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.

100% agree with this, I worked in store but the SLT wanted the pharmacy and management teams to soley run the stores on so they could furlough all the staff.....fecking joke. Oh but we did get issued fabric face masks and generic boots branded water bottles - however, we were swiftly told the face masks werent protective and not to be worn and not to use the water bottles incase we accidentally mixed them up. Sooooo glad I've Ieft!

Ohhh those face masks. We were given them in D90 too. They were massive and just slipped down constantly no matter what. We had to wear them in the office at all times unless you were sat at your desk.

🤣🤣 ... we eventually got upgraded to the disposal masks and plastic screens that didnt fit the till points properly and had to be 'bodged' to fit with masking tape! ..... living the dream!

Is it though? I’ve worked with some absolute lazy buggers over the years. I get that it’s probably easier to be lazy at home - but harder to be lazy in the office? I don’t think so.

There have always been people who spend more time online shopping or browsing gossip websites than working. Maybe it’s easier to get away with it at home than in the office. But let’s not pretend they don’t do it.

That factory sounds like 2 jobs run by me last year. I suspect a few employers are experiencing this issue of being unable to recruit if they’re insisting on it being an on-site role.

One was also struggling to fill their vacancy because its location was out in the sticks. A good 40 minute drive from the motorway if the traffic was good based on Google Maps. Salary was average too. Unsurprising to me there were no takers.

The recruiter who was handling the other job was at her wits’ end by the time she spoke to me. They’d lost 3 candidates they offered the job to because they took too long with the first and with the other 2 there was no budging on it being a site based job. I’d worked in the building where they’re based for a few weeks when I was temping about 10 years ago. It can be a swine to drive to and from some days. It’s not the sort of job that needs to be done from the office either.

I went to meet with them and it struck me the only reason they were insisting on it being a site based role was the preference of the Chief Executive.
As for the office, the room - sorry, broom cupboard - the person would have been working in probably didn’t help. I’ve worked in some small office spaces but this was another level. They eventually filled this job about 2 months after I’d had an informal interview for it - this was about July last year. However, I saw it being advertised again by October. What are the chances the person who took it quit because of it being fully on-site?

I work in HE where hybrid working is normal and there is an expectation of being on campus 2-3x per week. It works exceptionally well in the main. Academics work notoriously long hours (our contracts are normally "hours commensurate with the job requirements") and the saved commuting time is put to very good use. I get way more done WFH than I do on campus days because on campus lots of people want to talk to me.

I have noticed that WFH simply reflects workplace behaviours. A person who does the bare minimum at home is the same person who swings the lead in the office. Mandating a blanket policy to tackle these poor performers simply alienates everyone else and doesn't solve the original problem. Trusting your employees and having good management is the better solution.

I have noticed that WFH simply reflects workplace behaviours. A person who does the bare minimum at home is the same person who swings the lead in the office. Mandating a blanket policy to tackle these poor performers simply alienates everyone else and doesn't solve the original problem. Trusting your employees and having good management is the better solution.

Couldn't agree more .

WFH gig has been badly abused and exploited by lazy people. If productivity didn’t suffer, employers would have no reason to force people back into the office.

Hardly seems fair to remove it from everyone who has it because of a few who are taking the piss though?

@Alcyoneus so the employer keeps the lazy staff and good staff get a job elsewhere wfh.

Are they not allowed to come into the office then or do you not have a physical office anymore? (genuine question so sorry if it sounds sarcastic).

You've just made my point for me.

You're universalising the experience of people you happen to know, deciding that they're representative of an entire age cohort. Even taking your claim here at it absolute highest and assuming that they're representative of your particular sector, that's one sector only. You cannot and have no business trying to speak for all of them.

Then there's the London centrism. Your young colleagues are by definition people who are able to live in the area of the country with the best job market. That's not the majority of young workers. It's not the majority of any age group. Yet the ones who live elsewhere go completely unnoticed in your post. People who live outside the south east do actually count as well. And the fact is that remote working opens up opportunities for people who don't live close to the best job markets.

It's evident that what you actually mean here is young people working in a particular sector in London. So say that. Don't extrapolate what you've seen of a minority of that age cohort towards all of them.

If you actually read my post I said the opposite of pretending that people are not also lazy when at work. I work with a lazy arsehole who does bugger all in the office.
I said that it is much easier not to get caught out when at home and I stand by this.

Yep and people seem not to want to acknowledge this.

Good on him.

WFH has been dreadful for my husband’s mental health. If you are doing your job properly you will be doing 9-5 at your desk with a lunch and tea break or whatever hours/ breaks are on your contract. There is zero point to wfh because you shouldn’t be doing childcare, exercise, housework or anything else. It’s incredibly dull and lonely.

As a consumer and user of services I absolutely do not want to be speaking to anybody or for my data to be - in private homes. I know I’m not alone in this. We were working outside of the home perfectly well before Covid and it’s ridiculous lazy staff are still trying to cling on to it now several years later.

WFH existed before Covid. It's existed for a long time.

Just because your husband struggles with it doesn't mean everyone else does.

I think there should be more transparency re which companies have customer data, call centres in private homes and which over use WFH. I’d happily avoid them.

It is widely acknowledged that wfh is not good for mental health. Human beings are social creatures - surely the pandemic taught us this?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/02/working-from-home-mental-health-society

Boots managed to operate successfully before the invention of the Internet. Should they go completely offline?

But that’s the reasoning behind it. Or it’s to help the economy in eg the city of London. Workers are being encouraged to return so office space doesn’t lie dormant and so Pret keeps making a profit. I don’t even care about smaller businesses, they’ve made more than enough money over the years and times and what people want change. I’d far rather help my local high street by wfh/hybrid.

I get it, shops have closed down generally which is a huge and bigger issue. Where I generally work which is Victoria the big House of Fraser department store closed down and there’s loads of buildings, not sure if they were shops but now being turned into apartments and surprise surprise they’re not being snapped up! Probably because there’s nothing there! Greedy landlords in my area don’t help either.

Many senior high level jobs are not 9 to 5. They never were and never will be. It’s nothing to do with doing your job properly. WFH doesn’t work for everyone but don’t spoil it for those that it does work for. I have a senior roll for a global company. Sometimes I have very early calls, sometimes I have late calls depending on which country I am speaking to. I don’t need to be sat in the office in central London waiting for those calls in the evening or getting up at stupid o clock to get into the office. I plan my day around them and if I want to put some washing on, do an exercise video, go to the corner shop, pick up my kids from school that’s my business as long as I get the job done. And I do get the job done. I won two awards last year.

It’s fine for my mental health thanks. I think as long as you acknowledge that if you wfh you may get more insular etc and work on that then all well and good. It’s improved mine and other friends mental health ten fold.

Doesn’t necessarily work for the consumer though, you getting the work done when it suits you.

So not interested in the senior high level stealth bragging.🙄 My husband has a senior job and has to deal with staff in other countries. Most of the staff he deals with senior and lower need to be working within the same 9-5 hours to co-ordinate the most productively, do the job effectively and provide a good service.

And re working on not being insular, staff of companies or services should be doing that in their own time and not during the working day.

An article by a non-specialist Observer columnist where the majority of the citations relate to selective and in one case genuinely ancient data is not 'widely acknowledged'.

Despite it being written in July 2023, she uses this article from June 2020 for two of the claims she makes,

https://www.nuffieldhealth.com/article/working-from-home-taking-its-toll-on-the-mental-health-relationships-of-the-nation

Hmm, wonder if there might've been anything else happening in June 2020 that was bad for people's mental health that we'd need to control for?

Mind you, June 2020 starts to look positively relevant next to the study from 2003 that she for some reason felt moved to cite. Not a typo, she/whoever asked for this slant actually was either daft or disingenuous enough to go decades back. Now there are some fields where evidence from 2003 is clearly still relevant and legitimate to cite uncaveated, but one about the psychological impact of new technologies on workers, at a time when a lot of people had never even been on the internet, is not one of them. They even call it 'teleworking', how's that for quaint?

Generalisations about this topic are never, ever a good idea. There's too much diversity in jobs, sectors, living conditions and indeed humans. Remote working is appalling for some people's mental health. For others it's saved it. And everything inbetween.

You are being deliberately obtuse, but hey, knock yourself out with a non-arguement