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?

@anotherneutralname

To add a bit more anecdote to the mix, about 90% of our 20s/ early 30s employees are keen to be back in the office a few days a week. They've basically "got their tasks done" while WFH and have done their best but we, and they, feel they haven't had the access to informal learning that comes from just being around more experienced specialists. With all the effort we've made at delivering training and mentoring remotely, it still hasn't given them the same pace of career development we would expect.

Plus most of them share houses, sometimes with strangers, so are living and working from a single room - two years of this has been terrible for mental health, understandably.

It will of course take time to rebuild confidence about travelling and being around people, so it makes sense to start gradually. But we do need to start.

Long term, I would expect those who can work a hybrid pattern to see their careers accelerate past those who remain fully remote. And yes, I know once you get to a certain seniority that might not be the case, but as employers we need to give people the best chance to get up to that level first.

A lot of the perceived benefits/negatives of WFH really depend on your industry and role - I'm sure this is true in some companies but it doesn't apply across the board.

I worked from home for a decade before the pandemic, starting when I was - gasp - a 20-something in a flatshare - it was still far better for my mental health than the hell of open-plan offices. I networked online, which I was much better at the networking IRL. It also enabled me to network with people I couldn't necessarily meet in person anyway. Result, I was able to work internationally as well as in my city and now work for an international company - I've never met most of my team (though I've known some online for over a decade) and there's no detriment to the quality of our work.

DH's company are 3 days in office, two WFM but he negotiated and now only has to go in if absolutely required - and hasn't been in yet. People who say you have to suck it up or they'll fire you probably have jobs that can't be done from home and don't like it that yours can. Finding and hiring new, good people is a huge hassle.

@CallmeHendricks

I'm curious about the "doing the school run" thing. So, you take 20 mins or so out of your afternoon to collect the kids - then what? Bring them home and..... who is supervising them after that, whilst you're meant to be back at your laptop? You're being paid to work at that point, not do childcare.

I pick one of mine yo, he's at senior school. It take me 15 mins in total, there are no buses, DH does half the week, me the other.

The youngest two go to an Afterschool club.

I take those 15 mins from my lunch break, it hurts no one but gives me peace of mind.

When he gets home he does his homework and gets on himself.

Seriously, some people are so bitter!!

I think the employer has the final say on whether it has proven successful and should continue

Quite.

@ufucoffee

Refuse if you want but if I was your employer I'd find a way to get rid of you. Get a job with a contract that lets you work from home if you love it so much.

The problem with that attitude is what if your employees take you up on that? Say op is in a team of 10 people, they all want to wfh, employer says no, so they think fine ill find another job. 5 are gone in a month, 3 more a month later. Down to 2 people very quickly, and considering its clearly a job that can be done at home, I wonder how quickly they'll manage to recruit 8 people for an inflexible company?

I imagine the manager by this point may have lost their job too or been demoted. Worked out well didn't it?

See it now already, bad companies looking for staff and can't get any. Can't think why...

Oh, and some of the holdouts at my work are already managing to piss off their colleagues without realising it. So people may imagine they have more support than they do.

We had a big discussion the other week about how often to have a particular kind of meeting, and agreed it’d be once a month in a particular location, flexibility around the date to suit working patterns.

Immediately: “But we can’t meet there, it doesn’t have decent videoconferencing setup. And people working from home won’t be able to join in the collaborative parts anyway so we should restructure those. And I know you said it would be in person but we need to be inclusive of the people who prefer a 100% work from home pattern.”

Er, no we don’t, and good luck getting the rest of us to join you on the barricades with that approach Dave.

If you expect to be paid then you should expect to do what your employer tells you to do really! It’s not unreasonable to want employees in the workplace.

I run 4 teams and have asked for 2 days in the office. Each team have their days when they are in so they can catch up in their weekly team meeting, collaborate and problem solve more easily. It IS different/more productive ftf in my workplace to do this.

We have taken on a number of people over the last 2 years and they've found it hard to build proper relationships with everything online. This is especially true for the apprentices & grads who haven't had the learning by observation/osmosis which they really crave.

I'm happy to be flexible with the teams but we have to have ftf time. If anyone flatly refused I wouldn't be impressed and would take things further

This will be the start of two pay structures.

One for those who are in the office 3 or more days a week

One for full time WFH.

Why would a company, say in central London, pay a good high wage for someone who lives 300 miles away who has lower costs for housing and no commute?

So they will restructure their pay to reflect this IMO.

This may start with those refusing to come to the office having low/no bonuses and limited or no pay rises.

As they naturally move onto other jobs the new contracts will be exceptionally clear if they are WFH full time or hybrid. And pay will reflect this.

My partner works in social care. He was office-based pre-covid, and organised carers to go into people's homes.

He was moved (along with the rest of his department) to home-working at the start of the pandemic, and still hasn't gone back.

There was a bit of talk about going back last summer... didn't happen. Then it was supposed to happen this past September... didn't happen.

He's been into the office MAYBE 8 times since this all kicked off, and as far as I can gather, there's now no imminent plans to return to office-based work. And honestly, he prefers working from home anyway!

Just quit and get a remote role.

I'm a software dev. Anyone who tries to enforce an office rule gets nothing more than a pile of resignations. In my industry no one's even trying unless they want to lose a whole team.

Ignore the bootlickers. You don't owe your employers anything and don't need to be 'grateful' for a job. They're paying you for your life. You have all the power.

Last week I tried to speak to my bank, on hold for 50 minutes, that was bad enough but when I eventually got through to the operator. There was kids crying, couldn’t hear the operator. Surely if working from home folk should have childcare in place? Why aren’t folk going back to the office anyway?

I'm not sure what you mean regarding tax status changes or occupational health having to make sure you have the correct office setup. If that hasn't had to change in the last two years while people have worked at home why would it need to change now?

I'm not sure on the tax question, other than companies have had to offer the working from home tax rebate at a cost to them but on the occ health point the Health and Safety Executive acknowledged that the pandemic was a temporary situation and suspended the requirement for DSE assessments (short of sending out information to employees, which we did.) They will eventually need to come back in though and employers have a duty in Health and Safety law to meet certain requirements, including assessing the safety and suitably of their employees workstations. If your employer hasn't done that ever before then they're likely in breach of the regulations.

People who say you have to suck it up or they'll fire you probably have jobs that can't be done from home and don't like it that yours can

Not going down without a fight, are you? Or without a few insults aimed at anybody holding a view different to yours.

Unfortunately for you, you can’t get around the fact that the employer has the power and can require you to work from an office location if that is what your contract says that you must do.

@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.

It’s a difficult one. Whilst a lot of people are equally productive at home as in the office, there are some that take the piss. We have cases where some colleagues are just popping out willy nilly while at home, and never seem to be contactable. Appear on zoom calls with a toddler on their knee when they’ve been told absolutely no child care during working hours. Each company will determine what’s best for them based on how their employees are doing.

Consider the longer term impact on your career.

Do you want to be seen as being difficult? If others are happy to go back and you or a group of you refuse?

I can't comment specifically on your job.

However I can see the following happening - out of sight out of mind.

If some of your team go back and start having informal conversations that you need to know about - do you think they are going to jump into a room and start up a conference call?

A few days a week to collaborate is great compared to the previous of 5 days a week locked to a desk

@Belladonna12

As someone who has worked at home for many years I find the idea that it is “entitled” hilarious. So much jealousy.

I'm not jealous 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? 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.

@Thirkettle

Just quit and get a remote role.

I'm a software dev. Anyone who tries to enforce an office rule gets nothing more than a pile of resignations. In my industry no one's even trying unless they want to lose a whole team.

Ignore the bootlickers. You don't owe your employers anything and don't need to be 'grateful' for a job. They're paying you for your life. You have all the power.

This!

Even if I did agree with office work, if I sacked my team for non-compliance, they would find a new job in a week and I would struggle for months if not years to replace them all.

Also I hope none of the wfh “I’m all right jack” people criticise boomers for their luck in the housing market: because you are doing exactly the same thing but with the jobs market.

I am GenZ: no luck in housing or wfh!

GenX I mean!

@Thirkettle

Just quit and get a remote role.

I'm a software dev. Anyone who tries to enforce an office rule gets nothing more than a pile of resignations. In my industry no one's even trying unless they want to lose a whole team.

Ignore the bootlickers. You don't owe your employers anything and don't need to be 'grateful' for a job. They're paying you for your life. You have all the power.

That might be true for somebody with highly sought after skills in a field like software development, but those businesses used WFH anyway before the pandemic. Most of the people on this thread resisting returning to the office are not doing that type of role, only worked from home because of COVID and probably do not have highly sought after, very marketable, scarce skills, even if they think that they do.

If you refuse to go back and they have to let you go, tout will face high competition for a diminished number of jobs that are wfh only, all people as desperate as you for these jobs.

So it comes down to how desperate the company is not to lose staff vs how risk taking the staff is hoping to find the wfh job they think they are entitled to.

Wow! “I’m a teacher. I just didn’t come to work today, I can easily teach by zoom, you know?”.

I work for a large government department and we have gone back to hybrid working with individual patterns based on each person's circumstances.
If people live more than an hours commute away then they are being lenient at present and we only required to be in the office once a fortnight.
I went in the other day and it was pointless. No one on my team was there so I didn’t get any fave to face contact with them - we are spread out across a large geographical area so not all of us have the same base office.
I spent the day on my own processing cases on my laptop as usual and going to meetings over MS Teams. Except I had to travel for 3 hours to do it. It will have to change but at the moment there's no reason to go in except to tick a box to say you have.
I can see why there's no appetite for it.