To think that employers will have to pay more for working in the office roles?

[MrsMarieMopps]

Following on from the poster who is annoyed she will have to come back into the office two days a week, I honestly think this argument will come up again and again.
I have never been able to work from home, apart from the odd day when I had COVID. Worked through the pandemic in an office. I am an NHS employee and need to be in the hospital even if not necessarily clinical.
My trust is now fully back to pre covid 'everyone must come in every day'. I don't disagree with this. We should be in supporting the clinical staff and patients!
This means spending on

• transport (£12 a day for me)
• parking
• childcare including wraparound and school holidays
• food which can be transported. Milk for work, butter for work etc. I was home I could just make something out of what I had at the back of the cupboards
• some have cleaners as they are out the house more.
• some gym memberships are cheaper if you can go off peak. Which I can't.
• contributions to leaving presents, maternity leave, big birthdays. These contributions are presumably are less pressured if not in person.
• sickness. There's many days when you can't pull yourself in to the office, or when you're contagious, but you probably could log in from home. I have defo noticed my friends are rarely 'calling in sick' anymore for their children or themselves but WFH instead.

So whilst I appreciate that not all jobs require an office presence, if I was a job seeker why would I choose one that's not hybrid or working from home, especially nowadays. I feel there is going to have to be some sort of reimbursement for taking on a job which requires you to make all the sacrifices in order to do it. Also can't help noticing that it is generally the lower paid who are having to keep paying all these necessary costs. We don't have people falling over themselves to do jobs in care, retail, hospitality as it is and I think this would really help with adding an incentive. Otherwise why would anyone become an NHS band 2 admin or a cook in a nursing home? Also I'm aware heating costs may be more but that's just one thing and most just put another jumper, my workplace is freezing anyway!

OP I don't disagree with all your points but the comments re childcare / holiday clubs / off peak gym membership / cleaner are precisely why many employers are moving back to in the office requirement even for jobs that can be done from home. If people are taking the piss by not arranging childcare / going to the gym / cleaning their house when they're supposed to be working then no wonder employers want people back in the office.

And I say that as someone who loves WFH / the increased flexibility it gives me, so definitely wouldn't want to be 5 days on the office; thankfully my workplace has adopted a hybrid model but that's for a job that can very much re done from home, not all can be.

Most of the organisation I work for are based at home. They get an allowance to reimburse them for their working from home costs. If they travel for work purposes, the mileage is calculated from home.

I work in the same role, but I'm based in an office. I travel an hour to and from work and pay the associated commuting costs.

So I'm approximately £2700 worse off than my colleagues in the same role because of the office requirement. And time wise, I lose around 380 hours commuting.

But I also deliver much more face-to-face client interaction and outreach work than colleagues because I'm on the ground and not based a million miles away

Not everyone has toddlers. No need for childcare for Year 5+ if you work from home. Our primary school allow you to give permission to Year 5 and 6s to walk home themselves. Even Year Rs can be picked up by Year 7s. I won't let my two home alone for long periods but they don't need childcare from Year 5 if they come home to a non empty house.

Year 5 starts at 8 year old. You really just pay childcare for the first 8 years of their lives.

Your premise is wrong.

People who are wfh have in most cases been doing so for at least three years now, and often longer. There has been ample time for offshoring, and yet in most cases that hasn't happened. Sometimes that's due to regulatory or tax requirements meaning organisations have to have people who are physically in the UK, other times because it's just not a good idea. If it hasn't happened by now, there's no reason to assume it's a possibility.

On the subject of employers asking for evidence of childcare, a lot of phone based roles simply don't pay enough to be able to recruit staff who can and will pay for childcare, pet care etc these days. Even if they boot the ones who are wfh and looking after kids at the same time, doesn't mean replacements will be forthcoming.

So in some cases, organisations are responding to this when they don't try and force staff to use childcare. No point in pushing the issue if you can't be pretty confident that the outcome is going to be staff who don't have kids with them. And the same is true of paying staff more to come into the office. Some employers will indeed have to do that, some will be able to get what they want without going the extra mile. It all depends.

We need a £150k grant from DH employer to buil an extra soundproof office space. Or to fund a move to a bigger house. I have lost all privacy ow the house is full office workers. I can’t have the radio on blaring out like I used to .

It does! Certainly our Dept anyway. Not only are we expected to work in the office, our hours have been extended and the pay rise is absolute crap. I will be leaving shortly and I really hope I have an exit interview. We struggle to even get temps...

Which Dept, out of interest? Have just applied for CS (DLUHC) thinking hybrid was fairly well embedded but maybe not!

Doesn't surprise me. People like flexibility and they vote with their feet.

@csandsickofit just out of interest are you moving to WFH, more hybrid role?

How has this anything to do with wfh? Many jobs that cannot wfh were not well paid enough even before Covid and aren't now. I think the gap widens because of the COL crisis and not because a part of the population wfh. It tends to be the case that non-public sector or service jobs are on average better paid and annual pay rises are a bit more.

OP, I wouldn't resent the wfh people if I were you. It really isn't that much of a saving. I think the issue is that critical jobs (nurses, teachers, the whole NHS and care sectors) are underfunden and people are squeezed beyond what is reasonable.

Having said that you could try and get a wfh job if you think it's that much cheaper? What's stopping you?

People should look for the jobs that suit them. Some may prefer home working, others prefer to be in the office. Different employers have different requirments

I think it's got a lot to do with wfh personally. Speaking as a remote worker.

Jobs that require people to be in set places at set times often have associated expenses and are in some cases becoming less attractive (hospitality, teaching assistants etc). Those jobs are either going to have to pay more so that people will choose to do them, or we'll have to manage without them. But as a society we still seem to be getting our heads round that.

This! You’re comparing people who are not working very hard with people who are working hard. That doesn’t divide nearly down wfh/on site lines.

This is what a bunch of us were saying the other day. Some people had managed to get jobs where they could walk or cycle to work or the cost of commute was very small thanks to car share or location. Now they have extra costs caused from wfh and none of that has ever been properly addressed, not among our group at least. Also we don’t all have ideal or even reasonable little sections of the home we can allocate to wfh and know of some who are pretending all is fine and dandy every time the workplace questionnaire comes round . For me in particular our home has been invaded by office stuff. Dread the school holidays the noise from yet another extension going up etc etc.

But those jobs were already not well enough paid before wfh became a thing and were struggling with retention. Hasn't it always been the case that people in those jobs tend to get burnt out and underpaid? A few quid more to pay for the commute won't sort that. The problem is that these workers are undervalued and this needs to be addressed in a structured way. If the pay and work-life balance issue is addressed properly there would be inventive enough to get enough workforce. Employers will hardly pay a few thousand extra for those that come to the office - maybe they would get an extra £100 a month but in my view this wouldn't solve the underlying issue.

How does that work in the holidays? An 8 year old can’t be left to their own devices all day.

You're right that there were always issues with retention etc for some of those roles, but we now have a smaller labour force and more competition for workers. Hence for example TAs are a lot harder to recruit than they used to be- because people have more choices now.

Work life balance is relevant for some of those roles, absolutely, but that's not likely to be the reason why people aren't taking part time hospitality jobs. By all means there should be improvement in non monetary working conditions too... but cold hard cash is needed.

They cant, but the local holiday clubs to be are 9.30 - 3 for instance and you pay a massive premium for an extended day.

So a bit of juggling between you, a partner and annual leave you can avoid some of the child care costs.

That’s very rude. My son is only 6 but his cousins are 10 and 13. My point is not that are doing a bare minimum of “fending for themselves” it is that it is unfair just to leave younger children to amuse themselves while the parents work, especially in the school holidays.

Depends on your industry. I’ve been contacted by three different recruiters in the last two weeks about a role that a company are struggling to fill. In my industry WFH was standard before Covid- but this company has a company wide policy of 3 days a week in the office, regardless of whether the role requires it or not. They can’t fill the role- I am sure they will get some eventually, but to get anyone decent it is going to cost them about £15 grand a year more than their offering now.

This work from home nonsense is getting totally out of hand. If your job allows it and your employer sgrees then wfh. But if not suck it up or find a new job. Its not anybody's right.

The retention/recruitment crisis in teaching has got considerably worse since Covid and, talking to other teachers about this, it does seem like part of the reason for that is the inflexibility of teaching compared to wfh jobs. I think it all comes down to the fact that no-one minds being in a duff situation until they see that others have it better: I see my wfh friends popping out to the bakery in the middle of the day for a casual doughnut and I feel more resentful than I used to that I can’t go and watch my kids’ nativity plays or see a doctor in term time. It may not be that teaching has got any worse (I think it has, for various reasons unrelated to this discussion), but in the context of the increase in wfh jobs, it seems worse now because teachers are more aware of how inflexible their job is compared with many others.

I think thats OPs point though. People are deciding to find a new job so employers are struggling to fill roles so to fill the roles they might have to pay more.

But i dont know if therd are enough wfh jobs or enough people thst want them over other jobs for that to happen.

@StormShadow exactly. Jobs like T.A's used to be thought of as convenient to fit around school aged children, you get school holidays off (unpaid) but these posts cannot compare to the flexibility and ease of WFH. No it's not perfect but having the option to save time and money on commuting, work clothes etc is worth it.
No it's not anyones right to WFH but then people shouldn't moan when their child has three T.As per school year as they keep leaving and then have to build rapport with a new person all over again.