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

I already work full-time compressed hours - From home. This is not new, it's that not all employers offer it. We evolve with the times and adapt. If we didn't- We would all still be living in the dark ages.

I take it you don't get to WFH? Which is why you might be sounding a little jaded? Do people you don't know who WFH effect you personally in any way? No. I doubt they do. Unless something affects you directly - Don't concern yourself with it.

Surely if they are getting their work done, all is well? If productivity falls then you have an indication something is amiss. I’ve never understood the focus on bums in seats time as a manager and as someone who works full time on compressed hours With a hybrid, but in reality almost fully remote, working pattern I appreciate the flexibility it gives me and the freedom to manage my own time to get my tasks done. Providing the team is in communication and everyone is in the loop it works fine.

We've just agreed to compressed hours for one of my team. He's an incredibly diligent member of staff but had massive things going on outside work that meant giving him Friday morning off makes his life loads better.
I don't want to lose him, he's great and I value him, so we made it work.
Oh and we both mostly WFH for a very large local employer and both of us are massively more productive due to being able to concentrate instead of chatting to everyone else!

If I worked in the office, I would do less hours than I do now working from home. It's normal for me to do my weekly hours in 4 days working from home.
We can work in the office if we want to, and I have on occasions, but our desks are no longer our own as different departments also use them.
At home, I can shut the door to get peace and quiet and I can use multiple screens, whereas in the office, it's loud, there is no escape and only one screen.

I worked from home since covid but was expected to be in the office one day every two weeks . Because I’d been able to take a pension from a previous job I was able to drop one day a week and work just four days but normal hours. I found I did more work when working from home than I did when I was in the office as there were too many distractions . If I had to do extra work to get a job finished to a deadline , then I just carried on and did less hours when it had calmed down . This was called ‘trust’ time , prior to Covid I worked in the office and we had a clocking in and out system. There were some people who cheated this by coming in early but they didn’t work - they dealt with personal emails, went on Facebook and had breakfast etc.
This was a civil service job . I’m now retired but I know that there are still people cheating the system in my old work place and I also know that there are other people who are picking up the slack because there conscience won’t let them leave work undone and it makes me angry but there’s nothing I can do

So do I, but that is very much down to the individual. And I know several who don’t pull their weight whilst “WFH”.
One who works in a warehouse apparently wfh on a Friday whilst also being the main child care person, even during school holidays, so obvious conflict there.
Overall it comes down to the individual’s personality- some are grifters and some are responsible career minded people. But it also depends upon how the company treats you and your individual prospects.

I think some are getting obsessed with tasks! What tasks? It sounds like someone is giving you say 10 applications to process a day and you are then done and your time is your own. I came across this myself with the Passport Office. Yes, you could give someone 8 applications a day to process but to approval or something else?

What is someone had put in the wrong info so you had to go back to applicant. Reason I am mentioning it is that is what they did try and it didn’t work. Ditto measuring people as to the number of calls they took in a day in a call centre.

Needless to say you got your relatives and friends to call you to keep your calls up. Job done! My job and I suspect lots of them is you are say an Operations Manager. You aren’t given the tasks of the day and who is to say that they might be too many or too little. Who are these people feeding you tasks and do they get reviewed daily? I have never had a job like this and I have been everything from an admin person to a senior manager where I have managed people.

And to the PP who state it’s OK to have children in the background for (insert very important reason why it’s OK for you) words just fail me. We seem to be going down a slippery slope where some are trying to do the least amount they can get away just at a time when we are trying to get productivity up. We don’t have oil or something specific to keep us going.

I worked 9 hours yesterday while on unpaid holiday time . I’m not saying anyone should have to, but professionals all work beyond their paid hours.

If none of your employees are not working productively, it could be systemic rather than laziness.

I'd get far more done at home than in the office. Some people stop to chat a LOT. Would absolutely love to get peace to work at home with no interruptions

So the person who is digilent and gets more work done ends up doing the work of skivers! It happens whether they are at home or in the office.

The person who is being paid on the basis of contributing for 8 hours a day is expected to contribute for 8 hours a day.

That's actually really normal in many workplaces.

When skiving happens at home the managers can't do much about it is the problem they face. No doubt everyone on MN is a great employee, but not every workplace is like that unfortunately. And it's harder these days for employers to treat employees differently, because they will claim it is unfairness - even if the manager knows Jill is reliable and honest, but Joe is likely to try and get away with doing the bare minimum, Joe will claim some kind of preferencing is going on. Sometimes it seems the more bureaucratic the workplace the harder it is to overcome this and treat employees as individuals.

Though -as far as MN being full of great employees, it kind of sounds like quite a few people see this more as being about getting allotted tasks done rather than working for the expected number of hours, which is exactly the kind of working that a lot of employers are looking to avoid.

I think that's true, but if you read the thread, look at how many people seem to think that if they are doing what the manager allots them, or expects to see, they are fulfilling their obligations.

So one systemic issue can be that the workers at home giving the impression they are working 8 hours a day, and the manager starts to see that output as about what to expect, but actually less and less is getting done.

My team at work can't usually work from home because it's a hands on service industry, but I have some staff that are on a shift schedule where I don't see them much. I have to make a point at coming in and working differernt shifts to see how they are getting on, especially when they are on the newer side. (It's not generally because they are slacking off either.)

Working from home can be great for employees but I am really surprised at the degree to which people are sure it's also great for the business overall and for managers. I'm sure we've all worked with problem people and know how hard it can be to get rid of them even when they are in the physical workplace.

I don't know, I'd rather have someone who contributes 6 hours of excellent work than someone who pads that out into 8 hours of work when it didn't need to be. But maybe I am unusual as a manager! I focus on output, quality/accuracy and technical expertise and whether the clients are happy, not whether Alan spent ten minutes chatting at the water cooler or Bob nipped downstairs to collect an Amazon parcel.

I remember a secretary in the same floor as us who always appeared busy but often doing utterly pointless and unnecessary tasks. Whereas her colleague would get through the jobs that actually need doing but occasionally break off to chat for a bit. I guess there might be some jobs that can be measured purely by hours of bums on seats (receptionist perhaps) but for most there's a big qualitative element too

There is no workplace where people work their full number of hours with no breaks. And even chatting and such can overall be a good thing for teamwork and productivity. It's all about the balance. I expect my employees to take two 15 minute breaks plus an hour lunch in their shift, and if there is some chatting etc, or they are slower on a hot day etc no worries. There are times they get a bit off track and need some redirection though.

But it is very hard to see if that balance is good as a manager if you have no eyes on the individual/group.

It's also the case that some people can get work done more quickly, and if they are being paid for piece work that's great for them. But consider that the corollary of paying someone for 7 hours, and being happy if they what you expect done in 5 and then do their own thing, is that a slower but diligent worker who doesn't get it all done in 7 would be expected to finish the allotted tasks without extra pay. It's the same logic.

If your quick talented employee gets paid for 7 hours, why would they not owe the employer two more hours of productivity? That are being paid for their time in the vast majority of jobs. Now if the manager doesn't give it to them, that is on the manager. But if the manager can't see what's going on, how do they know?

The complaint that the manager doesn't trust his team - there are plenty of workers who are not trustworthy, it's just a fact.

I'm only paid for literal hours worked properly. I complete a sheet with hours to show this.

I also need a different job.

I was actually the one to suggest 10hr 4 day weeks to my last employer 10yrs ago. It worked so well. We covered busiest hours and worked weekends on a rota'd basis. It worked ad either 3 days off during the week, if you were on wkends or sat & sun plus a day either side. If a colleague needed a mid week day off, if was so much easier to swap a day.

Surely it entirely depends on the job. If, as you say, you have specific tasks to do, you can do that from anywhere. I am a lawyer and when I used to work in London, I had an open plan office and so once every couple of weeks I would take a pile of reports home as it was easier to get on with it in the quiet (I had no kids at the time) and then when I finished I would head to the shops, sometimes out for a walk as I figured I had gained back my commute. This was back in the early 2000s.

However, the rest of the time I needed to be in the office as I could be called into court, or needed to answer client calls and also would talk to colleagues about work things too.

The nice thing with law was time sheets - you could easily show what you had done in a day so there was no chance of slacking off.

When my DD was little I asked to do compressed hours, working 3 10hr days and 1 7.5hr one. My employer said no, it wasn't feasible, I wouldn't cope, etc etc. I then demonstrated that for two years I'd been working on a 4 day a week contract, but actually being called constantly on the 5th day for technical advice. My timesheets showed I'd actually done in excess of the proposed hours every week for 2 years, so I was in fact trying to introduce more work-life balance and have some proper time with my DD.
It is easily doable, it allows flexibility for employees to work how they would like to work to allow for childcare, leisure, etc.
The struggle is going to be management and leadership in the employer. If your staff aren't working their proper hours that's a reflection on your management of them. That's what needs the focus, not on bringing people back into the office. Sure there are many reasons why perhaps people need to come back to the office, but a flexible working policy isn't one of them.

It's about delivery. If your team deliver sufficiently and are online during those hours it doesn't matter where they are?

If someone is underperforming then I believe they should go in and be supported every day. But if someone always delivers then they don't need to.

I'm finding the whole back to the office thing exhausting. It's back to the presentism of the 1990s.

How do I get I to a wfh role?

You apply and interview for a job that says "remote" on the advert.

Here's the thing - compressed hours and WFH (or both together) are only a problem if you don't trust your staff.

And if you don't trust your staff, it's your failing for hiring them in the first place.

Treating them like children and insisting on monitoring them the whole time is just covering up recruitment failures.

That is true, but some managers don't trust their staff. There are plenty of managers who got to their position because they've worked their way up through technical roles, and management is then the next step. They may be very technically competent, but they're not actually the same skills needed for people management. Some do cross over well, but others really don't, and also don't get the support to help them learn and develop the new skills they need.

There's a lot of it in IT, but I suspect there's a similar pattern in many other fields.

That's fair. And that's actually the reason I'm no longer a manager - I hated it, I didn't feel like I was particularly good at it and so I left and went back to being a pure developer.

One of those weird situations where I effectively demoted myself and ended up paid more.

Incidentally, the final incident that made me leave was actually one of team welfare, with the senior managers wanting snooping software on everybody's machines.