Is hybrid/remote work dying?

[Finallybreathe]

Posting for traffic.

I was looking for a new job and I didn’t want to work in an office full time nor did I want to work from home full time… I was surprised to see how many jobs are no longer remote/hybrid but full time in an office. Thankfully my new job is 3 days at home and 2 days in the office. What’s happened?

What’s the working dynamic like where you are? Are you back in the office full time?

Not in my industry. Most people are still mostly at home or hybrid, with varying mandated office days. Ours is one day a week but it's very flexible. We're recruiting on hybrid contracts.

The trains on my commute are still much quieter than they used to be, too.

Mum said what’s hybrid.

Me: part office/part work from home week….

1 day in office, 4 WFH . It’s never going back to more than this. The office has downsized and we can’t all come in same time.

i like it this way, honestly

100% at home and love-enough to keep me in a job with no progression

Such an interesting point & I agree.

I manage a team of 8 & purely from staff support / optimal working, the more time I have f2f the better. I find they engage much better with me - whether it's opening up about issues they are facing or being more proactive about their projects.

We work 3 days in the office / 2 at home on a fixed 2 week rota tho my days change as a manager depending on what / when I'm needed on-site.

It's great for so many reasons and we won't go back to fully on-site but it's definitely harder work in terms of engaging with staff, progressing sensitive work items etc.

I have had to work really hard recently to encourage my team to use email less, and use Teams or arrange impromptu calls.

Hybrid is .still strong in London.
I was recruiting recently and said I wanted the people office based for the first month, and then hybrid, to offer training and support in the first few weeks. Agencies were quite negative about it.

what I've noticed is that immediately post lockdown, there were a lot of part time roles about - they seem to be a lot fewer these days.

No I think our ways of working have changed forever. Some people want to go back to how things used to be but it’ll never be the same.

I like working from home but do worry that we’re setting our kids up for a lifetime of social isolation .

Also think wfh makes it harder for managers to keep tabs on employees but noticing that there’s a trend of doing away with middle management who don’t really add any value.

do worry that we’re setting our kids up for a lifetime of social isolation .

Why would you worry about that?

College / university is in person.

Most new-hires & grads start fully on-site. Most roles have strong social or in-person elements.

Even the fully wfh jobs, the person will have a social and personal life in person, I hope.

We are 2 days office and 3 days at home. We don't have enough office space for everyone to be in. A few people have permission to wfh full time.

Been fully wfh since 2016 when I graduated.

Some weeks I don’t go in at all, some I’m in every day. I average 1-2 days a week in the office. Big boss very keen to mandate 2 days a week in the office but hybrid working has worked out very well for us in terms of attracting talent who wouldn’t ordinarily have looked twice at us, so HR have warmed them off doing it for now.

Interesting that 2 days in the office seems to be the norm. I’ve just applied for a couple of city-based roles which would both come with hefty pay rises, but those would be cancelled out by having to pay for the train more than twice a week. Both say hybrid but not the ratio. Might be more workable than I was envisaging.

I guess it's a mix depending on the business model.

I’m in the office one day a week and WFH 4 days a week. I have to do the one day in the office as a minimum (I see patients face to face) but could do more days in if I wanted. I’m happy with my current split.

do worry that we’re setting our kids up for a lifetime of social isolation

Yes, I find that worrying too, but many MNers would be overjoyed as so many of them seem to be lacking in basic social skills and are ridden with anxiety around other people in the first place.

My kids socialising has never centred around my working life.

My kids are older so do their own socialising mainly. But hybrid is allowing people, who work for me and have younger kids, to spend more time with their kids/friends and wider family. More time to take their kids to hobbies and so on. They are socialising more with the people who are important to them.

Dd has just finished her first year at Uni. Most lectures were in person. Ds is still at school, so socialises with school friend inside and outside school.

I think if you are a parent who likes social isolation, then you would be more likely to isolate outside work, if you have to work outside the house.

I do think fully wfh (hybrid or full time) doesn’t work for all people. It obviously doesn’t work for all job roles, even in the same company or industry. it’s very individual. But there are plenty of jobs that aren’t wfh if it doesn’t suit.

Not sure I agree on people who wfh being left behind career wise. I think it is happening. But I can see in my company and the companies we deal with, these are the people that were really effectively engaged in pursuing promotion when on the office.

I know some people who wfh 4 days a week and still get recognised for their contribution and have been promoted. I know some who work 4 days a week who haven’t been. The ones that haven’t, come in don’t really speak to many people, don’t want to engage in meetings, won’t stretch themselves or come up with ideas for improvement. But they were like that before. They want to come in, do their job and go home. They wouldn’t be in a different position if they were in the office full time.

Its bizarre. But says a lot about the strength of the underlying assumption that work is at the centre of people's lives, and the primary social space outside the home.

DH is still hybrid (typically 3 days wfh and 2 in the office). I'm mainly back onsite.

I've seen people worry about this before and I don't get it at all.

I've WFH since 2009 and found that it allowed me to be much more sociable - it still does. When I worked in an office, by the end of the day I was knackered from being around people all day while I was trying to work, then the commute on top of that, and wanted to do little more than sit by myself in a dark room in the evening.

I have more energy and more time to socialise with people I actually love - my friends, not my colleagues - now I WFH. If I finish at 6pm and some friends are meeting in some other part of London, I've got the energy to travel to them. I fill my weekends with socialising because I don't need to recover from the week. If it's a slow work day I can tell my team I'll be offline and meet a local friend for lunch.

I think 100% remote jobs are thin on the ground but I would’ve said the same about 100% office. Interesting you’re seeing that. Perhaps they advertise as that for legal purposes but the reality is they are more flexible?

So true.

Fully remote. Oh has to go in one day a week now to London which is pita as we moved during lockdown, it was two days but they have to hot desk and work from laptops whilst at home he has 6 screens ( banking ) and productivity has really dropped so they said one day. In September it goes to one day a month and I think they will probably stop it altogether in the Winter due to unreliability of the trains.

MN is skewed towards the introverted so it doesn’t really represent a balanced view.

I'm in a hybrid role moved jobs in December and the team were adapting and putting in post Covid working plans. I have to do three days in the office and two at home which works very well for me. I love the mix and generally appreciate the wfh days as much as the sociable office days

That's an interesting point. Some organisations will have more staff that are reliant on striking modes of transport to the office than others, and that probably makes a difference.