To think there are different 'types' of WFH?

[LittleRedRidingHoody]

Every thread we have on here about WFH has varying opinions on what you can/cannot do when you're working from home - and people get quite heated in their beliefs! But AIBU to think sometimes it's comparing apples and oranges?

Some people WFH and the expectation is they work their set hours - same as you might do in the office - and obviously work the whole time. Not do any childcare at the same time etc. These hours are often tracked in some way.

Other roles (like mine) are much more flexible, but demand more at different times. I end up doing 40 hours or more across days/evenings/the odd weekend, but flex this around household tasks/school runs. My boss is fully aware of this and it's accepted company practise across the board. I was aware of this when I started, and it suits me well.

Obviously some people abuse either system, but I feel on MN even a whiff of doing anything other than work during a day WFH is evil and you're pulling one over on your company, which in turn becomes a bun fight. Am I alone in thinking this?

Yep, there are absolutely DC who are of an age and maturity level where they need someone in the house with them but no direct attention. And there are jobs where the adult could attend to any urgent issue that might come up with said DC then catch up later.

Exactly this. I block out my diary for school runs - and it's transparent so everyone knows what I am doing and not to book meetings for that time but everything is up to me to organise how I see fit. We also don't have to be on Teams all day and its okay to not answer. I am high-performing, I know that, my managers know that so there is no issue.

I think a good rule of thumb is if you're comfortable being open about it, it's likely fine in your organisation.

In my role, I feel absolutely fine booking in time openly and transparently for, say, parents evening (at our school that is 3-6 so not really evening) or school play performance or whatever but it would not be ok in my organisation to do that for the school run every day, unless the children were over 9ish and genuinely independent after school.

But there absolutely are posters on other WFH threads who will talk about basically pretending to work, mouse juggling software to keep themselves green on teams, etc.

Or in short there are some people with genuinely flexible jobs and others who are just pisstakers.

Unfortunately with both parents working full time out of necessity, and shortages of some skills, employers need to be more flexible to parents. Mine has been good, but they are in the work your hours camp too, which works for me as i dont have time in the evening. What I do with my break is upto me and you can have older kids at home, but they would be concerned if younger kids were around and staff were working, more out of concern for the child than anything. I tried to work once with a sick preschooler as I was worried about deadlines and I got told I should be off.

I think a lot of people are oblivious to the struggles of parenting these days when you both work FT and have young kids. You need flexibility or you have to leave and then rely on the state more (which these people hate). These people also hate WFH and don't get the need for it. They generally don't understand anything outside their own experience of the world either.

There will always be pisstakers, but this is not unique to WFH. It's just life. Most people are honest.

My husband and I both work from home and have different set ups. I think people who don't WFH don't realise that people who take time out for appointments or long tasks are generally making the time up elsewhere.

Mine is quite bums in seats, and if we want to take flexi time we have to do it formally and do paperwork. We can request it pretty last minute and it's rarely denied, but it is formalised. We have a lunch hour which is flexible during the day though, so people use it to pick up kids from school or do other tasks.

My husband's work is completely flexible as long as he is available for meetings. They officially have core hours of 10-4 but no one seems to actually stick to them. He often goes to do tasks for an hour or more during the work day, and makes up the time later.

But there absolutely are posters on other WFH threads who will talk about basically pretending to work, mouse juggling software to keep themselves green on teams, etc.

I think that is just people pretending because they hate WFH. If you can get away with doing that, you don't have work in the first place, surely. It would affect your performance and you would be found out.

It does happen - I have had instances of it in my organisation and am dealing with one instance of it at the moment (someone who regularly tries to work while looking after three children under 7). But performance management once you're out of probation can take a really long time.

I think this is missed sometimes.

Employers might not enjoy having to make accommodations to parents in order to allow them to work, but there isn't necessarily a better option available. Flexibility might be what's needed to get staff.

I feel like the question with WFH behaviour is always - would it be a problem if my employer found out what I was doing when WFH? There isn't a single universal answer to this, every job and employer is different, and even within the same company different roles may well have different expectations. Our PAs are expected to remain at their desks and fully available aside from their scheduled breaks when WFH (same as in the office) because their job involves being an immediate point of contact for client calls etc. I work in a deal team and have some flexibility to manage my desk around client demand, but I'm expected to mark my calendar out accordingly and use my judgement depending on the work I have on. We have colleagues who work in research and knowledge management functions who can pretty much flex their days as they see fit.

I know my employer isn't going to have a problem with me taking 10 minutes out to put a wash on, nipping to the chemist to collect a prescription or starting 30 minutes later in the morning because nursery have an event on (as long as it's in my diary). I know it likely would raise eyebrows if I went to a three hour hair appointment in the middle of the day. I think most people know where the line is for their specific circumstances and know if they're overstepping it.

@Honeycrisp this!

I think we're already seeing that companies who want rigid processes/set hours/no flex/in office (for roles that COULD be flex/WFH) are having to pay more, or have a lower standard of candidates for their roles.

I'm obviously in a very flexible role in a very flexible company, and we find we're paying an average of 10% less salary for comparable roles in less flexible companies ~ we're also getting a much higher standard of candidates applying because we're transparent about our flexible working policies. Also saving on the huge cost of running an office!

Ultimately employers can 'force' people back to the office, decide them want to be in office for whichever days, do what they like really. But - especially with covid - employees are realising they also have the choice to walk and find something that suits them better. And en masse, that does make a difference to big corporations, what they can get done, and their bottom line.

Agree that there lots of different types of homeworking arrangements and what's OK with one employer or type of role is not OK with another, and vice versa, so YANBU.

I always find it quite weird when people get so het up about other people's working from home habits. Obviously if you actually work with someone and it has a knock-on effect on your own workload, then it impacts on you, but I can't see why people on Mumnset get so stressed about the homeworking arrangements of total strangers. Even if I do think it's taking the piss to claim you're working from home while looking after a toddler, the fact that some random I've never met could be doing that isn't something i could get cross about!

Of course it’s all down to personal experience.
I don’t have any issue with someone blocking out their diary to go and collect their DCs from school, none whatsoever ever. What I do have an issue with is speaking to a professional, supposedly wfh when I can hear their DCs repeating back a confidential conversation, supposedly protected by data protection. That is not acceptable.
Would it be acceptable to have a medical consultation where the consultant had her DCs in the same room, so they were privy to hearing about a patients concerns? That’s not down to strict work practice. The information this professions children could hear is not supposed to be openly discussed or left open to be seen or heard in anyway by anyone other than myself and the person on the other end of the phone.

There was a heated thread on this recently and I think it's a pointless thing to argue about as it depends entirely on the job, not just flexitime. My job is reactive to calls and emails and has only a bit of admin so no I'm not tied to my desk the whole day and do housework take dog for a walk etc. Weird people being outraged about it, not my fault my job isn't as busy as someone else's 🤷

Speaking only for myself but I suspect it applies to others, I sometimes get annoyed because I am experiencing these issues in my team and so it feels more personal than it actually is.

For example, I have had people in my team claim that they can work just fine with their kids around, little Ellie is only 4 but just sits next to them and is as good as gold. But their output suggests otherwise..

My experience with team management is that a lot of people really kid themselves over how successfully they are able to multitask and the extent to which they really do make the time up. So when I see these sorts of things trotted out on here it does get annoy me sometimes because it reminds me of those people.

I aman academic. There are points in the year where I could literally be abroad for a month and no-one would know.

It’s depends on the role, probably on level of seniority, and how well your manager manages you. I am senior and trusted to get on with it - that’s how I manage my teams too - as long as the work gets done, deadlines met, I am flexible about where, when, etc. WFH should never involve childcare, sorry, no (depends on ages of kids/need for ‘care’ obvs).

Because (I thought this was obvious, but maybe it's not obvious to the people doing it either!) they end up doing much less work than they should be doing.

Our core hours are 9-5.30 with an hour for lunch (7.5 hours). Some people time shift this e.g. 8-4.30 or have a shorter lunch e.g. 9-5 with half an hour for lunch. But still 7.5 hours.

Some people like to take time out in the day to do personal things and make this up at other times. So for example, someone might take half an hour off for each school run, and will work from 7-8pm in lieu of this. Still 7.5 hours

The hybrid version means that people work the 9-5.30 day, take off whatever personal time they feel like, but don't bother to work any extra at any other time to make it up. Often significantly less than 7.5 hours and leaves their more conscientious colleagues picking up the slack.

Our primary school closed its after school club post-covid as the numbers were no longer economical so that fucked up childcare arrangements splendidly with short notice. DH has the arrangement with his employers, negotiated when he took his current job, that he can work around school pickups as a result (the kids are older so self-reliant when they get in from school).

My work is slightly more structured - although since I work in community healthcare I manage my own diary and as long as I'm seeing sufficient of my caseload, I can do admin from home - and my line manager is perfectly happy with my approach of documenting if I work over my hours and then use them to duck out for a school event or similar - I just make sure everything's accounted for clearly so I'm not open to any accusations of taking the piss. Considering we're getting work offices closed all over the shop - they'd never fit us all back in the office anyway!

It's not childcare it's parenting

Yeah and now companies want people in more they're moaning their employees are using lack of childcare as an excuse

It's almost like the pisstakers have ruined it for everyone else

I just do what needs to be done in my working hours. Generally, I’ve got enough but if I’ve run out I’ll either see if I’ve got any mandatory training to catch up on or message my manager to see if there’s anything else for me. Sometimes there genuinely isn’t anything for me to do so I log off 🤷‍♀️

I think there’s a difference. I have 9yo twins. They could easily manage to grab snacks/ play / watch tv / iPad. I wouldn’t go out to work for a day but I could work from home for a day.

I think of it as being loosely supervised, easy access to an adult if needed, someone to cater lunch, but otherwise just getting on with stuff. I’d imagine most kids over age of 8 till high school can cope with a few hours of “loose supervision” In high school should really be fairly self sufficient and need no supervision. Under 8s probably need a bit more input. Obviously there are exceptions so it’s up to parents to know their kids.

Clients hire me as a contractor to get very complex work done. I do this from
home, and if I want to spend a few hours one Wednesday afternoon resting my brain and watching downtown abbey, I will. If I need to work until 1am to get a project out the door, I will. I’m being paid for my expertise and effort, not the time I spend sitting in an office chair. I’m a freelancer with nearly 20 years of experience and no one gives a crap when I do my work as long as I’m a) vaguely contactable during work hours and b) doing the work on time and to a very high standard.

I can see why, if you’ve not worked in this kind of role, it’s hard to visualise - I found it hard to get my head around before I started doing it. But that’s the reality of many senior/expert/consultancy roles, home-based or not.

to add to my previous point - anyone who fucks about working from home also fucks about working in the office, they just do it by ‘looking busy’.