People who wfh full-time - what do you do?

[Psm92]

I'm being pushed out of my current job (civil service, mid-management, policy role) due to having a disability which means I can only work remotely. At first, they allowed me to work full-time from home as a reasonable adjustment, but are now claiming it doesn't work - even though the rest of the team works from home 3 days a week. Not sure what I'm going to do if this happens. Most Whitehall depts/agencies don't seem to offer full-time remote working options, and obviously my skillset is quite specific. Looking for ideas. I earn around £45, have a mortgage to pay, etc., and worry about having to start again on a low salary. Just at a loss for what to do really. TIA.

Have you been sent to your occupational health dept? Have you got the Union involved/legal advice. Hard as it is, you need to fight this decision. On what basis are they pushing you out - capability?

I could be fully WFH if I wanted. Public sector body.

4/5 days at home. I do one in the office out of choice but many of my colleagues are fully home based.

I'm a journalist. Phones are magical things.

Although £45k+ would need to be an editor tbf so maybe journalism isn't a good idea. It's awfully paid.

Our CS directorate are fully at home if they want to be (I am). We are recruited nationally though so the team are spread across the country, being in the office would make no difference as you wouldn't be with your team. Have a look at other CS depts, they won't advertise as fully WFH but if they are recruiting nationally chances are they will be fully remote

@Greycheck problem is if they're not advertised as remote it means it's not contractually promised, and whilst it makes sense to not come in if you are dispersed, unfortunately many areas of the CS are still religiously sticking to 40/60% office time despite it being nonsensical in some places, some organisations do advertise remote contacts, but not many.

OP - ask (in writing) for an OH referral. If OH recommend HW, they’re utterly snookered and have to allow it.

Don’t give up your job. Fight for what you deserve.

@orangegato that's not true at all, OH still has to be offset with business needs, I've seen many OH requests not be met because they were (supposedly 🙄) not feasible for the business, and they were all around home working (influx as we started going back to the office).

Honestly I think you should fight it. Get yourself considered properly under the disability policy, get your union on side. Full time WFH is very difficult for CS to refuse as a reasonable adjustment.

But yes I get that you might not feel like you have that fight in you, which is fair enough. You could look at other CS jobs and chat to the hiring managers, again approaching it that WFH would be a reasonable adjustment, not a flexible working request.

I’ve recently left the civil service (same grade). Stop saying you don’t have relevant experience - people move to new sectors all the time, it’s about the skills you do have and how you can apply them to a new area. Sit down and work through your CV, work out where your strengths are - policy, governance, risk management, ops management, comms, etc etc. I took a pay cut, because I wanted to work part time and going down a grade was the strategic move I needed to make. If I’d been going for a full time role I could have stayed at £45k+. I now work for a university who want me in a day a month, but I suspect would roll over quickly if I said I needed the adjustment of no time in the office.

Full time WFH is very difficult for CS to refuse as a reasonable adjustment.

I've seen it refused more than I've seen it approved.

@limons it’d be hard to argue WFH isn’t productive or appropriate when everyone else does it 3 days per week.

It’s absolutely worth a shot. Don’t go down without a fight. Worth doing the research and challenging decisions.

@orangegato not really because they put the emphasis on the other 2 days and what they do on the office days and the benefit to that (especially in operational roles) I was in an organisation that was hell bent on getting people back to the office, staff were very reluctant (exasperated by location strategy and Covid recruitment where people changed jobs during high levels of WFH) and I saw no OFFICIAL approvals (capitalised because I knew of lots of unofficial line manager agreements) it was a big issue on all staff call where staff were asking why OH adjustments were being refused and the Head of People explaining that Oh adjustments still have to meet business requirements. How robust those decisions would be to external scrutiny I don't know, but people seem to think of OH referrals as more of a silver bullet than they are.