Be honest… what do you really do if working from home?

[Wffhh]

Just that really.

I often have a bath at lunchtime. Go to shops. Clean. Last Friday watched a Christmas film in the background in bed while doing some online training. Made a pie.

Sometimes I have to work very late. Sometimes on a weekend. So I think it balances out. Anyone else be honest? Do you ever have almost a day off doing life admin?

When I was wfh during covid, I was teaching music on line 1-2-1.
No chance to do anything else, except maybe hang the washing out during my lunch break.

Tip - google the answers! I'm sick of doing and redoing basic training that's only a box ticking exercise.

Our team manager checks up on us on Teams. She thinks that we have to be online constantly because of the nature of the work. But I work far more efficiently later in the day, always have, so if left to my own devices, I'd do most of it in the evening!

I'm too busy to spend a significant amount of WFH days doing what I want.

Things I might do:

Put washing on/put washing in the dryer
Load or unload dishwasher
Might pop to the supermarket five mins down the road to get food bits in
Exercise on lunch break

But baths, TV, chilling...absolutely not. I usually have numerous calls every day and people constantly wanting stuff from me!

Your online training - did any go in? Ours always has a quiz at the end to prove you were listening!

I think the number of companies who want you to understand and benefit from online training, versus those that want to be able to point to an automated record of you having taken and passed that training if anything goes wrong, would make a very interesting Venn diagram.

Why? If the work is getting done?

A decent manager should be able to manage by output.

I do a lot more work at home than in an office. But then we have daily targets so that is always a motivator. I love working from home. I use what would be commuting time to spend with my family. It does allow me to run out to dog groomers or appts at lunch. Only downside I eat a lot more/ more tea and coffee as there’s no social pressures regarding constant snacking!

WFH 2 days out of 4, it's an adjustment due to poor health (previously was in all 4 days and expectation is I'll get back to that at some point).
I work on those days, probably harder than I do in the office tbh, because I'm worried if they don't see that I'm productive they'll take the WFH days away.
Because I haven't had to use energy getting 'properly' washed and dressed and commuting it means I've got the energy to make a meal in the evening. Not a fat lot else mind 🙄

@Wffhh jealous of you taking a bath - mine would take my entire lunch break to run, wouldn't have time to actually get in it!

Ultimately this is just poor management and nothing to do with people working flexibly when they’re at home. If a manager can’t tell whether somebody in their team is productive or not and has to use a blunt measure such as bringing the entire team into the office full time then they’re not a good manager. Good managers look at performance rather than pointless shit such as whether somebody’s Teams icon is inactive. If employees aren’t performing well and on top of their workload, whether they work in an office or at home, then it’s for managers to follow through with performance improvement measures. If employees are performing well and on top of their workload then a good manager isn’t interested in when they happened to get that work done and whether it took them 3 hours or 9 and whether they took a bath in the afternoon.

I manage 6 people. I manage them on the basis of whether they are meeting our departmental targets and completing everything assigned to them in workflow. My manager in turn manages me likewise. None of us are checking up on each other. I’m going to bet we’re far more productive as a department than most of those in workplaces where people seem mostly preoccupied with checking each other’s active Teams statuses all day long.

My job is task based and I am much more productive in the evenings. On my two work from home days, I do 2 hours of cleaning and collect DC at 3.30 from school. But I then also stay up until 12pm working. It definitely balances out, and I don't see the problem. On my office days I work all day and then do housework in the evening, it's the same amount of time.

I have to say though that I don't have a job that allows me to just not do things, and neither do any of my WFH friends.

I don't disagree with you but this is the reality for many people, including myself from time to time if I'm honest and I'm really really not proud of it.

But some people really do push it very far. I know one person who constantly has the 3.30 to 4.30 booked on her calendar for a private meeting that I know for a fact is actually picking up her children from school.

This is a large part of why productivity is so bad in the UK.

Only just finished and will probably hop back on laptop in a bit to tie off some loose ends. I miss people but get a lot less done when I'm in the office as there's so much chat and then longer lunches out/coffee runs etc whereas I just grab something from the fridge at home. I lose track of time as I'm not trying to commute home at a particular time so frequently just run over.

This.

Plus I’ve worked in governance my entire career. If I had to listen to an online training module first in order to correctly answer questions about risk management, regulatory compliance, corporate governance, data protection, whistleblowing, or any other manner of what is my role’s bread and butter then I’d think I was in the wrong job to be frank.

I do exactly the same WFH as I do in the office. Besides actually doing my job, if I want to do a bit of shopping or get my hair cut, I do.

My job doesn’t have set hours so it doesn’t matter as long as the job gets done.

People are not meeting their targets, nothing to do with Team status.

Clearly I'm in the wrong job, judging by some of these responses! I am expected to record and log all of my hours, the same as when working in the office, and if I have nothing to show for those hours it will be noticed when my output is reviewed at the end of the month.

Excellent post. I WFH and like I said, get paid for output and performance, not hours chained at a desk. I also manage a team of 8, some WFH and some in the office.

I make sure they aren't chained to their desks either, as long as their performance is good. I had to remind one employee last week that she was on top of her work, to stop stressing and go and do what she needed. Which included painting her kitchen!

Alternatively, I also recently let someone go who has done absolutely shit all for two years whilst in office.

Poor management is the problem. If managers cared more about actual output and less about hours and busy work, or hired a proper amount of people for the team...then this wouldn't be an issue.

Then a good manager tackles those people specifically with targeted measures rather than their entire team bluntly by telling everyone including those who are meeting targets that they have to be in the office. There are just too many poor managers out there.

There's no such thing as "company time" in my line of work. A company might be buying some hours of my time, but in my profession, my employers are buying my input. If I resolve a problem, sense-check a project plan, or produce a response to a business tender then it is of no interest to the company if I do this in 5 hours or 25 hours as long as its done on time. They are paying for my knowledge and experience, not for my time sitting at a desk.

I am far more efficient working from home. I'm saving the time (and money) previously spent commuting. I am in a better state of mind for working because I've walked from my kitchen to my home office carrying a coffee instead of arriving, already knackered, at some high-rise stress factory after an unpleasent hour or more spent commuting. If I'm stuck on a issue I can chill out, go for a walk or do a task that needs doing (laundry, dishwasher, hoover) for half an hour while my brain re-sets. I don't have colleagues interrupting my thought process - either by asking a work-related question that they demand requires an immediate answer, or by chattering on about Strictly or something else they've seen over the weekend. I don't have to stress about getting to the shops or fitting in a dental appointment - I can take an hour out for these when needed and still meet my deadlines.

I appreciate that not all jobs can be this flexible, but the pandemic showed that very many people can work from home and be more effective and efficient (and happier in their work). The people who seem to be most against WFH seem to be the "Office Managers" - if there is no longer an "office" to manage, they are effectively out of a job (and companies are now realising that many of these middle managers actually did very little anyway).

Do none of your managers notice?

Uhm....working?

I do all those things you do, cooking, doing the laundry, watching Netflix, going for a walk.

I do them on my lunchbreak though.

My manager encourages it. I am a manager, and so do I. As long as performance is good, there's no issue.

I work much less from home than I used to in the office. But now when I go into the office there's a lot of catching up/chatting that you have to do, so don't work much on those days either. Overall productivity is significantly down, and they really don't seem to care. It would be very demoralising if I was young and trying to build a career, unbearable in fact. It's hard enough for me to swallow at 65.

This is why people need to be in the office. They are far less productive at home. You are not paid to cook or watch films.

Yes I can see menopausal problems must be greatly Allie visited by wfh. Perhaps women should all wfh at that life stage just as they used to do that withdrawing thing when pregnant. Confinement?