Turn down job offer that requires 4 days a week.in office?

[Greenbootgrass]

Hi All

Offered a new role at a different company, salary increase and better pension however....

I currently wfh 2 days a week, new job only allows 1 day a week wfh

Am I mad to say no to this?

Really enjoy my 2 days a week at home, comfy clothes, no commute ( hour each way) and doing errands etc at lunchtime.

I can see why it's appealing. But honestly it just doesn't seem real to me! I probably don't understand all the jobs the wfh people are doing mind you.

I just feel it has created a divide, and we don't need any more of these.
A whole section of society isolated, staring at screens and working in their joggies. I hear all the people that say they are fitting in more exercise, the school run etc. But I'm sure there's an equally large section of people becoming surgically attached to their sofas.

Getting up, dressed and heading out is good for mental health, in a way that not needing to move or get changed out of your jammies surely can't be!

but I do get up and get dressed all be it not my suit work attire. I walk my dogs every morning before I log on. I also walk them at lunchtime. I am not isolated nor divided from my team. in fact I actually see more of my neighbours and my family. before I would be gone at 6am tearing to get onto the motorway before traffic hits and then drive in after 6 and rush to put dinner on. spend weekend catching up on housework sleep etc. now I actually have time to talk to people have a coffee etc. see my sis for a cuppa after work to me that's real and that's what life should be. and before you say oh you can have coffee with yoru colleagues. half my colleagues are in another country and the rest of the time I didn't have time to have coffee as running around meeting to meeting. it is real and its a fact of life for certain industries and we have to accept that

It definitely doesn't work for everyone and actually though I didn't like it at the time, hybrid has been better for me overall than full time WFH was. But, as an introvert with ADHD, full time office work is really hard for me too

I've been WFH since 2018 and not once have I done a day's work in my pyjamas. I shower have breakfast, do my hair and make up and wear smart casual clothes as we have cameras on for meetings.

The work is the same as you would do in an office. Emails, spreadsheets, meetings, calls, documentation etc. except you don't have endless chatter and noise.

Oh and the fact that everyone uses Teams now means less isolation.

Yes I think I would probably like hybrid if I ever changed sectors.

But i still think the OP should consider her pension!

I wonder why remote working vs in person is a divide that's suddenly a problem, but we never heard pre 2020 about the divide between, say, people who were able to live near the best job markets and people who weren't. People whose disability meant they struggled to work in person and people who didn't have to worry about that. More remote working has lessened those divides, so why the double standard? Is it due to not having realised this or not thinking it matters?

I do one day a week in the office, it's lovely. Although I realised how much more I actually do at home the other day.

I couldn't do it if I had to do more as I've taken a job almost 2 hours away (the 1 day makes the commute doable).

I always get dressed and do my makeup up. Occasionally I might sit in my gym kit in the afternoon depending on how hard my lunchtime gym session was but no joggers or pyjamas.

For me the 10% would be swallowed by train fairs. I’m in 3 out of 5 and looking for something I can do max 2 days in office

Nope, I wouldn't take it. Work life balance and all that.

it Sounds like it doesn’t work for then say no.

You say that, but I’m currently waiting to hear back on a role that’s a 21% pay increase and my days in the office would decrease from 2-3 a week to 1 a month.

not all employers demand 100% site attendance. If you work at a desk there’s no reason why you can’t work from home if you’re productive.

I mean - it’s company specific. We work 5 days a week in the office.

If the job advert/description or actual interview outlined the required working arrangements why did you apply for the job?

If none of this was mentioned prior to interview, did you ask the question at interview?

If at no point until job offer were working arrangements mentioned, that's a piss poor recruitment process they have but if WFH was important to you, then you should have made enquiries during the recruitment process.

If you don't want to go to an office, it's quite simple, don't take the job and stay where you are.

JudgeJ · 20/03/2024 15:27

This seems to be what a lot of people post-Covid seem to want, had it not been for Covid working in the office would still be the norm.

I'd say, let's climb back into the tree. After all, that is how it used to be.

Seriously, what a bloody stupid argument 🙄

My DSis worked in HR for a construction firm who “didn’t believe in” WFH for engineers/surveyors and other office staff even post Covid. Construction locally is difficult to hire or retain staff in, turnover is very high, so this was madness. All that happened to this company was that when they advertised roles the first thing that prospective applicants would ask the recruiter was “what’s the position on WFH?” and then quickly, “Thanks but no thanks”. They did pay a bit of an uplift over their competitors, but it still wasn’t enough to attract people or keep the staff they did have. Every single exit interview she did, office/professional staff cited the lack of flexibility on WFH as their main reason for leaving. People value their time too much, and I think there’s a real acknowledgment from most of us post Covid that it’s not all about the money.

There’s plenty of naysayers even on this thread, but I’m afraid Pandora is well and truly out of the box. Any employer with desk based staff who thinks they can maintain pre-2020 policies on WFH is either living in cloud cuckoo land or, like Boots, trying to shed significant staffing costs without incurring the need to pay redundancies.

Sorry my response was supposed to be at ScierraDoll not you

@TheCraicDealer that's really interesting about your sister's former employer, and probably not that unusual.

I work for a large-ish public sector employer, who has offered hybrid ever since COVID, however until we'd got our hybrid policy ironed out and nailed down (which took ages, for some reason) and attached to job adverts, hardly anyone applied for jobs with us. No one wanted an employer who hadn't decided quite what they wanted in hybrid terms. We now state a minimum of 2 days per week in the office, which seems to work for everyone, and people have started applying again.

Pandora is indeed out of the box!!!

@Springtime43 being upfront about what is required should be the norm. Hence my view that legislation that required all such arrangements to be advertised in advance before employment, and not something that can be changed at a whim, much more useful than some vague right to ask for hybrid working.

You're not mad to value WFH.

I made a similar decision before Christmas. Although my four days a week in the office would have been on a shorter commute I value the days at home for ploughing through the work plus achieving a work life balance.

I don't regret it! Employers need to value flexibility more where a role can allow for it.

YANBU - we wouldn't consider jobs that are in the office that much, 2 days a week is the maximum I would do tbh. Maybe try negotiating with them?

I prefer to be in the office 5 days a week

I would personally but it would depend on how much I needed a job at the time I guess.

If you can WFH at least 1 day a week, it means you can WFH any day of the week - so it's more about control than anything else which is what puts me off.