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.

@Eleganz A large part of the success attributed to Midland house prices is the high speed link running into London St Pancras, this development cost was met by tax payers to improve access and therefore average salaries for people living in this location - who would be able to benefit from larger London salaries. It’s dangerous to feel like you’re in a bubble, the UK economy is entirely symbiotic.

@lavender2023 That is a interesting thing. I have noticed that full time WFH people, to thrive and get on, need to become more not less on the office and "office politics".

On a slightly different note, recently I have been looking to procure a service from a London based company. Pretty much all of their back office stuff - admin, clerical, accounts was outsourced to South Africa (not to a third party company like IT - direct employees are in South Africa) - basically all the jobs that can be done "from home" - it is becoming moee common apparently - similar time zone and English spoken very well either as first or second language makes it very attractive.

... I also genuinely think that people who WFH full-time have lost sight of what has been lost. Zoom/Teams meetings work in a bare necessity kind of way. You can share information and get the necessary stuff done. But they in no way replace the human interaction, gestures, and creativity that can be sparked in person. The off-hand remark that happens as you're leaving the meeting, the small gesture that you pick up on in the room that shows you how a person is feeling that could so easily be missed on the screen.

It's just not the same, and it was only when I got back to doing more in-person meetings that I fully realised what we'd lost.

I do, however, accept the point that some people exercise more and are healthier whilst WFH. But I don't believe statistically this is true for the majority. Most people exercise significantly less because you need a disciplined exercise routine to make up for the 'by the way' exercise you do when commuting. Some people have that, but most don't.

Excellent post @gannett - don't seem to be able to quote you.

When young people themselves post on here, often they're saying quite different things about remote working than some of those who are concerned it disadvantages them. I know the stuff about younger workers is mostly coming from a good place, but there's a massive blind spot there. Like, if your young staff are all choosing to be in the office more, by definition they're not going to be those young people who are disadvantaged and excluded by in person work!

I also think it's easy to discount how many non profits (in particular) no longer have an office to go back to because the costs of office space can't be justified on tight local authority contracts. When you are running a shoestring service, people working from home is a cost saver.

This doesn’t surprise me actually: I’ve long thought the “5 in 4 days” type model was going to get a long hard look at some point.
The issue is that many others were also doing discretionary extra so “deserved” the benefit but hadn’t formally applied or been approved . Some firms have been challenged on it by other workers who didn’t have the same perk.
Fixed irregular hours also caused issues because some people had to cover the unpopular shifts (e.g. weekends or before/after hours).

Just to add that from my POV, the biggest problem for employers is they've been caught in a lie. And there's no rowing that one back.

Best illustrated by once place I worked that actually (and rather foolishly) wrote an entire statement to staff about why flexible working "sadly" wasn't possible for their business model. (I do keep in touch with old colleague).

Except when lockdown hit, all of a sudden it was "essential" for their business model if they wanted to stay solvent (which it seems they did).

Bit hard to use the word "impossible" after that, isn't it ?

Everything in my life is better WFH. And it's the same for most of my colleagues.

We have a flexible employer team so people can choose WFH, hybrid or office based.

But still some people are vocal about wanting to force people into the office more. And they cite the 'peer support, the off-hand or overheard comment that leads to something important, social aspects' theory.

They're usuallty he same people that pre-covid were the ones spending hours a day chatting, complaining and distracting others. And who sat in virtually empty offices during covid because as front-line workers, they could say they needed to keep their kids in school.

Indeed some younger people prefer WFH and it has definitely been good for opening up things like internships for people outside of London or people with disabilities.

However as a counter point I have experiences of some young people working with me who often prefer to WFH a lot but it is not to their benefit. Often they can struggle to mange the freedom properly and do not understand the additional proactive communciation that is needed when you WFH. It is a big issue for early careers staff.

I have also found some use it to avoid challenging meetings or situations or to avoid problems they are having with work. I recently had to crack down and insist someone came in for three set days a week (we operate a very flexible hybrid system) as we were so cocnenred about their performance.

Just becuse some younger, less experiencedpeople prefer it doesn't mean it is actually good for them.

As well as the cut in staff numbers, I've also heard that a fair few staff have been redeployed to work on stuff to do with Brexit, which has created a lot of work on the customs side of HMRC.

The Mail et al would never mention that though, they're still clinging to the myth of unicorns and sunlit uplands where Brexit is concerned.

Wow. So much bitterness in one post. Why should anyone have to "suck up" bigotry like this?

I have to disagree with this.

MN is a great platform to have discussions like this, but it's a platform that's going to be more common with certain demographics, for example, people with young families and children. These will have different needs to university leavers sat in crowded house shares.

My government department's stats show a much larger percentage of younger people choose to attend the office more often than the minimum requirement.

However, the feedback is that whilst it's a change of scene (and for some an escape from crowded living conditions), because the offices are so empty there's far less value in it in terms of development, networking and organic learning. Often they're sat in large empty offices, alone on a bank of desks.

I can vouch for this- last summer my office was a short walk away and as I was on a talent programme, I was encouraged to attend more. Honestly, I had so many days sat in a huge empty space alone, like being in a zombie film. In the end I agreed with my line manager that I'd travel to a much further office away office once a week as it was much busier.

Its the DM, it's owned by billionaires and their ilk. Who no doubt have investments in commercial buildings and their rents etc.
WFH has hit the people who rented office spaces, it affected businesses close to large office spaces which relied on lunch and passing trades, etc.
Maybe I,m just a cynical old bitch, but there's a reason the DM will be pushing this narrative to whip up hate and cause divisions like this. and it's not because working from home is bad. It's because somewhere someone's pockets are being affected and they want popular support to reverse that.
Follow the money

The true impact of all of this will be seen in 10 or 20 years time rather than now. And people will make different choices based on what they want out of their careers. But for those who are ambitious, I don't think the future business leaders of 10-20 years time from now, will for the most part be people who have chosen to entirely WFH. I think office-based or partially office-based staff will still have a huge advantage. That's fine, because not everyone is that ambitious. But I believe (as with so much that initially seems a benefit to women) the 'benefit' of being able to entirely WFH around childcare is something of a double-edged sword.

@reesewithoutaspoon this is true for a tiny minority of businesses - those leasing office space and/or hospitality. For most businesses (like mine) it would be much cheaper to give up our office and let everyone work from home. It would save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. But we don't do it, because we get better results from some in-office interaction.

Absolutely.

Agreed.

I think it will also make people more vulnerable in redundancy rounds etc

(And I say this with some frustration as I am disabled and working from home really helps me but it is just naive to pretend there aren't disadvantages for employers and employees - some hybrid compromise is always likely to work best)

Again though @AllAtSea53, by definition the young people who are choosing to attend the office more must be the ones who are able to. The young people to whom in person attendance functions as a barrier or a disadvantage aren't visible. Just as they weren't ten, twenty, thirty years ago. This is why generalisations are a problem.

I can well believe there are young people who'd be better off with the pre 2020 model, including those you work with. But they are not the standard or the default.

actually WFH does not work in many occupations! why should people be allowed to work from home? Just think what happened with the passport office or even DVLA during lockdown! Mail not answered, documents only available in office but no one to answer calls!! I know for a fact the WFH did not work in my husband's legal office!!

Times have changed then. I used to work in a Fleet St pub. All the hacks from the Express , Star and Standard would be there all day , everyday.

I often wondered who actually typed up their rancid stories about lazy car workers , single mothers , immigrants, militant trade unions etc.

I expect the moral panic about WFH is really about empty offices going unrented - owned by their chums in the City.

The biggest reason for the rise in council tax is the 40% reduction in the central government grant to local authorities. The shortfall has had to be recouped from the council tax or met by making savings.

I suspect that their decision to build a new office and get shot of their old one may have been made pre-Covid and WFH, too.

Where I live, both district and county councils went to a form of hybrid working pre-Covid, with staff expected to WFH 2 days pw, so that they could reduce their office costs. And the district council merged all central services with a neighbouring authority to save money.

Despite all that, they've still had to shed staff to make savings, eg there are now 4 housing officers where there used to be 8, and it now takes 6 weeks to get a housing officer to reply to an email.

WFH is open to as many abuses as office working, but I don't remember this level of naval gazing about the disadvantages of office working before the pandemic.

We didn't have monthly threads complaining about meetings that should have been emails, bad commutes, the disadvantages to introverts etc.

But both need to be well designed. My current employer is crap at hybrid working, they get none of the benefits so far as I can see.

Those defending WFH are largely assuming that every employee is conscientious and good at managing their own time. As anyone who works in an office knows, not everyone is. This is true of any employee in any situation but at least when they were in the office, these people were in a structured environment and given help/support in managing their time. There’ll be many efficient, conscientious people working from home but there’ll also be many people who don’t have the same focus.

But commercial property isn't stable. I've had pension funds where the commercial property fund was blocked - as in, I couldn't get immediate access to it if I wanted to withdraw funds. I transferred my pension and the commercial property bit had to transfer after the rest of it.

So you manage those people appropriately. If people get on with their work and achieve their objectives you let them work where they want (which may well be full time in the office).

If they don't, they work where you can keep your eye on them.

If people need to be in the office to mentor and train younger/less experienced colleagues, they come into the office.

It isn't difficult.

Friday night drinks aren't a thing anymore - people have WFH on Fridays for years, way before covid.