To be losing the will to live with staff who chosen a job with a long commute & then complain about it

[Benibidibici]

I work in a well paid industry - think 6 figure salaries.

We've made really clear through hiring processes that roles are hybrid, not remote, we as a team really get a lot from collaborative working so we expect 2 days a week in the central office. There's flex about which days but we ask that people try to mostly hit the core days of tues/weds/thurs. As a line manager I'm not watching the clock and we are happy to play around with what time people start & finish - eg. One guy leaves at 4.30 to collect his kids by 5.30 & this is fine.

We've hired 3 people this year and made all this clear and they're all grumbling about their commutes and regularly asking to come in less. We offer what we can in terms of flexibility but when we insist we need them in 2 days, they are basically sulking. Its clear one of them in particular never had any intention of coming to the office more than a day or so every 2-3 weeks and expected to get away with remote working.

Its really frustrating. We were honest about what we needed and people just seem to think they can insist.

Why do people do this? One lady has moved 2 hours from our city 3 years ago, and during that time consistently keeps applying for and taking jobs here rather than in the large city where she now lives. Her husband also works in our industry and between them they'll have an income of £200k plus, so they aren't forced to live in a cheaper area.

Its really shit for me to have to go through the unpleasant process of monitoring people's attendance & imposing formal consequences etc (I'm not that kind of manager at all) because they took a job they don't want to turn up for.

What can I do to stop people doing this?

I am a teacher! Please read what I said above. There is a recruitment problem in teaching but it is not due to other people WFH.

It’s about behaviour, lack of investment, workload etc. Exacerbated by the general labour shortage we were discussing earlier.

Preventing other people from WFH does nothing to improve the conditions of teachers.

With the low fertility rates however, there will be fewer teachers required, but it’s still important for investment in schools and better conditions to be achieved.

We will need more people in aged care. But again the answer is to improve pay and conditions there, not to make other jobs worse to “match.”

It's not a perk if it is compulsory and not wanted.

I think there are some industries where being in the same room as other people has benefits that are quite hard to measure. Sure, if the company is insisting on them being in the office and they sit in a booth with a headset on all day in Teams meetings then there’s a good argument for working from home. My husband works flexibly, leaves early a couple of days to get the kids then logs on at home and does a full day at home (my job can’t be done remotely and my days are 12 hours) but he manages a team of people (who also work flexibly) and being in the room with them has benefits. He can provide ad hoc training and support in real time, he picks up grumbles over coffee, he can troubleshoot on projects as issues crop up. He finds if he isn’t in the office as much for whatever reason that problems tend to show themselves at a later stage and are more difficult to sort. He finds this balance about right, he doesn’t want to be in the office full time but equally wfh full time has downsides too. Equally if he has a member of staff who ends up wfh for a long period he tends to find issues aren’t picked up as they would have been in a collaborative environment.

I’m not sure how you could measure that though and it’s quite difficult to argue that isn’t an attitude of presenteeism.

You misunderstand employment relations - this is an on-ging business negotiation. Contractual T&Cs change over time - they are not fixed for life! Who here, who has been in employment for any length of time, has had their pension terms changed, or had changes made to arrange for performance pay, for example?

I do agree @taybert and I do sometimes remind myself that my grumbles with presenteeism are a privilege of my 12 years of experience in the job, and the fact I work closely with another person so we constantly communicate about issues. If I was a new start and WFH on my own I might feel quite differently and be desperate for people to come into the office.

There is definitely a natural knowledge sharing that happens in person that doesn't happen remotely.

I’m in a large public sector organisation. We do 2 days per week in the office, and everyone seems to be happy with that. My commute is approx one hour each way, but because its only two days per week its bearable and I do actually enjoy my office days, it’s healthy to get out of the house and mix with my colleagues.

However we work really well with Teams meetings, and all managed to retain cohesion during COVID (when no one went in for 18 months). Also, we’re spread across 3 large sites and even pre-COVID I only saw a handful of my colleagues f2f on a regular basis.

The mythical water-cooler moments didn’t happen (we all used different water coolers!) so whilst I personally enjoy going in twice per week, I think it’s quite possible to work perfectly well even if you only go in occasionally. I am not a fan of presenteeism

Disagree with your last paragraph. It’s perfectly normal to renegotiate the terms of your employment beyond your initial contract and people do it all the time. You might ask for all sorts of changes eg a pay rise, for a transfer to another dept, to take on a different type of project or client, to move to PT hours etc.

Given that several people in the office aren’t coming in for the 2 days that were in the contract and nothing has been said about it, they may have concluded that they didn’t need a formal change to the contract to WFH more frequently.

There is definitely a natural knowledge sharing that happens in person that doesn't happen remotely.

This is a generalisation. If you say it's applicable to you in your role and sector, I've no reason not to believe you, but you are not the default.

There's so very much variation even in the sort of role that can be done from anywhere. It makes no sense that people assume what they've seen must be applicable across a very diverse range of roles and industries, much less to people who could have very different characteristics to them.

@Rabiz

It is normal to try to renegotiate your terms and conditions but you have no right to expect it. The employer can refuse.

How long is the probation period?
If a month maybe it is too short? 3 months is standard and I've had 6 months before too.

Its easy to go up an 'act' if you have no intention of hybrid for a month. Much harder for 3 or 6 months.

Extending probation is always an option and can work well for both parties if they are making noises about not wanting to come in. Maybe its not the right position.

Of course they can refuse. It depends how much they care about holding on to that employee and what the risk is that the employee will leave if they refuse, and how much the refusal will impact the morale and productivity of staff in general, how much time and money it will cost to recruit someone new and how confident they are that they can hire someone at those wages who will be better or different. (Also, any legislative requirements around protected characteristics etc.)

It’s a negotiation, where both sides weigh up the risks and rewards. There is nothing wrong with that and I think women in particular need to speak up and advocate for themselves and know their value, as often men don’t have any qualms about these kind of negotiations.

Exactly.

OP (or her employers) can a) vary the contract (whether formally or informally) or b) move to terminante the contract if terms are being breached.

What OP can't do is 'stop people asking if they can come in less'.

I am very much in favour of WFH, but plenty of industries benefit from learning in the office. In my profession people have specialities, but need to learn more widely around their specialities, and they need to learn skills like negotiation. When I was training I learnt huge and invaluable stuff from listening in to colleagues and bosses, and a large part of my weaknesses now stem from how little time I continued to spend in such an environment after qualifying.

Absolutely, plenty do. It's a point that can be made without assuming it's a definite across the board, which the poster I quoted did. Basically, when it comes to this issue, people universalising their own experiences is a bad idea.

Christ it's impossible to have an actual normal discussion on this site.

Yes I was sharing MY experience of working in an office, and from discussing pros and cons of WFH with people in real life. Ok, it doesn't apply to YOU and my sincerest apologies for the generalised comment, didn't expect it to be picked apart 😏

Nah, I think you are the one who misunderstands employment relations.

I have worked for decades and navigated many contract changes, however, I did this through mature discussions with my managers.

I've always followed the appropriate channels instead of simply avoiding commitments, such as not showing up for a night shift because I no longer felt like doing them.

The staff in the OP are simply not bothering to come into the office 2 days a week as per their contract, just because they don't want to. There has not been any negotiation of a contract on their part, just a complete lack of professionalism and entitled that they can do what they want and fuck everyone else.

The complete value of in person learning and communicarion is hard to quantify but is valuable.

I have recently had a very very high preassured and time constrained situation at work where things were changing on an hourly basis and involved a lot of intense collaboration with senior people

Teams chats and the real time editing function of Sharepoint documents definitely helped but the quick discussions and judegments that needed to be made were best in the office.

Yes yes, it's totally outrageous that someone's discussed a post made on a discussion forum.

OP's staff are, regularly asking to come in less.

A perk isn't mandatory and doesn't cost you your job if you turn it down.

I do agree with you. But to be fair in a job like PR (and I briefly worked in a very similar job) if you're representing an artist you do need to build relationships with them and their people. And turning up at the recording studio mid session to introduce yourself isn't the answer - the answer is to turn up when they are socializing after a gig.

I agree that going to the gig is not a "perk", and I agree that an employee should be paid for attending if they are required to attend.

But, on the other hand, it is also an industry whereby if you don't want it to be your life then you probably shouldn't be in it. If you don't want to go to events and mix with famous people as often as possible then do something else. I understand why the employer would say "if she doesn't want to come to our artist gigs then she simply isn't the sort of person who has the dedication and personality to make a career of this".

Tricky one to balance. I genuinely believe that people should be paid if required to be somewhere with work. Always. But I also understand why a company would say "you must understand this industry - you get paid 9-5 and you have to show your face at numerous events that people pay a lot to attend - and you'll have VIP treatment and celebrity access. If you don't see this as a perk then do something else".

And being told no they need to come in.

Then the company needs to increase the actual perks (salary and annual leave) to compensate. No one should have to work for free no matter what your job, your industry or your pay bracket.

I am of an age and seniority where I can stand up to an organisation and say this though. I truly believe companies need to wake up and value their employees time and right to a work life balance.

They are only meant to be in 2 days a week - less would be full-time WFH, which is not what the job was advertised as, and they knew this at both the application and recruitment stage. Thereby in accepting the post they were agreeing to this.

Defying your manager who has told you that the needs of the business require everyone in two days of the week, does not constitute negotiating your contract. IMHO that is misconduct and should be met with disciplinary action and/or termination of employment.

The elitism on this thread is absolutely breathtaking. The NHS would grind to a complete halt tomorrow morning if nobody worked “for free”. It runs on goodwill and people working over and above their contracted hours.

How many jobs are there where it’s impossible to work from home? Millions - and they’re almost all the low paid ones which are of the greatest benefit to society as lockdown proved very amply. I really hope some of the posters on this thread are outliers because if not the work ethic is well and truly dead and we can forget any hope of the economic growth this country so desperately needs.