To think people who work from home don’t get it?

[Wfhwhat]

It’s not just the reduced stress as no travel, but it’s also the reduced sick days as it’s easier to wfh than go in if unwell. It’s being able to have a contractor at your home instead of booking a day off. It’s cheaper. You have more time with family.

I work in the nhs so there is literally no scope for me to work from home. I do love my job but had I known office jobs would turn in to work from home, I wouldn’t have gone into the nhs. I know I could change if I wanted to… but it’s not exactly realistic. I’m 48, two kids, trained in what I do.

just having a moan really after seeing so many wfh photos on Instagram out in the garden today.

Long before COVID i had a job that was 100% WFH and it made me depressed. I'd find myself considering grabbing a beer from the fridge at 2pm, etc.

COVID coincided with becoming a parent and WFH was fantastic in terms of time spent with my son.

I now do hybrid working (5 days a fortnight) and it seems to work fairly well. To be honest I'm less productive now because I'm not willing to come home, boot up the laptop and start implementing changes, whereas WFH I was working silly hours.

I can't work from home anyway, so when covid came I sat and did nothing for 3 months but could not wait to get back to work in the office. I would never ever want to work from home.

I like the commute, I like the social. I think people need it.

For some it can make them lazy and also anti social. I have seen it.

There’s probably a hybrid sweet spot of 3/2 office/ home. I work in school so it’s not an option but I love the contact with children and colleagues and would get down if I wfh full time. My two DDs, 23 and 21 do hybrid. Eldest does 3/2 and youngest 4/1 . They say they couldn’t cope going in to work 5 days a week!!😂 I do worry about the future workforce.

I do both (in to the office some days and wfh on others) and prefer going to the office. There's something to be said for getting out of the house, smartening yourself up a bit. I walk to work so it adds some exercise to my day. I like my colleagues so the social aspect is important too.
I spent 7 years years being a SAHM and felt rather isolated. I also worked from home for 2 years during Covid. I hated being in the house all the time, only seeing my family and I put on lots of weight!
Also when I work from home I end up wasting time on chores "Oh, I'll just put a load of washing on, I just hang the washing out" etc.
I do like working from home. It's more relaxed. But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose going in to the office.

Oh I agree. Lockdown was awful for me. I begged to be given some physical tasks in the office that would make me 'essential', but no, I was stuck in 'non-essential' and had to stay at home behaving like a depressed person with no reason to live.
Among my colleagues, apart from the most fervent defenders of wfh, most agree that a mix is best and don't want to wfh all the time.

I wfh mostly, but we have a little garden area and tables where my office is, so staff can sit and work out there if they want to enjoy the sunshine.

Also, office is near a big park so if staff are making a long phone call or need thinking time, or to talk at length to a colleague, we can go for a nice walk in the park.

There are definitely wfh jobs in NHS

Of course we got it, it's why we wfh

This is a popular view on MN, but I have to disagree. It's a sweet spot for some people with particular characteristics and preferences. No different in that way to fully remote or fully on site, which also occupy sweet spots for some people. There's so much variation in the best way of working for people and organisations that there's no hard or fast here.

And hybrid can sometimes be the worst of both worlds. A two or three day a week split still means people have to live close enough to the workplace that we don't get the societal benefits that arise when geographical barriers to work are reduced. It means the employer doesn't significantly widen their recruitment pool. Two days a week is enough to still be a problem for a lot of people who struggle to work in person due to health, caring responsibilities, lack of structural support such as childcare and reliable public transport etc. Meanwhile it's still not necessarily sufficient for the people who thrive on being around others, especially if the days don't have to be set. I know it works very well for a lot of people, but so does every type of work pattern.

It seems though from these pages that many try to juggle both or at least are able to go out for the school run or look after a sick older child at home.

Remote work can definitely reduce childcare costs, that's a given. It can also mean being able to work whilst looking after a sick or recovering child, where there wouldn't be childcare but an in person worker would have to stay off, with the corresponding loss to their employer and possibly themselves.

For me, what's more interesting is the way we talk so much more about that than we do about other advantages some employees have over others. OP isn't trying to present herself as reasonable, so I'm not having a dig here, but it's interesting that she's not given any consideration to the way in which she as an NHS nurse will have eg much better pension contributions, sick pay and maternity pay than the average worker. Some of whom will be hybrid or fully remote.

I think it's because we were already used to wild inequality in lots of aspects of work already. Wages, pensions, annual leave. That's essentially accepted. But more flexibility is a new one.

My Employer isn’t bothered who comes into office and who doesn’t.

It is very common to see staff block out time in their calendar from 3 - 3:30 for example stating “school pick up” and that’s the same for the most junior to the most senior staff.

Nobody cares who is doing what so long as the work is done. I wouldn’t work in any other environment.

OP you have the option to get a job within or outside NHS where you can wfh so I don’t really understand your point.

we have a little garden area and tables where my office is, so staff can sit and work out there if they want to enjoy the sunshine.

Now that’s a company that cares about their employees, how lovely. I took my laptop into the garden yesterday and worked there all day. It wouldn’t always work, I wouldn’t attempt it if I was creating diagrams or presentations, but yesterday I had 13 conference calls with about three half hours in between. Anyone who thinks that isn’t working can piss off.

I often go into the garden to have a break away from the screen for 5 minutes.

That was supposed to quote an earlier poster who asked why people were in the garden if it wasn't lunchtime.

The hybrid/flexible model has great advantages, but the big killer is that you still need to be commutable to your office, so you still have to live close enough to your workplace, which is a real barrier for people who live (or want to move to), the regions rather than close enough to one of a handful of major cities. You're almost no better off that full time office working if you're stuck living in or around London when you'd rather be living in the Yorkshire Dales or Northumbria. That aspect continues to limit the options for both employers and employees, especially in places with poor public transport (and I don't mean a hamlet on a hillside, I mean all the smaller cities and towns with poor public transport compared to London and other major cities!).

My son got his first job in a city only 84 miles away from our city (in Northern England), but it's impossible to commute, even for 2/3 days per week. The trains don't start early enough and finish too soon so he couldn't physically do a 9-5 day there. The train journey takes 3 hours with two changes! (That's without the frequent cancellations of Northern Trains and Transpennine Express). In theory, a relatively short distance like that should be perfectly commutable for 2 or 3 days a week, but it's simply impossible by public transport (not to mention expensive as it's £50-£60 per day). That's city centre to city centre, not some sleepy hamlet on a hillside! As a result he has to pay over £1k per month in rent, utilities, and bus fares, to commute from the only flat he could get on the outskirts of the other city, when with good public transport, he could have saved that and commuted. We have a relative who does a similar length rail commute in the SE and that takes half the time and costs less, and trains start much sooner and finish later too!

I do get it, because I do half and half. Full on days in the workplace and then half my days at home. They're both challenging in different ways.

That's why I suggested op looked for a role that could be done hybrid, if it was important to her?

I obviously didn't say all NHS roles can be, that would be ridiculous.

I work from home because it allows people with a disability, like me, to work full time - whereas otherwise i'd be on benefits.

OP if you arent happy, retrain - you are not too old to do so x

Oh we do get It and appreciate it. I spent 23 years in an office and through Covid, so when my role changed to WFH I was delighted.

I do sometimes miss the "office family" I had as we all got on well.
However it is a huge perk to be able to do what your OP states and also be on hand for teens and have a chance to do a few jobs in your lunch break.

The down side to the not calling in sick thing I have found is that even when I was really ill recently it was almost expected I would check emails and answer calls, whereas back in the day sick meant sick and shut off from work.

Also sometimes I do miss the division between work and home.

WFH is amazing for those with kids. I WFH and can go into the office whenever I want or not at all. I have compressed hours, can spend more time with my kids and get paid the same. I’m not paid well for my role but I stay for the perks. I do feel for those in professions that can’t have this flexibility, it is very unfair.

Also, surely, in the same way someone in India could do a job from home just like someone in the UK, surely any UK company could set up cheap offices in India just as easily as hiring someone to WFH there. Idk why WFH poses a specific risk, unless the owner typically works in the same office as all of his employees.

I also work for the NHS. I am hybrid (assessments out and about, report writing from home).
OP, can you not utilise your experience in the NHS to find a WFH/hybrid post?

I've chosen to go self-employed and wfh. I earn substantially less than I did, don't get paid if I'm sick, often work odd hours because I go where the work is and am responsible for my own tax matters. Yes, I have a lot of freedom but I don't have any certainty. You have to decide what's important to you.

I think you’ve already touched on this by saying it’s unfair. You’re jealous, and that’s understandable. There’s probably some people who are jealous of your office based role and find remote working harder to deal with, isolating maybe.

I do both, 3 days in most week and 2 days at home. If I’m honest, I’m not mad keen on working at home. Yeah, I can pop a few loads of washing in, go straight to sorting dinner when I finish work or have a trades person in the house whilst I’m working, but I just don’t really like it. I’m in my depressing home office, not leaving the house until the afternoon.

I spent all of working life up until 2020 working in an office pretty much 5 days a week full time, sometimes with hefty commuting. I appreciate the difference working from home has and can make, but you’re wrong to think that people who work from home don’t get it

I hated working from home for the month I was recovering from an operation but it was that or be off sick on SSP and struggle to pay my bills. I’d much rather work in a nice cool air conditioned office that at home where there’s way too many distractions not to do any work