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?

WFH has advantages and disadvantages. As a civil servant I’m supposed to do 40% in the office, where I am the sole member of my team and work alone though I do travel to other sites too. WFH is not good for inexperienced staff or change of job roles. I don’t mind office or WFH either way but what really gets me annoyed are those people who relentlessly avoid attending the office at all, and the spineless managers who fail to address it. Inevitably ministers will bleat and rant until everyone is back 100% office based, probably in a couple of years when there is a cull of surplus staff recruited since covid; enough desk space then! I can get stuff done when WFH with no distractions but do notice a big difference in winter fuel bills. I can chuck a wash on and save time on travel, work late to finish task etc. There are managers who suspect staff are skiving; sometimes they are right - anyone else have certain colleagues who are green on teams but never answer an incoming call - always call you back?? They can’t always be at the loo! Was told today about someone on another team who is going through gross misconduct action - apparently his lack of visible output was a concern so his equipment was periodically monitored remotely. They were able to tell only the M key was being pushed on keyboard for an hour at a time thus keeping him green on Teams! Goodbye to him - reckon more than a handful will be caught out on this before the skivers panic.

These Threads always make me wonder if you would be "more productive" and happy to work from home if your employer reduced your salary because of it? I personally don't think staring at the same 4 walls everyday is beneficial for anyone's mental health, regardless of the "studies" but that's just my opinion, luckily I work for an industry and do a job where WFH isn't really impossible, I was WFH for a bit when Covid first hit but I hated it!

I've been able to buy my first property, which is big enough to live in, because we do hybrid working and I can live somewhere further away. If it was still five days a week I would be still stuck renting or having to buy a studio flat, which would have been OK for six months but not 5+ years.

I really hope the WFH crest doesn't break ‐I'd love to secure a job with at least a teeny weeny bit of WFH when I leave my career in education. I mean, I already get to do quite a bit of WFH for free on evenings and weekends, but actual, contracted WFH seems like heaven to me!

I think what often gets missed in these conversations is that the set-up of teams is so diverse now and has been for a long time that applying the same rules to all isn’t going to work. A lot of people talk about being in the office with their team, but many, many people do not work like that any more. In my previous job the people I needed to talk to were almost all field- or home-based or working out of a different office to me. My team was scattered across Europe. That was the same for a great many people in the organisation. I went into the office for a change of scene and socialising only.

Now I work directly with people who are in the same building as me so it makes sense to see them in person regularly. Even then, though, it really doesn’t need to be five days a week.

I’m also not so sure younger people want or need quite as much office time as older workers think. The younger employees I have known tend to be more than happy with wfh or hybrid from what I’ve seen.

WFH suits slightly older, settled people with houses where they can have home offices etc.
It doesn't suit young people who live with parents or flat-share etc.
Companies need younger newer staff and so more experienced ones need to go in to the office and show the ropes. They are future-proofing.

@Happygolucky2023 Why would salary be reduced?

One of my daughters had a mostly WFH temp job inputting stuff onto databases, she felt very depressed on days she worked from home. I think it depends on what you are doing at home and how much contact with others, doing a soulless job can be mitigated by having nice colleagues and a team environment.

For DH... it is a better home life balance. But because we have no separate office space, he's in the living room. I have to tip toe around really. The kids can't watch TV after school. I can't run the hoover around...

Exactly. WFH isn't just about the person who is WFH. It has an impact on other people in the household.

There have been quite a lot of threads about husbands/partners WFH who take over the sofa, who talk loudly on calls, who are always there, and the negative impact this has had on family life and on their relationships. Those men probably think WFH is great and they are far more productive and why should they have to go back to the office....

And in some areas of work, there must be confidentiality/privacy issues if there are other people in the house and the person WFH doesn't have a separate, secure office space.

I have a client who doesn't like me working from home "because it doesn't work for him"

I wfh at the very most once a week but it's more like once in 2 or 3 weeks. And it's arranged to fit in with my own employer, and immediate colleagues.

What he means is - I don't get to see what you are doing/what you have done until the next day. In the course of a week he may well have more work on the weeks I have worked a day at home but because he didn't see it or get it the same day, he is unable to see the benefit. (If something is needed for a specific date then I would make sure it was done for that day)

Most civil servants get a London Living Allowance (LLA - between £3K - £5K) which is essentially just bundled into their rather crap salary. It's to pay them more than counterparts in the regional offices.

So the argument is that if they are 'based' in London but only WFH they shouldn't have their LLA as they're not actually in London and therefore shouldn't get more money than someone in, say, Manchester who does the same job.

IMO working in the office is fine maybe 2 days a week. But the occasions I go in I get no work done as it's (A) loud, (B) full of people on Teams calls, (C) lots of seniors popping in and out and asking for things they would do themselves if people weren't in the office, (D) lots of people wanting 'catch-ups' (aka coffee breaks), (E) I have to queue thirty minutes for lunch. Then I have a 2 hour door to door commute home and by the time I am home I'm too knackered to work. So, when I WFH I work about 12 hours a day, when I'm in the office it's about 8.

If I lost my LLA and kept my job and didn't need to go into London I'd be happy. The LLA doesn't even cover the cost of my commute.

I think some offices and teams really are more social than anything else! In one job quite early on in my career there was so much chatting, debating and messing about that I used to feel guilty - but my line manager, who was pretty senior, was the main culprit.

Funnily enough, it is the one I always think of when people say younger staff should be in the office to learn, because despite all that I learnt a lot from those people and the social side meant I felt I could ask them anything.

Current job is pretty focused and others have been somewhere in the middle.

If people want distractions, they’ll find them. In the office or at home. During lockdown when my colleague who went in everyday was complaining about people WFH putting the washing on completely forgets that when everyone was in the office, he’d spend 20 minutes talking about football. There will always be distractions if you want them, in the office though those distractions distract multiple people.

Some people need the socialisation, some need the solitude. Some need the space to be at home and manage chronic conditions or make childcare more manageable. I wouldn’t be able to work the hours I do and get commute back from the office to do pick up. Different set ups work for different people. Rather than it being WFH is bad, I think it should be WFH is bad for me or WFH is bad for this team. People will then shift into organisations that suit them.

People will probably hear my DD on my husband’s calls. He isn’t looking after her though (unless she’s sick and then we’re managing it between us). She’s at home with me on my non-working day, I care for her, DH works. The advantage is that DH gets his lunch with me and DD and he’s home earlier to spend more time with her in the evening.

Companies invested in commercial real estate and don't want to take a loss.

It's always about money.

Not the conclusion of most studies which suggest the opposite - that you get more out of the homeworkers

Actually, I think more recent studies show that at the start of WFH, productivity soars, but it quickly flattens or even drops off.

I do think there are a lot of variables and there are also, without a doubt, a lot of benefits to WFH - not least employees being happier as they're not losing hours a day in commuting etc.

But, for many businesses, there are significant risks that they aren't finding good ways to manage while staff are WFH. The fact that collaboration, informal training and mentoring etc just doesn't happen when WFH as a rule is a huge one, especially for junior staff. I work in PR and there's no doubt that one of the best ways junior PR people learn is by simply listening to the more senior team members as they talk to clients and journalists. Creativity is also stifled when everyone is working at home, partly because there's less spontaneity - I almost NEVER just get a call from anyone anymore. It's always arranged and pre-booked.

And of course, there's the issue of the people who think they're productive but really just aren't. I have seen this personally with many clients - th ones where people are working from home more are simply less responsive, less likely to implement new initiatives, less efficient.

Having said that, my clients where they've insisted on everyone being back in the office permanently are full of unhappy miserable staff members. There definitely needs to be a middle ground.

I can’t think of anything worse for young people starting work. Over 50 years ago, I made a whole group of new friends when I first started in an office. I still see some of them now. A few years later I met my husband at work.

I’m a permanent remote worker and I absolutely love it. No desire to go back to an office even hybrid at all. I go max once a month. However I’m 50 and well established at work and have a husband and family at home if I was just starting out or lived alone I might feel differently.

Why would your salary be reduced? Ok you don’t need to commute regularly but the cost of heating and lighting your home all day balances that out.

I am at least as productive if not more at home and it can be easily measured in our work, less so now I’m in a senior position but I am trusted to get on with it

I was soft-offered a job paying 20% more about six months ago. I declined to take it forward because the flexibility of hybrid and the approach my current workplace takes are worth that for me for the next couple of years. I know I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to make that choice. I do know others who have dropped days of work when their organisations adopted a more rigid work policy though.

But realistically we've never based pay on people's living costs before, or their commuting costs. We didn't pay someone less if they lived next door to the office, or more if their commute was £5k a year. We base it mostly on the labour market demands of a particular location, and realistically things like the London weighting in the civil service were never really about living costs, they were about being able to be slightly more competitive in London.

You don't want to learn anything from your colleagues? Learning should be a continuous process to stay up to date and not stuck in your ways. It's a shame you don't want to make friends either, sounds quite miserable.

The civil service have been called 'the blob' by Dominic Cummings, and generally treated abysmally by politicians in government since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. The belief some politicians hold that they are obstructive or lazy I think has a role in this.

I think more widely there is a mixture of jealousy, some genuine concern about those starting out in a job and/or career, and from some who place a high value on conversation at work. Other factors seem to be the personal preference of senior managers.

My feeling is that the benefits of interaction in an office can largely be got in one or two days a week, or specific things.

I am more productive WFH - but that's not because I'm a chatterbox in the office, it's because I'm not being asked questions by other people, or jumping in to help out. While it's good for me as an individual, its not great for the team as a whole, unless I have a specific deadline to meet.
My personal preference would be hybrid. I don't save time on the commute because I just end up working longer hours. I find having colleagues around who are getting up and leaving at the end of the day actually quite helpful!

I like going into the office when there is a purpose - be that collaboration, dealing with something that is quicker/ more readily done face-to-face, meeting and building a rapport with colleagues.

I am for most tasks far more productive at home. As someone who is neurodiverse, being able to control my environment when WFH also massively reduces stress and sensory overload.

For this reason I prefer a more flexible hybrid approach. It works better for me and most colleagues find the same. Coming in to sit on your own and make teams calls in a busy office seems to be pointless presentism

Thanks for your thoughts Jk987. I promise you I am not in the least bit miserable. My 10 or 11 colleagues are all 20+ years younger than me, male, and work in the building trade. I do the admin and invoices and bookkeeping. There's really not a lot of room for me to learn much about flanges, earth rods, intermittent electrical faults and the like. I feel I can get through my next 20 (hopefully) years on this earth without their knowledge and I'm sure they feel the same way about me and my job, which will soon be done by a robot, no doubt.

Yes it’s by spring 2024 all civil servants to be in the office 3 days, space permitting. I personally think it’s been done to help the economy too. New staff to be in more, probably 5 days a week. I like being in the office and tend to do 3 days anyway, but it hasn’t gone down well. All I’ll say is it needs to be across the board, not some managers deciding it doesn’t apply to their staff