Boris Johnson's comments on WFH

[username39583]

Sorry if this has already been done I have had a look expecting some threads on it.
I just get more angry the more I think about his comments about WFH not working and how people spend it going to fridge every 5 minutes.
From my experience of my team who I work this is extremely insulting and very untrue. For a start we are ridiculously busy and anyone slacking would quickly be noticed. It makes me wonder what he actually does day to day if he has time to keep going to the fridge.
For me and most of my team we actually get through more work at home. We actually did hybrid working with us all coming in twice a week. This was quickly reduced to once a week as many colleagues and I felt we were getting alot less work done. To many distractions/meetings running over/people late due to transport etc.
AIBU to say WFH does work? And would also like to know if other feel they are more productive in the office or at home?

I get so much more done at home- it’s really hard to get the concentration for deeper work in the office. We have assigned shared desks and mine is opposite one of our bosses who has a really stressful job and spends all day loudly fighting fires on Teams. No criticism of her as she’s great at what she does but it is really distracting when I need to concentrate!

At the end of the day, the jobs market will shake out. People who want to WFH will move to jobs where that's facilitated. People who want to work in an office will get jobs where they can do that. There'll be a fair bit of movement for a few years, but ultimately, there'll be the equilibrium where jobs and workers match again. Luckily, people are free to change jobs these days since slavery was abolished so those who find themselves in an "unsuitable" job need to get a job more suited to their preferences.

I know so many people will say they're more productive at home, but I just don't find it to be true.

Service provided by companies who have lots of staff at home has gone through the floor. I know I'm not efficient at home and use too much of the day pottering with non work stuff. I avoid doing it because I annoy myself.

Just by coincidence I was having coffee with a couple of friends this morning. One does one day a week from home and said she gets the hump if she's very busy on that day and doesn't get a chance to get paid to clean her house.

The other, who occasionally wfh admitted/bragged that the day before she will save that day's work in her draft emails to send out at intervals on her "day off".

Obviously that won't be everyone, but it's enough to mean that wfh isn't a great thing for the employer and where it's civil servants, that's taxpayers' money.

WFH works for some but not for others.

Benefits of being in an office is actually seeing people, particularly important for those who live alone. But no point in them going into the office if nobody else is in.

Separating work and home being able to switch off. Dead easy to say oh I'll work on / come back to it later if you are in the house.

It's more difficult to train, explain stuff to young people when you are all remote.

But open plan offices have many downsides lots of noise and distractions.

There are also huge benefits for teams who work across regions or countries. No more hours spent travelling to meetings - a quick, focused Teams call and off you go. Brilliant. I’m aware though that there are people for whom travelling is a perk of the job - 5 hours of a round trip for two hours of actual working really suits some people.

The trouble is those it doesn't work for are still doing it and yes, of course their managers should be managing that, but it's much easier to do if they're in the office.

What I'm finding among friends and colleagues, is that there are a large number for whom wfh doesn't really work very well, but they're still very reluctant to return to the office and lose their gained time and cost savings.

E.g. I've always felt I was one of those who doesn't want to socialise with colleagues, but now I'm doing it again, even though I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to, I really can see it benefits my wellbeing.

Regardless of his motivation for saying it, it resonates with the general public. Because the message you hear when waiting on the phone for an hour is ‘please bear with us as we’re experiencing exceptionally high call volumes due to Covid’. Sure you are! After two years! Also the usual ‘our staff are working exceptionally
hard from home’. Poor service from govt departments and private companies has become a norm behind the guise of Covid and home working. Right or wrong - that annoys people.

Exactly 👏👏

I'm CS and this is all starting to get to me. It's like having a boss who seems to begrudge having anyone on the payroll.

I want to remain WFH. It makes no difference to colleagues or public, I get more done and to be frank - with cost of living rise and wage freezes - not spending ££ on commute or wasting money on shit food from Pret is going to be what keeps our head above the water (just).

i do worry what it will be like in a couple of years. Will those who come into the office be those who have a better knowledge of what is happening in the organisation? Will they be the ones called into the last minute in person meetings - will they get extra work dumped on them because they are more visible?

Will it start to impact promotions etc? Will the example of that law firm paying people less for working from home catch on? Are we looking at a new workplace battle? Everyone tip toeing around this issue because of the number of industrial tribunals that bubble up?

My experience is that some people are like OP and team who are working hard and getting stuff done at home. But probably an equal number are using it as an opportunity to doss -either by literally not doing anything or the bare minimum, or by stealth (e.g. taking 40 minutes to do the school run, not making the time up and being distracted for the rest of the day because of having to keep seeing to the children). So I do think that people need to consider that not everyone's experience of wfh is the same as theirs.

From my point of view, the quick 5 minute question at a colleague's desk (even if it sometimes turns into 10) now takes about 2 hours of repeated chasing, and I don't learn all the extra useful things that they would tell me as a by-the-way if I was stood by their desk. My colleagues who now ignore me, say that wfh is great as they can ignore distractions (I should say I always tried to speak to them when they were not looking busy). They don't seem to appreciate that their distractions are other people's jobs and this makes things harder for those other people. People should look beyond their own personal experience to bigger picture.

For me, flexibility + wfh has improved my work. I now work based on output, not time. So I am given a list of things to do and work through them, with a bit of ad hoc work thrown in.

For example some weeks I might put in some hours on a Saturday and a couple of evenings, then do less hours during the week days. I don't have a partner and DC are adults so I don't have "commitments" in those times.

If I had to work 9-5 from home I wouldn't enjoy it. Yes I'd get my commuting time back, but still being chained to a desk with no escape in those times, but without seeing anyone, would demotivate me. So for me I do work better from home but only because I have the flexibility, which I couldn't apply to the office as it's too far away to just pop in.

Haven't seen his comments but that's very insulting to us hard workers who WFH. I'm much more productive than in an office.

2 things to say. He must have a very big fridge at number 10.

And there certainly isn't a suitcase full of alcohol in my home.

I wish he would just put us out of our misery and just resign, he's almost certainly the worst prime minister this country has ever known.

I think JRM will likely find that people are less likely to go into the office when the weather is shit. Purely because getting there is more grim.

i cycle to work. If the weather is shit, I’d much rather be at home. Arriving at the office wet and cold, getting showered/changed, figuring out where to dry my stuff (nowhere in the huge open plan building), etc is a shit start to the day. It’s much more efficient at home.

it makes little difference anyway because my meetings are all in teams with people in other cities. Why do they care if I’m in an open plan office or at home?

He is a perpetual liar. He has been sacked for making up supposedly factual newspaper reports. He agreed to have someone assault a journalist at the behest of a friend. He’s made hideously racist comments in public.

Why is anyone surprised, and why does anyone listen?

It's Rupert Murdoch’s agenda talking.

This is so important.
I worked form home between international travel for last 5 years of my career. I loved it in many ways…it worked as I was taking calls form time zones across the world so could do early mornings and later evenings flexibly . But over time I found more and more difficulties with my boss and rest of her team - they were based mostly in another country so I was being managed “remotely”. Defiantly out of site and out of mine. I found she was giving my work to others in my team with no experience in that role becuase they were sitting in same room as her. Caused chaos (ok she wasn’t a great manager🤦‍♀️) . I missed the “water cooler” causal conversations/networking where you find out so much. I didn’t hate the WFH bit, liked it, it it was the lack of face time that I found increasingly difficult and problematic

my youngest DS started work after uni and only went into the office for 3.5 months before his company stopped them due to covid. That was over 2 years ago and he’s only just been in twice in last 2 months as they’ve gone back to hybridish…they don’t even have a big office now they could all work in. . At the start of his career this is so much of a problem …he just doesn’t understand office dynamics, he’s gone through turnover of bosses he’s never met …he’s also been incredibly isolated socially over lockdown as that social interaction as new graduate is a big part of work when you’ve moved to new area and don’t know anyone. He was stuck in a HOMO with folks he didn’t know 24/7 for first part of lockdown before he upped sticks and moved back 100 miles to live with his girlfriend.

another relative is never going back to office work. They hate working at home. Hate the isolation and became depressed.

but have other friends who love it.

And I don’t believe that people , including me, worked less hard at home. In fact my experience as manager and being managed is most workers work harder and longer at home. It is stopping the boundaries blurring that is the problem . The lazy gits or those with poor self disciple or concentration levels will just raid fridges every 5 mins whether wfh or in their place of work (no 10!) or hide in a fridge.

I think Boris is projecting what happens when he works from home and he thinks we're all the same! As PP have said many of us are flat out. I honestly do not see the point of a 1 hour + commute to be on Teams/Zoom to people in other countries for most of the day. Pre-CV19 I went into the office more but was always very frustrated with turning up, speaking to no one apart from people not in the office!

My job is exactly the same wherever I do it. I'm expected to be sat at my desk, taking calls
Screens and calls are recorded, my breaks and lunch are allocated and timed and so I'm definitely not getting to take it easier at home as it's not possible even if I wanted to
I could be sat on a beach and I would still have to do exactly the same amount of work

They don't seem to appreciate that their distractions are other people's jobs and this makes things harder for those other people

Surely you don’t think that it’s ok just to interrupt someone working by standing at their desk for 5-10 minutes to ask a question? How many of those interruptions from you and others do your colleagues have to put up with each day? No wonder they’re more productive at home. You need to be better at scheduling your requests for help rather than expecting others to stop what they’re doing to respond instantly to your questions.

I agree with this. I am in the CS and our team is very understaffed and has been working so hard for the whole pandemic. Morale is taking an absolute beating with the constant media coverage saying we are all workshy time wasters.
WFH means I am less distracted (even though there is cheese in the fridge), I am more likely to stay on and work longer as I don't have to pack everything up and factor in a commute.

Considering he works from home all the time, I think it is a telling example of what he does. But think he was probably always like this. The tory party is the party of the bosses - and a lot of them dont trust their staff to be working when the should be. So the mindset being revealed is not surprising.

It’s a fucking insult. We worked 14 hour days facilitating the covid response. We pivoted overnight to a whole new way of working and we excelled. We achieved much more than was ever thought possible. We weren’t eligible for furlough. We didn’t get a doorstep clap. Our children had to educate themselves while we responded to a fucking disaster! And this is our thanks.

Oh and also the government has been selling off civil estate, moving us into hubs, where there aren’t enough desks and promoting activity based working for the last decade. Prior to the pandemic we had to do two days a week from home anyway because we didn’t have sufficient desks for us all to be in all the time. This was a government directive. Fucking hypocrite

@Handsnotwands agreed

Agree.
Work ethic and integrity is either there or is not.
If people are not productive working from home, they can be managed in the same way those who are not productive in the office are, I assume.

The option to WFH has opened up a lot of opportunities, especially for people who are disabled or vulnerable, so I think it has a place for a lot of people.