Genuine question for those still working from home

[HeritageQuay]

I'm a manager in a company that employs about 100 employees across several locations in the south of England. We are in an industry that stayed open throughout Covid but apart from that we think we are a fairly normal business, i.e. we sell things, and then we deliver those things to our customers.

However, we have always been puzzled by the concept of people being able to "work from home". We think that our employees perform a full range of business functions and but none us have ever been able to work from home, even at the height of the pandemic, because our jobs mean that we have to be in the workplace.

So my question to those currently working from home is "what do you do" and "what industry are you in"?

Corporate communications

Community Mental health nurse, i use home as my base rather than the office i only go to the office to collect injectable medicines about once a month other than that i do home visits but all my admin is done from home now.

I'm a community nurse, so obviously I go out to see clients, but my documentation is done at home,as are reports team meetings, and all other meetings, of which there are many. I hate working from home to be honest.

"popping in to the office once a week or so, more for social reasons"

IT people and 'social reasons'??
Only joking.

"You can certainly stop accepting cheques."

No, it really depends who your customers are. If there are a lot of 70+ people, for example, you can't just refuse cheques.
Some of these things are outside the control of the accounts department.

Where I work, some things that had previously had to be 'originals' and signed physically became online only during lockdown, but once the rules were lifted it was back to 'real' stuff.

LA service delivery manager Housing.

Most junior staff do require a physical presence as they work directly with the homeless, unless it’s just data entry.

I'm a PR consultant in a small business, company of 13 people (although we were bought by a much, much larger US-based business in 2021, operating as our own independent division).

We all, without exception, work from home full-time. Before the pandemic we wfh 2/5 days, with 3 days working together in a co-working space in the city centre.

We all prefer wfh full time, so we kept it that way.

I personally struggled greatly with office life - I'm autistic and it was a sensory, and social, nightmare for me which resulted in frequent burnout and poor job performance. Since wfh, my performance has improved massively, I've been promoted twice, and am managing people now with ease. I love the quiet, the privacy, the comfort, and the lack of social expectation that I used to find so stressful.

We have a co-working space in London that lots of people from our parent company use a few times a week, and some people from my division like to go in each month for the social aspect. But it's all entirely optional and no pressure.

Our output really increased wfh, and everyone's happy with it. I personally would never in a million years consider a job where I had to work in and office again.

"i guess I struggle to visualise what type of work is done in an office full stop as it’s just outside of my experience. I think of maybe insurance and finance type roles but don’t really know what they entail."

I'm quite amazed by this considering how often office jobs are depictied on TV and in films. It's mainly working on the computer. In my job, answering emails is a huge part of it and the rest is working on Word documents and the like.
In the old days, I used to answer the phone, but email has been taking over so much that I barely have to use the phone these days.

You can even do the actual manufacturing at home sometimes. I used to know someone who assembled Parker pens from home about 22 years ago.

"I personally would never in a million years consider a job where I had to work in and office again."

I now enjoy wfh from time to time, but I would not take a job that was 100% wfh as that would be very bad for my mental health.

Solicitor. Absolutely no need for me to work in an office - all meetings can be on teams and when I need time to draft agreements etc I can have total silence and concentrate properly. An open plan busy office does not serve itself well for confidential calls and the need for tricky drafting!

I'm kind of old-fashioned in my approach. I've long believed in 'management by walking about' - where senior managers are visible on the shop floor (or hospital unit), or around the offices. Not for the technical aspects of my job - I could write most Board papers from my bed - but for all the otherwise unseen and unsaid stuff which helps to solve issues before they become a problem.

Sometimes there are big gaps between the skills and natural talents of different staff groups - care managers who have budgetry responsibility but who feel nervous about finance and sprreadsheets; staff with new line-management responsibilities who are uncertain about some HR processes. ime it was always easier to wander into the office of 'Carol from accounts' or Dave from training' and to have a chat with them, rather than to phone or email. I still think so.

Pre-covid we deliberately located accounts teams / IT teams / HR teams adjacent to service delivery teams, to make the relationships more interactive.

Currently, the accounts team think they can work effectively from home all the time - the front line staff feel differently especially when no-one in accounts seems to answer their phone on a Friday afternoon We currently have office staff in 3 days, wfh 2 days (although everyone is in on Mondays and Fridays). I expect we will extend that to 2 days in the office (and remove the M/F restriction), but this way of working is new to many of our staff and we have to get it right.

Analyst in Aerospace, I’m part of a global team, whether I’m based in the office or not still means all communication is done via Teams.

Op, I'm quite surprised that you don't have the imagination to think for yourself which jobs can be done from home.

I have worked from home for 5 years, long before the pandemic. I work in medical admin. Would never go back to a physical office of I were to find something else.
Plenty of jobs can't be done from home though just depends on the work. A lot of phone or live chat customer service could be, apple tech support staff have worked at home for years too. I applied for that before I got my current job.

Recruiter for pharma industry. We do have an office but there is no benefit to being there other than to interact with colleagues. We all go in once a week.

if your company makes/distributes “stuff” then it follows that more people will need to be physically in the office. But I’d be surprised if admin/finance/hr/marketing/sales really needed to be in every day?

@venusandmars

I've long believed in 'management by walking about'.

Yes this has always been my approach too. The only person in our organisation that I could realistically consider working from home would be myself, but I think that would be the entirely wrong example to set if I was expecting all other staff to come into work.

Medical Secretary for NHS not patient facing

TV Production Manager. We were fully WFH during lockdowns and moved to a hybrid model since. We produced international series, with all of our filming happening on a different continent. Rather that flying the team over we developed a model whereby they could remote into the shoot, so the Directors could interview from home. We did mostly hire small local crews but also had a camera setup that meant we were able to remove that too if required.
Between SharePoint, Teams, Zoom etc even a job that usually involves international travel and huge amounts of in person collaboration could be done with us WFH. I'm amazed that not only is it not possible for your company but that it sounds like you didn't even try.
I remember posts here two years ago from people who's employers were making them go in to the office every day, wondering where on earth they worked that valued their safety so little. I guess yours was one of those companies.
Request electronic invoices, streamline the accounts processes so that for those companies who can't manage to email you an invoice, only one person at a time needs to be in for the literal paperwork. The advantage you have now is that everyone who wasn't already doing so modernised very quickly in 2020, so there will be many people and places you can learn from.

Cybersecurity - wfh for a decade before the pandemic even started!

I am/was an accountant/consultant for a big international firm with clients all over the world (as I had a bit of a niche specialism).

I was able to work from home pretty much as soon as broadband was invented and available in our town. I'm guessing that I had a mobile phone (Nokia, obvs, then we all had a Blackberry) by about 2000.

There was some clever phone tech that allowed me to dial in and let them know where to forward my calls. So nobody could ever be too sure whether I was in NY, Frankfurt or my desk at home.

We were substantially paperless from about 2004/5 with "easy when you know how" document/project management systems that we could access remotely as long as we had the right "permissions/access".

It was cheaper/nicer for me to have an "unlimited call" landline than it was to commute every day but I did go to an office at least 3 days/week. It was important to be "seen" and available for my team and to bump into people who I might work with on other projects.

Whatever happened to Lotus Notes, I wonder?

I work in forecasting for a big retailer. 90% of HQ functions are fully & permanently WFH. I do a lot of demand planning on the computer, have meeting to discuss product strategy. Review upcoming product from the brands we sell. Company has £3bn in turnover & 2000 HQ staff. Literally only difference with WFH is our vendors have to post us samples instead of bringing them to our office for a presentation. It, marketing, accounts etc all no need to be on site. Visual merchandising and our in house product design teams are hybrid because they need to physically feel materials or in some cases physically ride a bike, build a tent etc.

that says, I burst out laughing when you said that you received a lot of paper invoices… everything for us is handled over EDI. Prior company all invoices & POs were excel or PFD based. You really need to join the 21st century!!

Im also glad you’re not my manager! I have to work to do and if it doesn’t get don’t it’d be pretty apparent quickly! My boss and I have a weekly check in but he lets me get on with it the rest of the time. Always available for questions but the idea of a manager who “walks about”, yuck. I’d be leaving sharpish. If you don’t trust your employees to do their work & ask for help if they need, you’ve hired the wrong people, given inadequate training and/ or your expectations are unclear.

I work in finance. Due to my organisation making cuts year after year it means that myself and all my colleagues are busier than ever. I am supposed to work full time I.e 37 hours per week. In reality I work far more than that. I often work over the weekend and into the evenings. I feel exhausted from it to be honest. It wasn’t like this pre-pandemic because there was more staff and less work.

I find it so frustrating and insulting when I hear people implying that people like me are skiving because we wfh when in reality I work so hard and put in many additional hours for which I don’t get paid.

Since Covid we haven’t been pressured to return to the office. However if my employer turned around and told us we had to return to the office - even for a few days per week, then I would immediately start looking for another job because adding a daily commute into the mix and having to fit that into the school run with the added stress of finding a parking space at work (by the time I get there they would all be gone anyway) would be too much and I would be run ragged.

Maybe we just watch different things. I’m thinking about programmes that include office working and the only things coming to mind are the office due to the name which I’ve never watched, modern family and the wardrobe company, and love actually with the Christmas office party! Not sure they are a representative sample!

jobs of people I know, family and friends are gardener, plumber, hospital doctor, paediatric nurse, teacher, comedian, shop worker, chef, jewellery maker, midwife, vicar, youth worker, one works at a nature reserve, physiotherapist, outdoor activities coordinator, lab technician, personal trainer, massage therapist, kitchen fitter, lots and lots of people running small local shops, businesses and/or self employed people in services and products of various kinds. No one in an office.