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.

Right but then what about the men that work alongside me that will have to be in the office 5 days a week too.

How can they take that additional responsibility either? It won’t be an option for them with this.

and equality is at the heart of it - let’s be honest here - I’ve never seen a man do a job share, or put a flexible working request in yet. (Fully aware this is a national problem though and not really just a Boots problem)

I disagree with you bringing equality into this. In fact it irks me, because your argument suggests that you think all caring and child responsibilities fall to women. I would be more supportive of a thread about men taking more responsibility at home.

Be irked all you like, whilst we all know it shouldn't be the reality, it doesn't change the fact it is for the vast majority of family set ups. Pretending flexibility isn't more beneficial to women doesn't suddenly make men step up and do more or change the reality, it just makes women suffer more. We need to take action to improve equality, but until that time, anything that helps women remain in the work place is a good thing, and there have been various studies and commentaries post Covid that has shown how beneficial it has been to women particularly.

it doesn't change the fact it is for the vast majority of family set ups yes, isn't it something like 70% if childcare and chores are done by women/mothers?

It's not wrong to say that we need a better balance of caring labour between the sexes. Meanwhile, we don't have it, and remote working is a useful tool for many women to function in a sexist society.

What I was trying to say but this is much more succinct!!

👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

would love to know who the other employers are, I’ll add them to my list to look at for vacancies 😂

If companies want to send everyone back into offices full time they'll need to stump up realistic salary increases to cover the costs of travel.
They will also need to manage their expectations. At the moment wfh means back to back meetings, late/ early hours and flexible lunch breaks. There is no way this can be replicated in the office- pre pandemic across many sectors 2 big meetings a day were the exception due to travel times, a lot of time was wasted on lunch, presentations were often clunky and let down by shit projectors etc and there was a systemic macho culture where leaving on time for school pick ups was frowned on and only the loudest and often white male voices were heard in meetings, whereas online in teams everyone gets an equal chance- even if they contribute in chat.

Also excludes many disabled people.

Article in the Daily Mail today about the railways losing 3BN due to WFH. A lot of companies bleat about the environment but shit themselves when it means they’ll have to ACTUALLY adapt, not just for their own profits.

I hope everyone talented leaves Boots so only the presentee dregs are left and it all goes tits up. And they can’t recruit to backfill. It’ll serve them right, dinosaurs.

If companies want to send everyone back into offices full time they'll need to stump up realistic salary increases to cover the costs of travel.

Who reduced salaries?

@OneMoreTime23 they didn't increase them proportionately to cover increased costs... people have accepted this as it's still cheaper to wfh ( clothes, home food) but more than a couple of days hybrid will need serious pay rises.
How many people have worked from home with any allowance from their employer to cover electricity, wifi and heating ?
No wonder there are so many people in this country who have retired early or left work altogether, employers are taking the piss.

You’ve never heard of lunchtime? Or the time spent commuting? A one-hour commute isn’t uncommon - that’s three extra hours a day altogether.

Similarly my office has done the same. I think it's reasonable but not everyone agrees.

I'm pleased that my company broadly still thinks that WFH is fine though. Most of us have school aged kids and it just helps enormously. We're expected to be generally quite flexible with our time due to working across several timezones - but manage our diaries around family commitments for the most part. Interestingly we're quite a 'mature' company in terms of staffing. everyone's either been there for years or joined already highly experienced. There's no 20 somethings that need to be properly managed/supervised BUT I for one was happy to be in the office full time when younger, and probably wouldn't be as good at my job as I am now, if I hadn't had that experience.

Insisting people go back to the office full time, is just really backward. Many will leave. Good for them.

Salaries have never been set to include commuting costs though.

Costs me £100s every month to travel because I choose to live far from where I now work. I don’t expect work to pay more than the job is worth to cover that.

May be they will reconsider if they can not find people to fill those roles.

That's what happened in companies I worked/work for.

Inflation.

But it's about supply and demand really. Some organisations can get people back into offices without paying any more. Others can't. For the latter group, they've got a choice to make, and it's not going to make any difference that they haven't reduced salaries themselves. Some will even have increased them.

@Vistada sorry but parenting should not ever come into it!! you are either working or your are parenting outside working hours. you cannot work while looking after children. this is not fair on the employer because you are only half paying attention to your work!

I swear, I’m not trying to be funny, but I looked at their accounts on Company House. Their clean and clear profit for 2021 was NEGATIVE £111 million. So, over £100m in the red. So all you have to do is earn a dollar more for each of the next nine quarters to accomplish this “luck.” I appreciate they PR-washed it, but… they had nowhere to go but up or bankruptcy. That said, their clear profit for 2022 was only £15m; not so good. There is no way this is a healthy company - a healthy company doesn’t need to close 300 stores. And I think the CEO’s statement is absolute BS; I’m sure all their workers know it. They’re trying to force people into the office out of fear that they’re not wringing every last drop of productivity out of them and that they the financial stats be recovering faster if they did. As they said at the end of that article, most offices that are forcing their workers back are doing it out of some belief in productivity - it DOES NOT mean they’re right, but that seems to be what they believe.

The main inequality I see is that workers in the Boots shops are probably paid less than the office workers and obviously have never had the choice of being able to work from home .

Then pay more for the in person ones.

Interesting people said it's to reduce headcount without redundancies. Because the absolute stupidity of that is that it will be mostly their top performers who leave and they'll be stuck with the others having to pick up... Redundancies instead allow you to get the lower performers or non essential roles out of the business. But creating a shit workplace to reduce costs is insanity.

I agree, but the post isn't about that. It's about every day being compulsory at the office.

If you can't trust your employees not to skive when working from home then you have an employee issue and that needs to be managed on a case by case basis. The same any other competency issues. I WFH permanently and I would never work in a job again that was full time in the office. Luckily the organisation I work for us very forward thinking with flexi and WFH. We have casework based work so I am responsible for my own clients. It would be clear to management if I wasn't doing my work. I am definitely more productive at home and my stats prove this.

I don't get the networking and team building being an issue. I have a good working relationship with both my team and the wider team. Some of these people I have never met face to face.

My DM WFH yet every month she has to go into a city Centre for an area team meeting. As the job covers a wide area she has to allow a 2 hour commute....that is 4 hours that could have been spent working when they would be perfectly capable of having the meetings over Teams. I think this is madness.

At the end of the day it is the efficient hardworking staff that know their worth that will likely quit the companies that treat their staff like this. They will be the ones motivated enough to seek out alternative WFH employment. Leaving the companies that feel they can't trust their staff and therefore treat them like children to limp on with the deadwood that remains. It is just as easy to slack off work in the office as it is WFH. I am sure we have all worked with colleagues like this in offices before.

How do you mean?
The rest of Europe has teleworking just the same as the UK.

Our Boots now shut for an hour after lunchtime due to staff shortages.
Maybe they are not making as much money as before.

Technically the only difference is not having to travel to work as WFH still have to put in the hours.

Maybe they have noticed a reduction in productivity.

Well that is an argument AGAINST working from home, not FOR it!