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?

We started doing hybrid the way your company does but we are starting to have more rules which make it better. Many teams now have a day a week when everyone comes in. Senior management meetings once a month are compulsory face to face unless you have covid. New joiners are in the office most days in their induction period and their team has to have someone in to support them on a rota basis everyday they are in.

We have to be in two days a week and teams generally organise themselves. In our team we all come in on Wednesdays so that's our day for team meetings etc, and then mostly we come in on either Tuesday or Thursday. We're asked to note in our calendars in advance what days we will be in. We do have a new grad in our team who has just moved to London so comes in every day as her flat share isn't very conducive to WFH, so we've been trying to ensure one of us is in every day Monday to Thursday to keep her company!

However we're about to move to a new smaller office where we will hot desk. This is going to be a whole new ballgame in terms of booking desks in advance and none of us quite know how it will work. It will be really rubbish if we can't book a block of desks together as a team.

We're still wfh mostly. Management seem to have decided hybrid means 2 days a week in the office minimum without showing their working. TU shop survey shows staff generally want to come in much less often.

@Oblomov22

Senior management in their lovely huge office at home. Or in the garden. Less well off people sitting at a dinning room table. Being forced to go back into an office that a skeleton of the atmosphere it had before.

It is a huge problem, I agree. In my firm the senior people are all lecturing the kids about having to be in while most of them go in at best once a week and all join meetings in visibly luxurious surroundings from country homes. The optics of it are hideous.

And it is going to really damage the credibility of the top tier of these firms if they don't listen to the younger generation.

But hybrid is also a total nightmare if you have children. I don't know what the solution is but reading with interest because I do think things need to change.

It’s rubbish. The default for my team is that they (and I) work from the office but if there’s a reason to wfh (appointment, delivery, etc) we can. I’ve worked really hard to create that culture in the team and also to make the office enjoyable. It had paid off though. The team work and training is so much better than being at home.

You need set days. We do 2 in the office, 3 from home. One of the days the whole team comes in, the other day we get to choose. We have a calendar where it is clearly marked up so we can see if other people are in. Sometimes, like now in the summer, of no one else is going to be in people move their second day or even do 4 days from home - management do understand that if you have no meetings and no one else is in, it’s not always nice to be in the office if you don’t want to be.

Maybe take the lead and suggest a calendar so everyone can start to coordinate their days?

It sounds like your organisation just isn’t managing it properly. We have two assigned days per week where we are required to be in the office, the other three are wfh. There is some flexibility on that but not for I just cba going in.

The small number of people (less than 10% in any department) who want to be office based full time have been accommodated to do so - the 2 days their teams are in they sit with them, the rest of the time they are all together across one floor so no depressing, empty office feel for them.

Managers/assistant managers/trainers have accepted that when we have new starters we will have to spend more days in the office. So when I’ve had new people I’ve gone into the office with them for say 4 days a week for a couple of weeks, then reduced it down to the 2 mandatory days. So far it’s working well overall.

I’m honestly wondering if we work for the same organisation because that is EXACTLY my experience.

We do team days so we can go in and sit together, it works really well

We operate a minimum of 3 days in the office for those that can work from home. When a new member of staff joins a team, the team needs to come in for their full probation period so they get to know everyone (3 months). It works well.

We do 2 days in the office, the office is in teams of about 10 people so everyone has a set team day and then you can pick your 2nd day to suit, we hot desk so have to book desks upto 4 weeks in advance. It works really well .... however I do find my 2nd office day less productive because im working with people that I might only see every few weeks 😂😂

It’s working pretty well in our office. Some people like being in all the time, so they are and have their own desk assigned. The rest of us desk share with another person so although we don’t have assigned days to be in, we usually come in the same days (eg I usually go in Mon and Weds and my desk mate does Thurs/Fri). There’s a spreadsheet showing where everyone is each day so you can make plans to
come in the same day as someone, or borrow someone’s desk if they’re at home.

Our main problem is that sometimes a piece of work requires everyone to be in and then it feels quite crowded and is hard to find a spot, but that’s a small
price to pay for the overall flexibility imo

Works well where I work. But the big boss is in most days when he's not travelling. It's hilarious how, when he's in, certain senior managers the next level down who otherwise are never seen all suddenly turn up like they're always in the office. The rest of us are in consistently the middle 3 days. So I'd say in your situation the senior managers saying "do as I say not as I do" is why it isn't working.
If they were all in, people who weren't in would feel exposed. As they aren't, if you don't want to come in you feel like you've got cover because senior manager isn't doing it either.
As PP said, it's a poor management issue. They need to lead by example.

Wow, I would leave if I had to go to the office all the time every time someone new started!

Our hybrid working is not on any rota and it works fine. Nobody has to go in although there is a shared calendar saying which teams are in, when. I don’t even go in once a month. The busiest day is always Tuesday so I avoid that. But then we were well set up before the pandemic, the office is lovely, the tools for remote working are excellent. Were I closer, I’d go in more often. But then we are all quite independent and it’s not the kind of office where people come to others’ desks to chat (not least because we don’t have fixed desks). We can book adjustable desks or breakout rooms on an app, whatever we need for a specific part of the job. We also have a strong but fair and committed management team that sticks to what it says.

Your thread should be simply titled

My employer is totally shot at managing hybrid working

We have a strict rota so I wfh Monday and Thursday - but rarely do both as boss often not in and I cover (that’s a whole other thread).

i used to know who would be in from the team that sit next to us but now they mix it up and every day is a surprise. The thing is, who is in makes a huge difference to office dynamics so I never know what I’m walking into. I prefer a more nailed down approach. I do like my one day a week at home that tends to happen though.

shit

Oof! How does that work for team members who otherwise wouldn’t need wrap around childcare?

Personally I love love love love it

(mind you, I work part time and my “weekend” starts on Thursday at 12.30 so I am spoilt generally)

This hybrid thing shouldn't be forced on those who want to be full-time remote.
This is probably part of the reason why it's shit.

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.

That sounds ridiculously shit.

Old school solution is the meeting room has a conference call phone and any non-office-based person dials in. There’s undoubtedly a similar Teams or Zoom solution to this with properly equipped meeting rooms. But if you can’t be arsed/can’t make it in for the in-person meeting you shouldn’t be forcing other people to be on screens.

The easiest solution is just let people decide for themselves. Do those that like working in the office can all be there together all the time. Hybrid working really is a box ticking exercise for a lot of people. The ultimate in presenteeism.

You seem to that that is a good system.

the rest of us are shocked at how utterly shit that is.

You have your WFH arrangement and then suddenly all up ended for 3 months because a new starter joined.

sounds awful

Our organisation has a set up that is working well (for me).

There are no mandatory days but I generally go into the office for a specific purpose (i.e. printing or I say to someone "shall we do that in the office"). Then I have a guaranteed reason to be there.

Most of the time I would say it's moderately full - maybe 10 ish people in? That's enough for it not to feel like a zombie apocalypse - lights turning off from lack of movement.

Occasionally it's very quiet but then that's usually really productive so I don't mind too much.

We have a proper hybrid meeting set up with things called "meeting owls". They struggle if there's more than maybe 7-8 people there in person but are otherwise pretty decent. That plus the big screens in the meeting rooms to see people at home means you can have a pretty decent hybrid meeting.

People agree a regular schedule to be in the office with new joiners otherwise it's hideous for them if they're young rather than an old hand who's moved round the industry.