to think some people would be weirdly excited if WFH came to an end?

[LoveWFH]

Why do some posters sound almost delighted at the thought of Nigel Farage stopping WFH?

There’s this tone of “that’ll teach them” whenever it comes up. As if people working from home have been getting away with something.

Here’s the practical bit though. My company couldn’t bring everyone back full time even if it wanted to. They’ve sold off chunks of the office space. Whole buildings gone. Desks gone. Leases not renewed. There literally isn’t room for everyone anymore.

Hybrid working isn’t some trendy phase. It’s how a lot of businesses are set up now. They’ve planned for it. Budgeted for it. Recruited around it.

You can’t magically create space that no longer exists.

If you prefer being in the office, fair enough. Plenty of people do. But I don’t get the satisfaction at the idea of other people losing flexibility that works for them and their employer.

I said overlap, not causation. A child that thinks that life happens inside the home and is anxious to go outside the home, is affected by their parents at home, WFH has increased that because more parents are at home.

It is a factor for these children and we should be concerned about that, not dismissive.

I've worked from home since 2015 and have been incredibly lucky in that it's enabled me to continue working full-time and earn a decent salary while also be present for my kids. In my job, it's always been about content delivery, not presenteeism, so as long as I've hit all my deadlines and done my work to the required standard, nobody cares if I do the school run or pop to the shops or whatever. It's been the same with my last three employers. Companies who know productivity is good are happy with employees who WFH and that's unlikely to change. From my perspective, it's been great as I don't have to waste time commuting like I did for hours before 2015, and have time to cook healthy dinners, help my kids with their homework, hear all about their days, clean the house, etc etc. I mean, great but exhausting tbh. I am looking forward to retirement (in another 20 years!) where no doubt I'll also think the next generation have it far easier than I did in my day.

The point is that flexible working massively benefits women, and by extension, their children and society in general.

Right, well if you think it's only overlap rather than causation that still leaves the question of how exactly you can prove the claims made. You said that various professionals had access to this information. In which case, where is it and how exactly has it been collated? When making claims as specific as you are and telling other people how they ought to behave, you in turn will need to have solid proof.

This is actually really important because when people are making claims they can't back up based on vibes, being dismissive is the responsible approach. We need to know what's happening wrt school refusal, and we will not learn that by pretending we have information that we don't.

I work from the office one day a week and what used to be a quiet stretch of motorway before Covid is now a terrifying fast and furious computer game of chocka block lanes. If everyone was suddenly back in full time I don’t know how the road system would cope.

For me it’s working women that will suffer. Childcare / wrap around will either need to be increase or women will need to quit their jobs.

I work from home alot and it allows me to do the school drop off in the mornings, work till 5pm
and pick the kids up from after school clubs.

I worked before covid and we had to be in the office. I was so stressed all the time, so anxious as we don’t have family help. Accident on the road I have no one to pick up my kids. Working extra hours at night to get everything done. Working flexible and at home, I am calmer, a better employee and a better mother.

If they made me go back in the office full time I would honestly think about quiting if possible.

Class is VERY much alive and kicking in the UK. I'd go so far to say we're obsessed with it, as a country.

I tend to wonder how the transport infrastructure would cope with us all going back to the office. I know it did before wfh was such a prevalent thing but the traffic doesn’t seem noticeably lighter as a result.

exactly!

Anyone who complains about how busy the roads are/how long the queues are to get a coffee when they're out shopping/how expensive or hard to find parking is/how crowded trains are/how long they have to wait at the post office to pick up a parcel they missed/how annoying it is when commuters park outside their houses, how hard it is to get a doctor's appointment, how much they hate call centers that have been outsourced to India....don't seem to realise how all those things will get significantly worse if people can't wfh.

In terms of the economy, the reduction of sick days in my company pre covid and post (when most of us are WFH or hybrid) is incredible. I think I've taken maybe 1 sickness leave in 5 years, whereas before I was always either off with flu/a bug/bad cold or struggling through but completely unproductive (while infecting all my colleagues, and vice versa) at least 3 times a year.

The absolute irony of Farage, someone who has barely been seen in his own constituency, and who rarely, if ever attended his "workplace" when he was a MEP, pushing this, is laughable. If people are stupid enough to vote for him they deserve all they get, and I would be preparing to post "what did you expect" with a laughing emoji multiple times a day in a few years' time, if it wasn't going to also impact me!

I hadn’t thought about the childcare aspect but yes, our local childminder now finishes at 5.45 and after school club at 5.30 and 4.30 on Fridays! That has changed since pre-Covid times - I don’t know how those who work 9-5 in the office in the next town over are expected to make that work

This is a weird article as it doesn't seem to have any more basis than the head of Ofsted saying that if his parents were at home, he wouldn't fancy going to school himself.
Where are the stats showing that people with WFH parents are less likely to attend than those with parents out of the house?

My mum didn't work when I was a small child. It never occurred to me to stay at home with her.

Yes, and the shrinking birth rate could have an impact there too. The numbers started to fall through the floor in the 2020s, and we still have the end of the larger 2010s cohort still in the childcare system. As they age out, this may affect the viability of some provision. There's potential for a vicious circle even if we actually funded childcare properly, which of course we do not.

I dont know where the information is collated, I dont need to, its what I see and have seen over decades of work, other professionals will say the same. WFH as a bigger component to that came later, during Covid and after Covid has remained to some degree, it has increased the issues.

When you say the word 'you' are you talking about me specifically? Im not sure I have told people how to behave, where did I do that?

I dont support mass moves back into the office, I simply replied to another poster who also raised the impact on this particular area. Believe it or dont believe it.

My son once tried arguing he didn't need to go to school because I was WFH that day. How I laughed.

My BILs company no longer have an office. It's all been sold off. Everyone works from home so what will Farage do then?! Tell bosses they have to buy a new office? Don't know why this is even an issue. I'd have thought there were bigger things to worry about.

It's a mixture of sheer resentment from those who can't wfh, and the belief that work should be as unpleasant and miserable as possible.

I have a job that I'm good at, with OK pay, and I mostly wfh. I'm just as productive as when in the office; people don't seem to realise how much time is wasted there, and imagine rows of workers hunched over desks in front of an overseer, when in reality nobody knows what anyone else is doing most of the time.

It's made such a difference to life, saving me two hours commuting time per day and the expense that goes along with it. I can also wear comfortable clothing rather than an office 'costume'. My pets are happier too, and I get all the washing done!

I still go to the office now and then, and enjoy it when I do, but it's good to have the choice.

Again, if other professionals are generalising based on the necessarily small samples that they see, they're wrong too. Because in fact both they and you do need to see this information collated properly on a wider level if they want to do any more than talk about their own experiences. If court staff are claiming that schools have good data on how much time parents are spending working in the home, they're full of shit.

You don't know that remote working rather than the multitude of other changes in the 2020s has any bearing on the increase of the issues you see. You just don't. You are wrong to claim that your own limited caseload is evidence that it does.

In answer to the question, you specifically told other people how to behave when you wrote 'we should be concerned about that, not dismissive'. We means you and some others, if you only meant yourself you'd have said I.

It's our version of the racial divisions in other countries

In a previous public sector role, to justify cuts to jobs (which i'm not in favour of btw), they brought in working time directive analysis to see how much time people were actually spending on logged work.

This was a fully office-based team, years before WFH became commonplace and the results were eye-opening as the amount of time actually spent with clients, in meetings or doing paperwork was roughly equal or less than the time coming in a bit late or leaving a bit early, travelling to appts, often to find the person not home, non-official breaks and just general arsing about in the office, chatting, looking busy or complaining about being busy but not actually doing any demonstrable work.

But quite often the person thought they were in fact, really busy and sometimes feeling overwhelmed with work.

I had a colleague who was really lovely but constantly complained about being busy and if she worked over hours, would log that down to take it back as time-owing but didn't seem to realise she came in late every day because of traffic, had her lunch break and 4-5 15 minute fag breaks a day and also spent probably 1.5-2hrs a day gossiping, complaining about her latest family drama or about how overwhelmed she was at work. All of which distracted other people.

She was one of many.

In the early 70s up to 75% of mothers stayed at home. If your theory was correct then wouldn't this have been a huge problem back then also?

It's interesting because I always hated working from home (am now retired) but I don't see how the country could have continued to function without it during COVID. I don't see how it can be stopped, if companies want to enable their staff to do this.

I am listening to a discussion about this on the radio at the moment. Apparently it's referred to by some as 'woking from home'. Fantastic

WFH has been essential for me to manage having DC and work, otherwise I would not be working at all. Fortunately, I my work is pretty autonomous and I'm responsible if things get done or not.

Having said that, some of my colleagues ARE complete slackers when they do it, and it's better for them to be in the office where you can keep an eye on them.

I would say it works on a case by case basis.

Surely the right wing folks would prefer it if people "woked" from home instead bringing all their left wing milks into the office?

Because when I spent 1hr 34mins waiting to speak with an agent- I don't want to be cut off because of "signal issues" or wait 53mins for response on chat because someone doing school run with laptop.
It's very easy to blame other being jealous until you are affected by it. I literally missed very important procedure because I couldn't hear a word (dogs barking) and had to wait 6 weeks to get another appointment.
If you think I'm wrong- try to contact someone through customer services 9am or 3pm.

Well he’s worked out that British people are the Olympic champions at crabs in a bucket mentality.

Stoking the fires of jealousy through pointing at ‘London citizens of nowhere middle class elites’ led to economy destroying Brexit.

More recently, there was the VAT on private schools, which had many on here licking their lips, despite it resulting in no positive difference to state schools.

Farage understands one of our key cultural traits is to try and fuck things up for others even if it does nothing to improve our own lives. Therefore this statement will probably end up gaining him more voters.