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?

Yes. Younger employees need to be in an office with older and more experienced people to learn soft skills they can't learn at home.

If you're an older employee, you benefited from this. The people you 'learned' from had to come in every single day. We were only rarely allowed to work from home because the technology wasn't there.

Seems we have learned little from Covid.

My team is is on similar set up but nobody needs to be in the office at all, it’s an exercise in optics.

Load of BS if you ask me as we are far more productive when not being treated like school children.

HTH

PS I have a colleague who takes doggie sick days and none of us are remotely interested as it doesn’t impact our work in the slightest.

You being in an employer's market means you're in a position to enforce your 'shoulds'. The fact that OPs organisation have a 100% this year rate of new staff not having it suggests they aren't as advantageously positioned.

There isn't any evidence that more and more companies are requiring people back in and removing flexibility, incidentally. The most recent ONS figures suggest there's been no clear upward or downward trend in remote work since the pandemic restrictions ended. There are of course anecdotal examples of some having done it, but it's evidently been balanced out elsewhere.

Obviously these 3 team members don’t feel like they get much from coming in to the office, otherwise they would be keener to do it.

I think the problem with this approach is it could be discriminatory or discourage diversity

Is that not true of any job that requires people to be at a particular site regularly? Any office-based or hybrid job?

I agree there is a lot of "in the office for collaboration" bullshit. I look for specific reasons/examples from people saying this.

In theory there is no aspect of my job which I couldn't do remotely and have worked with multi location teams and clients for decades. However learning new skills and relationship building with clients are both a lot faster with some in person face time.

I had a couple of teams working on site throughout the pandemic due to security requirements at the client site. The difference in progression for the juniors I had on site vs those having to work remotely was very marked. This also means that people like me need to suck it up and do my share of time in person with them - its part of our responsibility to the juniors.
The other place I still make sure to be in person is building relationships with new clients. Again - nothing really I can't do across collaboration tools but its simply much faster to do it in person and speed matters.

I'd echo the comments up thread as well - our juniors often want to be together and meeting their seniors for casual conversations. Its the more experienced staff who opt to wfh more often which is fine so long as they do their share of in person time to coach the next generation.

I would like to apply to this 6 figure job please and will attend the office 2 days per week, every week!!

Alternatively, if you're an older employee you were fucked over by this because insistence on in person work disadvantaged and sometimes even excluded whole cohorts of people. But we did a very bad job of noticing that, as a society, before the 2020s.

Yup, one of them was me. Impossible to work FT in the office once I had a baby and a long commute. At that time there was barely email. I made a life-enhancing but financially costly decision to freelance and my very modest pension pot shows the impact of that.

But somehow we all managed it. For decades. Entire careers.

Not very effective management if you've only just recruited but didn't specify that the job was hybrid with the expectation of X days working from home. I'd say next time be more specific in (a) the advert, and (b) the interview.

No, we 'all' didn't. You just didn't notice the ones who weren't there.

This reminds me of a colleague that was now thankfully left our company.

He was fine with the commute until COVID struck, then reluctant to return to the office, when he was told he needed to be in 3 days a week. He started to count working on the train as part of his day (he self certified this) So even on the days he was meant to be in the office, he would physically only be there 11am-4pm.

He has switched jobs now, but the new job has the same commute!

I work hybrid under a similar arrangement - we’re supposed to be in the office 2 days a week. I do this without complaining, it’s in my contract, but I do find myself increasingly frustrated at the 1.5hrs/ day I spend commuting, time that on my homeworking days I can use for all manner of other things. Also, a significant portion of office time is spent on Teams meetings, which are so much easier to do from home. TBH I think I could get all the same collaboration benefits by a much less frequent office visit, maybe once a fortnight, especially if it was coordinated with other team members and there was a conscious agreement not to schedule remote meetings on those days. I suspect your employees are coming to the same realisation, they understand the expectation but aren’t convinced of the benefits of an arbitrary two days rule.

Anyone who can’t work Teams well enough to pass on their knowledge isn’t someone who’s worth learning from IMO.

Young people benefit from the choice of place to live that remote work allows.

What a stupid comment.

If people are "rejecting roles that are office based" OP wouldn't have this issue.

The question is why are people accepting roles that require some time spent in the office then complaining about having to spend some time in the office.

OP I would start with belt and braces - advert, interview, contract all clear that at least 2 days out of Tu/W/Th in the office every single working week is essential for the role and not going to change. Spell it out and get their clear affirmative verbal commitment to it in interview, and when sending over contract to sign also send a seperate letter about hybrid working practices that formally states the same, reinforces that this is a contractual obligation as per section 3.4 whatever of their contract, and that this is non-negotiable either now or in the future. Get them to sign and return that letter at the same time as the contract.

Then get clear on your company performance policy (which everybody should have access to from the get go) and implement it. Monitor attendance on something like a basic spreadsheet. On Thursdays or Friday every week email the offenders to ask why they weren't in as per contractual obligation and forward them a copy of the letter with their signature on it. In fact I'd probably prefer that they supply their office days in advance the previous week - sticking their initials on the relevant day in a shared outlook calendar works for my team.

If they consistently underperform then start informal/formal disciplinary proceedings. Follow through with these right up to dismissal if needed.

I know it's not a pleasant part of your job, but it IS a part of your job. I know you wish it weren't necessary but it is - your position in relation to this isn't dissimilar to their position in relation to WFH. You need to get on with that part of your job just as much as they need to get on with coming in to the office, as per their contract.

What can I do to stop people doing this?

Tell people at interview stage that you have had to take disciplinary action against staff members not adhering to the two day a week rule.

That should scare off anyone who thinks they might be able to get away with it.

This is ignoring everything OP has said. She has no problem with the motivated and committed ( and I think would be glad to replace the whiners if they left of their own accord.)

btw , defining ‘loyalty’ as some sort of weakness is….curious.

OP not read the whole thread but read a number of your replies.

Noted that you have said you will only hire from CVs with local addresses but that staff move away after they have been hired.

I think that recruitment goes both ways. If you think you have found someone who will be a total asset to the company, whose CV you are impressed with, who shows commitment to their work, who you can see will fit in with the team.
It is not just the candidate who needs to be honest.

You need to look the above perfect-on-paper candidate in the eyes and say, before you offer them a job "if you do not do the following minimum time within the following weekly days every single week in the office, bums-on-seats, then that will be considered a disciplinary matter and ultimately we will let you go. You will have to sign up to that as an express condition of your employment"

The candidate signs up to that condition before you offer them a job.

If you dream candidate says no I will not do that, you accept it and do not try to persuade them otherwise.

If your dream candidate accepts that condition and then renages on that commitment after starting work, you fire them (you cannot have one rule for one and another rule for another). All of the senior managers need to work to the same pattern (you cannot expect juniors to do it if no one senior (including you) is ever in the office).

The stress and financial cost (in terms of lost salary and expenses arising from working from the office) of daily commute is enormous.

You are justified in demanding it but you have to stand by that in all ways.

Its nothing to do with the technical ability to use Teams or similar. Its the missed opportunity to observe more experienced people as they do the job, to hear the conversations, to have them at hand to ask "stupid" questions.

As I said upthread - our juniors who had to work on site during covid have progressed must faster than those forced to work in isolation. Its the juniors who are least likely to want to WFH as they are at a stage in career where then need to learn by observation, don't have comfy and warm home offices and derive a lot of their social life by building friendships at work.

OP would no doubt be glad to replace them. The question she'll have to ask herself is whether she realistically could. The fact that this has happened with every single new staff member they've had in 2023 does suggest this might simply be the norm for new recruits in the industry now, rather than just the employer choosing badly.

No, i have a shoulder injury

Getting to work isnt an issue, it is the fact i need to cancel all my daily meetings while in the office resulting in a complete loss productivity not just for me but my team.

Not being able to liase with my team except by email or teams chat function

We didn’t have vacancies. 🤷‍♀️

It’s not necessarily about technical ability. It’s about understanding the new workplace culture of IM, screen sharing, video calls, collaborative online tools etc. There is no excuse for not senior staff passing things on ad hoc or not having ongoing casual conversations with their employees in a world with IM.