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

Why? What logic is there? Apart from, more expensive, more time, more burnout? So why?

I think there is a lot of resntment because being in an active, full on frontline job and having half an hour lunch break to make calls which aren't answered is frustrating. Of course the length of time could be the same in an office but there are so many cases people wfh have abused the position, even on MN some saying they are looking after their children, offline to run errands, when they should be at their desks. Of course most don't and it's the few who do give wfh a bad reputation. Xx

I think the day may come eventually when jobs like teachers, police, supermarket workers will get much better wages. Because they can’t work from home.

Otherwise there’ll be none of them left!

I hear you @SqueakyDinosaur 3 of our team have very specific work place equipment for medical issues etc and hot desks make that a nightmare- we have storage space but it’s tiny and no hope what so ever of having team tea/coffee or cups left safely in the kitchen!

And when you're hot desking it's a pain in the arse having to dismantle your home set up and take everything in and out with you for the days in the office every week then set it all back up again at home, my stuff doesn't even fit in one bag. Luckily both my office days are together. I'd never work in a job that's more than two days a week in the office, they feel so much longer than a day at home and I'm not someone who messes about at home, I'm only away from desk at my tea break and lunch.

I completely understand if the office is based in another part of the country. Sorry, I was just assuming they were local. My DH wfh and his main office is in another country. I have friends whose offices are literally 10 minutes away and yet they are unwilling to go in you see. Xx

Fair enough, I could have worded the OP better. Point taken.

Before covid I was in an office full-time. When covid hit we were told to work from home exclusively until 2022. I had a role that during covid got busier so the hours and days I worked were crazy, I worked 46 weekends out of 52 in addition to my Monday to Friday without a break. I could do this because I was working from home.

We are now supposed to do mandatory two days a week in the office, only it's hot desking and they moved to a new premises after covid which has 1/3 of the desks we previously had. Staffing numbers have gone up across the portfolio so it's physically impossible to get a desk and I've found myself sitting at a table in the kitchen area trying to work on several occasions. Add to that the new office has 3 meeting rooms with a maximum capacity of 10 per room, previously we had in the region of 20 including ones that could be merged for large capacity so I spend my entire day on teams calls having meetings or being unable to concentrate because all I can hear around me is people on teams calls.

My commute daily is 2 hours and the fare for my bus has gone from £8.20 return in 2020 to £13.90. The team members I have are fairly spread out geographically due to joining during covid and being told then that the expectation would be 1 day per month in an office eventually.

So no I don't want to go into an office to work where I can't get a desk, I still have to do teams calls either due to lack of meeting spaces or because my team are in other locations, I don't want to spend 2 hours a day on public transport instead of with my family (I'd also have increased costs as I'd need to extend my wrap around care) and I don't want to pay the rip off public transport prices when the timetable has reduced massively since covid and is utterly unreliable. And yes I'm civil service.

Add to that my workload has doubled but I've lost staff to the private sector which is much better paid for our niche role and with a recruitment freeze on-going for over 18 months, my wages haven't increased (aside from working my arse off to get promoted) much at all over the last decade but my mortgage doubled last year when my fixed term came to an end along with the increased cost of everything, working from home is the only thing stopping me also leaving for the private sector.

So where is the incentive to go into the office? I don't blame anyone for pushing back against this and fully support them.

Well yes. I completely understand the commuting point. I only ever had a 20-30 minute commute so have no idea what it is lime to have a couple of hours commute.

If only, these jobs deserve much higher pay! Surely everyone realised during covid how vital they are and if no one did them we would all be buggered! I really hoped this would this would show the world, especially at the beginning of the pandemic when we were all terrified yet we had to go to work, wear masks, deliver shopping to vulnerable parents afterwards, take our clothes off coming back home and have a shower, it was beyond stressful! X

It's a fucking pain in the arse. Along with teabags, milk etc. Twice a week.

Lol 😆 I take a flask! Xx

Hate the hot desking that we have now but the office itself has been done out very well. I don't live far so it's not exactly a commute. It does help being in the office when working on certain things though.

So change jobs then. Horses for courses.

I am now retired and when I last worked it was a hybrid set up. I would hate to have started my job and worked totally from home. I and all other team members learnt so much talking and overhearing others conversations.
I guess it depends on the job role but sometimes it’s not the big things you would phone about but just little things you overhear or discuss over making coffee and having lunch.
Also how does it affect people living and working alone or without a proper home?
A couple of weeks ago I had to wait for at least 5 minutes whilst the lady from my insurance company chased her delivery driver down the road, professional? I think not.

Easier said than done when you're experienced in a certain area but I am trying! Xx

Whenever the daily mail etc vent their spleen on WFH in the public sector, they always have pics of well-heeled Whitehall-ers when the reality is that those most affected by the 60% policy are caseworkers on the lowest grades and earning buttons. This clueless government has trashed public transport and created a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis - and expects the lowest earners to pick up the tab for its half-arsed policies.

Yes I get this, if it's not necessary and a case of employers doing it for the sake of it. However, everyone else who doesn't have the choice and has to commute daily has to arrange wraparound childcare etc, so if it's a genuine case of going to the office then surely that's just it, going to work? Most are hybrid so a couple of days a week means the majority of days are still wfh and can still have the extra benefits of flexibility? Xx

Childcare was one of the reasons mentioned in the article which I think is a fair one, if you suddenly have to spend more on childcare then your earnings decrease. I know a couple of people who took remote jobs in the last couple of years and got rid of their cars, then recently have been forced into offices 2+ hour drives away a couple of times a week. They wouldn’t have applied (or probably been accepted) for these jobs if that was the working pattern from the start. So they’re now losing money and family time as a result

You are retired and have never had a longer commute, yet felt you should post to say you had not much sympathy for people who are currently working and may have a long commute. What a mean spirited, nasty post.

I think people forget that the employer is paying them to do what they are asked to do. You might prefer working from home but if the employer wants you back in the office then you go back or leave. It's that simple.

I mean you only need to look at stuff like this article to understand why WFH affects people's lives. My friend who works for the civil service is resigning because she has been told she has to be in the office 3 days pw but lives 90 mins from the closest one and has a DC in nursery who she has to do all pick ups and drop offs, and age can't get the childcare hours she needs to physically get into work and back: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/working-from-home-keeps-mothers-in-employment-study-finds-9wgmgh237

These sorts of threads are always from people who are jealous that they don’t or didn’t get the opportunity to work from home.

Or they’re from people that want to go in the office to socialise as a pp said. We all know people like that and we avoid them like the plague before they bore us with their life goings on.

The rest of us want to work from home because we can do our job just as well, often better, and it makes our personal lives better too.

Companies are recognising that to attract and retain good employees, working from home has to be an option where possible. 80% of my friends are now working from home, going in only a couple of times a year, some moved company when they tried to bring in a 2 day in the office rule, other employers had to back down because too many employees said they would leave.

@usernother yes except that's not quite true is it? If your employer asks you to work 100 hour weeks or move overnight to Timbuktu you wouldn't just do it would you? Which proves reasonableness of the request matters. IMO it's not unreasonable to tell staff that you plan over time to move back to two days per week in the office with flexibility for those who can't do so for some time. It is unreasonable to expect people to suddenly do it when they logistically can't.

No, it’s not simple. If enough people refuse, it’s likely they’ll back down, as I posted above. My partner works for a global company who put out the feelers for returning to the office once a week and didn’t get a positive response. He now has wfh in his contract as do all the staff that requested it.

If not, there’s plenty of other jobs which provide home working. The best people are in demand and can often set their terms.