If you currently work from home or are hybrid, how much extra would you want p.a. to work from the office 5 days per week ?

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If you currently work from home or are hybrid, how much extra would you want p.a. to work from the office 5 days per week ?

Just that really.

Those of you wanting more money to work from the office - did you work from the office in this job pre-covid? If so did you get a pay decrease when you started working from home?

I've been hybrid since 2017 and I did actually drop a band to take the hybrid role from a higher band role that was fully office-based.

This! Why should you be paid the same if your outgoings have decreased? Surely these are factored into your salary ? Esp if you were London weighting

£8000 minimum is what I would need realistically, to make up for the loss of work-life balance, comfort and lack of flexibility. I have given this a lot of thought recently. I’m in the public sector, I’ve wfh since Covid with one day in the office per week. I’ve heard rumours that civil service are going to be expected in the office 3 days a week. I’ve been considering my options, if that does happen (which I doubt because we have sold a lot of office space off and are finding recruitment to admin positions a fucking nightmare right now) I have turned down much higher paying roles in the private sector previously because in the civil service I get to WFH and appreciated the flexibility. If this was no longer a benefit and then I would be off.

For me, at least double my salary and have the commuting time included as part of my working hours so I don't have another hour of driving on top of 37 hours putting up with people.

Plus an office of my own so I can shut the door and get on with work instead of being disturbed every 2 minutes.

Plus someone to make me regular cups of tea and make lunch, as my OH does that for me when I'm WFH.

Even then I'm not sure I'd stay if I was offered that to work in the office 5 days a week!

The only relevant questions are how much it would cost them to replace you? how much can you earn if you work elsewhere?

For me, about 25% of my salary which would allow me to go down to 4 days, buying back some of the time and energy it would cost. And my office is only 15 mins away.

If you’ve got the choice of fannying about at home in your onesie all day tapping on a keyboard

I run an organisation with a turnover in the millions and employ over 50 people whilst working from home.

I don't own a onesie.

There's no fannying
but I do tap the keyboard.

I currently wfh 3 days and 1 day in the office. My FTE salary is approx £37K and my part time salary is approx £34K.

For an office that is 10-15 mins away, 5 days a week I would need to cover an extra day of nursery so it would need to be at least £200 more a month. I don’t really want to work 5 days a week so there would need to be I think about £300 extra a month to allow me to get a cleaner and do fun things at weekend with DD to make up for missing out on my day in the week with her. So it would be £45k, which isn’t going to happen 10-15 minutes away from where I live. The realistic options of finding a job are 1 hr by train, 1 hr by car, 2hrs by train to London.

1 hr by train for 5 days a week in the office. Extra £200 for extra childcare. It’s £250 a month for the train. I really hate the place I’d be working so my inconvenience payment is more in the region of £400 a month. So we’re looking at about £52-55K.

1hr by car for 5 days a week in the office. Extra £200 a month in childcare. We’d need a second car, so the initial cost of buying one and then running one. Plus the inconvenience factor. I think we’d be talking about £55K because I quite like that city.

2 hrs by train to London. Childcare is going to have to go to early starts 5x days a week, so that’s now £280 a month but there would be times I wouldn’t be able to get back in time when DH is working late so we’d end up paying a lot in late chargers (before losing our space). Train fare is £650 a month. I’d hate commuting to London everyday and I’d find it really draining, a cleaner is a must, meal boxes would probably become every week. It’s got to be £1500-£2000 more a month after tax so probably at least £90K but I’d be utterly miserable and would probably only last a year before seeking out a lower paid job closer to home.

No amount of money would make up for having to commute, missing out on family time and the extra stress and reduced productivity .

I walk into work 5 days a week, for £60k a year. For me to get a new, higher paid role I would have to WFH for a London firm, but I thrive on company, enjoy my walk, so won’t look elsewhere.

I get the same amount working from home or the office. My contract was office based but after my 2nd child I couldn’t cope with the commute and childcare (3 hour round trip). So I’m wfh now 2 days a week 9-3 and office 9-3 1 day

No amount of money would ever tempt me to work 5 days in an office. Especially since going there for me at the moment takes 2 hours each way...

I also have a long term health condition and working from home allows me to stay in the workplace.

In fact I took my current job purely because I was told it was mostly home base. They tried to change the pattern after a few months. I reminded them of my disability and they back down.

But it did break my trust in the organisation though and I have started to look for a fully remote role.

This organisation has a massive staff turnover and problems recruiting but some employers never learn...

Home working is here to stay and people have realised that it is perfectly possible to have a better work life balance and that offices, often noisy places where time is endlessly wasted on gossip/politics/pointless meetings, don't even make for a productive work environment anyway.

Employers who just think the only way to work is being chained at your desk in an office 5 days a week with your manager staring at you will just keep losing good staff or failed to recruit as candidates go with jobs with more flexibility.

My current employer is looking at ways to get people back in 2 days a week. But there aren’t enough desks to do so. There’s no equipment at the desks which make them really uncomfortable to work at (pre-Covid we had docking stations with second screens and keyboard etc but they’ve all gone). There’s no canteen facilities to lure people in with decent food. The kitchens on some floors are a health hazard. And the company has no money to go and spend on making the office more appealing.

We’re typically somewhere that doesn’t appeal to job seekers but have done well out of flexible hybrid because it massively widened the pool of potential applicants knowing they only had to come in when it was necessary. As a result we’ve had some brilliant new staff. Two days doesn’t seem like much but it’s the lack of flexibility that will put people off and the threat that 2 becomes 3 becomes 5 in the long term. And conversely we have teams who are currently in more days who, when they hear everyone else is being told to come in 2 days, will decide they will only come in for 2 days. And they are the type of workers who could walk out the door and into another job that same afternoon, so it’s a risk.

It’s not a straightforward task to mandate more days in the office especially if the organisation’s position in terms of recruitment is already on shaky ground. They’ve had to pay an external consultant to come in and try to work it all out!

My contract still states office based worker we’ve been home since covid so if they said come back, we’d have to go back.

That said, when I’ve been looking for other jobs , I’ve only been considering those with office days will salaries of over 5k of what I earn now.

Interesting post. Your last paragraph sums up the position a lot of organisations find themselves in. Mandatory office time is fine for employers who have lots of recruitment options. The rest, not so much. It doesn't sound like that external consultant is going to be able to do much!

No, especially when the other part of their remit is closing buildings so there’ll be even less space to put people on their mandatory office days!

Sounds like a bit of a perfect storm! But honestly, some employers don't help themselves. It's not 2019 any more...

I would look for a new job as my life and routine is organized around hybrid working. It wouldn’t just affect me but the whole household. But if you really want a price on it I would need the cost of doggy day care four days per week, someone to see to my horse who lives 5 minutes from my house and the cost of my short but expensive commute (north west with notorious shit public transport). Also public transport for DSS on days when the weather is too bad for him to cycle to school. So about an extra 10k per year at a conservative guess.

I’m actually in this situation right now and weighing up options. Pre-redundancy I was WFH with London (2.5 hr commute) once or sometimes twice a month, which the company paid for.

I’ve been offered a job for the same salary I was on, but office based 3xpw (50 min commute) which I’d have to pay for.

Im trying to decide what figure I’d need to not lose out, but the reality is that I’d prefer to WFH more as I like being able to see my teenagers off to school, be here when they get back and so on. When the last one has flown I’d probably prefer to be more office based but for now I think flexibility will win over salary.

I don’t think you get loads more, maybe just enough to cover commuter costs. And as some one else said, if you didn’t take a pay cut to WFH, why should you get an increase to go back to the office?

Personally I could think of nothing worse than WFH, I enjoy getting out of the house, and seeing people other than my family daily, I was furloughed for a long time and hated it.

A million pounds and I’d still probably moan about having to go in.

Not about the money. I work 5 days a week from home with the odd day in the office.

However, if my company wanted to change all that tomorrow to go IN five days a week, I'd go in. Because I'm fully aware that, as my employer, they call the shots - not me!

In the real world where wages are average I would never wfh as I like seeing people every day and face to face communication. I have also seen the negative impact that wfh has on productivity in my particular industry (FM)
DH works in a different industry and has a commute of 5hrs each way and an overnight stay once a week which isn't ideal. However he gets paid fairly and loves his job which offers a good pension and perks. His colleagues all have to be to be in the office once a week as well and many commute from much further away. The pay is banded so no one is demanding a raise.
This is in contrast to before covid when he had a 2 hr daily commute at peak time which was never less than 3 hrs for 20k less. That was brutal however also perfectly normal for most people.

Surely demanding so much money for doing the job you were employed to do within the confines that the people paying you expect, is something only relevant to the elite few.

Big business will only tolerate this for so long and will instead focus their money on the eager and willing younger generation coming through, rather than paying through the nose for the talent who think they are too good to get on the tube.

Aside from new starter on-boarding, I've not heard a compelling reason for return to office full time - 'culture' and 'those serendipitous moments by the water cooler' (bleeurgh) have been banded about.

It seems to be more about unused office space and under performers.

2 days a week, is quite enough, if your role genuinely allows for it and you're high performing.

I do feel for younger people though. Most of the fun I had in my twenties was with work friends (still best friends!). Working in the city, dinners, drinks after work - great times :)