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?

I think wfh is the start of the next mental health crisis it’s incredibly isolating

I find this attitude so entitled. Why shouldn't an employer stipulate office-based working, particularly if that's how it was prior to COVID or how it was advertised?

I think wfh is great for some, but for lots of people, especially young people starting out in their careers, it’s very isolating. A lot of learning is done informally via watching others, and I think I’d feel more self conscious asking a simple question via email or teams rather than just asking my colleague sat next to me! Plus there’s no social interaction at all.

Hybrid seems like a good compromise

And in the future large numbers of employees who don't know how to interact in person, work with all different types of people, lack confidence

We'll regret this in a few years time imo

This is my experience too (public sector)

Higher management going on about RTO without solving the problem of nowhere near enough bloody space for everyone because office space was sold during covid.

I think hybrid could be the ideal - if it worked properly - if you could have teams sitting together, if you could get a room to have a team meeting/training, if either everyone or no one was on an all staff call at the same time, if you didn't have to run around several floors to take a sensitive/confidential call, if you didn't have to have debate about what section one staff went and sat in when their manager didn't want them there, filling in hybrid info sheets and checking whether staff still had the right percentage in the office when they'd been on leave/off sick and following up regularly.
The hybrid actuality takes up so much time and mostly not due to staff being awkward. Maybe there are offices where all these issues don't happen and then it's great.
I understand why managers may say oh just give it up and everyone is in every day, but that's from frustration- though ironically it's probably them that made a business out of hybrid in the first place.

Treasury literally has 6 desks for 10 staff.

An employer isn't a kind benefactor. Employment is a relationship of competing interests and workers are entitled to care about their own.

I work 35 miles from my office since the company took the decision to close my local office and relocate.
They have now handed back one building which means we have half the parking too.
If I am driving 35 miles in all I want is a parking space rather than having to divert to the retail park, walk 10 mins to the office and have to move my car after 6 hours.
They used to pay for overflow parking over the road before COVID.
If they want me in they could at least put their hands in their pockets (huge international financial institution btw)

It's because a load of nonsense consultants who used to make up stuff like hot desking can no longer get a job coming up with nonsense workplace practices.

So their latest wheeze is to demand everyone gets back in the workplace so they can dream up new schemes to make themselves money.

Not many places are fully remote, and I think most places with a hybrid arrangement generally don't restrict people to a maximum number of days. We have to do at least 3 days, but a lot of our new grads come in 5, along with maybe a quarter of the other staff. Maybe not 5 days every single week, but definitely 9 weeks out of 10. So people who find wfh difficult often (not always I know) have the option to go in more.

And I don't think you can ignore that for some people, the office is a cause of immense stress. And wfh allows them to continue working much more easily.

I have a bad anxiety disorder that has, in the past, led to severe agoraphobia. Wfh full time isn't great for me, because not regularly having to leave the house allows the agoraphobia to creep back in. But equally, 5 days in the office causes me stress as well, and in the past I've ended up signed off work for significant periods.

I also don't think wfh full time is isolating for everyone who does it, depending on the rest of their lives.

Basically I don't think there's any one size blanket statement you can make, either around wfh being detrimental to individuals, or that being in the office is detrimental.

And that's without even mentioning how people with physical disabilities may find more jobs open to them if they can wfh. My DH is visually impaired (not seriously, but cannot drive) so prior to wfh was limited in jobs because of travel - any job needed to be accessible by public transport. His current job involves him going into the office once a month, and we can afford a taxi for that, or I can drive him if I'm wfh. That wouldn't be the case if it was every day.

Agree 💯 it is frustrating that it seems impossible to agree a system that recognises human needs and differences

WFH isn't isolating for me, it saves me from significant discomfort. In my team I have a number of people who wouldn't be able to work full time if they had to do it in an office.

What does your contract say?

Your last sentence is thoughtless and cavalier and quite probably elitist. Tell that to nurses, paramedics, teachers, police, people who mend the roads and clean the streets.

We get free lunch every day, cooked meals, sandwich options, salads, free drinks etc. 3 meals a day. Always have.

I don’t want to go into the office for some food. All my colleagues are in the US. So the 3 day mandate means I have to go to work to sit in a booth and talk to my colleagues in a different country. Of course, my working day is 9-6 but theirs is from 3pm my time, so I also have to strategically leave to go home so I don’t get stuck in meetings with them until midnight.

It’s stupid.

And you are entitled to find a job elsewhere, if the terms of your current job don’t suit you.

Those Mumsnetters of around my age will have studied the EM Forster short story The Machine Stops. It's a dystopian vision of the future that we are heading towards at frightening speed.

So many people seem to regard any human interaction as some sort of invasion of privacy, if not a near-assault. It's bizarre.

@TonTonMacoute its amazing how quickly work socialising has just… stopped?

Pre-covid it was so normal for people to go for a beer or similar. All ages.

Now, and particularly for those who I work with under 30, it’s just seen as a massive imposition and no one does it.

I have heard so many people talking about it - it’s quite sad really.

For me, I'm old and enjoy hybrid working but I do worry for the youngsters who wfh and never interact in the office and may not develop their social skills, or learning how to tolerate working with people 🤣

I think it’s one of the reasons why we have such a mental health crisis and so much anxiety about talking to anyone too. Disaster.

Totally agree with this. People who rarely have to interact in person with others are bound to be less resilient and more fragile.

No, they really won't.
They will gradually replace these "WFH" employees with cheap Asian labour or AI.
Cannot wait for that!
😜
(I don't work, so no bitterness, funding myself).

@MidnightPatrol

DS is 25 and would give his eye teeth for a job that wasn't remote working, flexible hours. Luckily he has a good social life apart from that.

His godmother, one of my best friends, I met in the office of my very first job in 1983!

6 desks for 10 staff is absolutely fine if it’s hybrid working. We have 4 desks for 7, we have a flexible rota. Everyone picks their 2 days and if 5 people want to be in on a certain day extra desks can be booked. Nothing wrong with hot desking, it’s an efficient use of facilities.

Lunch vouchers are also fine, we get free lunch on a Wednesday if we’re in the office.

It works for many people. Why has it caused you such strong feelings against?

I haven't heard of that story, I'll look it up. I've worried since COVID about the effect of WFH on young people as they join the office based workforce