suppose 2 days a month is doable” without effectively having to back down a bit. Will be interesting to see how that works out for them…

[Bangolads]

We moved during lock down to the middle of nowhere- partners job has gone 95% work from being 80% travel and 15% office and 5% WFH. His work have completely changed and quite frankly we’re having the time of our lives. Am sure lots of other companies are following suit too. Obviously not yours!

[sanbeiji]

@withoutawordofalie

If you can work from home from anywhere in UK then whats to stop someone working from home in India and doing your job for a fraction of the salary. I know some of you will say my job cant possibly be done from abroad. My sister in law thought that too, she worked for a large high street bank and they sent all her work to India and made her job redundant.

It goes in cycles.
WFH/offshoring has been a thing in IT (where I work) for decades.
At first there was a big push for offshoring, but the quality of work dropped, resulting in a lot of it coming back.

Now some of it is going away again, but a lot of it has just disappeared altogether - automated.

I'm under no illusion that my job will be safe despite being highly paid now.
However offshoring needs such careful management. As fixing the mess caused by subpar staff is more expensive. It's also difficult to recruit without a base there as major companies (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) can pay way more than us and hire the good staff.
The 'less good' staff require more management etc tec by that time a lot of the savings might have disappeared.

The 'work from anywhere' in the UK argument for us isn't that relevant as we already work with people across different countries and timezones. Not easy, I often have to get up early/stay late. There's lots of benefit in having staff in one country.. but oh wells.

I don't know what the world will be like.. but we can't really stop it. IME some office time is great, I get so bored at home. Fully remote work really isn't for me. A lot of companies have the same view

[HardbackWriter]

@GoldenOmber

I don’t get why 1 day a fortnight is so hard either. Maybe they think they’ll be asked to do more and more days in the office if they agree to that? But probably best approach is to show that 1 day a fortnight works fine, not “but but but I’ve sold my house and moved to Narnia”.

I agree with you but I guess if your argument is that you 'can't' go back into the office then it weakens it to go in at all. The people who are adamant they will never set foot in our office again are insisting that a) it isn't safe/healthy (because of Covid but also, they now say, because other illnesses used to spread around the office) and b) the office is so distracting and terrible that they get 'no work done' there (I don't know if I'd want to say I'd only been working for 2 years out of the 16 I've worked there but one of my colleagues seems to be saying just that!), both of which are a bit all or nothing as arguments - if the office is a plague pit that means they achieve nothing at all it doesn't make sense to go there even once a year, I guess.

[Yourcatisnotsorry]

Yanbu at all. WFH is wonderful for many (me included) but unless your contract states it’s forever anyone in their right mind would understand it might not last forever. If they want to make a case to WFH 100% complaining about dogs and commutes is not the way to do it. Focus on the benefits to productivity and other things that might interest your employer.

[karlakourt]

Lots of people gave up childcare when they were furloughed. Cant blame them for that

[Userxxxxx]

Don't know. I started a job where there are concerns whether it is a true WFH job we have (...after rules meant we could do office training for two weeks...) but I couldn't really believe an Employer was happy to know new staff were coming in from the next county (and for those on public transport have a crazy journey of like 2 buses and a train to reach our workplace! equals very tired people during training) for it not to be genuinely thought through. As no one would want to carry on a commute like that full time and forever surely.

I did get a bit worked up at first, why my employer was not prepared to write 'remote worker' in contract, but then I actually came by the company intranet which states: "Home working does not form part of ANY employee's contract of employment and we may amend it at any time"

Interesting times I think.

[Stanandlarry]

I understand your complaint but people were suddenly instructed to work from home and did so turning their lives upside down. Unless there is a business reason for needing to be in the office, why would a company not be decent to them and treat them with the flexibility previously shown by the employee? Just because working in an office used to be the thing doesn’t mean we need to go back to that now. If people have managed to achieve a better quality of life out of this awful pandemic we should all be happy for them. Not to mention the benefits to the environment and tte larger talent pool to recruit from going forward.

[AffableApple]

WFH has been amazing for career progression for mums (and dads - but let's face it - mums), people with disabilities, people who struggle with a traditional office format for whatever reason. The OP is definitely not BU to think it’s daft to make big life decisions based on WFH without checking it’s permanent. But anyone in this thread going off-piste and using WFH as a stick to beat people for whom it's been life-changing (not to mention how incredible it's been for businesses for bringing much-needed diversity - so people don't automatically think presenteeism at the office is the norm, for example ) is BVVU.