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.

I work from home and have been in the garden all day as I don't work Thursday and Friday not everyone works full time. It's a choice I made, try not to judge your life against other people's.

I WFH for the NHS. I desperately miss the office some days. I can't ever leave my desk at home but in the office it was no issue at all to take a walk to get a cuppa or talk casually to a colleague. There is definitely an expectation for immediate replies and to be able to answer calls every second of your work day. I found it really tricky to learn my role remotely. I would like to work hybrid but unfortunately no offices available for my department...

Exactly this! Be paid for your expertise not your geography!

Why should someone saving the employer money on office space, electricity, and internet, and being just as productive or more than someone in the office, be paid less? If you think you'd be happier WFH and you are qualified for WFH jobs, apply for a WFH job. If employers find that they are not getting enough applicants for in-person posts, they'll have to offer more to entice people.

I have been thinking exactly the same thing. Why pay someone 40k to work from home in England when you can pay someone a fraction of that to work from home in India.

My job 10 years ago was in a small charity. I left that job, in part, because they were putting hot desking and hybrid model in because they couldn’t afford the office anymore. At that point, in my mid-twenties, I didn’t want to WFH. I was in a small flat in a rubbish area. I didn’t have a space to work. So I left and found a job with large offices and required on site work too.

By the time covid happened, I had a house and a space to WFH and so WFH was more appealing. I left that job because I wanted more flexibility, among other things. With both jobs, the way they were didn’t suit me in the stage of life I was in but would have done at a different point. There were other factors involved in both decisions to move but when looking for a next job I knew what I was looking for.

WFH works for some people and not others. Even within the same roles, there are organisation who prefer in person and those who prefer more hybrid approaches so in the future it’ll naturally sort itself that people who want to be hybrid look for hybrid roles and people who want to be in will look for site based roles. There will always be jobs that more of a calling, nurses, doctors, pilots, teachers, police, travel reps, and they won’t be hybrid but people who want to do those jobs will go into that knowing and it’s the desire to do that job overrides the desire to wfh.

We get it perfectly well, thanks. Having spent 16 years commuting into the workplace 5 days a week until the pandemic hit. I also used to work in a job that would have been impossible to do from home until I chose to take a career tangent as I wanted to be office-based. I also work with quite a few former NHS staff who are trained in specialist roles who decided to step away from the hospital and into my sector. So they now also get to enjoy the benefits of WFH. If anything, I work longer hours now that I am at home as I don't have to leave on time to make sure I catch a particular bus. And aside from the occasional bit of time spent on MN (which I would have done in the office too), I very much work solidly in my home office and am just as productive, possible even more so as less distractions, as before.

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.

The reduced sick days are surely an employer benefit.

I have a back injury which means I can’t sit so here I am standing at my home desk with my laptop on a box. If I didn’t have the option to wfh I would be on my second week off sick because I don’t have the facilities to work in the office in my current condition. But because I can wfh I only called in sick one day when I was actually in hospital.

Same for colds/flu. Unless I’m so sick I can’t get out of bed I wfh. Sick days in my company have definitely gone down massively since we’ve had the option to wfh.

I am so grateful for the flexibility in my role, my last company and manager weren't like this at all (she made us go in so we could be seen).

I've spent the day sat outside working, only coming in for a meeting I couldn't do from the garden.

I don't miss the daily commute, the 20 minutes it would take me just to get the 5 minutes down the road, the jammed solid motorway.

What I do miss though is the 30 minutes in my car every morning listening to whichever breakfast show (used to be Christian O'Connell on Absolute) and being in stitches, they really knew how to make the commute more bearable. It would also help me gear up for the day, same with afternoon drive home helping me switch off work. I don't get that anymore. I don't have an actual start or finish time. The laptop is there in the study, I don't turn off at 5pm and leave work. I don't think I ever truly switch off.

We know this. It's why people wfh.

What is the purpose of your post?

No, it isn't unfair.

You do a role which requires you to be on site. I'm assuming your role cannot be done from home otherwise you'd wfh.

My role (also NHS) allows me to wfh because I'm admin. It doesn't require me to be on site every day.

The 2 are not comparable therefore saying it's unfair is moot.

What you're really saying is you're envious because you don't have the luxury of working outside today.

I can work from my garden provided I’m within range of my WiFi router. I can run an extension lead through the window to plug my laptop in. In practice, I don’t do it very often, because the weather’s rarely good enough and garden chairs aren’t the best for my back for sitting in while typing. But it’s perfectly possible, and acceptable to my employer. My boss had a family emergency once and worked from his mum’s house in his home country for a few days. I had a one-to-one with him via Teams while he sat in a charming Mediterranean courtyard with crickets chirping in the background.

I’m lucky enough to work 3 days from home, 2 in the office, but I see WFH for what it is - middle class perk. It’s the same as the much heralded four day week, that extra day of leisure we’ll have to go to places…. staffed mainly by people on minimum wage.

We get it. As someone else said, that's why we work from home.

Bluetooth and WiFi - my laptop works outside.

Ffs read the response properly
It was in relation to a mother wfh who had kids also at home, my point being you cannot work effectively if you are doing childcare.
It was NOT about people wfh who have to
People such as you start arguements in empty rooms

I get what you're saying OP!! And I think a lot of ppl are missing your point. I work for the equivalent of the NHS in Australia and I mostly wfh. I know that there are lots of clinical staff who have moved into administrative areas over the years because the knowledge they bring is so valuable.

It's not impossible to do some sideways job changes if it will help your work life balance. You will probably be working for another 15-20 years so it is worth considering?

I'm 48 too and just forced myself to try a short term role outside of my permanent position as I was probably going to be stuck there forever if I didn't do it now. So far it's going pretty well. I don't know if I'd stay here but it's been good to know I can do it! Good luck, I hope you find a mgr or role that supports this for you!

Some of the reasons:
-Most WFH jobs require a very high standard of spoken and written English which is harder to find overseas
-Recruitment campaigns are tricky even in the UK, especially for hard-to-fill professional roles. Conducting the same campaign in a foreign country is going to be even harder
-Employers want staff on the same timezone as them
-Nearly all WFH jobs require SOME face-to-face meeting time, even if it's getting together as a team twice a year
-Any government job usually needs to be conducted in the UK for reasons of national security
-GDPR

It doesn't take much for a perk, or a benefit to push over the line to be a hindrance, you know.

Yes, family. I'm happy to answer the door 754343247 times a day for parcel deliveries. Yes, I'll stop what I'm doing to sort household stuff - online shopping, plumbers, electricians. Cease typing and discuss your mini drama/non problem? Of course! And I'll sort the dogs while I do.

Don't get me wrong. I love what I do and I love it's WFH. It's all rosy on a summer day. Come back in the winter OP when there's duvets over knees and the smell of damp everywhere!

I am guessing you would never call yourself middle class but are quite happy to have the perk of WFH. And obviously when you do any leisure activities at the weekends or when you are on leave, you only go to places where the staff are being paid far more than the minimum wage?

Working from home is not always easy. I work for home and my partner is flexible but most days chooses to go to work. We have teenagers with chronic illness and someone needs to be in the house. He has more freedom than me, sees colleagues every day, meets people for lunch etc. I spend my life in the damn house. I can hang the washing up etc in my breaks but that's not a huge bonus. And it's rarely sunny. Even if it is I can't take confidential calls outside.

Our office was sold off , so we have to work from home. No choice.
Ive done enough unsocial hours and long shifts in the NHS. WFH suits me now and no I’m not out in the garden.

I used to work in NHS offices and would be constantly on edge as I'm profoundly deaf. I'd never know if someone was talking to me or not. I'd always miss out on office chit chat and never understood what was being said in meetings. It's so hard to get a sign language interpreter, let alone one who would be able to sit with me full time.

Now that I WFH, I join Teams meetings and can follow because I have captions and can stream the audio directly to my hearing devices. I can relax fully, knowing no one is trying to chat to me, and that I'm not missing out on anything because my whole team WFH.

I'd love to work in the office and take part in office chit chat and have lunch breaks with colleagues, but sadly it's not an option for me. WFH has quite literally saved my sanity and allowed me to be part of a team.

There are also others who are in worse situations than I am, who can only WFH for various reasons, but this is my reason.

Well, this is tricky, as the majority of the workforce started off working from the office, and it was the COVID pandemic that forced employers to be creative in terms of where staff could and should work. So many, many people are still on the same contract, and the same salary. It seems unfair to now ask them them to earn less because they were willing to be creative when their employers wanted and needed that. Also, many companies use the same argument in getting staff back to work - you are paid this amount which was worked out by factoring in commuting costs, therefore it is not unreasonable of us to ask you to start commuting again (and I agree). Why is it not possible to work from the garden? We have a table and chairs in teh garden, within easy WiFi range, and it's certainly more pleasant working there than the cramped desk in our tiny bedroom. Pretty sure I get more done on the days I can work outside as I have more space, and can spread out documents etc. I'm fortunate in that I have a hybrid working pattern - WFH 1 or 2 days a week, commuting in the rest of the time. I do appreciate that I am lucky with that, and I am sympathetic to people who don't have that choice given the jobs they do, like the OP. But I think it's unfair to punish people who stepped up and made things work for the company during COVID now that it's no longer necessary. I had to buy a desk and get a better WiFi connection. I was happy to do it, as I like my job, and had the sense that we were all in this together. But I would think it a little unfair if my empoloyer basically said, "Great - you stepped up and made it work when you couldn't come into the office, and we appreciate your flexibility, but we have no intention of being flexible with you."

Presumably you're not a nurse or cleaner or doctor or physiotherapist or microbiologist or radiologist or receptionist or any of the other myriad of jobs that require NHS staff to attend their place of work... and thank goodness they do.

@Wfhwhat Of course I get it, worked in a well paid retail commission based role for 15 years. Packed it in for a much lower paid job and retrained, trying to work my way up. WFH, office two days a week now, can get more done in terms of house stuff and getting bits ready for
my children. I can pick them up earlier, be more flexible. When I first changed jobs it meant I could look after my terminally ill dad, but I was broke - holes in socks couldn’t afford new ones broke. You just have to make a decision. Not everything comes without sacrifice. I still don’t make as much as I did but hoping I will in 2-3 years.