To ask why employers will bully, stomp and bribe with lunch vouchers to make staff go back to the office

[Everythingisnumbersnow]

But won't in any way make the office a nicer place to be?

Hotdesk serfdom is real.

Just give people a space and treat them like humans?

Obviously I chose my job so can't complain (and generally prefer to work longer hours in a more hands on role than deal with corporate politics etc) but I think it would do some people good to spend a few months in a role like mine where I'm contracted to do 50 hours p/w onsite with the additional caveat that I must stay until issues are resolved (e.g. plant breakdown) up to the 15 hour legal limit if necessary, which I usually get close to hitting at least a day or two a month.

I mention this because a lot of posters are commenting on how women are the worst affected but the flipside is that it's almost exclusively men doing roles like mine in the construction/plant sector where wfh isn't possible and eight hours is an extremely short day - 10-12 hours being the norm.

Come on there is a middle ground. My children don’t have anxiety but also have occasionally objected to holiday programs or new things where they don’t already have friends. We talk them into it, support them, and they’ve never once regretted it, and often found a wonderful new activity or program they absolutely love, most recently a few weeks ago with the junior life saving beach classes. Mum I don’t want to do it. Mum you’re so mean. Mum it’s not fair, mum it’s my holidays too.

mum mum mum this was the best ever we HAVE to do it again next year!!

and each time builds experience he can draw on to know how this works and how it can be very worth it, and it’s never as bad as he thought it would be. This is the general case for young people, and missing out on being put into situations is missing out on building experience and resilience, yes there are exceptions but it’s terrible logic to use those exceptions to say no one benefits and people arguing they do are full of it. Young people benefit.

If we are serious about tackling climate change we need to get rid of the commute. Working from home, for those whose jobs allow them to do so, is a universal benefit - it cuts carbon emissions significantly. I refuse to accept that tackling climate change comes second to protecting the interests of super-rich landlords who own those office buildings - because that is what the return to the office push is about.

i think it’s more expensive to heat or cool my house with just me at home in it than my proportional share of rhe office, and I catch the train into work. I drive to drop off the kids, but I’d still have to do that. Wfh is not intrinsically more environmentally friendly.

How do you explain the lack of pollution during covid when many people worked from home?

@Everythingisnumbersnow you can ask for an occupational health review to see if your social anxiety deems it is best for your health to work solely remotely.

That's great when 'home' is a nice, comfortable space with room to work. It's not so great for our younger generations who are increasingly in student-style house shares or still at home with parents. People without appropriate space sitting on beds or chairs with laptops on their knees, giving themselves a world of posture problems because they don't have a home office or access to a dining room or similar won't be finding it so great not leaving their houses.

Well the headphones are an issue - sitting at a desk like that is a no-no in our company.

Hotdesk serfdom
Says someone who really has no inkling of history and what serfdom really was

Cars not being used, also by people who didn’t go to school or the shops barely or pubs or restaurants or holidays? My point re the train is it doesn’t have to be bad to commute. Re the heating and cooling, the total energy cost is relevant here too, just because it’s not being chugged out an exhaust pipe in the town centre doesn’t make it all renewable energy.

Agree, in general, about the mental-health effects of isolation. But there's a huge difference between 'I don't want to leave my house' and 'For some reason I'm not massively motivated to leave my house for an hour-plus sardine-style rail commute or sitting in traffic, to go sit in a soulless impersonal space all day trying to block out the other people in that space enough to get any work done'. Not all 'leaving the house' is equivalent. Setting up commuting to an office as the healthy alternative to wfh allows us to paper over the real problems with the modern workplace - which, let's be honest, isn't really organised for our benefit.

If we are serious about tackling climate change

We aren't.

I work out of four different offices at my workplace. My local one and the one that is closest to me is completely lifeless and soulless, I would rather do the 150 mile commute to one of the offices in the North and stay overnight a couple of times a month and than go in to that office. The other two are also busy and lively places to be. I don't have a problem going in to the office, it's nice to see people properly, I'm in 3 or 4 times a month and now look forward to being there when I know I'm going to see more of my team.

But also some Companies have signed rental agreements that they can't get out of, so if they are paying rent they may as well have people working in the buildings they are paying for.

Absolutely. There's no inherent reason why a commute followed by enforced physical proximity to people one hasn't chosen would be beneficial, especially for those who have traits which often lead to workplace discrimination. There are MNers who've told us how freeing it is to work without face to face racist microaggressions day in day out, for example.

Some people find community in work, certainly, but anyone who thinks people can't be isolated whilst in a physical workplace isn't paying attention. And of course, plenty of people are able to use the saved commuting time to have actual useful, meaningful interaction with other humans.

If employers want folk in the office that's where they should be. This wfh skive has been going on for long enough.

It's beneficial if you have a nice house to sit in, with a proper workspace, yes. I think a lot of people here don't understand that not all people doing office jobs with commutes are living in circumstances which facilitate home working. Many office jobs are barely above minimum wage. There's people trying to do this in bedsits/house shares/parents' house. Not ideal to have to work on your bed, in a chair without a desk, or without a dedicated space.

Don't get me wrong, I loved working from home (not in a job where it's available, now), but I can see why it's not ideal for everyone . It wasn't easy for me at the time because we had a tiny house with no room for a proper workstation, my job involved needing to print off documents which had to be organised for dispatch. Not great trying to do that in a tiny living room.

It's not just about MNs hated 'social people' missing out, it's not physically practical for everyone..

How do you make phone calls then?

Are you retired @Viviennemary?

By picking up a phone, holding it to my ear and saying ‘hello’! Unless you work in a call centre… or video calls but we have rooms and booths etc for that.
anyway, the poster I thought was talking g about the deadness of when someone puts headphones on and ignores all around them.
As I said - not allowed in our office offices.

Surprised companies still have phones - I haven’t used an actual phone at work for about 8 years; everything’s done through Teams.

I'm not getting any luncheon vouchers and they need to turn the heating up. Nice to see colleagues but I have a beautiful home office which is far more pleasant to be in.

When I started work decades ago I had an office and a secretary. Now it is like a battery farm for white collar fools

You don't allow reasonable adjustments for neurodiversity?

In the 80s I had my own nice office in 2 jobs and a nice big desk in a shared office job with room around it, standing on its own.
Now and with a 'higher' role there are no separate offices, which is fine, but also only very small desks crammed together, this may partly be due to equipment getting smaller and the 'vision' of paperless, but it's not conducive to working hard tbh. No one can have a quiet chat at someone's desk - about work if folk are worried re chatting on employer time - but instead if it's confidential you have to trot off and stand in corridors and move from there if others arrive. Half the stuff you need is just piled up rather than efficiently separated, etc etc. But that's what it is and you continue on as it's your job and employer says so.
But Then it's Covid and employers see a chance to get rid of/rent out some of their space and you have to give many reasons if you're one wanting to attend an office instead of wfh. Now they don't want to buy it back to fit all employees in but instead want everyone in, only they can't all fit now, so they want a hybrid and that could be great but actually is made awful with limited space, erratic rotas, terrible hot-desking, no place for confidential discussions or normal meetings/calls.
I'm all for folk doing their job, accepting some stuff just is part of working life but honestly some employers make it really hard and it seems it's just to their preferences to do so at times! I've gone from a lovely desk that was good to work at to super small awkward desk or no desk - literally no desk at times in the office now so carting stuff around from one place to another all day. It's just not conducive to good working and whilst money may have been made by cramming more staff in and now selling some room off I expect some is being lost with the difficulty and annoying conditions in the office now.

Not quite. It's beneficial if your home is somewhere you find nicer and more suitable than your workplace. This is not actually the same thing as having a nice home. Because some workplaces are awful. Others might not be awful in themselves but are just unsuitable for the particular worker. It's actually possible for a less than ideal home space to still be better than a workplace.

I think a lot of people don't understand that not everyone has access to a workplace with decent space, proper workstations and whatever adjustments a worker might need. There isn't a mechanism whereby not having enough room for a proper workspace at home means your workplace is, say, free of racist microaggressions. It would be nice if there were!

Obviously, lots of these jobs are poorly paid, so it may mean throwing the extra expense of a commute on top.