To think if you moved out to the countryside during Covid, you can't demand remote working?

[JacquesHarlow]

Before I get piled on, the key word here is demanding remote working based on their lifestyle choices, and therefore going against an employer's setup (mandated hybrid or full 5 day wees).

The number of people I have interacted with in the last year who feel entitled to fully remote and flexible now, never coming in, because they took a gamble five years ago and relocated outside of where the work is....is staggering.

Let me rewind for a minute -

I understand from the ACAS site etc that people are legally allowed to request flexible working. But surely employers are equally allowed to turn it down or request a modified version (you have to come in X days). So why do so many people moan about this, as if they're entitled to fully remote?

I guess the answer lies in the pandemic.

For desk based jobs such as mine and many others, we were able to work remotely in Covid-19 office lockdowns. Many people reported increased productivity. We could work variable hours, walk the dog at lunchtime, pick up the DCs and then jump on Teams calls. No need to pay expensive £6k a year season tickets, less money spend on childminding to cover the commute etc.

However these couple of years also saw all kind of people look at what their flat or house inside the M25 was worth, cash in, and then flee to all points of the compass in the UK, using their strong London pound so to speak to buy up all kinds of acreage in Frome, Weymouth, Cambridgeshire, you name it.

Where I'm struggling is how many people I've seen on here will say "I've applied to a job which is clearly stated 4 days a week in person in the office. Does anyone work here and can say how firm this is, can I demand it be remote? I live 2.5 hours away from London and it'll cost me £70 a day" etc."

Why though? Does an employer have to throw its office policy out the window every time someone who moved away from London wants the same salary and access to the job market, but won't come in on their terms anymore?

Am I being unreasonable to say that people are being unrealistic about this?

Do any of you think that we should be able to request fully remote when applying for a job, no matter what the employer's policy is? And that it is "discrimination" if they don't?

I mean, one person on here was told by a prospective employer that they need to be mindful not to have their toddler crying out too much while they're on Teams calls with clients. The job seeker then got upset in their post and said "I don't think this job is for me"...

Has COVID completely changed people's expectations that they should be able to do it all with a toddler on their lap?

AIBU?!

Sorry and before the pedants rush in, my title should really read:

" To think if you moved out to the countryside during Covid, you can't demand remote working IF IT IS NOT ON OFFER FROM THE EMPLOYER DURING HIRING " etc

As in , companies where they mandate a 4 day week in office and state it clearly in job application.

Whether you moved out during Covid or have lived in Somerset/Norfolk your entire life, of course you can’t demand an employer offer full time remote working when that isn’t on offer. You can ask, but if they say no, that is the end of it. And the job market is not what it was 4 years ago…

Why are you bothered ? Is it effecting you ?

Remote working is a great way to move jobs out of cities and into the countryside, without the need for massive infrastructure investments. Helps to redistribute the wealth from those roles, into historically deprived areas.

I kind of agreed with you, one thing that really astounded me during Covid was the number of people in my organization who thought it was fine to move countries (and I don’t mean Wales or Scotland), in some cases without even mentioning it.

But there is a fundamental disconnect which has occurred in the UK. People believe that they are more productive working from home, and they have got used to the significant lifestyle benefits. But employers know that productivity is actually way down, and see returning to the office as one lever to improve this. But unless they manage to get the bulk of their employees on board there’s going to be a very long uphill struggle to make office attendance the norm again.

Pointless to generalise. Some people are attractive and in demand enough that they can enforce this, as are some employers. Others not. What's true of one person in one sector won't be true of someone else. Some employers do indeed have to throw their preferences and policies out of the window in order to get the skills they need for the rate they want to pay. Others don't.

So YABU.

The Covid London effect is way overstated, as research now shows. Even those who moved did so within a normal commutable distance.

https://www.centreforcities.org/press/londons-population-bouncing-back-thanks-to-new-arrivals-since-covid-analysis-shows/#:~:text=191%2C000%20more%20people%20left%20London,the%20case%20before%20the%20pandemic.

In my direct experience as a hiring manager and leader of a large team, most people wanting to stay WFH are close to the office anyway and unwilling to do the 20 minutes commute twice a week that they did full time pre-Covid.

Job seekers can want what they want. Whether the workplace allows it is up to them.

Are there studies to show WFH reduces productivity?

A lot of this is simply people struggling to get their heads around a change in the balance between employers and employees. We have a smaller labour force than we had in 2019. There have been swings of the pendulum before, there will be again. Too much of the discourse on this is people who can't see past their own feelings on the matter.

Are they demanding it or are they asking and then don’t take their application further if it’s declined? It’s always worth a punt, if the company really want you they might be prepared to bend their rules.

DH got a job that’s fully remote a few years ago, it’s been absolutely life changing. His previous role went back from wfh to hybrid after Covid, he preferred wfh so he looked for a remote job and got one. It’s a better job for a nicer company than his last one. They’re always hiring, there are plenty of jobs which are fully remote. So you could say people who want that should only apply for those types of roles but equally why not ask if a company will accommodate you and no harm done if they say no.

No of course you can’t demand it if it’s not in your contract.

I think lots of people are frustrated though because many of the “get back to the office” edicts are so clearly tokenism/ ill thought out. Not enough space in said office, managers who make the rules not following them, coming into the office only to never see members of your team, shit IT, antisocial colleagues, shit expensive trains etc. And all at a time when people are facing a cost of living crisis and an increase in mental health issues.

I think what you might be seeing is bad communication/ frustration at people seeing their lives made more difficult/ miserable for no good reason more than anything else.

Where are the statistics for productivity being down?

Yes, it's not immediately obvious why anyone would have concerns about a prospective recruit giving the employer the benefit of information they wouldn't otherwise have. That is, that there's someone who would work for them remotely but not any other pattern. The employer can then do whatever they want with that information.

Surely they can demand whatever they like? The employer doesn't have to give in.

People are knackered and skint. They're working harder than ever to pay stupid mortgages and ridiculous childcare/commuting costs and it has made people ask the question of their employer.

But the employer can say no, so it's really not an issue.

Psychologically humans get annoyed when other people behave in ways we ourselves would like to but feel we 'shouldn't', so it may be that you have an internal thing going on about this issue.

I’m a firm believer in hybrid. To be fair my employers commitment to office returning is anything but token, they moved offices and did a nice fit out and we have a breakfast bar and a barista provided Tuesday to Thurs mornings. I’d have said until recently there is a place for fully remote but with the rise of ai I have realised there is no place for employees no one has seen in person and continues to be sighted periodically if you’re desk based, because and I kid you not, you cannot guarantee you know who you’ve hired. I read an article last week that said if you have remote employees you’ve never seen and you’re in tech then you have foreign agents working for you (and it’s as much for income as for espionage I think with places like North Korea) They pass video interviews with ai avatars being them and fake identities.

Reports are pretty consistent about it, eg https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2023/08/06/the-productivity-problem-with-remote-work/ . Even if you think the studies are biased, my main point was the disconnect between employers and employees rather than who is right. From my own personal experience as a manager working from home was fine for BAU, but really bad for collaboration, innovation, onboarding and implementation of change.

They’re time wasters though. I interviewed someone for a job that was in London. This was clearly stated in the ad and at interview. After the offer came out they announced they wanted to work remotely from their home near Liverpool. It wasn’t possible. Wasted everyone’s time including their own.

'Hard to isolate WFH from other factors' is the most significant sentence in that post. There are so very, very many other things that have happened since remote working rates shot up in March 2020. The labour market is totally different. The workforce has shrunk. The number of people with chronic conditions and/or caring responsibilities has mushroomed.

There's also a tendency from people who blame remote working for issues to work on the assumption that the alternative to those people working from home is them/someone equally suitable working in person instead. Which is hardly a given!

At the start of Covid and beyond, my company assured us that we now have flexible working policies in place. We have been working like this for over 5 years now. Understandably, during this time people have made life changes. Some have had more children, moved further out of London, things their new working conditions allowed. Some parts of my organisation are demanding people come back into the office 4-5 days a week, I think that is unreasonable. This is the same company who aren’t giving pay rises, even small inflation linked ones. I haven’t moved any further away but would struggle to find the £7k pa extra to now come to the office 4-5 days a week. Other companies in the same industry are generally asking for 3 days a week, I think that’s reasonable.

Give it a few more years of crap productivity (I disagree with you there) and it'll all shake out. Public sector will resist but most private sector jobs will be mainly office based I think. Through natural wastage rather than formal return to office madates and because young people want it.

Correlation is not causation.

It's way more complicated than WFH = lower output, whatever Jacob Rees-Mogg would like us to believe.

Look how much more broken every support service is - people waiting a really long time for health treatment being a massive factor in our productivity problem.

I think the word demand is important here. The pandemic helped lots of people reorganise their priorities, with commuting and being out of the house for long periods, away from loved ones taking a back seat.
i think this is why so many people moved. However, I think you’re right that people can’t expect employers to roll over and be satisfied taking a back seat by working remotely.
Rightly or wrongly, I feel the employer gets to set the rules so to glibly demand to work remotely 100% of the time isn’t on. My partners, brother and sister in law have all seen their organisations be taken over by different companies, which have then moved there offices to completely different parts of the country. Each had very frank conversations with there employers explaining that should there be expectations that they’re in the office on a regular/semi regular basis, this would not work for them, so would have to tender their resignation. On all 3 occasions their employers said they were happy for them to work remotely, with very occasional visits to the new base office. I think my brother and SIL have been to their office 2-3 times since 2021 and my partner has yet to go his new office since the 2023 takeover. I don’t think people are unreasonable to ask, ut to demand is a very different thing.