To think WFH has gone too far now?

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I am very lucky to have a fully flexible role in a very understanding organisation. My colleagues come from a range of backgrounds and have various reasons for appreciating the level of flexibility we have - not all are parents.

We are now almost entirely home based, which in principle is fine but in practise becoming frustrating. Our work is desk based and requires quite a lot of collaboration.

My issue is that people are becoming so much harder to talk to in the day because it’s as if work fits in around their home life when it suits. Almost everything has to be booked in as a meeting, rarely is anyone available for a spontaneous call / chat on teams as you would have done in the office. We are supposed to be available core hours 10-4 for a 35 hr week, and either side of that as you see best.

Recent examples when I’ve sent a message to ask if people have five mins for a chat - sorry I’m making bread / feeding the horses / talking to the plumber etc etc. I’ve also noticed people are booking in more and more non-work appts in the working day yet still expect to clock off by 4.30. They are things which could easily be done before / after work day. We have a colleague (who does some important work for me) coming back from mat leave in summer who is planning to have her baby at home with her on at least a couple of her work days because flexibility.

AIBU to think that people are becoming less and less available and that it’s affecting our work and working relationships? I’m quite a collaborative person and I like exchanging ideas with colleagues (but I don’t overdepend on them before anyone starts!).

Starting to wonder if this is the right place for me but before I decide what to do I wanted to see what other peoples experiences are. This is not a large corporate company, it’s a small design firm where we work to super tight deadlines but we do lots of client facing work too eg pitches.

Sounds like an issue with the culture in your workplace. Don't management get involved and actually manage these people?

DH works from home, has done since before the pandemic, and it's a far more professional set up than you're describing. He wouldn't tolerate this from his teams and if he behaved like this it wouldn't be tolerated by his manager either.

That's also a very good point. In my company people ask if a person is available and accept if they can't talk straight away. It can be very distracting.

yabu
our office does hybrid work now after 2 years wfh

it did work well for us in general. bar the odd person who took the piss (and has now left the company).

if you regularly need to speak to colleagues, book a meeting. maybe even a daily progress meeting of 15 min to set the tone.

Fortunately, I only had to work from home for a very shortly amount of time. The only bonus I found was that I could do lots of other stuff at home instead of working. I was intensely productive in short bursts but I completely lost interest in work and I increasingly saw it as a chore that I had to fit around my home life. I also completely detached from the company and started looking for other jobs. Obviously I am not suited to working from home!

I can often tell when I am speaking to someone on the phone and they are working from home. People frequently want to renegotiate timings of calls, they often drop out of zoom meetings, they leave for the school or nursery run and there is generally much poorer communication. It is not always a problem and clearly some people really suit it.

I’ve been WFH for the past 11 years. I work for a v small co and we all WFH in the main. Unwritten rules are that you are around and available during your working hours. If I am not going to be eg next week I will have to do secondary school run bc train strike I’ll email everyone and let them know I’m not at my desk.

sometimes there’s unforeseen urgent stuff but otherwise it’s pisstake and none of us do that.

That's not my WFH experience. We do have people flexing their time in a reasonable way, but that's true flex so if they disappear for 30 minutes during the day you can bet they're staying on 30 minutes in the evening...and it's certainly not a common work approach.

That being said I rarely make myself available for spontaneous calls. I work in design, having someone interrupt me in the middle of constructing an illustration or mapping out a storyboard really affects my pace and concentration so just like pre-zoom days I'll ignore calls that are badly timed and call back later. I'd do the same in the office (headphones in and head down was a "leave me alone" sign in our office).

However I do agree WFH just isn't suitable for childcare. Older children who just need a bit of company, fair enough, but then that's not really childcare if they're walking themselves home from school, getting themselves a snack and chilling until you finish work. Young children who need attention and care, not on at all because either work or the child is being ignored...and I'd put money on it not being the child.

It doesn't sound like the WFH dynamics in your company are working for you. Either see of you can change it for the positive so you're all getting more out of the working day or find work elsewhere.

My colleague and I were discussing this; both of us agreed that we have become crap when working from home - too many distractions and too demotivated! And it's cold due to lack of heating. I come into the office more than I have to now simply because I prefer the company of my colleagues to being on my own. That said it's great to have the flexibility when I want it. Sometimes it's good to have a day where I can catch up on washing, appointments etc (while fitting work around them!)

WFH hasn't 'gone too far' because your colleagues seem to have forgotten about the 'work' part of it and your company management aren't dealing with their piss taking effectively.

Done properly, it works exactly the same as in the office and often better than, because you have the technology in place to have calls and meetings that would previously required people to be in the same place.

If you need to speak to each other or clients and have a core time, availability in those hours needs to be enforced, at the very least.

Most people socialise outside of work and will use the lack of commute to their advantage in that respect.

So instead of sitting on a train or tube for an hour at each end of the day, they have time to see their partners properly, go to the gym, go to the hairdresser, meet a friend for a coffee or head out for an early dinner etc.

I run my own business from home but primarily work outdoors - I can happily go all day and not speak to a soul - it's heaven

This isn't a WFH issue. This is a 'your colleagues are taking the piss' issue.

I also think your colleagues are taking the piss.

I think a bit of flexibility is fine - e.g. I wouldn't want someone in my team to feel like they had to book a day of annual leave to be home for a couple of five minute chats with a plumber. I occasionally take a differently timed lunch break so that I can attend a school event (school is 3 mins walk from our house) but I flag it to my manager and team.

But I am at my desk for as much of usual office hours as I am in the office - and people do regularly call me.

As an introvert, WFH has been amazing for me, I find the office quite intense. 2 days is nice to connect face to face but I can't imagine doing full time in the office again

WFH isn't for everyone and it's entirely reasonable not to enjoy it.

But I do think that out of the absolute mess that was COVID there has been some changes for the good - and that includes people striving for a better work-life balance.

No matter how much you love your job, it's just a job and should take second place to your real life. Leaving on time is so often frowned upon, and people compete not to take their holiday or to work the longest hours. It's absolute batshit crazy - and even some of the comments on MN regularly frown on people who don't throw themselves in front of the proverbial bus to keep their employers happy.

Your loved ones, your mental health, your well-being - those are the things that really matter. And for some people, WFH has meant a far more balanced life, and a healthier attitude to work.

In Scandinavian countries there's been a far more balanced approach to work and personal life for many years, with employers understanding that a more rounded, happier person makes a better employee.

For YEARS employers refused to consider home working, and women generally have borne the brunt of the inconvenience. WFH has opened up new possibilities and while it's not desirable for everyone, I think on the whole it's leading to a far healthier outlook. You shouldn't feel embarrassed about not working flat out at warp speed the entire day.

As it happens, I'm self-employed now - I've WFH for around 13 years so it's been quite strange to see everyone entering "my world". Before I was s/e, I used to be a manager at a finance firm and I hated the inflexibility of a big corporate office. I'm happy to see a more open approach from many firms and I hope this is now a permanent change.

YABU

it doesn’t work for you because your company are shit at organising it. it works well in companies who actually manage their staff.

the woman with the baby needs to be plainly told that wfh while solely responsible for a young child is not acceptable and she will need childcare those days.

It's your company not WFH. I WFH 4 days a week with core hours 10-4. I sit at my desk and I am available even before and after those times to be honest. I throw some laundry in on my lunch break but that's about it.

We're a small professional services company - I'd be horrified as a manager if someone proposed having sole charge of a baby while they worked. That would be a no for me.

My experience of people working from home is that everyone is available and work gets done. Possibly with a little more flexibility than when they are in the office (we have a broad 3/2 split so people are meant to be in the office more than they are not) but that's ok and I've never had a problem getting hold of people. What I do find frustrating is when I haven't seen a colleague in person for a few days and realise I'm putting off a conversation until we can have it face to face but then that doesn't happen because they've decided to work from home all week.

We do hybrid so 2 office days and 3 wfh. We are flexible, for example I do the school run, but as long as work is done & no one takes the piss Managers are happy to leave us to it.

I find at home I get more done as I'm not distracted by people coming to my desk constantly with a "quick question" which is never actually quick. I find myself having to skip my lunch break & work later on office days.

We have one person with very young kids at home & it's so distracting hearing them in the background & she never seems to be available.

As a whole I think the move to wfh has been beneficial, but you'll always find piss takers.

I think we forget that plenty of people take the piss in the office too - I have certainly worked with people who took long lunches and spent half their time making tea and popping out for coffee etc

That's what our place is like. Most annoying thing this time of year is parcel delivery!

I don't really like people 'dropping in for a chat' whilst I'm working. It's one of the things about office culture that I found really difficult at times. I am a sociable person but I found it broke my concentration and was difficult to manage all of the social etiquette around this.

It was nice to have a lunch break etc. to talk to colleagues but I don't miss it all that much tbh.

I prefer to have calls booked in and it hasn't affected productivity in my team, if anything we are more productive.

Most people socialise outside of work and will use the lack of commute to their advantage in that respect.

I'm not in the UK, and my work commute has never been more than a 15 minute walk, but I see that not having to spend so long commuting could be beneficial - I'm just thankful I don't live in a place where long commutes seem commonplace. However, from reading some of the posts on this thread it seems UK workplaces might not be as flexible as they are in some other parts of the world.

You wouldn't stick a wash on in the morning to hang out on your lunch because someone might hear the spin cycle? 😆

What kind of odd people do you work for that would be offended by the spin cycle on a washing machine?

Core hours aren't meant to be full time hours so you should be available before and after (or doing extra hours at another time) - unless you're part time obviously.

10-4 is only 6 hours a day, not accounting for lunch

The managers need to take back control. Staff should be available to take spontaneous calls, unless it’s lunch time they shouldn’t be feeding the horses or other non work things. We don’t allow staff to have children under school age at home with them. Someone applied for home working as they had a baby, 15 months and didn’t want to use childcare. Well sorry but she should have considered that before getting pregnant. We declined it and she’s managed to find childcare, we have told her she needs childcare all 3 days not just the office. We allow staff to take a late lunch and pick children up from school, as long as they can sit quietly and staff are hitting targets. We have a 40% office attendance and I push that quite strongly as the leader of the department. It’s unfair to the staff who do come in consistently if others aren’t. People managed it pre covid. They are starting to take the P now, some of them anyway

It’s a personality thing/how you like to work. So I prefer to talk to someone to ask a question or to agree something but others would prefer to email.
I’m someone who has always been asked loads of questions about area I specialise in at work. When we were in the office I did get interrupted by people lots to ask questions but it also meant I could ask them for some additional info about it there and then, give a clear answer and be done. Now I still get asked loads of questions but they are by email. It is likely more convenient for them and I know some people asked loads of questions prefer it but I find it takes me longer to do and I don’t learn as much about other projects doing it all via email. In a 5-10 minute chat at my desk I could have asked my q’s, got answers and provided feedback and I’d have likely heard how project was going and might have found out something useful to reapply elsewhere. Now it takes me the same 5-10 minutes to read the email & try and find background in the chain then type a reply with my questions. Once I get a response I have to do the whole thing again. My email has become a monster since covid. I’m constantly behind on it and I get hundreds of new mails a day. Between that and meetings of 30 mins plus being booked in all over the place for PMs to “check in” since they never see the team face to face or for testing updates I struggle to get actual work done. I likely just need to get better at saying no and not helping other people but I will really miss the collaborative spirit of the team if so.

Definitely not like this in organisation. People might pop some washing on or whatever during a natural break but it definitely wouldn't wash if we were prioritising stuff at home over our actual job.