Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home

[sally037]

Nigel Farage has doubled down on his attack on remote and hybrid working, calling it “a load of nonsense” and saying people are only productive when working face-to-face in the office. He argues we need an “attitudinal change to hard work” rather than focusing on work-life balance.

AIBU for thinking this idea is just bonkers and totally at odds with how most of the workforce actually wants to work now?

I can only think it appeals to the "pull the ladder up" generation. Don't give two fucks about anyone else as long as they are comfortable or those that are unable to wfh and want everyone else to be as miserable as them.

Not read whole thread but it will because he has a load of property mates whose property will be empty. Most offices have massively downsized. Where do we sit?

I’d love to know how this would work, a local authority has sold all its building off and are relocating into a smaller building, with a maximum of 80 desks they employ 1200 people

AI will put paid to a lot of office roles, particularly the admin ones.

Says the guy that can barely be arsed to turn up to anything that isn't of direct financial benefit to him.

He's a lazy twat that never turned up for work when he was an MEP, and doesn't now for his day job.

He goes to work if someone pays him a stupid amount of money to spout his racism and fabrications, and doesn't care what dictator or corrupt regime it's for.

Honestly I'm sick of this, if you vote Reform you are stupid, a racist or probably both.

Sadly, that's describes way over half the voting population so we will have a Reform 'government' at the next election.

Since the early 1990s, I have associated an opposition to WFH home poor management. I worked in a small owner-managed creative agency in a PR role used to WFH if I had a feature to write for a client. The owner hated it and was nasty to me as a result. He hated it because he liked to pace around the office checking that everyone was working and, his favourite activity, billing clients. He was totally resistant to me explaining that if I left the office saying I was going to stay at home the following day to write a feature about quantity surveying in the Middle East, and the day after that I came to the office with the copy, it was obvious I had been working.

More recently, I worked for a start-up/scale-up where WFH for 95% of staff was the operating model. Now, it's a multi-award winning company, top of its industry league tables, and which has grown rapidly because it attracts funders.

This is anecdotal evidence but there's plenty of research evidence showing benefits in productivity and employee satisfaction. Nigel needs to stop being like my former boss and start asking Zia to seek out evidence to prove his point. He won't ask, znd if he did, Zia would be hard pressed to find it.

Sorry but this is such a mean and selfish take. That’s so awful to think of helping junior staff as a burden!

I was the senior staff but changed career so am now junior and trying to learn, so I’ve seen both sides of the coin.

As a manager it was my job to help junior employees learn, so helping with questions throughout the day were just part of my day. Often it’s just talking things through with them to make sure they are on the right track. Ultimately as a manager it is much easier to make sure the work was done right the first time than spend ages reviewing the work only for it have to be completely redone.

In some instances it is easier to say “ok put an hour in my diary tomorrow so we can look at it properly”, but that was the case pre WFH too.

Now as a junior member of staff more often i just have small questions that I need help with to move the work on. If I were to save them up I’d be sat with no work to do until then, and then no doubt I’d have another small question and be in the same position again. Saving up questions to fill a managers time just isn’t efficient for anyone.

I also work for a medium size public sector employer - we simply don't have enough space to accommodate everyone coming in every day. Our space planning is based on 2 office days per week per person.

I don't think the business side of it really matters to many of them, as others have said on this thread, it's emotional. Reform are social conservatives - pretty much by definition believers in social structure and hierarchy, where everyone has a place and must act and be treated accordingly.

You can see that emphasis clearly in relation to working-age benefits claimants, foreigners and people concerned about across-group injustices and the future climate. The attitudes exuded by Reform are about putting these groups in their place, not or not just about achieving some practical benefit.

It's a foundational part of social conservatism so of course it's not going to stop there, it's going to be pervasive and cover every part of society. Ordinary workers working from home can very naturally be seen as getting above their station (even as the high status carry on doing it). Same thing with workers' rights (deregulation), same with renters rights (opposition to the new law making tenants more powerful relative to landlords).

Like most of the arguments for/against, this is just repeating one side of a two-sided coin.

There were many people for whom Lockdown was bliss, not a hardship, and it was successfully WFH during lockdown that made employers realise there was no inevitable drop in productivity, the opposite in fact, and that there was no need to compel these people to come back to office-based work in the aftermath.

Ten years ago, I know if I'd made a request to WFH the way I do now that request would have been dismissed as being impractical. My actual job hasn't changed much in ten years, but it was lockdown forcing my organisation's hand that made it abundantly clear WFH was perfectly viable.

I still have plenty of ways to interact with colleagues despite not physically sharing a room with them, and I still socialise with all the other people I used to prior to lockdown. It's also the case that many people have no desire to interact and socialise with colleagues in the first place, because they are just that, colleagues, and not people you would have necessarily opted to form a relationship with otherwise. So it's not as simple as WFH inevitably being to the detriment of working relationships, socialising, social skills, and mental health. Far from it.

How about a bloody thank you to those who worked from home during covid (whether they wanted to or not) and kept essential services going like IT support etc. How about acknowledging the fact that those who have the ability to wfh will do so even when too ill to go into the office. When the weather brings the rest of the country to a standstill home workers keep going. Seriously we don't all take time out as and when, most home workers are monitored. Many call centres have home workers, you would soon notice if no one could get into the office one day for whatever reason and you really needed your call answered. I am no fan of labour but this man is not the answer

Yanbu. My husband works from home, he is happier for it and therefore more productive at work, not less.

It's both.

My Dad is 70 and only worked for an employer for about 10 years of his working life from aged 15 so was a self-employed taxi driver and later, an income-tax free foster carer for decades which he retired from 5 years ago.

He's massively concerned by lots of Reform policy ideas, as are his similar aged siblings and friends. Including WFH, because he hates the idea of anyone getting something for nothing and they all think as do several on this thread, that if he isn't able to get the help he needs on the 'phone, he thinks it's because of customer services WFH and not for other reasons.

Those reasons including him refusing to do anything online or have an email address...

YANBU

He’ll be arguing next that everyone apart from people like him should go to the shops instead of ordering online, cook over an open fire and do laundry by hand.

Technology moves on. It should enhance our lives and protect the planet.

Absolutely no point people travelling all over the place to do work on a laptop. When it can be done at home or in a local workspace. Total waste of energy (both fuel and human) and time. Not to mention impacts on people who are disabled, too unwell to travel and/or live in locations with poor public transport. And environmental impact of extra cars, buses and trains.

IMHO, the ideal should be to give staff a choice, which hybrid or flexible location allows. Being with work colleagues has a social aspect. Lots of people have met friends and partners via work. It also allows newer people the chance to learn on the job, by being around more experienced people. And some people find online meetings more difficult.

Good point about owners of offices. I imagine lots have been burned.

On a wider subject, this thread is a paradigm of what I was warned about by the gurus of strategy when I started in that sphere of IT. Which is to beware the "It's all about me" tendency of humankind. Everybody considers their world to be where it's at, so logically everything new has to be applied in that frame of reference.

Henry Ford used to say if he had listened to his customers, he would have made faster horses. Which reminds us that the automobile was never going to replace the convenience of horses in a world built around horses.

I don't doubt he has wealthy pals with empty office space going begging foremost in his mind. Quite how he squares his big ideas about cutting costs with the expense of running bigger offices than required when plenty of people work happily and effectively at home is anyone's guess. I know not everyone wants to work from home.
Ho hum. It's just another bit of rage bait really, isn't it? Nigel mouths off and gets us talking about Nigel again. Fuck.

There's different elements to this;

1. reactionary dinosaur 'back in my day' bullshit.

2. He is very much on the side of the billionaire class so a big driver would be the possibility of rentiers losing out on massive commercial rents.

3. He is very anti worker. Always votes against workers rights. Big believer in employers having total freedom with hire and fire.

4. He's totally ignorant of how the world works, e.g. employers downsizing premises to reduce costs and then not having enough space to accommodate presenteeism.

5. He's very much judging others by his own absentee, lazy, dodgy standards, as evidenced by his time in the European Parliament and never putting in an appearance in Clacton.

Just thought that how this will work alongside the DOGE cosplay he’s so keen on will be interesting- in gov’t they’ll have to fund an awful lot more office space.
It is, as said earlier by PPs, very much based on emotion - I’ve seen managers who love to walk around and check worker plebs are in place doing as they’re told and understanding their manager’s overall greatness.
Still as long as it’s making good things for Nigel I’m sure many will be happy with that!

Has Farage ever actually done a full days graft in his life? I doubt it as all available evidence points to the contrary.

He a complete twat and it’s baffling how so many working class people can’t see straight through him. 🤔

It's just a whistle call to all the retired folk who didn't have the luxury in their day... you know the super bright aged Tory types who voted in Liz Truss and crashed the economy.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-doge-kent-county-council-failure-402983/

I suspect he also wants to appeal to people with jobs that must be done in person, who cannot WFH. A great deal of his appeal is motivated by jealousy of others and this hits that button.

He's very much judging others by his own absentee, lazy, dodgy standards, as evidenced by his time in the European Parliament and never putting in an appearance in Clacton

He still refuses to hold in-person constituency surgeries, which he puts down to to being advised to over concerns about personal safety, a claim dismissed as rubbish by the Speaker's Office. He does hold the odd surgery via Teams or telephone call, so someone really needs to ask him where he is physically located during these, and if it's not his constituency office...

It's also the case that many people have no desire to interact and socialise with colleagues in the first place, because they are just that, colleagues, and not people you would have necessarily opted to form a relationship with otherwise.

I'm sympathetic in the sense that I've done office jobs that included at least a couple of colleagues that made my skin crawl. But I think the question of whether you would choose to hang out with someone socially for pleasure is separate to whether, in a general way, it's beneficial for people working together professionally in a team to meet in person. We all know those meetings aren't always a pleasure, but I also know some of the work conversations that have been most crucial to my progress haven't been in a formal Teams meeting, it's something said in passing while you're having a coffee or whatever that opens up an idea or a professional opportunity that you weren't even aware existed. It's not something I would have chatted about by other means because it wasn't on my radar, it's a chance conversation. Maybe it depends what sector you work in, but for me there's definitely something that gets lost when you're not having those conversations.

I hope Farage doubles down on his calls to end WFH as it was a massive vote loser in Australia.
I can’t think of much worse than this odious man as Prime Minister. Apart from his rich mates we are all far worse off because of Brexit as well as being a weaker country.
I can’t believe the press are not reporting he is mentioned over 30 times in the Epstein files because of his financial relationship with the far right Steve Bannon who is behind a lot of what Trump is doing.