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.

I guess that's sour grapes talking.

My organisation, never known as progressive, introduced an agile working policy. They are now reviewing our physical offices, talking of closing some, or moving to more suitable ones, but with the aim of reducing stock. My role is one that works very well in a FT wfh capacity, with meetings on-site where necessary. We will be moving to hotdesking, with only those who are in the office 60%+ of their time will have allocated spaces.

I do not miss the commute one bit! Saves so much time and stress in my day not having to do it.

My team are scattered across various locations so it's not as if we would ever have all been in the office together, and it's just so easy to pop onto a Teams call. There's probably more collaboration than when we were all in the office, and only saw each other at our (irregular!) team meetings! Much better for confidentiality and concentrating on reports etc not in a noisy and over-occupied open plan office!

Just a reminder to all that Flexible Working requests change from April 1st!

I find it is the progressive companies that still allow wfh and hybrid. My DH is on minimum wage but they allow wfh apart from some work that needs to be done face to face. They are pretty forward thinking in employee practices and service delievery.
It is the old fashioned places that want everyone back.

Boots have 3 set days in the office currently, and changing it to 3 set days from choose your own led to people leaving to work somewhere more flexible and people are turning down job offers because it is 3 set days.

5 days full time in the office will definitely mean people leave and will definitely make it harder to recruit.

Although I like the current hybrid I can cope with being back full time because I live close by and worked for years full time in the office before COVID. The ones recruited in the last couple of years on hybrid contracts have definitely been shafted!

And in my DH's work one employee in his team works in the office full time. But it is his choice.

This happened to a friend of mine. Her entire team found new hybrid jobs and handed their notices in, one after the other. Her new job even pays £10k more.

Last she heard, they were still struggling to recruit replacements months later because no one with the experience they need is willing to work full time in an office again.

This sums up my take, too.
WFH is a perk, not a right.
I'd like a Company Car, unlimited expenses and a PA- I feel it would massively help me in my work life balance.
I won't get it, but others do. 🤷🏻‍♀️

WFH is a perk, not a right

I'm interested why you think it's a perk. There are very real benefits for employers as well.

@baileybrosbuildingandloan Fine, people with choices i.e. good staff will leave and get jobs elsewhere.

Or you could arrange with your employer to work around the school run? That's what I did. I started work after dropping DS off at school. DH did pick ups in the afternoon.

My employer is flexible though, and I can work my hours largely as I choose along as I turn up for meetings when required.

As indeed many people are, when you see all the posts about how it benefits parents with kids so that if the kids are sick, etc, they can stay home to look after them! It's a shame for the people who do WFH who don't do that, but those who 'cheat' are spoiling it for everyone else

As a customer I’m peed off with the whole working from home thing. I can’t get hold of our lawyer, accountant or banker at school run time ever. Drives me nuts. Professionals I need to speak to are never available on a Friday afternoon

"Nobody" worked on Fridays way before covid. DH and I used to joke that we were the only idiots who worked. Trains were (and are) considerably emptier on a Friday.

As for not being able to get hold of people at school run time, why do you have to phone people at 2.45 when you have the whole day to call them? But also, it's just not true - there are loads of us who (gasp) don't have school aged children.

People did work remotely & hybrid before covid which seems to get forgotten in these debates. It will be interesting what it does to headcount at Boots, plenty of workplaces are hybrid.

I don't think hybrid working has been amazing for customers and service users. Workers claim that they're more productive but my interactions with private companies and the public sector have become worse and more frustrating since covid. It's much harder to get problems sorted.

Our local primary school has lots of Dad's doing the pick up and drop off.

Full time in the office would definitely put me off. Even in pre covid times we were allowed to WFH 1 day a week.

I love Hybrid working and the company definitely benefits from it as I'm online from 8 when I would normally be commuting.

Also a reminder to vote with your feet.

There are huge recruitment issues now in lots of industries if there are no flexible working opportunities.

@Overtheatlantic I think the poster was referring to her commuting time, not her work time.

That's the biggest perk of WFH imo.

I’ve worked mostly from home for 10ish years. Makes me laugh when people talk about WFH as if it didn’t exist until covid.
Also when people talk about productivity dropping, I just think if you’re a slacker you’ll be a slacker in the office or at home. If you’re getting your job done to a good standard, then there shouldn’t be an issue, if you’re not then start performance management. No need to drag everyone back in so you don’t have empty chairs.
My workplace made murmurs of a full time return and given most of us were hired on remote/hybrid contracts, I think the consensus was ‘give us 3 months notice so we can look around’. I’ve rejected job offers that don’t offer enough home working not just because I don’t want to commute, but it also says a lot to the attitude of the employer if they want to mandate full time office attendance to do a job you can easily do from home. Went for an interview where everyone was on teams calls at their desks (including in the kitchen becuase they’d run out of space) how an employer can’t see this is ridiculous is strange.
I don’t think it’s a sexism issue though.

Would we? I'm a man and don't use childcare - I balance my care of DC with work, as a lot of working men do. It's not 1920 anymore.

There are quite a lot of other things that have happened since covid that have had an impact on customer service, though.

There are fewer people working, more off sick, organisations find it harder to recruit and inflation means lots of them can't buy the quality of staff they used to at the price they did in 2019. Yet people think they can isolate just one of these factors as an explanation.

I agree with this. I do not believe the majority of people who wfh are doing nearly as much work as they should.
And nobody should be looking after young children whilst working. It's not productive or fair on the child

Perhaps if transport costs weren't so high going back to the office would be affordable

and childcare costs have risen again I'm paying £15 for an entire session after school so I can attend an appointment (at another school) instead of being able to pay £6 for a part session because they no longer do half session after school you used to be able to pay the six pounds and collect at four but they raised it to you must pay until five thirty no matter how much or how little time you use it all adds up

My workplace will never implement full time in the office. For a start there are 7000 employees and the office only has capacity for about 700. We WFH 3 to 4 days a week.

Oh and I'm not looking after kids or doing school runs as I don't have young children. In fact only two out of 7 of the women in my team have young children.

If it was working for them and saving money they would continue with hybrid

im sure there will be an avalanche of people telling my how much more productive they are
but at my work WF.H was a piss takers dream and as soon as they tried to deal there was endless bulling accusations and grievances we’ve now gone office based and the only exception is disabilities