To be filled with panic about WFH culture becoming a thing of the past?

[themusingsofaninsomniac]

prefacing with please read the context before blanket responses 😊

I am stressing away as I tend to do lately on the same topic. I have WFH since the pandemic, with the odd day or so in the office I am lucky to have full flexibility with.

I have Autism. I also have ADHD. The combo together is quite the clusterfuck to navigate as a newly diagnosed female. Essentially the pandemic shone a light on so much and I'm so grateful that it enabled me to seek diagnosis, as much as it's an ongoing struggle.

From working remotely since the beginning I've never felt more stable and successful in my career. I was able to secure a promotion into a field I'd never have had the confidence to try in a non-remote setting in the first place, and I've been fortunate to earn a fair bit more as a result.

I feel completely at ease in my own environment and with the ability to tailor things to what works well for me. Having that commute time back has helped my wellbeing, as has having my lunch breaks in my own home. I am in a routine that I feel helps my mental health and the challenges neurodiversity brings me massively.

My current employer is great but they are the type of company that won't be around forever unfortunately. And from a lot of media and on here etc, it's becoming obvious that things are shifting to either back in the office or a hybrid with a good half your days expected in the office.

This absolutely fills me with dread. I feel like it would turn my world upside down. I'm sure people who don't relate to this will think I'm being dramatic but change and environments outside of your own control are so so hard especially once you've had several years of the opposite.

I guess I'm just wondering where this leaves me. I still have a few friends who WFH but not in my industry. I'm not sure if there would be more flexibility for me, but I also worry about how that will reflect towards my colleagues and I don't want to get anyone's back up. I guess I'm catastrophising that if I need to find another job I'll never be able to maintain what is working so well for me.

Not sure what I'm seeking here to be honest - reassurance maybe or just help to navigate this and whether it's best to be upfront with new employers from the start, or whether that might reduce my chances of being hired. I've been told I don't present as autistic, or typical ADHD but I guess the mix of both means it's a lot more blended. Either way I have generally got good feedback from interviews so it would likely not be known unless I was transparent.

I'd especially like to hear from someone in a similar boat too, if there is anyone? Probably not at twenty to one on a weekday though I imagine 😅

Thanks to anyone who has read this to the end as I know that got wordy!

^What I would complain about is ringing say a lawyer and paying them a lot of money for them to half way through the call say oh sorry hang on my kids just need me to get them a snack or one second there's someone at my front door.
Just because a lawyer can technically work from home and I can't, this does not mean one of our professions should be allowed to not give our clients 100% at all times. Or apparently I should pay the lawyer more in order for them to go to the office and actually focus on me.^

Regulated professions are a bad example of the point you're trying to make here, because of the additional professional obligations. A dentist or solicitor has a regulatory body to answer to in a way that someone working in customer service doesn't.

The legal profession also isn't short of wannabe entrants, whereas call centre type roles were a recruitment churn long before our labour market tightened.

Funny that people keep on mentioning screaming kids in the background.

I pay 1200 pounds a month so that my children can go to nursery while I work from home.

I also never experienced screaming kids in the background when I called a service.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but it doesn't seem to be the norm.

I am Dyslexic and Dyspraxic and feel the same, OP. I changed jobs when my previous role started demanding everyone back in the office for part of the week.

After finding it so much easier to get stuff done WFH during the pandemic, I realised that I never want to have to endure working in an office regularly again.

My new job is the first time that I haven't needed to declare my Dyslexia and Dyspraxia because the only real accommodation I have ever needed is working from home more often. The result is that I am performing better than I ever have managed in an office based environment.

It actually really gets on my tits that heads of workplaces starting to demand X number of days in the office don't realise (or don't care) that they are indirectly discriminating against neurodiverse employees by doing this.

In my old workplace I tried to request still predominantly working from home once the pandemic was over, and they wouldn't allow me to have this, even though my assessment by an occupational psychologist says that working in a noisy, open plan environment will have a huge negative effect on my productivity due to my issues with working memory.

I've experienced the screaming kid/s scenario.

It happened during a Capita PIP telephone assessment one of my brothers was undertaking with me as his support person. That was an incredibly unprofessional situation and the impact on my already struggling brother was horrible. He felt as though he was 'annoying' and 'interrupting' the assessor whilst attempting to explain the most intimate details of his conditions. It was obvious, to me at least, the assessor was completely distracted by whatever her kids were up to whilst my brother was explaining how his condition impacts on him. Unfortunately, his already fragile mental health took a substantial hit as a result of that encounter.

It also happened during an insurance enquiry I was making. Obviously much less impactful than my brother's experience but nonetheless infuriating that I'm paying someone's wages who is allowed to put me on hold for non business related matters.

I made official complaints on both occasions, and voted with my purse in the second.

Perhaps your good luck in this scenario is balanced out by my apparent bad luck?

WFH is not going anywhere.

So what? Most corporate jobs can be done remotely.

Go freelance

I know what you mean. I've never quite done a salaried WFH, but I do remember the enormous quality of life increase from moving to live next door to my work. And though undiagnosed (and with no real need to be) I fully believe 'hell is other people'!
But.... Plenty has been said. And I'm afraid much of it is true.
I hope you find a way to thrive.

I understand that people like working from home. If you look at the productivity as a general rule, WFH is inefficient and is open to abuse (recent research has shown 40% WFH have second jobs).
So I think to be fair to those industries where it is impossible to WFH, everyone should get back to normal.

I don't think it's the norm either.

In any event, as long as they actually get the job done, it doesn't matter.

The bigger problem is actually getting through to someone and getting them to do the job you ask them to do first time. If you read the consumer pages of the weekend newspapers, it seems to be pretty much impossible unless the likes of Which? or the Times get involved. Again: nothing to do with WFH and everything to do with having too few, and too unqualified, staff (and maybe staff who just don't care).

Oh, and when people are in call centres you can often hear all the other conversations going on around them and that's distracting too.

Totally get where you are coming from.

My advice is if your organisation has an occupational health department self refer and get a formal agreement in place for you to WFH due to your health issues which I am sure must be covered by the Disability discrimination act.

If not does your organisation have a WFH policy and could you get a formal agreement in place via this route?

I feel exactly the same way and I will never be returning to the office. There are actual employment agencies which specialise in recruitment of people who want to work from home, hopefully they might cover the industry you work in and this might be something worth looking in to if it comes to it.

There is a subreddit called "overemployed" for people juggling multiple WFH jobs at the same time - unbeknownst to any of their employers - and it is really interesting. Even if they get caught, it takes several months to get fired and they will have been paid for those months. I would be surprised to hear if it was 40%, though. That seems high.

I do wonder if some posters think we live in a command economy.

Difficult to say without knowing your industry, but you are catastrophising, which I recognise as I have ADHD too.

I don’t think wfh is going anytime soon, in the private sector.

TrashedSofa: No we don’t live in a command economy “defined as organised by a centralised government that owns most, if not all, businesses and where government officials direct all the factors of production. East Germany, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union are all examples of command economies.” So I don’t understand your post.

We do live in a society where there is an expectation of standards of service, which is woefully low at the moment for a whole host of reasons, of which WFH is one.

You should get advice as to whether your disability would place you in a category for equal opportunities under DDA legislation - it still depends on the employer and some are notoriously bad at observing the statutory requirements, but it may solve your problems. I hope this helps

I really hope that the WFH culture becomes a thing of the past.

Customer service has absolutely nosedived and we now have a huge cohort of people 'terrified' of going into an office /workplace.

We do indeed live in a society with that expectation, notwithstanding that some of the claims about wfh being the reason are of dubious veracity. People can expect what they like, it doesn't mean there are workers willing to provide them with it for the price they want to pay.

The reason I mentioned a command economy is because we'd need a society with a substantial level of state control in order for what you mention to be a possibility. It's not like the tech sector are or can be made to go oh ok, shop workers and surgeons need to be in a physical workplace so we've got to do the same in order to be fair.

You do know that not everyone works in customer service?

I have many reasons for wfh and not one of them is being afraid of an office 😂

I was just stating my own experience, and that of most people these days.

That you are a professor of ancient Egyptian history or an HR manager of a Sanitising firm is of no consequence. It’s about a downward trend regarding people’s experiences re companies in general.

Surely that should be role dependent? Why would the council finance department need to be in the office 100% of the time? They aren’t customer facing.

I think WFH has opened companies up to a wider pool of candidates, some who they wouldn't necessarily have had before and some people moved further away from work.

We do hybrid (it's actually in my contract). We come in on the same day most weeks so we get to work as a team.

I currently do 1 day most weeks, some weeks none and some weeks 2. If they made us go back to more, I'd have to leave. It wouldn't be cost effective or sustainable.

My office is a good 90 mins/two hours from my home. There's no way I would do that 5 days a week.

Would you consider asking for reasonable adjustments on the basis of your diagnoses/ health needs? Would probably require occupational health assessment but could be worth it

I have adjustments due to health needs and it has kept me in work, for which I am very thankful.