WFH vs Office

[Fulshaw]

Interesting article in the Guardian this morning about the staff of Manchester United being told to come back to the office full-time.

The owner cites another one of his companies where they WFH on a Friday and email traffic fell by 20% on that day.

On the one hand, this seems like a clumsy way to measure productivity. There are lots of other factors surely and you’d have to look at calls, meetings etc. as well, and throughput of work.

On the other, what is explanation is there for the drop in emails other than people putting their feet up?

What do you think?

I work at a university and a lot of work for people is writing up papers etc and quite often they set aside one day a week for that and it is usually a Friday, so they absolutely are working just not by email. For me, I write minutes and tend to use Friday to catch up on these, so again definitely working but not really sending emails.

As several other posters have said, my most productive days are often the WFH ones when I tell my team first thing that I’m going to be offline for most of the day to concentrate on a project. And I concentrate much better when WFH.

WFH is the day I do my "deep thinking" work. The figures, the maths, the things I struggle to concentrate on in the office. So fewer emails. Also by Friday I've got through most my emails so have fewer to reply to

When I was in the office on Tues/Weds I couldn't get any real thinking done so all I did was send emails and do admin! The rest of the week was for the majority of my work (eg writing long presentations which required looking up loads of resources).

Now I'm wfh all week and there's a much more even split! Saying that, I also think most office-based jobs have a lighter feel on a Friday - especially in person.

I think it would be helpful to know more about the 20% and whether they took account of part-timers etc.

Productivity is easier to measure in places like call centres or service providers, much harder in project-based work.

Absolutely not in our office. Productivity (its measured on a workflow) PLUMMETS in the office. It's noisy people ask questions they socialise. It's great for training and teamwork but when it comes to volumes of work there are stats that show us the staff who work from home more do more.

In my office most people prefer to WFH so they can get their washing and tidying up done. There's not much more to it 🙈

Is it not the same in the office though? We were always told to get everything through by Thursday as nobody does much on a Friday and this was in office

It really needs to be a case by case basis

Sone people are shirkers and need to be watched
Sone people work better in the quiet

I do actually put washing ok whilst at home
In the office I would go for a walk to THINK

Because it's a creative and thinking role that I have

My team all go into the office on Mondays. It’s generally accepted that that’s meetings and catch ups day & the real work gets done at home on the other four days.

Totally agree

Sounds really daft and just a random excuse for a dinosaur boss to throw his weight around...

Constant emailing (sending and responding) is really distracting and frankly unnecessary so it really does not mean people are actually being productive when doing that, very often it is the complete opposite.

I do a lot of copywriting and design in my work (marketing) and I switch off Teams and emails when I am working on something that requires all my attention and where I need to focus on details and technical stuff (like web design).

If not I would never get anything done with the many email threads about birthdays, someone leaving, someone congratulating themselves for bringing in some money through fundraising...

Many emails are just pointless background noise.

WFH is not going anywhere and most employees value flexibility above all so shitty bosses like that will just lose or fail to recruit talented staff.

'@blacksocks33
In my office most people prefer to WFH so they can get their washing and tidying up done. There's not much more to it 🙈'

Yet another daft statement.

You know nothing about what 'most people' think or what they do when they are WFH unless you have cameras hidden in everyone's house and you can mind read....

I work from home because I am autistic and WFH allows me to do a better job in a quiet environment and remain in employment because I would struggle with using trains. I am really tired of suggestions that people WFH spend their time doing something else. It is tired thinking and just infantilise employees.

I work three days a week. Two days in the office and one day at home. I get far more done at home. In the office there's too much going on, too much talking. I get distracted.

I find the office environment when it's noisy and busy really uncomfortable and end up zoning out and retreating into myself. I'm alright on quieter days but if it's just too noisy I just can't concentrate.

I definitely get more done at home as I can just zone out and focus, plus it's quiet no office noise.

Unfortunately I don't really get to do it anymore as the culture is people are expected to be in the office unless the have it in their contracts

I'm trying to do something that requires high levels of concentration today, but there's the office chatter/meetings and I'm really struggling to concentrate

I presume it wouldn't be covered by a flexible working request? I keep toying over putting one in but don't want to make relations awkward if it's refused

@Startingagainandagain I know nothing what most people do at my work?? Except I do because it's a bit of a running joke at our work place and everyone talks about it all the time!
You really don't need to tell me what I know about my colleagues! Bit of a daft comment really 🙃

To be honest though, even WITH the WFH distractions, I'm still more productive at home than in the office. I can work, put washing on, do the dishes, plenty of other things, and my output is still better than when I have Marie from accounts chatting shit about her online dating next to me all day.

I'm with a public sector, large-ish employer. We go into the office 2 days per week, the other 3 days are from home (but you can go in more if you want). This seems to achieve of good balance of 'collaborating' when you're in the office, and then getting your head down at home. Most people seem to be happy with this. And most people appear to be conscientious when they're WFH.

I think the issue is that they are only working from home on one day and also that day happens to be a Friday (when a lot of people will slack off anyway regardless of where they are working)

If working from home was everyday or several days a week their productivity would likely even out as a result.

I agree

Friday is the most common day to not work, either as annual leave, part time or compressed hours. And when I worked Friday in an office, we usually went out for lunch and went to pub at 4.

I’ve only ever wfh, currently work with people that do some flexi work, I’ve noticed messages drop in frequency when they wfh but zoom calls increase, it’s so much simpler to have a zoom call when someone is in a private home office vs when they’re at their desk in the noisy office. Also sending emails/IM on a Friday is a pain, regardless of if they’re in the office or home you will likely be following up again on Monday so sometimes it’s just easier to do it Monday