5 days in the office - rant!!!

[DonnyDoris]

My company mandated 5 days in the office a couple of months ago, which in principle I have no issues with. However, my commute is just over an hour on motorways that have long term roadworks, so massively tedious and today I have no meetings so absolutely no reason to be here other than presenteeism. Could have got so much more done and also all my housework if I could've worked from home 😖Just needed to get that off my chest!!!!

I don’t think anyone has said it’s not a perk, have they? It’s one lots of people are looking for nowadays and those companies unwilling to be flexible are finding it hard to recruit.

My actual point was that what the office workers don’t seem to be able to grasp, is that people who wfh can get these little jobs done during lunch/ tea break and don’t have to be glued to their work space from 9 to 5.30, just to prove their productivity. In the same way that office workers don’t have to be glued to their work space (and aren’t, a lot of the time) to prove the same.

In my case, with my poor immune system, it means that I don’t get all the bugs and viruses that people spread around the office.

Since Covid, when I’ve been WFH full time, I’ve had two days sick, before that I had serious respiratory and other illness every winter. Now I’m back in the office one day a week I’m starting to pick things up again - at the moment I have two separate infections I’m being treated for.

Also, the exhaustion caused by a long commute means disabled people and those with immune problems are even more likely to become ill.

Exactly, I also interpret for the company and have no issues going in when there's a genuine need to connect physically with people. Actually I really enjoy that. I also love a bit of office time just to get out of the house a day a week, and if I lived 20 mins away I'd probably do that more than once a week. But with an hour's commute and no actual physical colleagues working on joint projects, it really would feel pointless to me if I were forced their for five days a week.

Why is everyone who criticises working from home assumed to be jealous? Personally being at home on teams meetings all day in my PJs doesn't appeal. And everyone knows for every person who works hard there's another taking the P ( haircuts, shopping, walking the dog etc)

that hour commute has always been utterly shite. Especially for women who still do overwhelmingly more of the housework etc (yes yes, i know your husband does as much or more than you...)

It has been utterly shit. And now everyone has seen that it can work without the stupid commute. When i WFH i start at 8 and generally end at 4. In between times i put on a wash between meetings if i have 5 minutes, and i hang it up at lunchtime. At 4:05 i go to the gym.

When i had stupid commutes? and bosses who just couldn't bear to see you leave on time, even if you got there stupidly early to miss the traffic? i barely had enough time to cook and eat before i had to go to bed.

Sometimes people feel too ill to get up, shower and travel etc, but can walk across the landing and keep up with their emails. Which reminds me of how I was after my Covid jabs. Not too ill to work, but too ill to make it into the office.

I'm sure the essential workers who kept the country afloat during covid and couldn't WFH love your 'common sense'

I bet the roadworks could be done in half the time or even sooner if there was shift working so work was being done 12 hours a day six or seven days a week.

Find another job OP and make it very clear when I hope you are successful why that is the case.

It’s really bad if your company puts disability related absence into their sickness stats. That’s highly irregular and discriminatory.

I can’t think how your point relates if that isn’t what you’re suggesting.

Well you’d hope that they wouldn’t be pathetic enough to be bitter that someone else is able to do their job from home, when they can’t.

But going by this thread, I’m not so sure that’d be the case.

It’s not law though providing it’s not something like data entry, if you have a break it can just be other work like writing notes
i get 30 mins in 8hrs in a computer based job

You need data of the likelihood that people who say this are making it up. Then you would be authorising worn from home ahead of employees who feel the same but are able to handle it like adults.

Huh?

OP is clearly saying that the journey time could be used for housework. Start at 9am and finish at 5pm at home and a lunch break and you can easily fit in some washing or quick clean. Nothing to do with skiving 🙄

Get a new job?

you do realise that essentials workers were working from home too, when the nature of the job allowed it? 😂

Some people need to be present, some people work nights, it's stupid to try to compare everyone only when it suits your narrative.

Office jobs can, mainly, be done from home. So what.

Most of us are a lot more efficient from home than in the office anyway. Even if I stop 5 minutes to put on a load of laundry or open the door to the postman. I spend a lot less time at my desk in the office than in my house, and I am not the only one

I own a business. We ran a 6 month WFH trial, which we scrapped after 4 months because output dropped by 30% and time to complete key tasks increased by 25%. Costs are going up for businesses and overheads are ever increasing. Employers are not paying office costs for “presenteeism”, they do it because it is needed.
We are in the office 5 days a week and have zero issues with recruitment. We pay staff extremely well and offer a lot of flexibility (paid time off for sports days, school events etc) plus occasional working from home (if the electricity company needs access for example). Our more junior and trainee members of staff also learn so much more in an office environment and benefit from quicker learning and career advancement and the team as a whole functions far better.

Because the stat is -

After work from home sickness basemen is down 80% compared to before work from home

it’s stated this is due to employees who would previously call in sick healthy but with a contagious
illness working from home instead.

therefore previously those people were staying home and not working.

if you are a slob and in your pjs all day, it's on you. I am not.

And everyone knows for every person who works hard there's another taking the P ( haircuts, shopping, walking the dog etc)
worst in the office, with their bloody tea rounds, break, 2 hours trip to pick up a page from the photocopier and generally being a nuisance for everyone else who's trying to get some work done.

For gods sake, the misunderstanding of WFH on this thread is wild.

Some jobs can be done EQUALLY well at home as in the office - sometimes better seeing as you’re not being distracted the whole day. My in office days are nice but not as productive.

So if my company suddenly decided to call us in 5 days a week just for shits and giggles it would be annoying. Because there would be no business need for it and work life balance would be affected.

Absolutely nothing to do with “handling like an adult” you’re just being ridiculous now. It’s completely normal to see that someone would be distracted whilst trying to work if someone was sat right next to them talking all day long.

or it indicates that they are attending doctor's appointments early in the morning or in the afternoon and logging into work for the rest of the time, rather than having to take a morning or a day off for a doctor's appointment (which is what i used to have to do)

Last place i worked had specific policies about how many hours you were expected to put in - but if you wanted to go for a haircut, or the gym, or grocery shopping during the day? no issues if you had no scheduled meetings, as long as you put in your hours/did your work. Low staff turnover, excellent results and satisfied customers. (we could also take our dogs in on office days if we wanted, and had a table tennis table and dartboard that we used between meetings or whatever)

It's a right to request it and have it dealt with in a reasonable manner. A policy of blanket refusal unless there's a caring responsibility is not having it dealt with in a reasonable manner.

Woah- touched a nerve have we? Accept it, if you WFH people will automatically assume you're having a doss. I guess it's just the downside to having all the time watching Loose Women !

They really don’t. Working from home is totally ubiquitous nowadays. You seem to have some strange fixed ideas about this.

That post might have been phrased in an unhelpful way, but I do think the best thing to do would be to start looking.

The only way companies like this will change is if people vote with their feet.