Anyone else in a bizarre 'hybrid' arrangement?

[Corporatepreggolady]

Just posting to see how typical my situation is.

I've been in my current company for eight months or so. When I started, I knew it was 3 days in the office, two days from home. All fine.

I started and there were three other people in my department that I sat with. Nobody in my direct team is in the office with me, they're around the world or WFH.

As time has gone on, these other people have left (and their roles not rehired) or been make redundant. So now I go into the office three days a week (it's tracked centrally) to sit on my own, doing Teams calls with other locations.

Is this the norm in big companies?! It's bizarre. I genuinely enjoy going into the office and meeting other people, but if I don't have a team there, why mandate it?

I may make a flexible working request to work two days in the office instead of three. At £30 a day travel costs, I'm happy to come in, but if I don't need to come in, it would make sense to save some money.

It seems ridiculous to go to the office to sit on your own doing exactly the same as you would do at home.

My other half had this, works for a big bank. His team is in Manchester and we live in the South so he was told he could work in his nearest high street branch. There was no space for him and no facilities so he went to the head office in London same there never a desk with the set up he needs ( neuro diverse) it was making him ill. Spoke to HR and he is now able to WFH permanently.

Have you addressed it with anyone?

I do 2-3 days in the office and the others at home (3 days is expected) but none of my clients are local and I don't have any immediate team members based there either so whilst there's people around me, there's no one I'm actually working with. It gets me down a bit sometimes when everyone spends all day on Teams calls or sits with their headphones in so you can't even pass the time of day with them. But I prefer it to being stuck at home all day every day and my commute costs £2 each way or I can walk.

I was doing this. Going in to the office, and spending the day on Teams. Not speaking to anyone in real life. Completely pointless.

I left.

@Corporatepreggolady i had a similar situation. It was absurd. I made it clear how I felt and now woke from home more.

Are there others in other days OP? If not it seems a huge waste of money to me for the business too. Decent offices aren't cheap - even a small 4 person office can be £1000 a month.

It would be cheaper to either let you work from home or give you a £300 allowance a month to work from a co working centre where you have other people around you to at least have some social niceties, (I do this) -

Technically, my job is exactly like that. In practice, the two days in the office aren’t monitored or enforced, and nobody does them unless they want to. There are many who only go in once every couple of months. I usually go once a week- I quite like the change of scene and seeing some different faces, but if it’s more convenient for me to be at home I do that.

Do you actually have to formally request a change? Would anyone notice or care if you just did it?

I have this as a civil servant, I just sit on my own on calls all day, it’s daft.

Ditto. Have to be in the office 60% of the time due to CS guidelines but the team I work in are spread around the country. The nearest colleague is 2hrs drive away.

Thankfully my role also involves going out and about to see my accounts on site so it doesn’t all have to be physically in the office for the 60%.

Similar. We have mandated set days but you can choose your days so inevitably we all sit at desks on teams with headphones in.

but we do get tracked and pulled up on it so into the office we go

Same here!
I was able to negociate with HR to only go to the office 2d instead of the company-wide 3d.
I often only go one day to be honest but I would say coming weekly to the office is valuable for visibility/networking purposes.
I’m lucky that the team sitting next to me is nice enough to include me in their coffee runs, secret santa & other team events otherwise it would be pretty lonely.

Thanks very much everyone for your responses, I really appreciate the perspectives.

Perhaps I will raise it with my manager. In response to a PP, essentially everyone is tracked so an automated dashboard thingy would flag to my manager (and their manager!) that I was a problem case if I wasn't coming in three days a week. Dystopian!

So I think I will request that this is assessed for my circumstances. I'm thinking I'll do this as a formal flexible working request, so they're forced to think through the business justification for declining (if they do).

I don't know that they definitely would decline, but I think it's a blanket three days for everyone and there's feeling that senior leaders like us to be in the office. So I could see my manager telling me it has to be three days because it's easier than kicking up a fuss, if you see what I mean.

Yes fairly typical I'd say. I have to go into the office 2 days a week so I spend £90 a week on fares and 2.5 hours a day commuting to do the same as if I was WFH. But hey, as long as Pret a Manger doesn't go bust.

Actually I don't mind going onto the office. Once I'm there. But the cost of train fares is eye watering.

I was in a similar situation - and my entire team (and upper team structure) is on the West coast of the US so I would sit in the office alone all day, no calls etc. Then would have to go on calls around the time I'd like to commute home. I'd end up getting home so late.

I put in a request to work from home full time and it was eventually approved. They rarely approve WFH requests so I was very relieved.

Similar here. Though we are getting told that everything can be offshored if we continue to argue that there’s no need to be in the office.

We were totally from home all through Covid (so basically from early 2020 to mid 2022) then told we had to be back 50%. Now we’re being told that 50% is not enough. The business is struggling a bit but rather than address the real issues they are saying “we’re better together” 🫠

After 4 years of working effectively from home, I find it totally pointless, distrustful, and a huuuuuge step backwards. People will start working to rule if you take away their flexibility which will have the opposite impact on business results to those desired.

That is bizarre. I am in a hybrid work situation, but I rarely go in. I used to go in very often, but the person I work with left and their role has been replaced with someone working in another country, so we just zoom. If I go into the office there is no one I work with or even that really understands my work. So any social talk is about kids and social lives. So there is zero benefit in going in. I literally go in sometimes when I need to access the filing cabinet with old files or the photocopier.

The plot thickens. Now, my manager (who works in a totally different location) has pulled us all into a meeting and read us the riot a act regarding being in the office for FULL DAYS only, e.g., not leaving at lunch and working from home for the rest of the day. Which is what I was sometimes doing because then you're home for 5pm versus 6pm without taking time out of the working day - because, and I can't stress this enough, there is literally nobody here that I work with.

As a separate but related issue, I don't have a great relationship with my manager. Nobody in the team does, she's known as a bully. So I'm feeling a bit stuck. It's really depressing working on your own in an office instead of WFH.

I think the full day and leaving at 5pm vs lunchtime is a redherring tbh, it’s more about going into an office just to sit on Teams calls with people not in the office that is the issue.

Just make sure that is brought up and discussed during this meeting, what’s the point of being in an office if you’re on your own?

My with is hybrid set up but it’s really flexible, I wouldn’t have to go in if nobody else was there and it’s not tracked officially. Some weeks I might need to go in loads, others I’ll 100% wfh, I’d hate the situation you’re describing OP how ridiculous.

It is like this across much of the civil service. With the levelling up agenda they have tried extensively the last couple of years to recruit outside of London. Most departments have multiple locations to recruit to, it's not at all uncommon to be in a building where you have no direct colleagues, but the Telegraph, sorry I mean Tory, mandate means we have to be in 3 days a week for water cooler moments and to "share ideas", whilst we all aggressively stare at each other for talking too loudly on Teams with the colleagues we actually need to communicate with.

I think everyone is still feeling their way on the whole work from home thing.

It clearly makes little sense for someone to go into the office if they are not actually having any interactions with people in the office.

However, I think full WFH has its own problems, particularly in the longer term. It's relatively easy for an established team to work from home, but it's much harder to integrate a new member of staff. I guess that if you have a new starter, at least if everyone is in 3 days a week, you can ensure they meet everyone, and can get started with someone at the desk next to them to help them find their way round the systems. If you've changed everyone's contracts to WFH, it may be difficult to pull them in for a month or so when there's someone new on the team. You could have a clause that says "3 days in the office when required", but there probably needs to be something clearly stating how to decide when it is required - and that could end up at the whim of an individual. For some, "when required" might work fine, but it's harder if your childcare requirements are different for WFH and commuting.

I worked from home before covid. In one job, we all work from home, and it does work pretty well. In another, I was the only person working from home, and it was okay to start with, but as the team changed and evolved I began to feel I wasn't really part of things, and my part of the project was being sidelined.

Interesting, thanks everyone. It sounds exactly like the civil service model - interesting to know. It's very weird. I wonder how the business world will grapple with this in the years to come. Surely anyone can see that three days in office where you work with nobody is arbitrary and pointless.

Agree re: full WFH, I did that too for a while and I didn't like it. Two days would be my ideal, but as you say, flexibility to go up and down depending on what's happening at work (or life) that week.

I feel like this all sounds sensible and non- controversial, but workplaces have set these blanket policies that managers are scared to deviate from.

To add - I guess from the business' perspective, it is all about these "watercooler moments" (🤢) and extra curricular things. I feel like I'm a good citizen and get involved with this site stuff - I've joined the women's group, I do workplace volunteering. But I don't need three days of it!

I wouldn't go in if I had no team to sit with, although I like going into the office so would hope to takk to other people. But if I was just on my own all day, then I'd rather just stay home!

It's bonkers. My large company tried 2 days a week which most people ignore if their team works remotely (like mine), now heard from the union they are going to mandate at least 3 days a week "away from home".
We have regular "pulse" surveys and they've told us to use this to give feedback.
My team are in London, Birmingham and India and I'm in the NW

This is poor management and you are paying the price. Look for another job and be happier in your life. I am office based but work 100% from home unless there are any workshops or team meetings then I go in. Works for me, works for everyone else.