To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

[catsliketowearsocks]

There is yet another DM story doing the rounds today about people 'working from beach'. Apparently it's council worker this time rather than civil servants. I work for a council and we would not be able to live abroad as we have impromptu office meetings, but even if we wanted to for the short term (like, for a family emergency or flight issues) we would have to apply for permission due to cybersecurity rules.

The DM would like to ban WFH which is just nasty. There may be a small number who take the piss but I don't believe that's the norm. WFH has vastly improved my life and mental health.

I'm willing to bet many DM journalists work remotely.

I’m not a fan of the DM but I do think they have a point.
I have two DC’s in their twenties who I think have hugely missed out in learning opportunities/ socialising in new jobs wfh.
I also have a friend who works as a manager in a council and she’s finding it difficult to train/mentor and yes check up on staff via zoom.
There’s always some people who will try and get away with doing as little as possible and wfh makes this much easier.
As a consumer the service offered to you has gone down the pan. Yes I’m sure everyone will say that’s Brexit:Tory policies etc but I’m sure some of it is wfh.

the biggest problem of wfh actually affects the employee more. my MIL has done 30 years of WFH (freelance), so she is a better case study than someone who has WFH since the pandemic. She earns less than what I pay my cleaner (her own admission). If she had stayed at her office job (in central london) which she worked in the 1990s, she would be earning £40k or even £65k (seen some job adverts that she would be qualified to do).

There is some worry that fully remote workers would be treated the way freelance consultants traditionally are, which might be fine for very highly skilled ones but for the less skilled and junior ones, it could be a Uberization of their work. It will not be immediately obvious, my MIL's salary wasn't even that bad in the 90s (it was low for London but not much less than her office job at that time and in line with UK average ). Even when I first met her in 2013, it was slightly above minimum wage. Now it is a good £5k or £6k lower than minimum wage.
https://www.iqpartners.com/blog/will-remote-work-lead-to-the-uberization-of-the-workforce/

And this may happen because when you work remotely you don't have such a close relationship with your employer. And the employer would view you as far more disposable.

There's a lot of guesswork in this post.

And people often talk about how wfh should be restricted, but we now live in a society where we don't have enough workers for all the things we want doing. Organisations can certainly tell their staff they can't work remotely, yes. What they can't necessarily do is assure themselves an appropriately qualified workforce, willing and able to work in the office, for the wages they're offering.

Lots of workers have more power than they did pre-covid. Some employers have recognised this. In customer service roles specifically, these jobs typically aren't that well paid. There was always quite high churn anyway, even when workers had fewer options. The wages are no longer enough to get staff who will all come into offices and pay for childcare and other associated costs. Telling them they have to come in isn't a fix for that.

I agree. HMRC are not full time WFH I believe and I expect this is a staffing retention issue rather than WFH

Really important point about staff retention. Which has long been a problem in call centre roles.

More flexible post-pandemic work arrangements are a boon for many women, particularly working mothers, and have increased the economic power of women.

The Daily Mail and Telegraph just cannot be having this.

Indeed - my DF was here the other day looking after DC for a couple of hours when I was working (not from home) but DH was WFH. DF decided it was appropriate to walk in on DH during a meeting and ask him why he couldn't get mobile signal and could he help. DF obviously thinks people need to get back to the office. I've was able to work remotely pre-covid (it was much rarer then). During an important meeting when I was speaking DF repeatedly knocking on door, so I had to ignore it as I was literally in the middle of presenting something. After a few unanswered knocks he walked in anyway and asked if I wanted a cup of tea. I mean it was meant to be a nice gesture, but what part of not answering and presumably being able to hear me speaking made it seem appropriate? Ah, because WFH is not real work. He's also a DM reader (sadly).

Flexibility is important but if women feel pressure to take on more fully remote jobs because they want to completely cut out childcare and remote jobs become freelance gigs/directly compete with increasingly outsourced roles, this has an impact on earnings. I posted earlier about my MIL who has been freelance WFH since the 1990s and now she earns less than a cleaner despite having a Masters Degree.

No matter how much she could have paid for childcare, there is nothing that would make up for the years of lost earnings.

What a bizarre comment.

So because you couldn’t work from home due to the nature of your role that you chose no one else should be able to.

what about other benefits employees can receive from their employers? Company cars? Should they also be banned as not everyone can and does receive them?

Some roles can be done WFH and others can’t. That’s the nature of the beast. Being bitter about choices that you made is peculiar.

I've worked in the Civil Service for a while now, I've had a lot of involvement with 'Hybrid Working' policies and investigations post-Covid, including wellbeing in a Hybrid Working age.

I'm the first to fanfare the benefits and flexibility that WFH offers, and whilst I agree it is unhelpful and frustrating to see certain papers and demographics attacking it, I really don't think it's helpful to push the narrative that it's amazing and doesn't have any downsides at all. It's far more nuanced than that.

The statistics from my government department are pretty telling- we are struggling to retain new starters and younger age demographics, their exit interviews and feedback are pretty clear that they feel disengaged and isolated.

Like it or not, mentoring and training on Teams is not just as effective in-person- of course it isn't. At the start of your career, you are learning a lot through immersion and observing, picking up on your colleagues discussions.

And the age demographic makes a huge difference. Those settled in families understandably lean more towards WFH as it offers them more flexibility, plus they're more likely to have ample space for healthy homeworking. But younger people who are ofren starting out living independently are in a completely different set of circumstamces.

People can here can be very sneery about the wish for social interaction at work- but I'd be willing to bet many of them have friends or even partners that they met years ago at work, but it's alright for new career starters to sit in their house share room alone. Or attend an empty office.

Hybrid working is the best of both worlds and I'd fight to retain out improved flexibility if it ever came to it. But it does concern me how many people fail to see that inceeased WFH does come with a few cons as well as the many pros. People run the risk of becoming isolated and left behind unless we acknowledge that.

Best thing to do with the Daily Mail is ignore it.

The reality - certainly in tech - has been that it's almost impossible to fill a role now if you try and make it 9-5/5 days a week in office. This isn't just a minor irritation. It's causing people to walk, and their vacancies to remain unfilled.

DH and I both retired when we had to wfh as it was so horrible and we had to use our two spare rooms for offices, I lasted about a month, DH lasted about six months, we had absolutely no benefit as we both worked locally. I wonder how many others hate it but have to suffer it

There has long been an issue with women being driven out of the workforce or into the gig roles you mention. Specifically because more mainstream employed roles, for want of a better term, didn't offer the flexibility needed. It isn't necessarily the case that women are going to be in these more flexible roles or more traditional office/in person jobs. There's another option, which is not being there at all.

Unfortunately this is probably going to become more of a live issue as the childcare and particularly adult social care sectors struggle. We all know which sex picks up most of the pieces there.

There are some huge generalisations being thrown around in this post, including the 'capitalist agenda' one. That honestly isn't the only reason 'bosses' want staff back in the office.

I'm a 'boss' - and a very left-wing one. But it is unquestionably the case that employees had more low-performance issues and mental health issues during the period when everyone was working from home, and that return to the office (hybrid only, 3 days a week, so still lots of flex) has been a huge positive for everyone, introverts and extroverts a like. Only the most offensive workplace cultures bond only over heavy drinking every Friday night in the pub. There are all sorts of social contact that can be beneficial to your career.

The other big thing no-one says during this debate is that what middle-class WFH staff want is for their white-collar jobs to stay comfortably at home. Obviously the Amazon and Deliveroo drivers who make this lifestyle possible for them still need to go out to work every day? As do nurses, doctors, teachers etc. So that's the other negative in my mind - a two-tiered society where people in certain roles hide away being catered to by service staff.

For me, wfh is far better for my health. We are hybrid but on the days I am at home, I am less exhausted from commuting into London so I eat better, I walk the dog and do a workout before I start work as I have time and I have time at lunch to prepare a healthy dinner for everyone.

I'm so sick of the faux-concern for young people angle.

I started WFH in the late '00s and built an entire successful career from scratch. I actually found being mentored (and in time doing the mentoring) and socialising much easier than when I worked in an office. In an office, you're expected to do all of that relatively spontaneously, around your actual work - when I was working I was focusing on that, not chitchat or asking senior figures (who were all also busy) to mentor me. When I WFH, I was able to compartmentalise all those things and arrange specific coffee meetings/drinks with people I wanted advice from. It was a lot more focused and effective. Same with socialising - it went from post-work pub drinks with people I was already sick of seeing for 8 hours per week to specifically scheduled gatherings with people I looked forward to catching up with.

Also important to remember that the old model really disadvantaged certain groups. Obviously introverts who didn't thrive in social settings and were overlooked in favour of louder employees. But in certain industries which were dominated by straight white men (still most industries!) and their favoured methods of socialising, also women, LGBT people and people of colour.

I don't think it's 100% sinister beyond being clickbait.

Many people now WFH at least part of the week. Many people can't WFH at all.

So articles about it provoke an emotional reaction that garners clicks and as revenue.

I've no doubt that some staff passionately hold anti-wfh opinions, but either way, the articles will get commissioned and printed.

I know a few current DM journalists as it happens, and to a large extent, they write what they're told to, for the clicks.

Agreed. I think it's notable that all the juniors in my team are in the office pretty much every day through choice. I've gone back to the office almost full time because I could see they benefited from me being physically present.

To work as part of a team in an organisation we need to think what works for others as well as ourselves

Sadly it won’t be your local caff propping up the UK economy! If many businesses collapse in central london, not only would that be very sad from a cultural and tourism point of view (London is famous for its restaurants, galleries, museums), we would see millions of jobs disappear along with these closures across industries. A housing market correction is something attractive to many, but a central London property crash, huge recession and contraction inwards of the jobs market? Sounds like all we bloody need.

Stop reading the DM?

The other big thing no-one says during this debate is that what middle-class WFH staff want is for their white-collar jobs to stay comfortably at home. Obviously the Amazon and Deliveroo drivers who make this lifestyle possible for them still need to go out to work every day? As do nurses, doctors, teachers etc. So that's the other negative in my mind - a two-tiered society where people in certain roles hide away being catered to by service staff.

You overstate your case a tad here bearing in mind that remote working doesn't require Amazon or Deliveroo. I don't ever use either in the course of my work, and working outside the home inherently requires lots of other people to support it too. Couldn't have got to my last office job without public transport, for example. It isn't just wfh roles that require the labour of others to sustain them, the same is true for the nurses, teachers etc that you list. If we're going to talk about this, we need to talk about all of it.

However, it's true that lots of jobs have to be done in person, often with little flexibility. With the way our labour market is, a lot of these jobs are either going to have to be paid more and the conditions improved, or we'll have to cope without them. We'd all do better to acknowledge this.

Wfh is fab.

It means I can work for a London company, helping to address the national skills shortage, without having to move to the overcrowded south east.
It cuts emissions
It saves money, otherwise wasted on train fares
It means someone else gets a seat
It means I can put supper in the slow cooker at lunchtime so we eat better, and more economically
It means I can do afternoon school run easily which reduces my stress levels and means ds is safe

This morning I was on-line working at 6.02am. I've written a presentation and the copy for a brochure. I've set up two mass emailers to go this week. I've sorted my assistant's work schedule, and supplied my boss with his management stats. I've just finished, because today I am actually on annual leave, but because I am equipped to work from home, I don't mind keeping the plates spinning for a couple of hours. I like my job ! If I couldn't work from home I would be out of a job

Anyone who buys the DM and takes it seriously just doesn't have a clue. You can only feel sorry for them being so out of touch.

@PinkCherryBlossoms Yes, I wasn't suggesting that WFH itself literally requires Amazon and Deliveroo but this has something that has bugged me since the pandemic started - people fighting desperately for their right to hide at home, while an entire other class of society goes out to work to serve them and their children and make that WFH lifestyle possible. It was more extreme during the pandemic - people wanted to hide at home away from shops, and this was only possible because online delivery drivers were out delivering their shopping parcels. Not to mention NHS workers caring for the sick. The 'can I work from home or not?' debate is a luxury debate only available to some, and I think that needs to be acknowledged more often than it is.

WFH has ruined my life, marriage, parenting and home. I fucking hate it.

The narrative on here is that the person WFH can be stuffed into a bedroom upstairs and largely forgotten about is really not what happens here. I have a DH working in a study downstairs. From 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening all I hear is ‘Yeah … Yeah … I’ll tell James to do that … But we’ve had issues with that before … I think we need to …’ It drives me batshit. He is in and out, out and in, kids see him and get all excited, try to follow him into the study, tantrums when stopped.

So we go out. Fuck all gets done in the house, kids get tired and probably over stimulated, IT IS HELL.

I wish every fucker working from home with someone else living there would fuck off back to the office!

I think that argument is valid in respect of lockdowns @cathyj77. Those sentiments certainly existed.

That being said, I don't think it can be framed as a luxury issue, because NHS consultants clearly have a lot more options than someone who's on minimum wage or not much more in a call centre, and who can't afford childcare while they do their job.