To be totally fed up at working from home and frustrated with company

[Whitegrenache]

Hey

Work in big pharma - have always been a field based sales employee for over 25 years - now in supporting function and due to covid have been working from home for 2 years now.

I am totally fed up.

I'm not designed to be alone all day, there are various managers who are wanting to meet up in hotels for business meetings and their teams are happy to do this.
However our company who incidentally have the most amazing wellbeing culture, think it's too soon due to covid risks and advising managers to wait until April.

Honest I feel utterly frustrated and feel like they need to listen to the well being issues of employees like me who are suffering working from home.

Please don't say change jobs as it has been my profession and not easy to move jobs whilst maintaining salary.

Or do I need to be patient and hope the company will allow face to face working come the spring!

Ahhhh

Anyone 😊

Can you request to go back into the office? I'm sure if your well-being is being affected then they should try and accommodate you being in the office. Alternatively can you go work at a share space or friends house.

I'm not office based I'm based in the field - eg hospitals, doctors surgeries and etc.. wherever the sales reps are seeing doctors.

Now that is a challenge (which I accept) as nhs is not massively opening their doors to sales reps - although some are.

All I'm Asking is to be allowed to see colleagues occasionally in a hotel.

Our office is 350 miles away and is open for office staff on a rota basis so go figure - when field based employees can't meet it's seems a bit unfair

I can see why a company wouldn’t want to fund that if they’ve realised it’s not overly necessary tbh. Why would they pay for you all to meet in a hotel meeting room when you could dial in to a zoom call for free?

I’m not meaning to diminish the effect on you, it must be horrible to be wfh if that isn’t something that works for you and makes you feel isolated, but with that set up, is it likely they’ll go back to what they did before? It’s not quite the same as a company having an office and having staff back in.

That's a great point @SickAndTiredAgain

Maybe that's it - the cost. Although I could argue productivity is much higher face to face than over zoom

I may have to seriously consider how long ,if at all, I can continue wfh

No advice but know how you feel to a degree...wfh for 2 years now and I was getting so sick of it that I went for a new job, got it, and then turned it down when we ended up returning part time to the office the same day I got the offer! I enjoy my job and like the perks of having WFH (and understand the privilege that I can) but I also love seeing people and interacting face to face!

Hi OP
I used to be a medical rep so I might have a bit of insight.
From what I can remember its a very very social job, you are meeting with Medical Professionals all day in various guises and in fact I actually wanted a break from people generally bu the end of the day. There were also a lot of UK and overseas conferences which were pretty “social” let’s say
However given Covid I think the job has probably changed hugely and I imagine it’s even harder than before to access the people you need to see. I know some companies are moving more to E-Detailing now.
It must be hard to go from all that to the current situation but meeting with colleagues isn’t really necessary and can be done online. In your shoes I would want F2F team meetings but if your company say no then you just have to get on with that

My public sector employer has always been very cautious, but did also recognise the wellbeing need to work in an office. Since the guidance to WFH has changed they are more relaxed and we can meet up if required for work (ie a virtual meeting just doesn't do it). I thought we were the most cautious ones!

We do still have mitigation in place in offices and maybe that's the middle ground. Meet up but with social distancing. Good luck OP

Thanks

@Hoppinggreen you are right - it's definitely changed but most of the reps are working hybrid- a lot of HCPs want to actually see people face to face.
I could go back to device sales as they are needed in theatres to help assist surgeons but don't want to go back to sales if I can help it.

I have a training role which I absolutely love