To not have much sympathy?

[KimberleyClark]

Office of National Statistics staff refusing to go into the office for two days a week. Homeworking is a privilege not a right. They might soon find themselves without a job at all.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqqnz7g4451o

It would have taken you 5 mins on Google to find out the benefits of working from home for the environment and quality of life. Your attempt to rally the troops fell flat.

My son works for the CS initially WFH full time and now he is expected to be in work twice a week, ostensibly for the " team cohesion" reason. Except during the time he has been working from home, they have sold off three quarters of the office space and there isn't room for a " team" all to be in at the same time and certainly not for two days a week, because of the number of teams in his location. So he ends up in the office with one or two members of his team- but hot decking so it's first come, first served- and the rest of his team at home and in on different days!

I agree with you there, I think a company's best bet really is to be a bit flexible.

This made me laugh so much. I could hear Lance and Andy from Detectorists,
"Immature"
"Are you?"

I'd have loved to have worked from home before I retired. All those bad for the environment, expensive commutes, all those pointless trying to stay awake meetings, all the colleagues wasting your time telling you what they watched on telly last night.....jeez, to have avoided that would have been great.

Home working seems a step forward to me. Surely it's only Rees Mogg and his ilk who want people to go to offices and that's because all their friends have invested in business property and want their pound of flesh in rent.

And it’s not my responsibility to be someone else’s social life!

I’m not saying people without kids have empty lives. Some of the people I’m talking about who are keen to be in the office have live in nannies, older teenagers or a grandma that look after their kids meaning they don’t have to rush and want to ‘connect with adults’. Some are child free and looking for friends. Not my problem. If people want to connect with adults and make friends, get a hobby. Trying to make others get in the office because you don’t like working from home, under the pretence of it being necessary for team cohesion is bullshit. I get on great with my team wfh but I don’t prop up their social life.

If there's any job that can be WFH, surely it's the office of national statistics???

Why would they want their workers to hate their job though? Every business knows a happy workforce is key. I can't imagine the benefits of being in outweigh the travel costs and risk of sickness, child and pet care costs and work-life balance or they'd be doing it happily. I have no idea why so many offices keep insisting on people making their lives miserable to earn a relatively basic wage.

When I worked - so many years ago! - most people were in the office. I used to change employer every three or so years, as I'd get bored and want new pastures/challenges.

It's interesting what being said about team cohesion. In the offices I worked in, sometimes one was positioned physically with people at the ssame level, so one team spread out over a number of offices (usually same building); sometimes a team was together - some people were jealous of those who had their own office but those guys were the top of the team).

Hot desking (never done it) sounds absolutely ghastly and not really appropriate unless you're a consultant coming in to do one job which will only take a day. I think any project which would take a person, be they secretary, typist, consultant in architecture or whatever, more time than that, will need theeir own space in which to work.

I can't say I noticed much difference in the team cohesion however they were physically organised, and I do know that the happier people are in their work, the more productive they are, and that includes all sorts of things like travel, finance, atmosphere, surroundings, people, tools and so on. So wfh seems like a good idea from that pov if that's what people prefer.

There's also the fact that if an organisation needs less office space due to staff wfh, then they'll save something in rent and utilities. The vacated buildings could be office space for another organisation or be repurposed into housing.

One place I worked in central London, the break room would have made a FANTASIC bedsit! There are many buildings in London which were originally people's homes and could be made so again.

You must see though that you got people’s backs up with a really mean spirited post?

It doesn’t impact you at all, and yet you declared little sympathy and “Homeworking is a privilege not a right. They might soon find themselves without a job at all.” Which sounds quite gleeful about people losing their jobs.

You could have posted, “surely the ONS have a point? Doesn’t it make team cohesion difficult?” Not sounded like you were rubbing your hands with glee at ungrateful upstarts getting their P45 comeuppance?

The thing is with a thing like ONS, they don't need to be office based that much. It's really just data crunching in silence with meetings peppered in.
They could have tons of staff that aren't based at their head office, and usually worked from home. Then they tried to change it?
I think 2 days is reasonable if there's a clear business need. But it could well be there isn't particularly in this case. Maybe it should be done by job role, individual rather than blanket enforcement across what is quite a big organisation.

Then those people can go to the office to meet like minded individuals. They don’t have to ruin a good thing for the many people who love working from home and can do it well.

Exactly this. OP exactly what she was doing and then pretended to be a victim by saying she had been abused. How pathetic.

This is absolutely insane, @ghostyslovesheets . I fully sympathise. I used to work in an environment where over time, more and more hotdesking came in, and less and less storage was allocated to people and none at all to teams (e.g. my team developed and delivered a lot of training and needed somewhere to keep materials - nope).

It became almost impossible, in a project-based organisation, to get somewhere that a project team could sit together. By the time I left, the size of locker you were entitled to, even at a fairly senior level, was only just big enough to fit a gym kit into, and as I had to have adaptive stuff (ergonomic keyboard, screen, special chair etc) I was just an incredible nuisance for them and treated as such.

Perhaps that indicates a need for offices to be more flexible in terms of looking at everyone's needs. Some jobs need some people to go into the office and if they do the facilities should be there for them to work effectively. Some people benefit from WFH but it doesn't work for everyone.

What's the problem of going to the office to work? It's still a much easier environment than many other jobs, ie teaching, police, retail, hospitals, restaurants etc. You can have toilet breaks, make a coffee, go out at lunchtime, swap ideas, make friends? Of course it's much more pleasant to wfh with no commute, getting dressed smartly, do household tasks, which these people who are refusing to return have become too comfortable with. I just don't think it's really that hard to go to the office, especially just a couple of days a week. Xx

No what will happen is people will leave, same as in my company told us to come back but we said nah and people stared leaving in their droves

Lots of jobs have the option to work in the office. If they don’t, the person can look for another job with conditions that suit them. The answer isn’t to have a blanket rule of 2 days a week to satisfy some people, often because they’re jealous of others being able to work at home or because they’re lonely working at home.

Everyone has their own things that they have to arrange and pay for to enable office travel though and in a CoL crisis people need to make cuts where they can. If going into the office is a numbers exercise for some board who want to show having office space is necessary and the staff know this, they will begrudge having to fork out for travel etc and productivity will go down.
Why do they need to be in the office?

I'm in two days a week. We're the only department who are in the whole council, the rest are one day and I think that would be better. I get more work done at home. In the office folk talk non stop, it's difficult to take calls and hear when there's so much chatter going on. I don't blame them.

If you can do your job from home, it’s pointless to go in the office.

What’s the problem with people wfh and finding it pleasant? Must they be be placed in a less pleasant environment because other jobs like teaching or police require that? That makes no sense.

Exactly, so much pointless chat and emails with no purpose being sent about. Pleasantries and long lunches when I could just make a sandwich at home and sit at my desk catching up. I think a lot of married men prefer being in the office - young women to look at and chat up and family commitments to get out of being just two things I overheard a group men talking about when making a coffee in the office kitchen...

Another one here who goes in for purposes of presenteeism. On calls or working on documents on my own all day in a room of others doing the same (nobody really talks to one another) for three days a week. I think it’s pointless and at least one more day at home would be appreciated, but it doesn’t put me out enough to make a thing of it.

However, I do worry about the slippery slope mentioned by others. I think I’ll be looking for another type of role if five or even four days a week comes back. It’s miserable going in when you know there’s no benefit; three days of that is my limit!

As I understand it, the ONS gave guarantees that flexible working arrangements would continue post-Covid, and people made life choices (moving further away from the office, investing in a home office, getting a dog) that now make it much more difficult for them to get to the office.

I'm torn on this one. I believe that teams work better if they are face-to-face for at least a good proportion of their time, and that for junior members of staff who need training, mentoring and support, all that works better in the office. But in this case it appears to be entirely politically motivated, and I believe was started by Jacob Rees-Mogg, so he and it can get in the sea.

Sorry but the mug and water bottle issue sounds trivial but agree with the rest if in an open office. Have never thought they are conducive to working, I don't think I would be able to concentrate either. Xx

Lots of civil service roles recruited since 2020 were people further away from offices on the understanding it was predominantly wfh with face to face only as needed. A sudden mandate of 2 or 3 days could mean a commute of hours each way. In the same vein, teams are generally spread out so being in the office just means sitting on teams calls somewhere else.

Buildings were closed so there aren't enough desks. Parking is often limited and public transport isn't great. Add on cost of living crisis and the previously not needed commute costs can be huge- let's not forget civil servants pay isn't great. At least not for the ones affected.

Many, many neurodiverse people have found huge benefits wfh, a student change is massively damaging.

It's utterly pointless and ignorant, ill-informed people and the daily Mail banding around this 'lazy' civil service narrative only serves to make it worse for the civil servants desperately trying to deliver essential services on shitty pay with not enough resources while being criticised from every angle.