To think ‘hybrid working’ is a bit shit actually?

[OctopusDare]

(Full disclosure: I’m really hoping all the replies are “YABU because my employer is doing it properly and it’s great”, to give me some hope to look elsewhere. Please also let me know if you’re hiring.)

My office job went WFH at the start of the pandemic. This was shit for those of us who don’t like WFH, but okay, pandemic. This year we have been trying ‘hybrid’ working. What this means is that coming into the office sometimes is ‘encouraged’. In practice it looks like this:

• Senior people mostly don’t, except their bosses want them to, so what we get is them regularly hassling us to “have a conversation with your manager about what works for you and your team! But come in sometimes! But it’s entirely up to you! But also you should definitely come in sometimes,” on Zoom calls from their lovely garden offices.

• About two-thirds of people say they want to work out of the office some of the week, but that they don’t want to go in if it’s nearly empty, they only want to go in if there are other people there to work with. And this never seems to get co-ordinated, so in practice people just… don’t go in because it’s empty because of all the other people who aren’t there because they don’t want to go in if it’s empty.

• For those of us who are in, the office is bleak and weird to work from and feels like a post-apocalyptic disaster film.

• Because of all this it’s really hard to train up new people to do anything other than very process-based work. We have lost some newer recruits because they felt like they weren’t getting to meet people or learn from them, and because they didn’t like the choice between working from home and working from a near-empty office on their own.

• There is ENDLESS whining, on and on and on and on, from some of the people who want to WFH full-time and feel like they’re being ‘pressured’ to go back in. “But I am more productive from home!”, says the person who just emailed a distribution list of 40 of us to complain yet again at length about how much he hates offices.

• Endless amounts of time trying to work out “hybrid ways of working” which all just end up the worst of both worlds. Like meetings - the rule is now that we encourage meetings to be in-person, but everyone in person should have their laptops in front of them with cameras on and talk to the camera, so that the people joining from home don’t feel left out. Which is rubbish. So people don’t do it and just work from home, which the managers then complain about, which… etc etc etc.

I liked the idea of hybrid working, but in practice it feels like the worst of both worlds. All the bad points of WFH except with added faff and stress and whining and uncertainty.

Are there places which are making this work? (And by ‘making this work’ I do not mean ‘the office is open for people who want it i suppose but I personally don’t leave my house’, we already have that, I mean a proper mix of in-person and at-home.) Or is hybrid just inevitably shit?

@OctopusDare it means on average around 30% of employees are in on any one day.

how often..that’s a difficult one.. some people may only come in once a month or even less. Others may come in 3 days a week/1 day per week, it’s just their personal preference

We avoided the whole ‘u must be in 2/3 days a week’ thing simply cos what is the point of forcing someone to come in who would then just sit at a desk on their laptop all day?! They can do that from home more effectively. For example, if I’m working on some kind of Project that requires focus for several weeks, it would be pointless for me to be forced to commute to work to then sit alone all day to work, just for the sake of management not trusting employees to work in the way that is most productive to them

Slightly off topic but my local David Lloyd seems to have become a remote working hub, lots of members can be seen working away in the Club Room, this will probably increase in the winter when fuel prices go up.

I'd be surprised if people worried about fuel prices can afford David Lloyd membership. Surely if you can't afford your gas bill you'd stop your expensive sports club first.

"But why are you isolated? If you work in an office and have a long commute you necessarily have to socialise with colleagues because you don't have time to see anyone, or do anything, else."

Who says that everyone has a long commute? I never have. I make sure of it.

"But if you work from home most of the time you have time to meet local friends and do activities locally."

My friends live in various parts of town. The city centre, where I work, is a good place to meet them or I have to go to where they live anyway. People living in cities don't necessarily have their friends on their doorstep.

I think if it were me I'd be making noise about the where to sit thing. Or depending on the organisation I would just start ignoring it and assume no one would bother me about it.

I genuinely think doing an 8:30 or 9:30 am round up where you go round and say "hey, I'm in the office on X days, I sit in Y area, I'll be going for lunch at Z o'clock. Come and join me if you want to?" might work quite well?

I don't mind the set up we have currently but ultimately I flex to make it work for me - I usually suggest at least one in person meeting a week and as long as I rotate through people most of the time that person agrees. There's also a core of "periodically in the office " people who I was easily able to locate due to us only being on one floor but I would definitely have made changes if not.

In my organisation if I wandered around the office and then sat in a different area because there were people there, then a) probably no one would ask but b) I am exec did and I said "oh I like to be around other people and where I sit was empty" then they'd think about it for 2 seconds and move on. I find asking for forgiveness rather than permission is generally a lot easier TBH.

Presumably once you'd done that a few times you would end up with a core of people who mainly sat together and just spends the day in your team space if there's a meeting or something that means you need to be in.

It is working for us, but I work for a large multi national company with offices around the country and around the world.

'My' office (out of which I am based) has recently been downsized and moved to a hot desking arrangement. There are 150 people assigned to this office, with 100 desks, if you want a desk you need to book, there are also lockers on site.

People are arranging days within their teams or with people they know in their offices (even if not in the same team) to work on site together. We have onboarded new people during the pandemic, was a learning curve at first, but we are pretty smooth now. Someone in the team, in the newbies location will take them under their wing and go in to that office while they get used to things and then once they have their feet under them they just move to doing what works for them.

We have constant Teams chatter. If I want to ask someone a question - from anywhere in the Company, I flick a teams message with - 'got a sec?' and have never not had a response.

Have met up with colleagues from outside of my team who actually live near me for 'work' lunches out. We do regular cross branch online meetings.

I am in the office once or twice a week for various reasons. Our meeting rooms are rigged up so that you can join the meeting from the room and whoever is online elsewhere sees and interacts with the room. Aware that this is probably big budget stuff though that we have just taken for granted!

Everyone seems pretty happy. I manage a small team who mostly conduct research and write detailed reports. We need to chat to each other occassionally, but it is mostly quiet task focussed work.

We have a two days in the office rule and different areas define how this works for them.

In our area (about 50 people) we work in the office on Tues & Weds.

Weds is an 'all in' day across our function (about 250-300 people I.e. the whole office).

People can still work from home on those days if there's something important that they couldn't arrange at some other time (dog walker cancels, hospital appt, etc).

The office is open all week for anyone who would prefer to come in on more days (and some people do).

Works pretty well.

Worth saying that there is the occasional moan about not being able to choose which days they come in but this is a minority (especially as we're still flexible when it comes to 'life stuff' meaning someone might still need to WFH those days).

Set days work better for the majority as it allows planning of childcare, dog care, general life around it.

It also makes a big difference for those of us with long commutes (I do 1.5 hours drive each way).

When someone on my team says they'd like to choose their own days I do remind them this would probably mean no face to face meetings with their manager as if I travelled 1.5 hours in to the office and found them all WFH I'd probably stop going in!

(They all live 10-15 mins from the office)

When I was in her position I would go to a local coffee place and work there for half a day for the price of a coffee.

Not every day but a couple of times a week. I also work from a laptop instead of using extra monitors so I can pack up quite easily and work from different places.

Did the op clarify how long she has been with this employer?

Hybrid working works for me and works for my team as well. I work for a big organisation and each team has to work in the office one day a week. Every team has a set day in the week they come in. My team goes in on Thursday. We have another team in a different part of the country and they also go in on Thursday. It’s not negotiable. There’s set day for each department and initially, people moaned but as the day you go in never changes then people had to adapt. So far, no complaints, every one goes in and I enjoy it. There’s talks that in future, some department may decide to start going in twice a week if it’s beneficial but mine won’t so I’m happy with it.

We are the same!!
It also created a new nickname.... the TWATs - Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday's!

We also have a lot of TWaTs. Along with the WTFs and the rarer MFs.

This is exactly my experience of it too! Out of an office with about 90desks there’s often less than 10 people in on Mondays and Fridays. We’re hot desking so needs another level of planning if you want to sit near people you’re working with, which as far as I can tell most people don’t do. The moaning about commutes really pisses me off, the traffic is quieter than it ever was before lockdown and the office hasn’t moved. Someone told me she couldn’t come in cos it takes too much out of her day and she needs to be home for the kids after school…….she lives 10min drive away and her kids are both in high school!!
I don’t like working at home or in the office at the moment, neither have much to offer. I’m seriously considering job hunting for something with more human interaction.

I've skim read the thread, but I totally agree with you OP.

Pre pandemic I loved being in the office. We had a great team, and we'd all pile into the small offices to work out planning etc. and have a good chat on a Monday morning about what we'd been up to over the weekend.
Even over the pandemic when I eventually started going in one day a week for the sake of my mental health, I'd generally meet someone I used to work with and we'd have a socially distanced coffee or lunch together.
The team I am in now, we're meant to be in one set day a week. Except there is no way of booking desks so they could be anywhere in the office- except more usually most are not in. My boss hasn't come in because of personal circumstances which is absolutely fine, but it means no anchor. The other senior person lives within walking distance of the office, so keeps trying to organise in the office meetings on days we don't have to be in.

I've just made my own team by plonking a riser on a desk - I have neck problems if I don't use one - that's right in the middle of the most used bank of desks, so I generally have some company when I come in.

Oh and zero social stuff organised.
I do a team walk - well I've done one but more planned for Autumn- at lunch for anyone who wants it, and there are office things that are good, but actual team social events don't exist. I guess I could organise one myself, but as everyone else seems ok with the status quo and doesn't seem to value social interaction, I couldn't be bothered.

Seems to be working at my office - everyone is expected to be in 3 days a week, everyone works in the office on Wednesday's (any group social type things are done on that day), wfh 2 set days a week posted so everyone is aware who is in/out. Seems simple and relatively uncomplicated 🤷‍♀️

My friend does this !
I wish I could do it productively myself, but I like a proper working environment either at home or in the office.

I’m amazed by some of the horrific commutes that people couldn’t possibly continue 2 days a week without huge detriment to their life, that they willingly signed up for.

I’ve been, on balance, working from home mostly since the pandemic started. I don’t understand how that’s supposed to mean I have local friends who I can see and do activities with. My friends all also work during the week, and we mostly have small children. Some of them live near me, some don’t. Some work from home, some don’t. Those of us who worked in town used to meet for lunch or a coffee sometimes, that has fallen by the wayside now we’re more skewed towards remote working.

Am I meant to adopt a whole separate group of “local friends”, in addition to my actual friends and my work colleagues, just so I’ve got someone to talk to in person during the working week? Who the hell has time for that?

I’m amazed by some of the horrific commutes that people couldn’t possibly continue 2 days a week without huge detriment to their life, that they willingly signed up for

I used to work full time in London and had a 2 hour door to door commute (it's very normal - people didn't really willingly sign up for it - jobs were too concentrated in London but you can't afford to live there). So if I eg wanted to go running with my club, it was always a stress whether I'd make it back on time or not. Now I don't have that issue as I am already here. I can also arrange to meet friends (often from the running club) for coffee.

Obviously if you live elsewhere commutes are much shorter, but the WFH thing is much bigger in London and the south-east than elsewhere. If I lived a 15 minutes walk, cycle or drive from work, I'd go into the office. Probably even on a Friday!

My point was that everyone says you just sit at home alone with a sad face if you work from home, but that's not true, because with 3-4 extra hours in the day you can go out and see people locally (and get more sleep). If you don't have friends/hobbies locally, presumably you will go into the office to see colleagues. It's having the choice that works for most people.

I simply don’t understand those who are championing the whole ‘set number of days in the office thing’. Really puzzles me. Why on earth force someone to come into an office just to sit on their laptop all day, which they could easily have done at home? I understand coming in for pre arranged f2f mtgs/collaboration/social events etc but to force someone to come in on a set day when they otherwise may well have been more productive to have stayed at home that particular and focused on a core piece of work, is just nuts 🤦‍♀️

why not just trust employees to work the way that’s most productive to them as an individual? Only a tiny number of employees would take the mickey and performance management would soon sort those ones out (btw the ones who take the mickey are also the ones who would take the mickey in some shape or form if they were in the office 5 days a week)

use the office for moments that matter, for experiences and purpose rather than just to force someone to sit, potentially unproductively, on a laptop on a desk in the office just cos someone senior has decided they want people in a set number of days a week . Christ 🤦‍♀️

It sounds like terrible leadership at your workplace, @OctopusDare.

senior leaders taking the do as I say not as I do approach.
lack of leadership in coordinating so that people who do go on get a good office experience (and they have clear feedback about what that would look like)
and so on.

Better leadership would produce better hybrid working outcomes.

"why not just trust employees to work the way that’s most productive to them as an individual?"

Because many office workers work in teams, not just as individuals.

@Gwenhwyfar tell me you don’t understand hybrid working without telling me you don’t understand hybrid working 🤔

Eh? I do hybrid working so how do you mean that I don't understand it?