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!

@Twatalert (fabulous name btw) I meant to add that I totally agree those jobs have always been undervalued and that is what needs addressing.

@carduelis exactly, I really think there is a bigger divide. I used to work in retail and the amount of WFH customers who were running errands in the day, going to the park, library, having coffee. If you're not offering people a pay rise and they barely have time to urinate, let alone eat lunch, then you're going to have a recruitment and retention crisis.

Yes I heard that and people moved to more expensive houses with an office but didn't think about the of possibility of loosing it because they weren't travelling to work
Can't have it both ways

Those saying that people shouldn’t be WFH whilst caring for children are being very short sighted. Childcare needs very much depend on the age of the child. WFH effectively is impossible with young children, mine are 4 and 2 and I categorically could not WFH effectively whilst caring for them.

My team in my previous role were very focussed on office presence and WFH was extremely limited. One of my old colleagues has to take 2 weeks annual leave to sit at home bored whilst her 11 year old DC ignores her and amuses themself. Not yet old enough to be left alone, but not young enough that they require hands-on care or attention.

In my new team, which is much more relaxed about WFH, a colleague in an identical situation with a child the same age is WFH all summer. Her DC amuses themselves whilst she works, but obviously she is there if needed and is present in the home.

In that situation, it absolutely is possible to WFH whilst caring for children, reducing the need for paid childcare.

It already has a hiring and retention problem due to wages effectively not increasing for nearly 20 years.

But if you messed with the pension and flexi-time, you'd see most people go.

This is a good summation. Very young kids cannot be looked after while you work. Though I think a lot of us had to do it during the pandemic... It was not fun! I don't think it is feasible to work and let under 7s to their own devices - and then 7-9 is probably down to the child.

But you can get work done while a 10 or 11 year old entertains themselves over the holidays.

@TrulyFlumptious

In that situation, it absolutely is possible to WFH whilst caring for children, reducing the need for paid childcare.

It depends on the nature of the work really, doesn't it? If it's say a job with a lot of phone calls or skype/team calls, then you really can't just "opt out" for a while when your child needs you, can you?

If it's more of a project type work, basically doing the work on your own, then you can be a lot more flexible when to actually do the work as taking "breaks" doesn't affect others.

I've suffered a fair number of calls to firms in the past couple of years where the call has been disrupted by "background" noise, such as kids crying or screaming, dogs barking, doorbell ringing, etc., and it's very unprofessional indeed to have to keep repeating yourself or have to wait whilst they sort out whatever they have to do!

WFH is s obviously beneficial for OP but that isn’t the case for everyone

I work for one of the major utilities and they’ve all but stopped WFH basically because of piss taking there is many performance and monitoring systems in place but a lot of the time WFH people think they are a law to themselves
which a few of the replies on here demonstrate beautifully

The school hours clubs are often really affordable (Mon to Thurs those hours is £90 for the whole week by us). Which is a lot cheaper than 8-6pm options.

@MrsMarieMopps Yes exactly! Most days I have to choose between eating my apple or going to the loo at lunchtime - but I can’t do both…!

I actually think employers will start paying less for wfh roles, especially roles that usually have an inflated salary to take into account being in London.

It is not a case of employers paying more to work in the office, rather than WFH. They will pay the going rate. If they want you in the office, then you also have the option of looking for another job, where you can WFH.

I don't know if I trust employees to know whether or not they should be working with others in the house, including children. I deal with very sensitive, sometimes distressing situations. I wouldn't be able to take work calls at home or join meetings unless I have headphones. We have had trainees who have failed to realise this, and have clearly heard people in the background whilst they were working. It's a massive information governance issue which I can't believe is being ignored.

I agree.

And as widespread wfh options are going absolutely nowhere, the solution to this is going to have to involve either making in person, less flexible roles more attractive or managing without sufficient people to fill them. Making them more attractive isn't solely about more money, but I can't see an option that doesn't involve that being a large part of it.

In respect of schools in particular, they're really suffering because for a long time, parents (mostly women let's be honest) who needed as much of the school holidays off as possible had many fewer options than now. The size of the captive audience has shrunk rapidly.

The DfE is exploring how more flexible working could be implemented in schools but it’s difficult to see how this could work.

It very much depends on the child. I would hope most 8-12 year olds (SEN notwithstanding) would know to how to behave whilst their parent was on a work call, be quiet, not interrupt unless it was an absolute emergency, and wouldn’t run around screaming.

My 4 year old would not abide by any of those rules, hence I would never risk WFH without appropriate childcare! But children older than 8/9 really should know how to behave.

I think what a lot of that boils down to is, how exactly do you think it could be tackled? We have a society that doesn't have enough workers, lots of people who don't want to work in person and still others who couldn't afford the commuting and/or extra childcare costs even if they did. It's one thing for employers to have what they feel is a good reason for wanting people to work in offices, quite another for them to be able to actually enforce that.

@DontBeAPrickDarren I said this ages ago on MN that remote learning will be a thing in the future to help with the teacher shortage/ TA shortage. People were horrified. Funny how people feel that they can work from home effectively and yet they don't feel that there children can learn effectively and also don't feel that teachers should be allowed the same working conditions (yet don't want them to be paid anymore)...
I agree that remote learning as the norm would be horrific in terms of safeguarding and child MH, peer interactions etc. But I also don't know what the solution is, as teaching is currently very undesirable.

Obviously we couldn't possibly, like, stop giving school staff real terms pay cuts year on year. That would be absurd.

@StormShadow I think the whole premise of my OP was PAY PEOPLE MORE. So I don't know why you think I wouldn't be in agreement with paying teachers more. But the government won't do it.

I didn't say you weren't?

@DontBeAPrickDarren It’s very difficult to see that - it’s just the nature of the job unfortunately. But there is more that could be done: staff meetings could go online (or in an email), lots of inset could be done from home. There is a bit of a culture in many schools of not trusting staff to get anything done unless they’re in the school building and if that changed then things could improve a little for teachers.

No one on my team at work pays for childcare and we all work from home.

Our work place don’t have a problem with it.

@MrsMarieMopps I can’t see online teaching ever being a workable solution even without it being the norm. Not only was it rubbish at the time but in some ways it’s made the job worse even now - there’s a bit of an expectation that teachers are now available for contact at all times, and in some schools you’re expected to set up an online lesson for absent pupils while you’re teaching the rest of your class, which is frankly a bit of a nightmare. I think online tuition for individuals is fine, but I can’t see many potential teachers finding the idea of online teaching particularly attractive.

Many of us who work from home still have childcare costs though I wouldn't be able to work if I didn't send DS's to nursery!

I do hybrid but we can go in a lot more if we wish. One aspect that your really missing is the increase in household bills from wfh especially in Winter!