Has anyone refused to go back into the office?

[GreenPepperRed]

Just that really. Have a job that can easily be done working from home. Company is now saying compulsory 3 days in the office. Has anyone just not gone in and carried on working from home? How did that turn out?

The majority of my department is insisting they are not going in. Can confirm they are serious because I went in to the office a couple days back and there was probably 10% of the people in.

Intrigued what my company will do. Fire us all?

@CatJumperTwat

VladmirsPoutine It baffles me too! The anti-WFHers are always grasping at straws in this thread, desperately hoping everybody will be forced back into the office. So odd.

It is odd. Like this comment And what would be the impact of losing one's job by refusing to return to the office! It was never meant to be a permanent thing, a lot of people seem to be forgetting that

I have been working partly from home since 2005. In what way is that not permanent?

[quote DottyHarmer]@anotherneutralname - I agree. Ds and none of his friends want to sit in their bedrooms wfh.

Scouring for internships I have lost count of the number that are discontinued. One ds showed me last week actually stated that their internship programme was no longer running due to all staff working from home.

So the wfh thing is all very fine if you have a decent set up and are settled in life - just a big FU to those coming behind.[/quote]
That is really sad 😟

Surely if you're contracted to work in an office then that's where you work? It's been a temporary fix to a situation beyond anyone's control but now it's time to go back to doing your job. If your contract is hybrid or wfh then that's your contract so why does everyone think they can now demand to wfh?
If you want to wfh then either change your job or renegotiate your contract.

"Surely if you're contracted to work in an office then that's where you work?"

In that case, employers who forced their staff to wfh when that was not the law/government guidance were also in breach of contract?

In that case, employers who forced their staff to wfh when that was not the law/government guidance were also in breach of contract?

I suspect extraordinary circumstances and government mandates will have covered employer arses there.

@MissMaple82

Why do you want to work from home still? So you can slack off?

FFS. Do you really believe this shit? If people WFH slacked off they'd lose their jobs, same as if they were in the office.

I think some of the posts on here miss the fact that your role at work isn't necessarily just the bare list of tasks you could do anywhere but all the extra stuff that comes with being part of a team- building camaraderie, helping to bring on junior employees (not just in designated training but in the sort of learning by osmosis that's so vital in a lot of careers), sharing expertise etc etc. An employee may be able to see their way to retirement just doing their job from home but a manager obviously needs to think longer term than that, in particular in relation to recruitment and training of juniors. As PP have said, things like internships closing are really concerning.

I like working from home- established career, happy family, big house etc etc. It is a completely different prospect for young people just starting out and, unless we all pull our fingers out to make the workplace somewhere you can learn and progress rather than just desk space, we are going to really shaft the next generation, even more than we already have.

Bad management of people WFH is a third
Managers nowadays rarely only manage their stuff. They have plenty of work to do to and managing the team is only one element of their role.

Managing people at home is much harder. If a project is not finished on time whilst working in the office, and the staff explains that it was because of issues with another team, it's a lot easier to accept as a genuine reason rather than the same person telling the sane reason but you suspect that it is because they were not doing their hours, were distracted by their children, etc... Having to then investigate is just wasted time.

@LouisRenault

People talk a lot about their own productivity without thinking that the productivity, development and well-being of of colleagues is important for the organisation too.

There's also the impact on other members of the household to consider. How many threads have there been -

DP wfh has taken over the living room and we all have to tiptoe round:

DP is always here and I never get any time to myself:

DP is on calls all day. He's really loud and it's so annoying:

(Plus the issues of confidentiality because as the person on the other end of the phone you don't know who might be overhearing.)

Agreed. When it gets warmer, I know I will once again be treated to my wfh neighbour’s booming work calls. Confidentiality? What confidentiality?

I genuinely can’t understand why anyone would want to wfh 100% of the time. I think I’d go mad if I literally just walked to my living room to start work every day and then didn’t see anyone and spent hours staring at a screen. How that is some people’s idea of fulfilling is beyond me, but I guess the reality for lots of people is that it really is nice and they still get to socialise at lunch and after work. I don’t know… For me, getting to see my colleagues and the kids and even to wear a nice outfit is really important. (I’m a teacher, so obviously completely different to an office worker in terms of my job role and the effectiveness of it done from home!)

Ultimately if you’re going to refuse to go into your actual workplace then don’t be surprised if you’re looked on poorly because of it. I don’t think people should be forced in for no reason but I’m not going to lie, having had precisely zero days wfh since I qualified in 2020, I do take a fairly dim view of people who act like being expected to go into work is an outrageous request.

@MissMaple82

Why do you want to work from home still? So you can slack off?

Or possibly because WFH people can work more efficiently as they don't get interrupted by others chit-chat; because they save two hours per day commuting time which could be our to better use: they save a fortune on petrol and can see that less cars on the road is better for the environment .

My DH is wfh 3 days a week and 2 in office. Later in year will be 2 days a week at an office 6 hour return trip away. It's what he has to do to secure his job. Be thankful you don't have to do that .....

@QuirkyTurtle

A PP also made the very good point that we have to think of the interests of younger people, who may not want to spend their careers working from home.

I disagree so much with this I'm not sure I'll find the words. I'm in my 20s and climbed the corporate ladder very quickly. I manage a team now, mostly people in their late 20s / early 30s. The overwhelming opinion of my team, and any other young people in this big company, as well as any and all opinions I see online is that young people do not want to commute and work in an office. Young people have seen now that a healthy work/life balance IS possible and that we don't all need to be slaves to the corporation. That there is so much more to life than a 9 to 5.

Yes we had great banter in the office, and now we have that on lunches out. And there is the option to come into the office sporadically on certain days if we want to.

I find it extremely important for the sake of young people that this new status quo is maintained. The old boomer mentality of working yourself to death is gone.

That's interesting @QuirkyTurtle . I was reading this thread and thinking that when I was in my 20s I would have hated WFH which would have either been my childhood bedroom in my parents house, a cramped room in a shared house or a bedsit (my living accommodation at different times in my 20s). I would have hated being isolated and missed the social aspect of work .

Yet in my current team, although we are all mainly enjoying WFH, those who are saying they would look for another job if we returned to the office are all the younger staff whereas the older staff (myself included) are quite happy to go in occasionally if only for the social aspect.

@shinynewapple22 This was definitely our experience in lockdown- in fact, during the time when you were allowed into the office if you couldn't work from home we ended up opening an office (attendance completely optional) as so many younger people were really struggling with the isolation of wfh and we had real concerns over mental health.

[quote MrsDThomas]@Belladonna12

How do you know that there is zero reason? If she's in her 60s she could easily be at high risk from covid

She isn’t. If you read my post correctly, it does say this person goes to restaurants and on coach trips. These are no reasons, just lame excuses. She’s unproductive.[/quote]
I did read your post but I don't think that means she is not vulnerable. I have been vulnerable but eat in restaurants outside. Whether or not a coach trip is risky depends on when it was undertaken and how busy it was. unless you were there, how do you know?.

I could understand if you wfh before COVID but if not why can’t people go back into the office. People on mn think they have some gotten right to tell their employer were and what they are willing to work .
They will be many people happy to go a office if it meant having a job .

I'm not jealous grin I couldn't think of anything worse than WFH all the time. I can see the benefits of hybrid working sure, but is everyone so antisocial on MN they don't want human contact during the day?

Just because people work from home doesn't mean they don't have human contact during the day.

I worry about a vision of the future where 80% of young adults are sat in their bedrooms on laptops all day. I mean, that's scary and can't be good for anyone's mental / physical health.

I have worked at home for many years and my mental health is fine. Not everyone is the same as you.

It’s probably too early to have many or any cases where colleagues have done collective action about WFH. Are you in a union OP? Has your employer suggested or in fact done any employee consultation?

The sense I’m getting from friends who are director-level in workplaces is that their employers are mostly being accommodating/not enforcing much whilst they get their ducks in a row, establishing the company stance and going through the relevant HR/legal considerations. But the other shoe is about to drop.

The wider questions PPs have raised about WFH generally is interesting but is going to really depend on the sector you work as to whether WFH really works (for the business)– I think some people think because businesses ‘coped’ with staff working from home, it should be rolled out widely.

My employer has used the WFH to launch a longer-term review of whether hybrid working is the right thing for the business (the CEO wants everyone in the office, but a highly unionised workforce means they are being careful).

My experience is that WFH 100% doesn’t work. Virtual meetings aren’t as productive people more easily opt out (which is a management issue in part) Hybrid working only works if the team are all in together at the same time and hybrid meetings are truly awful. The other angle is not everyone has the luxury of having a spare room to work in particularly if they live in cities in shared house which is common for younger people.

My husband. He's a contractor (contract is till the summer) and simply told the client that if they don't agree, that's fine and he'll terminate the contract effective whenever they want but that if they want to continue with him they really need to stop asking (pestering) him to come in. They said fine and stopped asking him to come in...

But they need him more than we need the money so it's an easy position to be in to refuse. Not everyone will have that option.

Agreed. When it gets warmer, I know I will once again be treated to my wfh neighbour’s booming work calls. Confidentiality? What confidentiality?

We were sent an email reminding us of confidentiality on calls. I just laughed. I live in a one bedroom flat, I work in the living room and DH is semi retired so is often around. Why should he have to go out just because I have to work from home? It’s my home, not my office!

I work in London for a global corporate finance company. We were lucky enough to have a hybrid working policy in places years before Covid. I have staff in three countries. They can work from home, the office, at a clients or in a coffee shop. They plan their own diaries in conjunction with the needs of the clients.
There are no plans to make any changes to the policy - it worked before and during Covid so no reason to think it won’t work in the future.

@grapewines

A blanket “you must be back in the office x days a week” runs the risk of indirect sex discrimination

How? WFH should have childcare in place in any case.

But you can see that child care for someone's working hours 9-5.30 is a lot easier to get than child care from 7.30 am - 7.00 pm to include commuting time ?

I was 2 days WFH and 3 in the office before Covid. I'm still working at home because its more productive for me tbh and no one in my office has gone back full time yet and hybrid working has been discussed. I also have been diagnosed with a frozen shoulder so I can't drive for long periods of time anyway.

Just because you’ve been able to WFH for the last two years doesn’t mean it’s the most effective way to do your job 100% of the time. During the pandemic we were all forced to adopt a different way of working but that doesn’t mean it automatically means it should continue that way.

Absolutely, for some tasks WFH is a good thing. However, there are some parts of most jobs that are better done together, in person. It’s also a really important part of any job to connect with colleagues, to be flexible and collaborate with others so simply refusing to go back to the office for any reason whatsoever seems ridiculous.

Individuals may think they’re more productive WFH 100% of the time but most organisations seem to disagree so I think that’s often a false narrative to justify not going back.

Having said that, I also think organisations need to be flexible and adopt truly hybrid working arrangements so everyone benefits from being able to choose the best place to undertake the task, be that at home or the office.

A lot of people in this thread are acting like pursed-lipped dinosaurs, though.

(To describe people who can see the benefit of teams working together for at least part of the week, and don’t subscribe to the view that we should all refuse reasonable working requests from our employers because we’ve got THE POWER etc)

Hurrah! A new insult to go with ‘boot lickers’, ‘forelock tuggers’ and ‘old boomers’.

Keep them coming. Bear in mind that if you have to resort to name-calling, it’s because your argument doesn’t stand up.

WFH people can work more efficiently as they don't get interrupted by others chit-chat

Come off it! As if you are gazing intently at your screen for eight hours. And is ‘chit chat’ so awful? It’s howinformation is exchanged and how relationships are built.

they save two hours per day commuting time which could be our to better use

Are you bollocks working two extra hours a day because you aren’t commuting. Pull the other one.

I worked with people, years ago, who used this excuse to WFH. Their commuting time was going to be used for extra work, they said. You could never get hold of them. They used to claim that they had been at their screens since 6 am. That was easy to check: they hadn’t.

they save a fortune on petrol and can see that less cars on the road is better for the environment

I believe that the first thing matters to the office refuseniks, but not the second. It’s just a convenient excuse.