To think that Boots move to 5 days a week is a step back for workplace equality

[Vistada]

Boots HQ, a predominantly female workforce - has been told they are to be back in the office five days a week from September with no debate and no real solid reasoning (in my view)

https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/boots-to-end-hybrid-working-for-office-workers/

I think the move to hybrid working is amazing for everyone, not just women, in terms of helping to achieve the work/life/parenting balance that has eluded us for so long, but we can't deny women shoulder this juggling act more.

I think this move, and any move back to 5 days in the office (where its really not needed) is a huge step back for workplace equality - and for a male CEO to enforce this just shows how out of touch he is.

Agreed.. I like to chat with my colleagues but I don’t really want to socialise with them and be best pals with them! There is a difference.

My oldest acquiantance is disabled and managed to return to work on a wfh contract for the first time in years. She loved her job. Her disability is such that she cannot go to an office and if she could, the adjustments required to make an office suitable just aren’t feasible. They’re now amending the contracts and saying all staff must be in a minimum of two days building up to 5 days, knowing fine well she cannot do this. They are not willing to consider her request to retain her wfh contract as an amadjustment. They are setting themselves up for a discrimination and constructive dismissal claim (hence minimal details) but when so many on this thread complain about lack of productivity, they’re not considering that wfh as the norm opened up the workplace to a group of people for whom work had been closed off for years. She’ll now have to reapply for benefits and put herself through the hell of assessment if she can’t find another 100% wfh job. Her story isn’t in isolation and the fewer wfh jobs there are, the fewer opportunities for previously excluded disabled people to participate in a workplace designed with their needs in mind. With the government pushing people back into work using wfh as the model making it possible when there are very few wfh jobs available now, disabled people can’t win.

Company car and PA cost money, which allowing hybrid working doesn't so they're quite different.

I manage someone who has been taking the piss massively with WFH and we are planning on managing her out

Employees seem to think they are entitled to boundless freedoms but that's called self employment, and if you'd like to give it a try, the doors that way.

We have really nice offices and we are bringing back full time office presence from September too.

@Ncncncworkywork I would not touch your company with a bargepole.

What do you expect from a supposed health-related company that forced its office staff to go to the office and work during covid when it was advised to stay at home

yes, it means you don't have good colleagues 😂

Colleagues can be great. Friends are different.

It's a privilege thing isn't it.
Lots of middle of the road desk job people whining about how they need employers to work around their childcare needs, but they still expect other women to get off their arses and go into work to serve their coffees and care for their children

@Loulou599 I am low paid, I do not buy coffees and I have worked in nurseries. But I still wfh.

And of course the big players in retail, banking etc. know that CRE is tanking big time and the only way to save the bad loans going badder is to get more people off the couch and back to the commute/hamster wheel?

From a purely practical perspective I don’t see how the roads near me would cope with mass 5 days a week office work. I have driven the same route for work for over 12 years now and - pandemic years aside - have seen it get noticeably busier and the journey times longer year on year. It’s now more congested than pre-pandemic and I am delayed most journeys by at least one accident. Hardly going to be improved by adding thousands more vehicles onto the road.

I won’t go back to five days in the office. If it goes back to being the norm and I couldn’t find something more flexible, I’d be looking into a change of career or going part-time. I’m through with sitting in the same assigned spot for most of my waking hours and am not prepared to put up with it when it isn’t necessary and I end up sitting on phone calls all day next to and opposite other people on calls all day. I haven’t worked in the same place as my ‘team’ (and I’d use that word very loosely) for years now.

I find this push at odds with all the hand-wringing about older workers quitting. Why would you want to make work even less appealing to employees with options?

Yep, if everyone WFH how many Boots stores would close, and how many people at the HQ would be out of a job? The modern debt based Ponzi world works on millions of people running around spending, and most importantly borrowing, not lying around in their PJ"s pretending to work, the "commuter economy" is (was) a massive cash cow for the big corporations and their shareholders.

This.

You get the WFH fanatics but in reality its causing real damage, particularly as people move to new jobs and don't already have good working relationships built up.
It impedes learning, impedes networking, impedes relationship building, really slows down dealing with all sorts of problems, minor and major, impedes creativity and problem solving, simply due to the loss of contact and knowledge sharing. If you have a job, like mine, that relies on all of that as a core part of your job, it sucks! It also really does create a mental disconnect from your work, as your work becomes some abstract thing you do on a screen instead of being about relationship building and bouncing off each other in ideas and information sharing. You are simply just not exposed to as much.

I work in the public sector and I started after covid, but WFH is the norm and no one goes to the office anymore really, so I stopped travelling in as there was no point as no-one was there.

I have no doubt that the reason why public sector productivity has not picked up as much as private sector is because the public sector has embraced WFH more fully.

I support hybrid, but think it should be mandated to go to work most days of the week and whole teams in on the same days.

Ah the old 'we can't be bothered to manage individuals so lets just punish everyone for 1 bad apple' school of management.

People don't seem to understand that the people who take the piss wfh are almost inevitably the people who took/will take the piss in an office. Good management should be able to monitor output and appropriately identify under-performers regardless of if they're sitting next to them, in the Hong Kong officer or in their house.

Also I couldn't give a shit about how 'nice' your office is, it's not as nice or convenient as my house!

100% agree with @alpenguin too - all this stress about people being out of work due to ill health, caring responsibilities etc. but lets also make sure we keep the (unnecessary) barriers that stop them working up.

Because they are banking (literally) on when it comes right down to it most employees don"t really have the options they think they have, most people (especially if they have big mortgage debt) will back down quite quickly if told they must come back in or be let go. The big banks etc. are absolutely terrified by what they see happening with CRE, they are going to crack the whip now to get people back to the Old Ways.

That isn't really applicable to Boots, it's a massive site on an industrial estate. The local nando's might have suffered bit but that's it 😆

So change career then, or go part time.

The truth is most people are replacable, and the few who aren't won't be working from the office anyway

either that, or those companies that stay in the 21st century and continue to allow flexible working (whether that's place or time), will be able to select the cream of the crop of self-motivating, self-organised staff....

See I think that wfh saves a company money (less office space, less power consumption, less wear and tear on furniture) so for companies to now be asking for people to go back to the office there must be reasons such as reduced productivity or other such impacts. Companies follow the money so they must have found an impact on the business somewhere to decide that office is better.

I did 17 hours in one day WFH last week so don’t tell me that I am lazy. I get far more work done at home than in the office because it’s much easier to concentrate at home.

I don't feel like that at all. I WANT to do the school run, assemblies, reading mornings etc at school and I'm sooooo grateful for an amazing employer who are super flexible and allow us to do this as long as we are working the required hours overall and the work is being done. I've only just gone back to work full time after taking 4 years off with my youngest. Ive gone back to the job was doing before kids earning good money. I would never have been able to do that pre covid as I wouldn't want them in before and after school clubs every day. Now the 3 days a week I wfh I drop and pick them up, and they are happy to have a snack and some downtime watching TV playing until I finish. The other 2 days I'm in the office which I love as well. Great balance!

Technology made it possible to work through COVID. If people could work at home then I don't see why hybrid isn't an option now.

I've been boycotting Boots for years, since discovering that the CEO was using a tax haven and not paying UK tax. I don't know if its the same guy, but it sounds like the same sort of guy.

@CrashyTime - yes, I suspect this is what’s going on. Unfortunately, unlike other posters I am not confident that the current plentiful supply of more flexible roles will continue if this trend continues.

@Ncncncworkywork - er, yes, that’s what I said I’d do and I would. Not sure why you’ve repeated it back to me. Everyone is replaceable ultimately, but many employees have been able to negotiate hybrid or full-time wfh for many years now. What a shame it can’t continue on a greater scale given that most people do not take the piss.

Not sure what you mean by the few irreplaceable employees not being in the office. Do you see office workers as drones who temporarily got ideas above their station or something?