To think this is a surefire way to insist that everyone comes back into the office?

[Pleasebeafleabite]

Latest BBC News link today. If I was an employer and I was forced into giving staff compulsory four day weeks based on compressed hours, I’m be making sure they were doing them in the office.

Yet more unintended consequences

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gl5w83z7do

Ha ha People with your attitude is why the UK has terrible productivity.

Good employers who DO care about their employees lives, will get the best out of them, with workers going the extra mile.

Bad employers, with your attitudes, have employees who do the least possible and have higher staff turn over.

I used to work as a supplier to government. It really isnt true that civil service have to committ to childcare whilst working. I spoke to someone from the Probate Office last week. Dog barking in the background and the lady said she was 'watching' her grandchild because her daughter had to go for a medical appointment. She laughed and said hopefully there wont be any screaming.

I spoke to someone from HMRC a few months ago who didnt even say that. I heard a child and they said they needed to go and shut the door so that they could hear what I was saying.

It really really doesnt work and will be rife with the shirkers taking the pxxs and allowing others to pick up the slack (happened all the time!). For those people who say surly the manage knows how lon the 'tasks' take. Well no - I used to be customer facing with senior contacts within my account. There is no task I undertook which can be timed!

The skivving will be off the scale.

I would not employ them if they had small kids at home during work hours. Simple.
I will always have an option of someone eho doesn’t take the piss. I replaced 2 employees within a fortnight who tried to do this. Now I gave 2 employees that can actually work.
Why should I employ someone who is not getting the work done that I pay them to do?

Some do, if attempting to manage the situation doesn't work, but only after running the gamut of claims of "conditions" which should make the employee exempt and howls of "discrimination" if the (often perfectly reasonable) requirements are perceived to disadvantage women

Speaking of requirements though, I had to smile at the claim that in the civil service "you're not allowed to wfh unless you can guarantee children are excluded from the work space"
It might even work if there were sufficient people who'll accept responsibility for seeing this happens, but there aren't so in many places it doesn't

Yes, a lot would not work or have to work less. That's a massive part of the point. That in a society where we don't have enough wraparound and summer childcare, we would lose the labour of some workers entirely if they weren't able to do things like look after DC whilst working sometimes. You know what else affects productivity? People not being in the workplace at all.

Anyway, tell us what should happen if the worker can't find a childminder or holiday care, meaning the employer doesn't have the option of the worker not being in this position in the first place. Stop swerving the question. And nope, you don't get to narrow the range now either. Summer childcare provision isn't just needed for 5 year olds.

Companies would do well to remember that if it wasn’t for staff working bloody hard from home during the pandemic many of them
wouldn’t have survived it and would have went to the wall.

the fact that it's not a 3 day week!

3 day weeks are great ,more leisure time, less commuting, what's not to like?

We're talking about an employer who doesn't have that option. It doesn't matter whether you personally do, you're putting yourself in the shoes of one who doesn't. That's who we're talking about.

Also, nobody said they weren't getting the work done. Stop moving the goalposts and answer the question.

No, I don’t think so, not in my experience. I had to let 2 people go in 6 years because of this problem. I have a great workforce and I am fair and accommodating but I won’t be taken for a ride.

As long as schools are also on a four day week I’m all for it 👌

Workers have a bit more power now as there are fewer of them.

2 day weeks! More leisure time and less commuting. What’s not to like?!

Depends on the person and position.

One team of direct reports are all remote. One asked to condense his hours for 3 years while his child was young, we agreed. He most certainly does put in those hours, actually he puts in more because I see it.

Provided your work is being completed to a high standard, and you are available as needed, then if you aren't at your desk for the full 8 hours or whatever, we're kind of ok with that. WFH is considered part of the package, along with the expected flexibility that provides. But that is reflected in salary as well.

Yeah, this is what a lot of these discussions come down to. We as a society got very used to the idea that employers could fuck people off and get someone else, and now we're dealing with that no longer being the case. Naturally, a lot of people don't like it.

I answered the question about 4 times. I would NOT employ them!

With the move to AI I think these professional people who think they can dictate terms might have quite the surprise when their role starts to disappear.

Would your business have survived the pandemic without your staff working from Home?

I had exactly that experience in the Civil Service but probably before WFH policies were properly developed.

Caller was from HR managing a possible redeployment as our office was closing. She had at least one and possibly two yowling toddlers around.

She was also completely out of proper boundaries. She was junior to me by several grades and tried to give me and off for taking a call from a recruiting manager with whom I agreed that, as she wanted somebody next week and my release date was not known and I had a letter from a high up in HQ confirming this.

What do you mean an employer who doesn’t have that option?? Of course they have the option not to employ someone who is taking care of small kids during work hours.

Why don’t companies sack managers who give their staff no work?

Also think about where many of these cooperations are located. We might have head offices in the U.K. but the firm is a US company. Don’t tell me that once employees are dictating less and less hours be worked they won’t just close down operations in the U.K. It’s another turkeys voting for Christmas situation. You want to force a four day week? Well here’s a zero day week, good luck.

80% of my employees work from home. It works for me and it works for them, what doesn’t work for me is having small kids there when they work so I don’t allow it. A lot of employers don’t.

I'm so over the constant repetition of the idea that people work harder in the office. It's deluded. Some people will, some people won't, some people will work harder at home, some people won't. I work harder at home because I'm not constantly interrupted by people chatting about their weekend or their holiday plans. I'm not being mean all I'm saying is that I can get more done with a big uninterrupted period of time. I can focus and concentrate and oohhh, if someone wants to speak to me, that's what phones or teams were invented for.

9 day fortnights I think are better than 5 in 4. You don’t have to work as much extra each day but still get the benefit of a day that is a bit more flexible.

I’ve done a 4 day week on 0.8 but there is no way I’d want to compress full time hours with children. I had colleagues doing that who were totally burnt out when they added in the commute and were often eating into their nwd to make up hour's if they hadn’t worked the longer hours needed which reduced some of the benefits.

Interestingly none of my younger colleagues without kids were interested in compressing even though the option was there. Lots of them wanted to go to the gym of an evening or didn’t have friends around mid-week so weren’t particularly keen on the idea.

I work four normal days, and this is just about manageable with school runs from home. In the office, forget it - I’d be back to part-time hours. Nine days are completely doable for people without school runs, loads of people at my work do this.

Regarding WFH vs office though, I am completely realistic about how many hours I can actually manage from home but I get FAR more done at home and have a better work-life balance. I would never go back to being only in the office, I’d leave if this was enforced.