Extreme measures to get WFH-ers back to site?

[skyroofwindow]

Background: Doing an office based job in large department in multinational company. People you interact with are often on other sites and in different countries. When lockdown started the entire department was told to WFH and not come onto site to avoid bringing Covid in and jeopardising operations. Productivity maintained across the department during pandemic and in the time after as people adapted to WFH. Company now wants people back on site, which is not unusual across the corporate world. But there is huge reluctance at this Company/site - especially as now there are not enough desks so if you don't book one a month in advance you end up sitting in the canteen!

Company is now taking a harder line getting people back on site and there are two facts I'm not happy with:
*Whether you receive a bonus this year will depend on whether you are meeting their target for numbers of days on site
*There is a public spreadsheet showing everyone's attendance rate, which includes people I know who have particular circumstances (eg health related) impacting their ability to work onsite

While it is entirely in the Company's rights to try and enforce/encourage people back to the office, the bonus and the spreadsheet make me deeply uncomfortable. But I'm not having much success identifying a specific reason other than it's creating a hostile environment, and staff morale is through the floor. Do I have anything specific I can take to HR? They are aware and seem ok with it so far.

Re the young people I know in their first jobs. I think the mentoring and “observe best practice” is just guff HR people tell themselves to justify their own jobs and actions. I worry about micromanaging them to boredom. These are young people who’ve been self-motivated enough to make it through home learning during the pandemic. I think the jury’s out on this one. There’s also the issue of strain on public transport. I agree it’s better for socialising, though god knows we don’t need the drinking culture.

Why can’t they issue a rota and have set working days for x number of people or teams? Makes it easier for everyone know when they are in and arrange things in advance

snorts You are entirely right, @Drosera, expecting companies to provide such luxuries as sufficient meeting rooms for the number of staff they have is, indeed, akin to expecting them to provide steak and red wine dinners every day. I should expect my teams to meet in the damn loos and be grateful that it’s not the corridor.

The same goes for facilities such as lockers (storage space for essential belongings…the cheek of it! Why, that would never have been provided before Covid…oh…wait…it was standard, wasn’t it?).

I’m in senior management…the organisation I worked for going into lockdown reduced their square footage, then merged with another organisation without reducing staff but only kept the smaller space. The one I moved to coming out of lockdowns let half their floor to another organisation and can’t afford to increase office space again (coincidentally, this space sharing has also removed access to the toilets for our org, so staff now have to go down ten floors to find some loos 😂). I am about to move to another org and they, too, have let half their space to another organisation.

Flagging that it is not just a lack of desks that the OP should raise with her HR team, but also other essentials to modern working practices that have also been affected by this organisational downsizing shouldn’t reduce you to frothing at the mouth like some rabidly triumphant Karen, smug in your glee at showing those ‘grifters’ who’s boss. It’s common sense!

@LaughingCat totally agreed with your post, but it's rather let down by your use of the misogynistic slur "Karen" at the end.

@Drosera you are so cynical, I'm guessing you must be a manager!

This! People know where they are most productive. Let them choose.

Also, it's not as if people are that productive when they are in the office.

just to point out: anyone can join a union. Anyone. It makes no difference if your workplace recognises them or not (exception: closed shop industries. Do we still have those?)

Your union can advise you on how to word your communications with the company on any topic you ask them about. They can also tell you, from their experience with your and/or other companies and the law, if you are on a hiding to nothing. They can help you if you feel you're being pushed out or if your employer is trying to change your T&C by stealth. It isn't all out "one out, all out, brother". And you don't have to tell anyone you're in a union or where your advice comes from. In cases where it may go to TE your union can often provide a lawyer, or advise you of which lawyers can handle your case.

Lol calm yourself with the exclamation marks.

I don’t know a single person who wfh and looks after kids at the same time, because it’s bloody exhausting.

However, I personally depend on wfh now I have young children, because I can’t afford to pay the longer hours to cover my commute by public transport, as my office doesn’t have enough parking.

It’s constantly in the news that parents, mostly women are having to quit their jobs because of childcare costs. So this is fewer people paying tax. That is what you should be concerned about. Not people working from home who are genuinely working hard.

And yes like others, my places of work have also downsized to save costs, and facilities in existing offices haven’t been maintained.

I now find it easier to join a meeting from home, as our offices were refurbished to looked like Google, with all these open spaces. All this has meant is fewer actual meeting rooms and therefore no quiet spaces.

I also agree with OP’s point about booking a desk and a meeting room. This wasn’t a thing before covid/downsizing and it’s a PITA.

The other thing is WFH and hybrid working has exposed a couple of things. One is that a lot of managers have absolutely no managerial abilities at all. Some are good at man management, but some are a project manager who could handle that and have been promoted on the back of good PM performance into a managerial role that requires people-management skills.

Most of these "BACK IN THE OFFICE NOW!" companies need to watch Field of Dreams. If they build it, people will come.

I got a job in the middle of a lockdown - the first 6 weeks were all at home, meaning BYOT for laptops, and having our mobile phones couriered to us. It was only partially successful, but when we finally got to the office (4 new starters in my team) to collect tech, the other team members were there and it was pretty good. I left that company for other reasons, but their hybrid working policy, people management and so on was very good. (no desk booking system though)

Where i am now has always been hybrid anyway (tech) and we have found that the developers are pretty shy nocturnal creatures a lot of the time, who emerge blinking into the sunlight for Town Hall Meetings (hybrid) and that's about it. Their productivity is fine. Others work where they're most comfortable which means i do 2-3 days in the office (office dogs! don't want to miss out on them) unless there are reasons i need to be there more or home more (workmen coming, doctor's appointments, f2f client meetings etc) Some are there every day. Some almost never go to the office. Some arrive at 10 and work until late, some arrive at 7 and leave earlier. Our bosses know that productivity is good. Where it isn't there are discussions, f2f where possible, then an interview without coffee if things don't improve.

bottom line: management needs to step up. The rest follows naturally.

@Flexwork you're probably better off starting your own thread in the work topic, you'll get more visibility

Apologies all. This is my first time here and I didnt realise I was commenting on another post! Trying to figure out how to delete my post and start a new thread so please ignore my comments😐

I know lots of people who cover childcare during their work hours - plus school runs etc. Absolutely taking the piss but it’s widespread not isolated and I’d put money on the fact all those hours don’t get made up elsewhere.

don't worry about it. If you report your own post, you can ask the MN moderators to move it to a new thread for you, i think. (it's the 2nd button from the right on the bottom of your post)

It depends what "childcare" is. For lots of people what matters is that they get their work done, no matter how long they are present. So stopping to do a school run and chuck a sandwich at your DCs when they get home is fine.

Others can do their work whenever it fits in to their schedule (me). I sometimes take a longer lunch break to watch a film, or wind down, or zip to the shops, sometimes i start really early and finish early because i want to have a free afternoon/evenng. Some of my colleagues log on at 6:30, stop at 7:30 to take offspring to school, start again at 8, stop at 2 to collect offspring etc etc. it is no skin of anyone's nose if that is your work set-up.

If it isn't your work set up, your managers will let you know.

The working environment is similar to that described by Brefugee. A bunch of highly qualified individuals all working on different projects and expected to work “as many hours as required to do the job”. So one week I may be meeting people visiting from another site Mon-Wed and then prefer to catch up with everything else WFH on Thu-Fri. Another week I may have a call with Korea at 7am on Tue so take it at home and stay the rest of the day Another week I may have a report due and prefer to WFH due to having an ergonomic workstation and not getting interrupted with all the usual distractions from being in a vast open plan office.

It is a situation ideal for hot desking but only if there is enough capacity that doesn’t get booked out as soon as the seats get released in the system a month in advance. As it is any days on site have to be written off as meetings and “collaboration”, ie socialising, and the most “work” I can do is keep an eye on email with my laptop on my knee in the coffee area.

''@Broodywuz

How dare someone who's actually paying you to work insist you have to go to work ay!!''

You do realise that people who work from home, well, work?

I wasn’t proud of calling them names, either. It was late and I couldn’t think of anything else that fit for ‘narrow-minded, self-righteous, petty and vindictive person’, and their wilful refusal to accept any viewpoint outside of their own as having any validity was as frustrating as it was funny.

No excuse for resorting go insults, though. I could have left it at ‘frothing at the mouth, rabidly triumphant and smug in your glee…’ and not used any insult at all, because namecalling is unnecessary

On a tangent though, I would call guys ‘Karens’, as well - I don’t limit any epithet to only the one sex or gender, as those words are just descriptors for a certain type of behaviour that can be displayed by any person. Men can be bitches and women can be tossers, too. There’s a guy at my work who is definitely what I would call a Karen - there’s no other insult that quite nails that ‘I want to speak to your manager, missy’ vibe he gives off! I’d never really thought of it as being a specifically female insult even though it obviously is. Topic for a different thread ☺️.

Don't know if anyone's mentioned it (thread too long to catch up in the time I have) but I'd be concerned about the lack of a DSE assessment for working in the canteen. Look at the health and safety executive website. By law the company must do a DSE assessment; how on earth is hotdesking in a canteen suitable. If they want you in that's fine, but they need to provide suitable desks, chairs, screens etc.

I'd also be concerned that tying the bonus to presenteeism discriminates against people with disabilities (if you need an actual desk due to back issues, for example, and they run out presumably you have to wfh? There's no way my DH can do a full day on a canteen chair, he'd be in agony).

The company's request for 3 days in the office is reasonable but they have to be providing the facilities to make it happen and I'm surprised they're tying it to a bonus and making data about attendance publicly available as that seems risky (even if there's no rule against it).

At our place, it goes into our diaries ‘Person’s initials school run and family time’ then later a block that says ‘Person’s initials flex’. Not saying everyone does that but it’s definitely something I’ll be implementing in future workplaces, as it’s good to see when everyone is available to be contacted.

also if you're working in the canteen (aside of any regulations about workstations and screens etc) are there privacy issues?

No, they don’t. That would be a sackable offence to wfh while looking after small children.

as several posters have explained - childcare problems could be not having a daily 3 hour commute, and therefore not having to use hideously expensive childcare, while still managing 9 hours at the coalface.