Why does it seem most are against WFH?

[user6776]

Just read an article that has said civil servants are now to work from the office at least 3 days a week. I'm not a civil servant, but my company adopts the same approach. WFH is generally frowned upon and they are all about being in the office as much as possible.

I prefer WFH. Less time commuting, more productive as no office distractions, can get stuff done on my lunch hour. It's a no brainer for me. I agree going in the office periodically to meet with the team and for important meetings but other than that I don't benefit much

What does everybody else think?

I work in welfare rights. Our productivity soared during the lockdowns, because we were no longer travelling miles and miles (we cover 2 counties and a city) to meet clients and help them fill in forms, so could do twice as much. We were able to double our caseloads, and the financial gains we got for clients increased by 150%, because we had capacity to take on a lot more complex work, eg appeals.

I've recently done my first couple of face to face appeals since Covid struck. One tribunal centre is 50-odd miles away on pretty shitty roads, and with the travelling, and hanging around for ages to start because they were running late, the whole thing kept me occupied for more than 6 hours. When they were doing them over the phone, I would have got on with other work until they called and it would have taken approx 45 minutes.

I only work 17 hours pw, so having to spend 3 hours travelling to/from an appointment or a tribunal is a fair old chunk of my week.

@LakieLady so who helps people fill in the forms now ?

To set out my stall, I have WFH and WOH previously. I didn't enjoy WFH personally, but my DH loves it and him being able to WFH has made our family life signifcantly better. He had a long commute before and he him being home to see the kids every morning and evening instead of sat in traffic was a game-changer.

I do think it's almost impossible to have a sensible discussion about the pros and cons of WFH on MN. This is because people who WFH and enjoy it seem very anxious about it being taken away, which results in defensiveness and, in a lot of cases, total refusal to acknowledge that there may be any downsides at all!

I have friends who openly admit to taking the piss and will laugh about how they spend whole days "keeping an eye on emails" while they watch Netflix, meet up with friends or shop online, but then when their employers started to insist they wanted them back in the office a couple of days a week they were outraged and 100% convinced their bosses were being totally unreasonable.

I understand the argument that there will still be people who shirk in an office environment. But whichever side of the wfh fence you sit on, surely it's stating the obvious that if you're someone who's inclined to take the piss, it's easier to do it when there is literally no-one watching! That's just common sense and I don't think pretending otherwise helps the WFH cause.

We do, but we do it over the phone, mostly. If a client specifically wants F2F, or if their support worker thinks they'll struggle with doing stuff over the phone, we'll go out and do it, but most prefer a phone call.

I understand the argument that there will still be people who shirk in an office environment. But whichever side of the wfh fence you sit on, surely it's stating the obvious that if you're someone who's inclined to take the piss, it's easier to do it when there is literally no-one watching! That's just common sense and I don't think pretending otherwise helps the WFH cause.

Nah, it's not. This claim is based on the idea that a physical workplace will involve some actual scrutiny, that whoever is doing the watching is competent enough to notice and they care enough to do something about it. None of those things can be assumed, and it's a common sense failure to think they can. Biggest piss taker I've ever worked with was mates with management and spent all day on smoking breaks with them. You won't be shocked to hear that their motivation to address the performance issue was not high.

Got cut off there- also plenty of remote roles involve being scrutinised, to the extent that it'd be obvious very quickly if the work wasn't getting done. Which again should be common sense!

Of course there are, but those aren't the situations I'm taking about. Of course remote working can and should be scrutinised, but it's clear this isn't always the case and there are some roles where scrutiny with no physical presence is difficult to achieve.

But the point of your post was that it's easier to skive when remote and that's common sense, wasn't it? It's not, because being remote doesn't mean there's no scrutiny and equally, working in person doesn't mean there is. It is, after all, crystal clear that working in an office or other workplace doesn't mean effective scrutiny is happening.

Being brutally honest, I think these kinds of roles are really pretty rare.

Much more common are the roles that managers say are hard to scrutinise remotely but when you look at it, it's because the actual management of those roles is pretty poor and previously those managers were getting by on the people being in the office to scrutinise/enforce. All these wfh skivers with time for second business/hours of gardening and shopping/watching TV all day are a direct result of dreadful management practices.

I think it really depends on the work.

I am the finance admin at our school in the afternoons. This involves needing to interact with our county government, usually regarding invoices they've sent us. Invoices can be wildly out of date (8 months for a few of them!) and/or not itemised clearly, which I end up needing to query with them.

It's honestly nearly impossible to do this within any effective timeframe now. I queried one, which was supposedly sorted by one person (we were being invoiced a second time for something we'd previously paid). I then received a final collection angry letter from someone else at the county, dated about a month later so you'd have expected that the person 'sorting' it would have done so in that timeframe.

So I queried it again and was told they (the Final Collection team) had nothing to do with the person who had supposedly sorted it for me, and how did that play out? Well I had to physically dig out old invoices from the previous financial year at that point, because they couldn't access their OWN INVOICES, which I was informed by someone else was because the team was working from home and unable to have the county financial system on their home computers for security reasons.

Which is all well and good but when it's literally your role to deal with those things, it's insane that you're working from home and sending the customer running to find paper copies of invoices to scan and send to you so that you can see what your own system has sent out.

Also this and other similar queries are all the sort which could have been sorted by a head over the parapet "hey do you remember that thing with xyz?" or whatever.

So I queried it again and was told they (the Final Collection team) had nothing to do with the person who had supposedly sorted it for me, and how did that play out? Well I had to physically dig out old invoices from the previous financial year at that point, because they couldn't access their OWN INVOICES, which I was informed by someone else was because the team was working from home and unable to have the county financial system on their home computers for security reasons

thats an issue with that particular place though, i work for a council and i can absolutely access the invoices at home

ridiculous state of affairs for any business, no wonder you get cheesed off!

I've been FT WFH for 6 years. I love it!

But I'm old and I don't like people anymore. My work is self managed & all Internet or phone based.

If I was young I would hate it. Going into the office pre-kids was mostly fantastic, social and fun. Apart from all the bits that weren't- but preferable to wfh on my own. Much of my skill set was learnt from older more experienced colleagues.

Did you quote me by mistake? Where did I say anything about doing chores?

I'm civil service. Since February 2020 I've been in the office for maybe five hours in total (spread over five separate days).

I'm never going back to office working and I don't understand people who obey when they don't want to.

The ones who complain are usually too unlikeable to have their own friends and miss after work drinks.

The culture of presenteeism. & Managers wanting to be seen to manage so they want you in the office. I mostly WFH Im no less productive. Im simply into doing my work I dont see work as an outlet for social relationships and dislike office politics, gossip, who doesn't like who etc. So im fine working in peace. Self-employed now, this relates to when I was in office based work. But tbh why even care what people think? Its just an extension of office style politics, people bitching when they think someone has it easier than them

The trouble is, isolation isn't solved if when you get to the office there is no-one else there because they are all wfh!

Yeah but why must I be miserable so you don't have to face your empty life??

Are you always so mean to posters?

You love WFH, just get on with it, those of us working in the office really aren't jealous and are quite happy being there.

(The lack of WFH is not on the 'shit things about my job' list at all)

Yes this is exactly it, there needs to be people in the office when you go in otherwise it’s pointless.

Last January/February I went four weeks without a property face to face conversation despite going into the office. It was tragic and I am actually embarrassed by it. I don’t have an empty life, I just had a series of sad things happen outside of work. I hated WFH before all that started but it’s just made it 10x worse for me. I appreciate I’m in the extreme.

Being that lonely is seriously painful, it’s like grief or a heartbreak and I’m not surprised the WHO have declared loneliness a global health concern. I truly do not see how sitting at a desk in your own house for 8 hours a day, talking to a screen with little social interaction is good for anyone, but each to their own I suppose.

Yes but @Pinkitydrinkity0

No one owes you their company

I am sorry you were lonely that's awful and a fear I think we can all recognise but forced office attendance to fix your problems is a bit like incels saying women should be made to date them

I like WFH because I see the people I actually like rather than office people and their attendant depressing ways

I truly do not see how sitting at a desk in your own house for 8 hours a day, talking to a screen with little social interaction is good for anyone, but each to their own I suppose.

But the social interaction comes before work, after work, at the weekend.

I love (need) the peace and quiet during the working day when WFH.

.

I wouldn't get any social interaction if I went to work
We say hi in the morning then we are on the phones all day. Lunch time I want silence back on the phones and say bye
By Friday I want to speak to nobody all weekend

I also don't get social interaction at the office. Or at least no more than I would if working from home as I'm just on Teams calls all the time wherever I am.
At least when WFH, I am not so knackered from the additional commute that I have time and energy to be sociable after work if I want to.
Being in the office adds to my isolation and loneliness, it doesn't lessen it at all.

Nothing wrong with wfh of you can do the job with 100% effectiveness. I remember DVLA using home working following COVID as an excuse for delays because employees couldn't access paperwork. If this is the case, get them back in the office or bring the processes up to date.