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 have friends and family who are so anti wfh it's caused actual rows! People have very strong views on it all, mostly that people should be out and about and not at home
I find it bizarre, but then ds2 wfh and loves not paying thousands to go to work on the trains, they seem to resent this ( although it's nothing to do with them really )

im jealous that I'm the only person in my office that cannot WFH if I did the others would have to deal with the shit I deal with on a daily basis and they don't want to! The joys of being an Assistant!

I work at home 4 days a week. It's a game changer. In busy times I can start work early, or be available into the evening.

Have noted though that across my organisation a lot of parents seem to WFH with their kids around, at least on a semi regular basis. It almost seems as though no paid childcare is used any more. I have no idea whether that affects productivity.

due to centralising the offices there are some people who commute a long distance and so if they come through and can’t get a desk it’d be such a waste of travelling time.

That's exactly what my partner says. For him, working in the office means two hours in the day lost to commuting, but for others it's far worse due to office closures and centralisation. He's also in the civil service.

I have noticed a bit of a superior attitude from some people in my team who prefer to work in the office, which winds me up a bit.

It's a frequent topic of conversation and they talk about it as if people who prefer to work from home don't want to collaborate, are hiding away, and are being lazy.

I really dislike that attitude. I like to be in the office sometimes for the social/ collaborative aspect, but it's also draining, and commuting is expensive and time consuming.

I think people should respect one another and let others work in ways that suit them best.

I would refuse a higher paying role if it meant I had to be in the office every day. They would have to pay me an awful lot more to even consider it, because I know from experience that it would have a detrimental impact on my mental health.

Just because WFH isn't beneficial to your own mental health, does not mean you can apply that as a blanket statement to everyone. My mental health is much better with a hybrid working pattern than it would be if I was required to be in the office every day.

Read a news article earlier about hildcare shortages... I think the "problem" of people trying to work from home while looking after children will get worse before it gets better

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67274943

I take your point @Starsalign but you're talking about the mechanics of getting people into the office. It's not the same as the actual reason to do it in the first place - I've yet to see any evidence it increases productivity.

Some people like the office, some don't. Some offices are great spaces to work, some aren't. Some roles suit office work, some suit homeworking. Any blanket rules in either the public or private sector are likely to miss these nuances - hence I think it's all probably bollocks driven by vested interests or bosses who like to physically watch their staff because they lack the skills to manage properly.

Cost of trains or buses, plus the unpleasant habits of some of those you work with, does make wfh attractive in some ways.

Whilst wfh works for me, those who want to go to an office should always have one to go to.

How to display your privilege without saying ‘I’m privileged’

• not everyone has a home office , people often live in cramped housing and end up working in their bed , in their kitchen or as one pp said ‘on the stairs’
• if you live in shared housing it’s even more difficult, junior and younger people overwhelmingly live in shared housing
• research from Stanford shows that long term WFH actually damages women more because they become invisible in the workplace .
• No work don’t pay for those things the individual employees have to , once again increasing the gap between the haves and have nots

Only reason wfh is discouraged, and workplace culture not shaped to fit around it is because the bottom would drop
out of the commercial property market if it were to be thus encouraged.

Which of course doesn’t actually benefit the worker.

Because it's often badly managed by employers and because people are envious of other people getting what they think is a cushy deal.

Frankly there are upsides and downsides to both WFH and in-office. I work from home (have done since before Covid; no option to go to an office in my current job) and I generally like it, but a few downsides: I have to put in extra effort not to be isolated, to get time with my manager, and to build social connections with my team and others. It is more difficult to have free flowing creative conversations over Teams calls - possible, but more awkward. It's absolutely harder for new employees to get onboarded and make company connections. Again, it's possible but the employer has to invest in the structures that help make that happen. Not everyone has a great living situation that enables easy home office work. Cost cutting - send everyone home, we can have a smaller office - can be difficult if people fight over desks when they are brought in. There are costs to working from home if you want a good set up. You don't get any office freebies.

I'm always puzzled by the What-about-Pret? (and other city centre businesses) stuff. It's not my responsibility to keep it going. I don't exist to serve Pret (or other places). It should be the other way round!

I don’t like working from home & it was always something to be endured until I could get back to the office.

• I don’t have dedicated office space, so my work stuff is kept in the dining room and I can’t have a large/double monitor, which I do need as I do video editing
• I get distracted easily at home
• i have a young child & for most of 2021 I hardly ever left the house during the week, apart from doing the nursery run, because of wfh - very bad for mental health
• DH can’t wfh so the bulk of the housework was falling to me, which is unfair
• I like to be in a work-focused environment with work-focused people when I’m thinking about work
• My commute is a 20 minute walk and a 20 minute train, which is good exercise and time for me to listen to podcasts, music and read.

I recognise there are some benefits, such as doing a couple of wash loads/hoovering between meetings, or saving the commute time, but they’re so minor.

I worked fully in the office, fully remote and now hybrid. And hybrid is the best of both worlds really. I think it’s very difficult for new people when they start and they don’t get to meet people and I also think it is easy for people to start working in silos. Teams meetings are great because they can be very productive and focused but it is adifficult to have an effective large teams meeting and it’s also difficult to have a good discussion on it if there is something to sort out - as it can end up like a series of monologues with people putting their hands up and referring to points made several minutes ago with no natural conversation flow. So for all those reasons hybrid works best for me. I think places that have brought all their staff back in didn’t successfully adjust to WFH. You need to adjust how the teams work - use calls and chat functions successfully so people have structure to their day.

Then I hope you don't put a blanket rule on not WFH for all because of a few lazy people that YOU hired.

I would hate to have a manager who didn't take individual situations and individual performance into account and lumped us all together. Thankfully, I have a great manager who treats us like the adults we are and trusts us to work effectively from home and for those who don't - she deals with that case by case without having to be anti WFH. A good manager should be able to manage people at all levels be that WFH, hybrid or in the office and should be able to address any issues with individual employees, without bringing the whole team into it and essentially discriminating against them and their needs for the sake of some lazy colleagues.

I work full time from home now, maybe go to the office or someone once a month. Our working days are much longer now, it’s handy being home to stick washing on etc and so the kids don’t come home to an empty house but oh my god it’s sooooooo boring. And I barely do any steps ( many many meetings!) so have so gained weight and become unhealthier.

Im dreading the winter and the dark and just never going outside!

From what I can see people don't like it because of a range of reasons. Business leaders don't like it because they feel they are less in control of staff if they are not in the office. Commercial landlords hate it because it threatens their business model. Older people sometimes hate it because it is a new way of working they have to adapt to. Right- wingers hate it because the media they consume tells them it is "woke" and public sector workers who do it are "lazy".

None of which are good reasons it shouldn't happen. Personally I think hybrid working is the right approach. My experience is that workshops and training work better face to face but things like writing and reviewing reports benefit from less distractions outside the office.

From MN posters, my impression is that a lot of people think it's a right so their spouse can be home for childcare. I don't really get why peoplecwant to work from home so kuchen, my job is operational so not an option but even if it wasn't, I like people and life, I wouldn't want to be sitting in a spare room with the sounds if family life as a background.

It's absolutely harder for new employees to get onboarded and make company connections. Again, it's possible but the employer has to invest in the structures that help make that happen.

I’ve just started a new job which is fully remote, apart from fortnightly team meetings in person. Because the organisation has most people working from home they’re set up for bringing people into the organisation - it’s been easy to make work connections, people are pro-active about checking in with each other and the induction process has been flawless. Collaborative working is well established and technology supports informal relationships.

I’m set up for working from home, have a private office space, good internet connection etc. There’s a good balance of time and space for research and writing, and time for discussion.

I know I’m lucky in many ways, but in my situation working from home is perfect, surely it’s horses for courses.

Well, that’s fine. I would never claim my experience is universal. But compared to jobs I had when younger - working in small shops, teaching English as a foreign language - I most definitely do feel that my work = at my desk where those jobs had me moving about all the time.

I hadn’t worked in an office where I regularly need to speak to people in the same building as me for years prior to a recent move. I was generally on Teams calls with people elsewhere or just working individually on something so there was no need to get up and walk anywhere. And I’ve never had an office job that involved leaving during the day to buy or deliver anything - I think that’s relatively unusual now, actually.

My partner is in sales so out and about much of the time, but when in the office or wfh often complains he has sat in one spot all day on call after call or catching up on paperwork.

From what I’ve observed of colleagues our working patterns aren’t unusual at all.

I think it depends on the situation and job roles. I know lots of younger employees prefer to be in the office for social interaction and also because their homes are not set up for a permanent workspace so they end up in their bedroom or something similar all day which is not ideal. Collaboration and communication is certainly improved by being in the office, it is far easier to learn from others around you just cant get that scheduling a teams meeting. However, I do think that WFH days should be an option in terms of flexibility for established and trusted employees. There have been several threads of the weird and wonderful things people do while supposed to be WFH and unfortunately some employers believe that the only way to manage this is to have everyone work in the office.

It's bizarre to be honest, I am in a very dispersed team so even if I travelled to my local office (1 hour train journey) there would be no one to collaborate with. I'll be sitting in virtual meetings all day but having bankrupted myself and commuted nearly 2 hours to get there.

I do travel and I'm happy to do that to meetings and see my team but the arbitrary 'you must be in the office x many days' is so regressive. I honestly wouldn't be able to do my job if my boss insisted on this as I wouldn't be able to fit everything in. Fine by me but the business is losing out.

I am civil servant with a long commute - as a manager I do find it easier to get things done and ensure quality when I am in office, I haven't found that Teams and Sharepoint have improved the collaborative working experience.

The thing that gives me the rage about Hybrid working experience is that offices have not been reconfigured to suit working practices where people are on MSTeams meetings for 80% of their day.

And yes no way we have enough desks for everyone to do 60% + in the office.

Someone who spends the working day mowing the lawn/watching Netflix was more than likely a skiver in the office though. Certainly any offices I’ve worked have their share of lazy bastards doing fuck all.

Ad for a PP and the recluse comment when I worked in an office last I’d drive there sit down and basically not move all day until I drove home. OK there were a few people to talk to but it was hardly this great hub of social interaction and activity.

Most of the anti-WFH arguments I see wheeled out repeatedly are tired and nonsensical, and not my experience of 15 years WFH.

Younger people in houseshares - this is total faux-concern. I was a young person in a houseshare for several years and WFH was infinitely preferable to the office. In the last of those houseshares 4 out of 5 of us WFH and it actually worked very well. If you're so concerned about young people's living conditions I suggest you channel your energies into fixing this country's messed-up housing market instead - sorely needed.

Younger employees needing to network - I found this easier to do WFH. I networked intensively online and managed to build up more contacts, especially internationally, than I could physically have done if I'd been reliant on IRL office contact. Young people in 2023 are very adept at online communication and getting to know each other via text! I was also able to arrange specific coffee meetings/lunches/drinks with people in my industry for networking purposes; just because I did my work from home didn't mean I was stuck at home and never saw other people. Conversely I never succeeded networking in an office because when I was in work mode, that meant I had my head down to concentrate - I couldn't be in social mode at the same time.

New employees onboarding - I started a full-time role WFH with an international team a few years ago and there have been precisely no issues with any of us getting to know each other despite all being in different cities and mostly never having previously met.

I absolutely understand why WFH doesn't suit some people but it's dependent on role, industry and personality. Trying to make out there are blanket negatives is frankly bullshit.