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

It's clearly beyond a lot of people!

My husband wfh. He has a very specialist skill set and his public sector employers are more than happy to accommodate it. In fact it now encourages working from home where ever possible within the organisation because audits have shown it has been highly successful. So much so that the authority is able to sell some of its buildings. All good because the funds go directly back into the public purse.

I believe 4 day weeks are under consideration atm. In a few years, it will be the norm in sectors where it’s possible. More and more employers are understanding the importance of a good work/life balance and finding that a happy workforce is more effective and most importantly is retained.

Any employer unwilling to embrace this progress will struggle to recruit.

I think we both agree on the point: Successful employers have happy supported employees.

I'm fortunate to work for one of those companies. And actually yes, it's ultimately a US company who employs all over the globe. Larger companies tend to be able to accommodate that flexibility better.

Smaller UK employers can have a really tough time accommodating those requests.

Well glad I am not one of those employers with an employee double jobbing and not getting the work done. What a nightmare to be paying people for work they don’t do or do badly. Realising how lucky I am as an employer that I don’t need employees with these so hard to get skillsets that cannot be replaced even if they leave of their own accord!

Four days and compressed hours have been proven to not always work. Someone else tried it (was it Asda? I can't quite remember.) They shoved the 38-40 hours into four days, and it was exhausting and tiresome for many people. So they went back to five days.

Someone I know dropped her hours from 38 a week down to 32 - and then did them over 4 days. Took a little bit of hit on her pay, but her quality of life has improved immensely. And it's less national insurance contribution, less tax, less pension contribution, less travel costs etc. So she ended up not being that much worse off. It's worth it for that extra day, and a better quality of life.

So yep, 4 days with the hours cut a bit too can work well. But not shoving the 38-40 hours a week into 4 days.

Working from home only became more of a thing due to covid restrictions. Not sure why so many people think they can carry this on forever. What did they do when going to the office/ workplace was the norm and why can they suddenly not cope? Genuinely interested. And no this doesn't apply to me, my job wouldn't be possible from home and can't think of anything worse 😅

I'd snap this up in a second, given I'm on here at 11am on a Friday and clearly don't have enough work to do!

Yes, fair to say if you're recruiting in an area where people don't need niche expertise it's going to be easier for you than it is for employers where the workers hold the balance of power. Meanwhile, the UK as a whole doesn't have enough workers or skills.

Ok, put it this way, Kids need to be looked after right? Work needs to be done. You are saying both can be done effectively at the same time? Kids don’t suffer and work doesn’t suffer. Would you send your kids to a childminder if they worked all day from home? Would you employ a childminder who had 3 kids under her care everyday?
I don’t think so.

Nightmare for employers in that case then.

Menopause can be awful and last for many years.

Lets hope your boss doesn't "let you go"

I certainly wouldn't want to be on the phone with someone with brain fog, confused what i ve just told them or repeating questions too me.

How hard is that to understand?

But surely if they aren't getting the work done, it's noticeable and you do something about it, just as you would in the office? I don't understand why obvious underperformers who WFH are presumed to have some sort of mystical protection around them that means employers can't do the exact same thing they would do about those in-office not meeting targets consistently, etc.

It became more of a thing during lockdown, of course, but that was only the acceleration of a trend that had already been happening for a while. Millions of people were already doing some wfh in 2019.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/coronavirusandhomeworkingintheuklabourmarket/2019

Bear in mind also that these millions would have been concentrated in the roles that can be done remotely, so it's something that was already well established in the sectors where it's taken hold.

In terms of the 'suddenly' and coping bits, we're talking about half a decade ago. There've been huge social changes in the 2020s. So even for those whose circumstances haven't otherwise changed since 2019, if they needed public transport, childcare or elder care in order to do their jobs in person, it may not be there now. I live in an area where the trains have become completely fucked over the past couple of years, as an example.

Yes the public sector has been doing this for years. I worked for legal social services 20 years ago and we had a system then of a 9 day fortnight if you built your hours up but you had to book int he day in advance and check the rota (so it wasn’t an empty office on the Friday) so it has been around for years

my private sector job had a few people do it again the day off had to be agreed to make sure gaps were covered

i suspect anything customer facing or has a daily pool of work may be able to argue - it is treated similarly to maternity leave so anything that can do shortened hours etc there can here

😂😂😂😂 I am the boss and comparing menopause to looking after small children is ludicrous.

It is also very insulting to the many women on here who are quite capable of doing their jobs whilst going through menopause. You just sound very stupid now.

Sometimes. Other times, it's just a question of accepting that the work might get done at a different time than it otherwise would. And everything inbetween.

No see here is where the lines are blurred. I am quite flexible as I mentioned, if the work got done around a time that suited both of us and the business I would have no problem with that. If someone contacted me and said they had something on or something happened and they would work on the report that evening instead, no problem, the work gets done. If you have kids there every day, a lot of the work does not get done, online meetings cannot happen, phone interruptions etc. that doesn’t work for me.

No not at all, women are being discriminated against because of the menopause and it effects everyone differently, some sail throughout, others do not and according to you, you re not interested in their private lives and if they cannot do their jobs then ship out.... until it affects you, then its all very different.

Boss? quite old terminology & but clearly so with so much spare time on your hands.

The last sentence is you talking specifically about your business. As you've said already, you can't speak for other organisations. Not all roles require meetings, some of those that do can be hived into a time when the DC aren't there, and some meetings can happen fine with a DC in the house.

If there's one thing this thread ought to make clear, it's that generalisations on this issue get us nowhere.

Oh come on. You have to put up better arguments than this nonsensical stuff.

Having a child at home with you while you work is entirely different than a woman having the menopause.

More and more companies are educating their Managers on how to support Menopausal women in the workplace. We provide support and education, why would you want to lose an otherwise good employee for the occasional lapse and bad day?

That fits more in with your emergency day for childcare at home.

I say that as a menopausal women who had a conversation with her Manager about it.

You are discriminating against them saying you would not want to talk to them in tge phone 😂

You also used the word boss hoping they didn’t sake me for having menopause .

Go back to bed 😂

Quite right - and yes, some of us have read and understood the pieces quoted - but I absolutely guarantee there'll be a subset who instantly think "Ooooo that'll be every Friday off!!"

... and who'll raise Cain and shout "unfair!!" when they discover that's not actually what it means at all

Tell me this then, how many employers would willingly employ someone who looked after their kids all day then? Not many! Most people don’t divulge that information at interviews.

Always amazed on these threads at how many posters who are apparently in a position to employ other people are still so stuck in their ways and rigid of thinking that not only do they think a presenteeist, bums-on-seats approach is the best way to maximise employee performance but they also apply that across the board to all roles in all industries. I always sense an underlying seething bitterness that other people might have managed to carve out a perfectly good working life outside of the 9-to-5 commuter rat race.

They always seem to think that the more hours an employee spends "at work", the better the work will be. This makes no sense from any angle?

By contrast the WFH advocates do't tend to argue it should apply across the board - merely that it can be life-changing for the better if it does work for you and your role.

Yes, fair to say if you're recruiting in an area where people don't need niche expertise it's going to be easier for you than it is for employers where the workers hold the balance of power. Meanwhile, the UK as a whole doesn't have enough workers or skills.

This is interesting @Peakpeakpeak because it's difficult for new graduates to get jobs at the moment. I know many who are struggling to get work in their relevant industries and yet we appear as a country, to have a skills shortage!
What I hear is that many employers are looking for people with several years experience, they are not taking on inexperienced people and training them. I wonder whether this is because teams are working remotely so it's difficult to train up inexperienced staff? They need people who can work largely unsupervised?
It's also doesn't work if the mentor is taking chunks out of the day to do other things and then catching up later in the evening.