Full time WFH opportunity - too isolating?

[minnie300]

I have the opportunity to WFH full time with occasional UK travel for team meet ups. The frequency of those hasn't been decided but I expect it would be once or twice a year. I'm desperate for a change as I've become bored in my current hybrid role (same job for nearly a decade) and the new opportunity is in a completely different field. On paper it all sounds ideal but the full time WFH is making me have serious doubts.

I'm definitely an introvert but I do find it nice to go into the office once or twice a week. Having said that I don't have direct work colleagues or a 'team' so it's a case of a passing 'hi' in the corridor and I do feel lonely at times. I suspect the new role would have more of a 'team' feel to it.

What do people do for social interaction whilst working from home? I've thought about gym/ classes at the gym (but who chats at those?), and maybe volunteering but otherwise I think I might go stir crazy.

I can imagine you'd be very lonely if this is how you talk to people. Any reason you took my reply to the OP as a personal attack on you?

Do it but have regular social things planned.

I love it, I went from FT in office to FT home working, I had my moments at first but now I couldn’t imagine being full time in an office.

pros for me:

no commute

gym at lunch

can get chores done at lunch

closer to my kids schools (for sickness, events etc) here when the eldest gets home

No office politics, if there is work drama you switch off quicker at home

More productive

always in for parcels 😂

cons:

I sometimes go a week without any ‘real’ interaction other than work,kids,husband.

Likely to stay later, because I can

Sometimes log in to check things

I wish I had a separate office space

No air con (but you don’t get heating/air con dramas)

I've WFH since 2020, I love it, we have teams meetings twice a week for general 'team stuff' and other teams meetings for other things. I have dogs which forces me out of the house and if I don't particularly get on with anyone in the team then I don't have to have much contact with them, those I get on with well we just meet up face to face every now and again in the office or have a social now and again.
I would say we're in a team but not doing the same work if that makes sense, so even if we were all in the office all the time it would be minimal interaction, which is why our team manager didn't feel the need for us to return to the office after COVID

I think it's dependent on so many things including personality, do you have an office space you can close the door on, do you live alone, have an active social life.
I wfh 3 days a week and hate it so much. My last role was 2 days wfh but I went in every day as i was close enough. I miss the casual unplanned chats. We don't have general online chat at my current place, have a weekly team call where almost everyone bar me has their camera off and we are not in the office not set days which means I can go in and none of my team be in anyway.
I live alone, don't have an office that I can shut work away in and find that work has essentially invaded my home sanctuary.
I'm desperate to find somewhere close where I can resume a more regular office set up with humans and leave my work at the office at home time.

OP- are you single or live alone? Would you be solely working on your own or is there a teams chat to discuss things with colleagues?

We have a work teams chat and can do video calls in the day if wanted. Its generally to discuss work but it always does often veer off into day to day conversations like you'd have around the water cooler at work. DH also WFH so I'm rarely alone. Days when colleagues are on leave and I work days on my own can feel a bit isolating at times, but then I can crack on and get more work done.

I agree with @Freeflight , depends on a lot of factors. I am home alone during term time which compounds my dislike of wfh, it can feel a bit like Covid lockdown for me during winter months tbh.

I tend to work 8-6, sometimes I might need to work later and when I’ve finished I really cba to go out when it is cold and dark so on those days all I do is work. I have got a treadmill and do yoga at home. Good for when I’ve been in the office but not when wfh when I feel the need to get out of the house.

It isn’t anything to do with not speaking to people either, I just don’t like wfh too much. I spend at least two hours a day on teams meetings, have my own office with great tech that I can close the door on, etc., etc.

I also think I end up being more available on teams than I would in person in an office because the organic conversations that just happen don’t when everyone is remote.

I go in a couple of times a month, but otherwise WFH school hours. Our wider team have been together a long time, and largely remote for best part of 7 years, and the team I manage are also on the same pattern.

It works well for me, and DH is WFH 3/5 days. I have the dog, school pick ups and various other social things happening to keep that side of things going.

I enjoy WFH, but then I have my own office and can control all of the sensory things that annoy me about normal offices. It also makes me nicer to others as I can think more before I r3spond.

I am an introvert with anxiety and have worked from home for the last 7 years.

I have loved it for the last few years and it has been an absolute dream for work life balance, as I have my partner at home and have young children so its brilliant to be around to do school runs and be at home when they get home.

However now I am more invested in my job, going for promotion and my kids are older, I am seeing the negative affects. My anxiety is getting worse (not due solely to WFH but I do think it hasnt helped), between being a busy mum and WFH I barely get properly dressed into pretty clothes or bother with makeup. I find I am craving the structure, interaction and enrichment of going into the office at least some of the time.

Does your new role have a base office you can go to optionally? I would take the role if you could travel into the office when it suited you, but would be wary of taking a job where that isn't possible.

Thanks for the replies everyone :)

I have a meeting with the company tomorrow so I'll get to know more about the frequency of the 'occasional' team meets. But I've decided if they're too infrequent I won't go for it. I might look further into a coworking desk option but it would be roughly £80 for 5 days/month 'desk rent' at one of those places.

I might look further into a coworking desk option but it would be roughly £80 for 5 days/month 'desk rent' at one of those places

What would you hope to gain from this? Routine of going to 'an office'? Sitting at a desk and chair somewhere else away from home? The possibility of a few randoms also sitting at desks?

Genuine question when it wouldn't be with colleagues and you'd likely not be chatting or getting to know anyone else sitting/working there.

LOL at logging off at 5, you seem to have a nice easy time

Why wouldn't she log off at 5 if she's finished her work and those are her contracted hours?

I WFH although I only work part time, but I just get my social fill elsewhere I suppose. Outside of work I am extremely busy with volunteering two nights a week, fitness, I have a lot of friends that I have meals out with, coffee, play dates with the kids. So working doesn’t really have to fill any sort of social bar for me as the rest of my life does that.

I find it isolating. It's crept up slowly. Have WFH since 2020, including a maternity leave. I now work around school hours so getting out to exercise/do classes is tricky as I'm usually trying to get all my work done between pick ups and then dealing with the kids etc, then by the time it's the evening most people I have the opportunity to know are home with their kids so it's not like we hang out much. As you say you don't often meet besties at the gym. I find I spend 90% of my time within a 1/2 mile radius of my house these days. Which isn't what I'm used to as someone who would commute to the city and travel internationally with work. It isn't all down to the job, but if I worked in an office there would be more of a variety of both faces and just things to see.

I'm hoping to find a role with a hybrid option. There are many perks to being at home in terms of the flexibility (for me with the kids, appointments, chores etc now no longer slip into evenings and weekends) but I do miss getting news from the world by proxy of just being in it, the accidental exercise of commuting and working in an office, coffee break chats, knowing when colleagues birthdays are without necessarily trying. You can still achieve all those things but they used to be effortless.

Do you have any office spaces near you? I work from a office space so I get to have regular "colleagues "around without I am at work. Therr are a core of about 10 of us who are regulars and then others who flutter in and out.

For me it works well.

I use a co-working space once or twice a week.
It's a small place and normally there are 2 other people there (there's a pool of maybe 15 people that use it) and I really enjoy it. The people are interesting and nice, very respectful but chatty when we're all in the mood for a break.
I pay myself for it and it's worth every penny. I get a change of scenery from being a home, a friendly chat if I want one and an environment that's nice than my home office

I find WFH (I do 100% in a global role so no office option) not the social isolation as such but the difficulty in picking up a new role/organisation. I found (and still find 4yrs in) this so much harder WFH than in the office, especially in a role that needs an element of soft power and a network of contacts. Onboarding/teams calls/occasional travel do their bit but having done a similar role in the office previously, the WFH role has been so much harder to drive as well as I’d expect (in the same sector). It doesn’t help that a lot of my colleagues are in the office (US and Germany respectively) which does often feel like I am missing out on important discussions. You said you are moving to a new field - would this be a factor to consider?
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I’ve found it incredibly isolating. I would leave if I didn’t have absolutely incredibly flexible hours that I can’t replicate elsewhere.

For me, the problem is that all the approximations of interactions that are now done virtually just don’t replace the real thing. A team chat open all day, or team video calls, don’t work as I hate the “talking to everyone at once” dynamic. I very much like 1-1 chats, and in person you can easily be talking to the person next to you whilst others are having a separate conversation. Now everyone else looks in on all conversations, so it all stays very superficial, so I don’t really engage much anymore.

Similarly, there is no body language to rely on. You could tell when someone was frustrated with something, and if you weren’t too busy, a quick question about what’s bothering them could often lead to a very easy resolution, or at least a sense of not being alone. Now we all try to sort it alone, as we don’t want to interrupt someone for something trivial (yes, we’ve all discussed and feel the same, but we still don’t feel comfortable doing it).

I think this has all made us much less productive as a team. It would be fine in a job where the tasks are well-known and don’t really change, but ours aren’t and we used to get a lot of value from ad-hoc interactions that just aren’t there anymore, but that’s hard to quantify…

I find nice places to work from, there’s a lovely hotel near to me, nice lunch and a change of scene is good.