to think some people think WFH should be a constant nose to the grindstone?

[Yodeloo]

I think some jobs are like that definitely. Heavy workload, helplines etc

Some people think all WFH should be like this and get horrified because someone hung some washing out or helped out a family member for a short time. Plenty of jobs have flexibility and it is about getting the job done not just being present in front of the computer non stop.

I get all my life admin done throughout the day around work. I do an exercise class most mornings and then start work later on the days I WFH. I will meet up with friends, work on my side business. Nobody cares at my work. All targets are met consistently.

Is it jealousy that people get so upset?

I don't know about that. The company I work for is international and 80%of their workforce WFH. Everyone in my dept is on £12ph, and there are thousands of us, that's just the UK part for this dept. There are hundreds of other depts were people are on the same money and WFH.

You are very rude

Thank you. Food for thought

Some of it’s jealousy.

some of it is that people are in junior jobs and don’t realise not all jobs require nose to the grindstone, clocking in and out

my job is totally flexible and I’m measured by outcomes. Not hours clocked or keystrokes.

And those are just the ones who know they're taking the piss! There's also a second category of people who appear to be doing it accidentally.

You sound as though you're saying you have a very easy job with very simple targets.

That's fine, I know a few people on minimum wage with the same sort of setup and it works for them.

But that's not really representative of other people with more professional jobs with real deadlines to meet.

Those are the people with their noses to the grindstone and for good reason, as they're paid accordingly.

The problem with expecting everyone to accept that flexibility works best for you, is that we have to accept it from everybody else who WFH too. So if you work best from 4am until 11am then go to bed for four hours, meanwhile your colleague is only just getting going at midday, how is your colleague supposed to communicate effectively with you, without waiting hours for you to return his call after your long nap? Then just as you are clocking off for the day, another colleague insists that she does her best work from 7pm until midnight. She needs to speak to you, but you're having your dinner/putting your kids to bed, so she has to send you an email instead, which you won't read until 4am tomorrow. It requires an urgent response but being that it's 4am you can't ring her.

So all in all, it's poor for communication, poor for teamwork, poor for productivity, nobody takes responsibility for anything because it's always sitting in someone else's virtual in-tray awaiting a response, and what can you possibly be expected to do about that?

It is not a very easy job that has very simple targets and is not minimum wage.

It is a professional role and I do have to meet deadlines. Still not expected to have my nose to the grindstone.

Well yes, given that your aim was to start a debate in which you were arguing that your viewpoint should be shared by the majority. It’s pretty disingenuous to support your case with facts that you know to be very specific to you, and ethically questionable to encourage people to do something that could get them into trouble by giving the impression that everybody does it.

Well then you've described it very badly here.

It sounds as though just about anyone could do your job, and they tend not to be much above minimum wage 🤷‍♂️

Well you obviously communicate in advance about your hours. An "I'll be offline for the next hour" note in Teams tends to do the job. There are very, very few occasions on which an email response can't wait an hour.

If I'm sending an email at 6am or 7pm I obviously don't expect a prompt response from colleagues in European time zones. Just like if I send an email at 10am I don't expect a prompt response from American colleagues.

The point of the post was not to describe my job.

Mortgage paid off years ago, car fully paid, 100k+ in savings so definitely more than minimum wage 😂

ok

You'ld pay for the job, not an hourly rate surely?

just go to calendar, click 'meet now', join the meeting, then change your status to available.. Works a charm but sometimes need to reset after a few hours, or if your machine shuts down. Great trick!

What do you do for work Op? @Yodeloo

If an acceptable time and amount of times, how is sitting out in the garden different than going out for lunch, or shopping, which many office workers have always done?

But that just means that any task or decision or project requiring input from more than one person or a whole team takes three times as long to reach a conclusion. Standard office hours are standard office hours for a reason. It's so that everyone who is working on the same project is available to work and to communicate and to problem solve at the same time. You can't just let every member of staff work to their own timetable and expect exactly the same level of productivity. It's just impossible.

I do understand why some people are so motivated to insist it's not a problem, but IT IS a problem. And companies have realised this, hence why so many are trying to get staff back in the office at least half the time.

It's pretty simple to understand when you put your mind to it.

i think the main consensus on here is that "the casual lazy breaks that a day in the office [DO AND ALWAYS HAVE] allowED

She might be rude but shes also right

well their spending was definitely down a LOT too...

Again (for the million time on this thread) it depends on your role, your company and your industry.

The majority of my work doesn't entail problem-solving or collaborating with my colleagues. It's solo work. When we need to collaborate we make time for it in advance, which works because it's strategic collaboration rather than on-the-fly stuff.

And my team is a small international one which means, literally, everyone is working to their own timetable. If we lose anything by not all being in the same place at the same time, we gain it by the team as a whole being available round the clock.

Maybe this would be a problem for your company but it isn't for mine.

Exactly this I run a small business and it's a bit of give and take. As long as there's flexibility on both sides it works well.

@HamptonPlace it wasn’t lunchtime though! If it had been lunchtime I wouldn’t have mentioned it

The need to wait and deal with written responses happens anyway in many businesses; people are not all on the same timezone and have other meetings or deadlines. My US colleagues will make an effort to get up early when I book them for something urgent, and I'll work late when they need me to talk to their client.

Let's try another way to explain how jobs can vary. I started Friday with 6 things to do: A prep for Thursday workshop for a colleague, B is 90% thinking and 10% writing a response that they'd like asap but could wait until end Feb for, C is fiddly online research plus write questions to go to 15 people and drawing ideas from responses, D and E are simple scheduled meetings, F is writing a paper that could be delivered anytime in the next month. They will all get work done but won't all finish as most are longer tasks being nudged forward, while urgent tasks G and H will show up around lunchtime needing a faster response. A, B, E, G are paid client work but the others aren't, so timesheets are needed and I'll be creative on that because I finished and sent task A during call D. Task B was mostly done while walking in the park, hanging laundry and lying on the sofa, because it involved thinking done better away from distractions; finally cracked the idea and wrote up between other calls so that's delivered much earlier than expected. Task E - I look most engaged sitting on a call and talking only about one thing, but it is largely client fluff and the least valuable way to spend my time. C I sent emails during the rest of call D but very little progress, F didn't happen at all, and H only took 5 minutes but I had to rush to respond while eating lunch because it was that urgent.

If I'd been in an office I'd not have finished A nor even started B; I'd have had to look engaged during all of D even though it only needed me to half listen and give opinions on 2 things, and H would have taken me much longer to deal with everyone panicking. Getting a room for D and E would have been tricky. I would definitely have moved C forward more easily; that task doesn't get done so well remotely nor by being done piecemeal, and I'm thinking of giving it to a junior because it's just not getting done right now. Highest value to the company were B and H, by a LOT.