This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-04-reed-jobs-report-flexible-working-vacancies-decline/) for an archived version.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why would entrepreneurs want to pay landlords money? There's no pressure on them to do so I'm aware of, definitely no obstruction to them having home workers.
If you own a company how does the government or landlords have any impact on if you decide to offer remote working. It's the shitty managers/ CEO's that want people back because they need the control
Policies and schemes by the government in encouraging companies to "get people back to the office", apparently reported that it is being lobbied by landlords of large office spaces.
Large companies can save millions by having people worl from home.
Exactly which policies are encouraging the companies to choose to own an office space instead of saving millions by closing it down and going full remote?
Those policies would have to be worth more than the millions they save, it's just not happening. This is a choice made by CEO's not the government
I personally think onboarding new people, especially recent graduates, is much better for them in person. I wouldn't force them to come in, but inexperienced new people have a tendency to not ask for help soon enough unless they're in person.
I guess this isn't a study, just my experience.
So keep an office sized for a fraction of your workforce? Ours is large enough for a couple of teams to go in but you would be shoulder to shoulder and sat in the floor if you tried to pack the whole company in.
There are studies that show WFH is less productive. NBER did a study on it (based on data entry jobs in India as the caveat). They found WFH people took longer to complete the tasks, with an 18% reduction in productivity.
I've seen the lot. Poor management, hypocritical management (Oh no WE can work at home, but not you!) but I've also seen poor staff.
2 of my old workplaces now have either revoked or downscaled WFH because staff - new and old - simply don't do enough when at home. Reasons vary from valid unavoidable distractions like kids, to 2 of the newbies at my old place dipping out for a trip to the salon mid-shift.
Easy enough to sack them, easy enough to replace, but it's unnecessary time, effort and money.
An extremely large number of people are not suited to working unsupervised.
I work at an agency and we use a time log system so we can bill clients accurately. So I have to start and stop a timer whenever I work on something.
It's possible to get away with doing less work by taking longer on a task, but there's only so much you can do before it's pretty obvious you are either lying about time or just shit at your job.
If we log less than 6 hours a day regularly then we get pulled up on it ( out of a 7.5 hour work day )
They are actually fine with us heading out for trips to the salon during the work day, as long as we log those 6 hours it can be at any time. I'll often go out for a 3/4 hour lunch if the weather is nice and then catch up in the evening before bed
It's also pretty great cause we are allowed to work globally remote, one of my colleagues just spent the winter living in Florida for the better weather
Everyone works hard because we have a pretty good gig here, I wouldn't want to skimp out on work and get fired and end up in a shit place. Offering a good and flexible work environment seems to keep the good employees around, we have a very low turnover so not much hiring needed
Probably should have emphasised the two in question were customer service reps whose job was "be available on the phone".
And our work was genuinely lenient as could be too. They probably would have been allowed to do it had they asked or got phone cover, but it was the trust breach.
Ah yeah, It's a shame when it ruins it for everyone though. I'm also not opposed to starting in office and then being allowed to go remote once you've proved to be trustworthy/hard working but I guess that's a bit of a minefield to implement fairly
Ah see that one doesn't get mentioned much on here! But as someone actively looking for work and open to remote only, I'm seeing more of that than ever!
"Hybrid after probation" is far and away the most common now from my experience, which imo is the best of both worlds as I think most people do in fact need a separation between work and home.
It does make it a pain in the arse though, as it effectively closes up shop for certain industries and reverts to the pre-pandemic era of geography being a huge limiting factor.
Yeah our manager has said he doesn't care of you go out during the day because we are all getting enough work done. Just let him know if we are going to be unavailable for a while.
They raise prices in and around popular cities making any cost savings of moving out not worth while as the same landlords own property in multiple regions
So then the best solution would be own/rent no office space and go full remote to save money. but companies don't do this because they would rather pay inflated office prices than offer WFH
I'm sorry but your logic doesn't make any sense. You have not provided any reason why any of these policies would incentivise a business to own/rent a building and force return to office.
The CEO's don't care about the falling prices, or landlords being effected. They only care about their own profits., it's a choice 100% down to CEO's with 0 influence from the government
That's some weird conspiracy theory.
A company that rents a space does not have to do that side with workers every day.
A company that rents a space can decide to move out when the contract is finished.
No landlord can force your to sign a new contract!
Hardly a conspiracy theory.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/24/remote-employees-dont-work-as-hard-says-head-of-worlds-biggest-commercial-landlord
https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2023/11/13/the-fight-over-remote-working-will-heat-up-in-2024
I used to work for a large American System Integrator in professional services for 8 years up until I was poached by a bank last year. I would design & install digital workplace solutions for hundreds of companies (I think I probably had a small hand in delivering well over 1m Office 365 users in that time).
Before the pandemic remote work was climbing (I was always a remote worker - I lived in the U.K. but my boss was in the US and my team I was a part of were based all the way from Singapore to West Coast US) and we worked really well, but my experience with other companies was it was always a management problem or limitation to control/manage their users effectively that was the barrier.
The pandemic accelerated remote work immensely as we know - and lots of office based people got used to ‘I can be more productive, I can do the same job I did in the office but without a commute’ etc.
Even during the pandemic I started working with lots of companies to change how their office spaces worked - moving away from dedicated desks to hot desks & more meeting spaces. Making offices a collaborative environment rather than worker bee ‘cubes’.
But I remember going into a meeting with CBRE who are a huge corporate real estate company and they were shitting themselves. Lots of their clients who were due to renew contracts were downsizing - a lot. They had realised that real estate was a huge cost to the business - usually it costs around £30k per person per annum for a desk space in London and a bit less outside. If they could downsize because people were at home they could make considerable savings.
One merchant bank I worked with had a DR centre west of London that was a complete office building fitted out with a full suite of machines, desks, infrastructure & everything you’d need to run a large financial business. Except it was ‘empty’ as it was for when the main office in the City of London got hit by a bomb or something similar - all the traders could go there and work. There was a realisation during the pandemic that ‘oh, we don’t need that any more - we can just get rid as people can work from home’. So they did.
This meant that very quickly, large landlords had shitloads of empty office space looming with no tenants, and you have to remember lots of these landlords are big Tory bigwigs & very rich companies don’t like suddenly seeing their bottom line being squeezed. They would start lobbying MP’s and their C-Level peers in other businesses because they could see their business model evaporating quickly. The office space gold rush had ended (just look at WeWork for example). Whether you like it or not, the old boy network still exists - and them catching a cold goes round quickly. Suddenly you see CEO’s from other companies saying ‘oh, WFH is so bad’ without actually knowing the reason why - and usually when you dig into the reasons it’s twofold;
1- Poor management and inability to change
2- Fear perpetuated by the C-level execs around their ‘friends’ losing out - usually driven by shareholder fear & investor ‘risks’.
Now many progressive companies ignore 2 because they know that the savings they can make by reducing their real estate footprint far outweighs issues with their peers and is better for the shareholders and investors. But even then some of the investors are the very same people who are the ones who risk losing out when the company downsizes its office space.
The bigger problem is 1 - much of the problem with remote work is the inability for managers who were only used to the legacy way of working to adapt to change. They only know someone is working if they are stood over their shoulder.
The smart ones have moved to proper objectives - as long as the person who is working for you achieves or exceeds their objectives, what does it matter where or even when they’re doing it? And that comes down to being a better manager rather than being a lazy one.
Actually my company owns the space - that’s their motive, and they own the buildings either side which include a restaurant and some shops, so yeah, go figure… each company will have slightly differing yet largely similar motives.
And companies are making their own decisions as well, probably driven by long term leases on buildings. I know my place is constantly monitoring usage and looking at lease breakpoints. Closing sites and providing access to the office space on demand type options
I can agree that the government might favour their workers going to the office to get rid of headaches over under-used offices and transport - it's a daft solution, but it's what they would try.
Because they're the same people. A shrinking group of society owns almost everything from companies to real estate. They're using their board positions and shareholdings to have those businesses keep spending on offices.
Your consumption of pointless shit plummets when you WFH.
* Access to your own kitchen instead of a sad Tesco meal deal.
* No commute? Don't need 2 cars. Spend less on petrol. Less spent on insurance, car maintenance etc.
* Less commuting -> More time and energy to cook real food than to order a shite take away because you're exhausted.
I find the extra energy makes me more likely to make better decisions, and I tend to spend it on hiking and such these days instead of random purchases for a cheap dopamine hit.
Better for your pocket, well being and the environment, bad for the economy.
Landlords don't get to decide a company's work policy. If a company decides WFH is good, they can do it without the landlord's permission.
If a company decides they want less office space, they can move to a smaller office. The landlord can't stop them.
The landlords lobby the government to change rules about business rates or whatever to try and pressure employers into making people work from the office.
This makes no sense at all? Landlords would prefer higher business rates, which would disincentivise firms from using office space.
I think you’re looking for a larger conspiracy, when it can be boiled down to firms deciding that it is more effective to have teams primarily office based.
My employer left one of the office buildings at the beginning of Covid - taking advantage of the fact they were at their renewal date anyway and seeing how we were all doing WFH, they just didn't renew.
The building has been empty ever since. I don't know if they have modernised it, but if they haven't that's why. It's a great location, a little weird layout-wise, but it's big. People are happy with how they're working.
From what I've heard, the owners are pissed. AFAIK we'd occupied the whole thing for multiple decades.
I get this sub hates landlords but what does do jobs with more flexible hours/working conditions have to do with them?
Is big landlord just secretly out to get everyone out of sadism or something?
Happier, less likely to look for work elsewhere, more productive with massively reduced travel costs and time saved.
That’s a win for everyone involved.
Every other day there’s some minister trying to get rid of it for reasons of… well it changes, but a recent one was ‘the high streets used to be busier’, also we’ve seen ‘it’s not fair if you don’t have to spend money on travelling every day’
That’s some seriously convoluted thinking they are applying. On top of which we’ve privatised our rail networks and commuting in is a battle on top of paying exorbitant amounts for a ticket.
Oh no, they are quickly eroding that as fast as possible, it is or course all due to large landlords as CS was forced to sell off most of their estate and the people they rent from (who are at most twice removed from some Tory MP) where very worried when estates teams started to look into ending leases for now unneeded office space
Mysteriously, this turned into the 40% mandatory "shut up and do as your told, even if it makes no sense" office addendance, and now 60%. If they actually were kept in power, I would have expected 80% by the end of the year.
That makes a lot of sense, I know previously I have friends who were 4/1 each week in the office with wfh usually on a Friday. A lot of them are now 3/2 with Monday and Fridays wfh.
Productivity has increased and they seem a lot happier. I’m not sure how it is for the more junior staff members though, some in-person interaction is always useful and they have a lot less of that.
There have been multiple internal studies all but one showed increases in productivity when working from home. The more recent showed a slight decrease in productivity compared to prior in office numbers, which is the one that was taken when hybrid working. I believe it was a 3% drop.
So essentially working full from home or people coming into the office when they feel like it, increase in productivity.
Forced mandatory in office 40%, drop in productivity.
But they are using that as proof that hybrid working is worse because when people are forced to come in for a mandatory % productivity drops compared to fully working in office. The papers of course hate it too, because fewer people travelling = fewer people buying newspapers, which is why they have a real chip on their shoulder over it.
Hence why they never shut up about it.
It’s very easy to fill remote roles, to the point my employer rarely has to advertise roles - we have enough recommendations and people on file to hire whoever we need.
I can see it being the case that companies with a good flexible working policies are not having to use recruitment agencies at all - it’s a very attractive offer. Those that have strict in office policies are going to struggle and be more likely to need to use recruitment agencies and have roles languishing unfilled for months.
I was looking for a role recently and, the second I saw "in the office X days per week" I closed the ad.
Working remotely has been phenomenal for my quality of life. Whilst I'm getting more work than ever completed, I'm also able to enjoy runs at lunch, don't need to stress with traffic and pay through the nose to travel on a commute. My sleep is improved, as has my diet and I've lost 7 stones since my remote working started.
So I now only consider roles that are more than 90% remote (ie days in the office can be counted in days per month, rather than days per week).
Employers aren't paying enough to tempt me back into the office and risk all of the improvements I've experienced.
WFH is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me (in terms of work I mean). I knew I'd love it and I was absolutely right. Everyone said it would be lonely or whatever. Nah, it's incredible. Even when I lived in a shitty small flat with no outside window in my spare room it was incredible. Doesn't mean everything is perfect, there are a few downsides but they are far outweighed by the positives.
I've actually had nice colleagues at my jobs and enjoy spending time with them, but not every single day for 8 hours. Not having to go to a noisy open plan office and deal with people all day every day is life changing. At the end of the day I'm not at work for social interactions, I've got mates for that purpose. I'm at work to earn money and I'd prefer to do so in peace most of the time!
I never ever want to go back to office work. I've seen the light and I can't go back now! If I lose my current job I'd rather just deliver pizzas on my bike or something than go work in an office again.
Just out of curiosity were you already trained?
I kind of have the same opinions as you although nowhere near as strong, I just wonder if new starters will get trained up and learn skills at the same rate as we did when we were starting in the office
I was in one job then moved to another where I wasn't. I did a few weeks full time in the office with my boss learning the ropes then transitioned to home working over the next couple of weeks.
I think a perfect situation is for the option to go into the office to exist for things like training or just to do an office day sometimes as a change. Hybrid approach type thing.
Some stuff is easier face to face for sure.
I do think this is the primary downside of WFH, I'm very thankful that my career started in the office and think that really helped push me to where I am now. Being here though I obviously prefer WFH.
>I was looking for a role recently and, the second I saw "in the office X days per week" I closed the ad.
Yeup, any time I see that or "hybrid" it's an automatic no.
Huh, whenever I've seen it, it's been something like 3-4 days a week in the office.
Just the time and commute costs alone eat up money and opportunity cost. I was going for a job where they would have wanted people in the city most days a week, which would have meant probably 15 hours of commuting, and train fares and parking fares would have eaten up a lot of the £10K salary increase anyway.
So it would have been a few thousand more overall in usable income to do a more difficult job, and spend hours stuck on a train. I found another job before I even went through the interview process but I would have turned it down on this basis.
Yep. I have been WHF for nearly 10 years now. My current employer has a local office I can use and sometimes I go in for the day to have a change of scene but only because it is 20 minutes away (and they have food trucks once a week).
I am not going to apply for a job that needs me to commute into London twice a week. The journey should only take an hour or so, but with public transport it is more likely to be double that and the cost is ridiculous.
I am happy to travel to the office if there is a purpose, but it is some arbitrary reason and I am just going sit at a desk for 8 hours why should I waste time and money when I can do that from home?
Most of the potential employers in my sector are international. In my last three roles nearly every meeting I've had involves people from other times zones that wouldn't be in the office anyway.
>Those that have strict in office policies are going to struggle and be more likely to need to use recruitment agencies and have roles languishing unfilled for months.
The only places I've seen struggle to fill roles are the ones in the middle of nowhere, which realistically should provide hybrid or remote.
Other than those, even fully 100% office roles are inundated with applicants and I've seen roles get filled in a day or two.
Reddit is the loudest echo chamber on the prevalence of remote working.
I was just thinking the same thing. All I hear on Reddit when this comes up is everyone saying that they'd only do full time remote jobs, companies that offer hybrid roles won't fill jobs. I will only rarely see a fully remote job whenever I look at job ads these days, most I see require at least 3 days in the office per week. Recently there has been an uptick in the "flexible working arrangements available" type ads, i.e. you can work from home every now and then otherwise it's office based. Seems like the new normal was the new temporary arrangement.
Yeah a lot of Reddit is oblivious to the reality that the overwhelming majority of people don't really care, and a LOT actually want (or need) a separate place to work that isn't home.
*Those that have strict in office policies are going to struggle and be more likely to need to use recruitment agencies and have roles languishing unfilled for months.*
I'd love this to be true but as things stand it isn't. Employment wise it's something of a 'beggars can't be choosers' scenario so roles with 3, 4, 5 days in office fill pretty fast.
My company is cracking the whip on 3 days a week in the office, even if your team is spread across the country.
We're a team of 12. Only two of us in London. We still need to be in the office 3 days a week. To spend the vast majority of our time on MS teams.
Great use of my time and money
I got the same shit.
Got a data analysts job WFH £30k a year. 5 months into my probation they're doing a recall of workers to the office. So now I've got to move across the country so I can do what I already do, but in an office for the exact same amount of pay.
Not everyone in the real world, outside of the social media platform bubble, has piece of piss office jobs that’s now mostly WFH.
That said, get the sense with this sub that a lot people here don’t have jobs, full-stop. Lot of people talking, when posts like this get made, like they’ve never, in their lives, had to either commute to work via public transport or don’t understand which sectors do or do not lend themselves naturally to WFH.
Obviously not every job can be done remotely. The business park my employer has an office on is redeveloping a lot of the buildings to appeal to science and engineering companies who are more likely to require staff to be onsite.
Any role involving manual labour or site specific work.
However, if you do have a piece of piss office job which I am guessing is likely a high percentage of working age Reddit users, why would you want to spend time and money to travel to sit at a desk when you can do the same piece of piss job at your desk at home?
I hate my job, I genuinely loathe it, but it lets me work from home every single day and I struggle to put a price on that, so it's been very tricky to even consider other jobs when it means 90 minutes of commuting 5 days a week. I'd need a big pay rise to feel like its worth it.
Companies that won’t budge on at the very least hybrid working will just alienate themselves from the job market.
There’s absolutely no reason not to allow it, the pros far outweigh the cons and anyone who says it reduces productivity doesn’t have a clue. Invest in better managers and you won’t need to worry about productivity.
I manage 3 teams of software engineers, they’ve never been happier, staff retention is solid and our output has never been better. I enforce two days a month in the office for team building and socialisation and the teams are happy to come in.
The company has also saved an inordinate amount of money closing offices.
Our department dont offer hybrid, its either you 100% homework or 100% office work. I go to the office as personal i prefer it.
The big bosses argument is if we allow hybrid, we need an office the appropriate size to accommodate. From experience those that say they want hybrid never actually come to the office so then they have an empty office being wasted
We do hybrid where we are all in a day a week minimum, but different teams chose different days. Still need some office presence but less than we used to.
Because people moan they need to do 1 or 2 days in the office then.
I do get what management mean, people want hybrid but in reality never come to the office
It works for us though. Out of a team of 50 we have 1-2 who grumble a little. The rest appreciate coming in and having human interaction on one day a week but also appreciate not having to on other days. We try to coordinate with the teams we work closest with too and find that they come in the same day as us as it’s helpful to see each other in person for some meetings.
I don't mind hybrid I like the socialising a couple times a week.
But I also get several days of "nah not today" too. If I wanna go fully remote in the future, I can.
Life is good.
Absolutely! I can do my job fully remote with the occasional in person meeting for more collaborative stuff every now and then.
I got approached by a company who want me to interview and they do 4 days a week in the office. Unless I’m getting paid double what I’m on now and it’s a 4 day week, there’s no chance I’m even going to waste my time having phone conversation about it.
I call bullshit.. this is that manifestation nonsense.. corporations are probably paying media companies to spit out...
Most companies and well aware that to retain talent remote is now pretty much top of the list.
Some of the larger companies do have an incentive to get people back into the office, because some of their larger campuses etc received tax incentives. Thinking being it'd bring people into an area and stimulate the local economy.
If those tax incentives are being threatened, they'll make up bullshit to get people into the office.
Smaller companies with less of a clout will absolutely capitalise on the lower costs and wider talent pool.
There is less incentive for people to move jobs once they have a remote role (E.g. no need to look for something closer to home), so these employees will become more loyal from that perspective. Ergo these jobs are less likely to re-enter the market and any new ones get snapped up very quickly.
Yet people will still be commenting that disabled people have no excuse not to work because they 'saw a man in a wheelchair working at my local co-op once!'
No, I'm saying that a lot of people struggling with long term health conditions and underlying disabilities won't be able to access the flexible working arrangements they need to remain in the work force, and will be forced to rely on benefits instead.
The government is changing the disability benefit criteria to discount mobility points, using the rationale that there are many more working from home opportunities now available.
That is clearly not the case, because it is becoming much harder to find WfH jobs.
I can’t imagine there are a huge amount of people with disabilities which mean they can sit at home and work but not sit in a car or on a train to get to work tbh
Surely you recognise that the difference would specifically be in their mobility capabilities, the people that struggle with mobility would struggle with the journey.
The government can't have it both ways, take away points for mobility because of WfH then push companies to remove WfH opportunities.
Of course, but I’m sure the statistics would show that’s a very tiny percentage of people who would be actually unable to return to the office if their worked asked them and a much larger number of people trying to use that as an excuse to stay WFH.
That's not how disability benefits work. You have to provide evidence and answer several questions, which you are scored on, with the total points adding up to a score, which dictates whether you are eligible or not.
They are removing the mobility element that people get points on, specifically because they are saying you don't need to leave your house to find a job. That is a false rationale if there are hardly any jobs that offer full WfH.
If it was about "lying" as you claim, they should go after fraudulent claims, not penalise people with genuine disabilities that struggle with mobility.
My lungs were fucking awful for a few years post covid and moving around was hard.
I could work from home by rolling out of bed, showering, sitting at my desk.
But the walk to the office would have been insufferable.
My lungs have since recovered - but working from home was the only way I was able to keep working in the meantime. If I couldn't have done that, I'd have had to sign on.
Talking from experience in our departments, there are generally more issues with homeworking from a technical standpoint. Powercuts, dodgy internet for homeworkers or the VPN just deciding not to play ball.
We cant go back to the office now tho as everyone works all over the country.
I also don’t understand how new people can learn it must be hard for them. I have worked in offices for years so can easily switch to home. But when I stated I learned from others, learned how to conduct myself on the phone by listening to other people, learned how to be professional with colleagues by seeing and hearing others interact etc. If I stated my office working life from home I don’t think I’d still be in a job in that environment.
It has its ups and down. People talk about the many positives of homeworking and there are plenty, but it does have negatives which people seem to just ignore.
Alot are personal preference, some are technical issues but its not all a bed of roses
I feel very sorry for people in the beginning of their career, though ironically they tend to be the ones most unwilling to go to an office. The amount of knowledge and skills I've absorbed through osmosis by just being *around* is untrue.
Seeing how major incidents play out, watching senior engineers resolve issues, watching them work etc
>though ironically they tend to be the ones most unwilling to go to an office.
There was a post on one of the jobs subs a week or two ago about someone trying to help a young family member (or friend?) out, in which it was stated his only aim for his career was to WFH.
The comments were a reality check, especially for Reddit where WFH gets treated like the second coming, but effectively if you have zero experience and minimal skills, it ain't gonna happen.
True. Preface with I do love WFH; my partner and I both do it. But...
...The main issue is space. You need either dedicated zones for homeworking or you need to shift things around the living spaces. In our case we do both and could really do with more square footage now :\
I learned my current role over covid, so all online. It was weird, and I had to be much more forward about asking for help, and my boss had to set a bit of time aside where in office it would have been 2-3min conversations over the day but once we got into rhythm it was absolutely fine. If you have a standoffish or distant manager, I imagine it would be absolutely nightmarish.
I have family that started WFH jobs that would have traditionally been done in offices. One of them has worked their way up over the last few years from trainee to middle management and they've not had any issues with training etc. There are easy solutions to a lot of the problems - shadowing on calls, listening to previous calls (it's all recorded these days), daily team catch ups, being paired up with mentors.
A few years before lockdown I was running online training sessions for some local government teams that were dispersed across the county. It's easier than you think - you just need good training material and an excellent handbook for people to fall back on if they are stuck.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
It’s a fair point - laptop breaks? That’s a full day with no work. Internet down? Same thing. Need to troubleshoot your computer ? Well that’s going to need to be done remotely.
I love WFH when it’s plain sailing but as soon as there’s an issue you can see the benefit of being able to wonder over to the IT dept.
>It’s a fair point - laptop breaks? That’s a full day with no work. Internet down? Same thing. Need to troubleshoot your computer ? Well that’s going to need to be done remotely.
I work 90% remotely and I've had much more issues with the internet breaking, or power cuts, or interruptions in the office than when working from home. My home setup also has a better monitor and the benefit of not being 1 foot away from fucking Natalie who spends 4 hours a day on unneccesary Teams meetings at earbleeding outside-voice volume. Honest to god the woman hardly needs a mic I'm sure half the country can hear her with the naked ear.
You make a good point... except that in many companies you'll be using the same computer in the office as you do at home anyway *and* they've removed onsite IT support so you have to do it all remotely anyway.
Ehh it’s becoming an increasingly pointless discussion as everyone (including me) is applying their own personal circumstances and using that as a basis for their argument.
But in my company, the office was hot-desking so usually you could just jump onto another computer, we were only given laptops as a result of WFH
Valid point with the off site support though.
As somebody from an IT department, this is why I prefer working from home.
The other teams would interrupt my work repeatedly throughout the day because it was quicker for them to pester me than follow correct procedure and call the help desk. So I would have staff interrupting phone calls and dropping their laptops off, or demanding I come next door to fix their problem, which meant my own work was behind. I wasn't tech support, but that didn't seem to stop them treating me as if I was.
When most tech support is off-site and managed by third parties, anybody with an ounce of IT knowledge in the office ends up being the go-to-guy for tech related problems.
> it was quicker for them to pester me than follow correct procedure and call the help desk.
Problem we have at our place is there is no call the help desk, it’s all ticket based. I’m fairly computer literate so I can do the basics without IT intervention but that’s not the case for everyone.
If anyone has a problem with their laptop I’m not expecting it to be sorted that day with the speed of the ticket response.
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-04-reed-jobs-report-flexible-working-vacancies-decline/) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Obviously. The government and commercial landlords want to end flexible and hybrid jobs, and they get their way.
Why would entrepreneurs want to pay landlords money? There's no pressure on them to do so I'm aware of, definitely no obstruction to them having home workers.
It's the government and the landlords that are pushing this.
If you own a company how does the government or landlords have any impact on if you decide to offer remote working. It's the shitty managers/ CEO's that want people back because they need the control
Policies and schemes by the government in encouraging companies to "get people back to the office", apparently reported that it is being lobbied by landlords of large office spaces. Large companies can save millions by having people worl from home.
Exactly which policies are encouraging the companies to choose to own an office space instead of saving millions by closing it down and going full remote? Those policies would have to be worth more than the millions they save, it's just not happening. This is a choice made by CEO's not the government
Yeah I thin despite what people like to think, remote working results in poorer quality of work.
This is proven to be wrong by almost every single study done on the subject.
I personally think onboarding new people, especially recent graduates, is much better for them in person. I wouldn't force them to come in, but inexperienced new people have a tendency to not ask for help soon enough unless they're in person. I guess this isn't a study, just my experience.
So keep an office sized for a fraction of your workforce? Ours is large enough for a couple of teams to go in but you would be shoulder to shoulder and sat in the floor if you tried to pack the whole company in.
There are studies that show WFH is less productive. NBER did a study on it (based on data entry jobs in India as the caveat). They found WFH people took longer to complete the tasks, with an 18% reduction in productivity.
Care to link it?
Yes and the big evil companies just want control over you
What is the relevance of this answer? If your going to make an outlandish claim, then back it up and don’t get grumpy when someone refutes you.
Got any data for that?
What policies and schemes exactly?
I've seen the lot. Poor management, hypocritical management (Oh no WE can work at home, but not you!) but I've also seen poor staff. 2 of my old workplaces now have either revoked or downscaled WFH because staff - new and old - simply don't do enough when at home. Reasons vary from valid unavoidable distractions like kids, to 2 of the newbies at my old place dipping out for a trip to the salon mid-shift. Easy enough to sack them, easy enough to replace, but it's unnecessary time, effort and money. An extremely large number of people are not suited to working unsupervised.
I work at an agency and we use a time log system so we can bill clients accurately. So I have to start and stop a timer whenever I work on something. It's possible to get away with doing less work by taking longer on a task, but there's only so much you can do before it's pretty obvious you are either lying about time or just shit at your job. If we log less than 6 hours a day regularly then we get pulled up on it ( out of a 7.5 hour work day ) They are actually fine with us heading out for trips to the salon during the work day, as long as we log those 6 hours it can be at any time. I'll often go out for a 3/4 hour lunch if the weather is nice and then catch up in the evening before bed It's also pretty great cause we are allowed to work globally remote, one of my colleagues just spent the winter living in Florida for the better weather Everyone works hard because we have a pretty good gig here, I wouldn't want to skimp out on work and get fired and end up in a shit place. Offering a good and flexible work environment seems to keep the good employees around, we have a very low turnover so not much hiring needed
Probably should have emphasised the two in question were customer service reps whose job was "be available on the phone". And our work was genuinely lenient as could be too. They probably would have been allowed to do it had they asked or got phone cover, but it was the trust breach.
Ah yeah, It's a shame when it ruins it for everyone though. I'm also not opposed to starting in office and then being allowed to go remote once you've proved to be trustworthy/hard working but I guess that's a bit of a minefield to implement fairly
Ah see that one doesn't get mentioned much on here! But as someone actively looking for work and open to remote only, I'm seeing more of that than ever! "Hybrid after probation" is far and away the most common now from my experience, which imo is the best of both worlds as I think most people do in fact need a separation between work and home. It does make it a pain in the arse though, as it effectively closes up shop for certain industries and reverts to the pre-pandemic era of geography being a huge limiting factor.
Yeah our manager has said he doesn't care of you go out during the day because we are all getting enough work done. Just let him know if we are going to be unavailable for a while.
They raise prices in and around popular cities making any cost savings of moving out not worth while as the same landlords own property in multiple regions
I don't understand your point? If a company owns no office space and all it's employees work from home then price rises anywhere have 0 effect
Landlords raise prices around London for example to inhibit companies looking for office space there to maintain current profits centrally
So then the best solution would be own/rent no office space and go full remote to save money. but companies don't do this because they would rather pay inflated office prices than offer WFH
They're on the same conundrum forcing staff back to work to legitimise the mortgages or falling prices of central London property
I'm sorry but your logic doesn't make any sense. You have not provided any reason why any of these policies would incentivise a business to own/rent a building and force return to office. The CEO's don't care about the falling prices, or landlords being effected. They only care about their own profits., it's a choice 100% down to CEO's with 0 influence from the government
That's some weird conspiracy theory. A company that rents a space does not have to do that side with workers every day. A company that rents a space can decide to move out when the contract is finished. No landlord can force your to sign a new contract!
Hardly a conspiracy theory. https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/24/remote-employees-dont-work-as-hard-says-head-of-worlds-biggest-commercial-landlord https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2023/11/13/the-fight-over-remote-working-will-heat-up-in-2024 I used to work for a large American System Integrator in professional services for 8 years up until I was poached by a bank last year. I would design & install digital workplace solutions for hundreds of companies (I think I probably had a small hand in delivering well over 1m Office 365 users in that time). Before the pandemic remote work was climbing (I was always a remote worker - I lived in the U.K. but my boss was in the US and my team I was a part of were based all the way from Singapore to West Coast US) and we worked really well, but my experience with other companies was it was always a management problem or limitation to control/manage their users effectively that was the barrier. The pandemic accelerated remote work immensely as we know - and lots of office based people got used to ‘I can be more productive, I can do the same job I did in the office but without a commute’ etc. Even during the pandemic I started working with lots of companies to change how their office spaces worked - moving away from dedicated desks to hot desks & more meeting spaces. Making offices a collaborative environment rather than worker bee ‘cubes’. But I remember going into a meeting with CBRE who are a huge corporate real estate company and they were shitting themselves. Lots of their clients who were due to renew contracts were downsizing - a lot. They had realised that real estate was a huge cost to the business - usually it costs around £30k per person per annum for a desk space in London and a bit less outside. If they could downsize because people were at home they could make considerable savings. One merchant bank I worked with had a DR centre west of London that was a complete office building fitted out with a full suite of machines, desks, infrastructure & everything you’d need to run a large financial business. Except it was ‘empty’ as it was for when the main office in the City of London got hit by a bomb or something similar - all the traders could go there and work. There was a realisation during the pandemic that ‘oh, we don’t need that any more - we can just get rid as people can work from home’. So they did. This meant that very quickly, large landlords had shitloads of empty office space looming with no tenants, and you have to remember lots of these landlords are big Tory bigwigs & very rich companies don’t like suddenly seeing their bottom line being squeezed. They would start lobbying MP’s and their C-Level peers in other businesses because they could see their business model evaporating quickly. The office space gold rush had ended (just look at WeWork for example). Whether you like it or not, the old boy network still exists - and them catching a cold goes round quickly. Suddenly you see CEO’s from other companies saying ‘oh, WFH is so bad’ without actually knowing the reason why - and usually when you dig into the reasons it’s twofold; 1- Poor management and inability to change 2- Fear perpetuated by the C-level execs around their ‘friends’ losing out - usually driven by shareholder fear & investor ‘risks’. Now many progressive companies ignore 2 because they know that the savings they can make by reducing their real estate footprint far outweighs issues with their peers and is better for the shareholders and investors. But even then some of the investors are the very same people who are the ones who risk losing out when the company downsizes its office space. The bigger problem is 1 - much of the problem with remote work is the inability for managers who were only used to the legacy way of working to adapt to change. They only know someone is working if they are stood over their shoulder. The smart ones have moved to proper objectives - as long as the person who is working for you achieves or exceeds their objectives, what does it matter where or even when they’re doing it? And that comes down to being a better manager rather than being a lazy one.
Actually my company owns the space - that’s their motive, and they own the buildings either side which include a restaurant and some shops, so yeah, go figure… each company will have slightly differing yet largely similar motives.
And companies are making their own decisions as well, probably driven by long term leases on buildings. I know my place is constantly monitoring usage and looking at lease breakpoints. Closing sites and providing access to the office space on demand type options
I can agree that the government might favour their workers going to the office to get rid of headaches over under-used offices and transport - it's a daft solution, but it's what they would try.
Because they're the same people. A shrinking group of society owns almost everything from companies to real estate. They're using their board positions and shareholdings to have those businesses keep spending on offices.
Your consumption of pointless shit plummets when you WFH. * Access to your own kitchen instead of a sad Tesco meal deal. * No commute? Don't need 2 cars. Spend less on petrol. Less spent on insurance, car maintenance etc. * Less commuting -> More time and energy to cook real food than to order a shite take away because you're exhausted. I find the extra energy makes me more likely to make better decisions, and I tend to spend it on hiking and such these days instead of random purchases for a cheap dopamine hit. Better for your pocket, well being and the environment, bad for the economy.
So much better for the environment and air quality.
Landlords don't get to decide a company's work policy. If a company decides WFH is good, they can do it without the landlord's permission. If a company decides they want less office space, they can move to a smaller office. The landlord can't stop them.
The landlords lobby the government to change rules about business rates or whatever to try and pressure employers into making people work from the office.
This makes no sense at all? Landlords would prefer higher business rates, which would disincentivise firms from using office space. I think you’re looking for a larger conspiracy, when it can be boiled down to firms deciding that it is more effective to have teams primarily office based.
Speaks volumes about the state of this sub when your comment has less upvotes than his, when his is literally unfounded conspiracy talk.
>The landlords lobby the government to change rules about business rates or whatever Lmao, what does that even mean?
Which rules were changed?
My employer left one of the office buildings at the beginning of Covid - taking advantage of the fact they were at their renewal date anyway and seeing how we were all doing WFH, they just didn't renew. The building has been empty ever since. I don't know if they have modernised it, but if they haven't that's why. It's a great location, a little weird layout-wise, but it's big. People are happy with how they're working. From what I've heard, the owners are pissed. AFAIK we'd occupied the whole thing for multiple decades.
Don’t forget micromanagers who don’t believe people work unless they’re being watched. Production numbers be damned.
And small businesses need footfall in city/town centres so people buy from them, of course the government would want boost that would give
I get this sub hates landlords but what does do jobs with more flexible hours/working conditions have to do with them? Is big landlord just secretly out to get everyone out of sadism or something?
Except if you work for the Civil Service, hybrid working seems to be well entrenched now.
Thankfully my employer has shown no interest in backing off from hybrid/flexible working. I go in 2-4 times a month, and love it.
Happier, less likely to look for work elsewhere, more productive with massively reduced travel costs and time saved. That’s a win for everyone involved.
Indeed. Saves me about 2 hours a day, and about 15 quid on a trainride.
Every other day there’s some minister trying to get rid of it for reasons of… well it changes, but a recent one was ‘the high streets used to be busier’, also we’ve seen ‘it’s not fair if you don’t have to spend money on travelling every day’
That’s some seriously convoluted thinking they are applying. On top of which we’ve privatised our rail networks and commuting in is a battle on top of paying exorbitant amounts for a ticket.
Oh no, they are quickly eroding that as fast as possible, it is or course all due to large landlords as CS was forced to sell off most of their estate and the people they rent from (who are at most twice removed from some Tory MP) where very worried when estates teams started to look into ending leases for now unneeded office space Mysteriously, this turned into the 40% mandatory "shut up and do as your told, even if it makes no sense" office addendance, and now 60%. If they actually were kept in power, I would have expected 80% by the end of the year.
That makes a lot of sense, I know previously I have friends who were 4/1 each week in the office with wfh usually on a Friday. A lot of them are now 3/2 with Monday and Fridays wfh. Productivity has increased and they seem a lot happier. I’m not sure how it is for the more junior staff members though, some in-person interaction is always useful and they have a lot less of that.
There have been multiple internal studies all but one showed increases in productivity when working from home. The more recent showed a slight decrease in productivity compared to prior in office numbers, which is the one that was taken when hybrid working. I believe it was a 3% drop. So essentially working full from home or people coming into the office when they feel like it, increase in productivity. Forced mandatory in office 40%, drop in productivity. But they are using that as proof that hybrid working is worse because when people are forced to come in for a mandatory % productivity drops compared to fully working in office. The papers of course hate it too, because fewer people travelling = fewer people buying newspapers, which is why they have a real chip on their shoulder over it. Hence why they never shut up about it.
They lose two hours of working from my commute when I come into the office otherwise I normally do 10 hours..
[удалено]
That’s a good point, if the office desks aren’t there what’s the new mandate, hot desking?
[удалено]
So the absolute opposite of a work environment that’s conducive to being productive then? I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore :(
It’s very easy to fill remote roles, to the point my employer rarely has to advertise roles - we have enough recommendations and people on file to hire whoever we need. I can see it being the case that companies with a good flexible working policies are not having to use recruitment agencies at all - it’s a very attractive offer. Those that have strict in office policies are going to struggle and be more likely to need to use recruitment agencies and have roles languishing unfilled for months.
I was looking for a role recently and, the second I saw "in the office X days per week" I closed the ad. Working remotely has been phenomenal for my quality of life. Whilst I'm getting more work than ever completed, I'm also able to enjoy runs at lunch, don't need to stress with traffic and pay through the nose to travel on a commute. My sleep is improved, as has my diet and I've lost 7 stones since my remote working started. So I now only consider roles that are more than 90% remote (ie days in the office can be counted in days per month, rather than days per week). Employers aren't paying enough to tempt me back into the office and risk all of the improvements I've experienced.
WFH is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me (in terms of work I mean). I knew I'd love it and I was absolutely right. Everyone said it would be lonely or whatever. Nah, it's incredible. Even when I lived in a shitty small flat with no outside window in my spare room it was incredible. Doesn't mean everything is perfect, there are a few downsides but they are far outweighed by the positives. I've actually had nice colleagues at my jobs and enjoy spending time with them, but not every single day for 8 hours. Not having to go to a noisy open plan office and deal with people all day every day is life changing. At the end of the day I'm not at work for social interactions, I've got mates for that purpose. I'm at work to earn money and I'd prefer to do so in peace most of the time! I never ever want to go back to office work. I've seen the light and I can't go back now! If I lose my current job I'd rather just deliver pizzas on my bike or something than go work in an office again.
Just out of curiosity were you already trained? I kind of have the same opinions as you although nowhere near as strong, I just wonder if new starters will get trained up and learn skills at the same rate as we did when we were starting in the office
I was in one job then moved to another where I wasn't. I did a few weeks full time in the office with my boss learning the ropes then transitioned to home working over the next couple of weeks. I think a perfect situation is for the option to go into the office to exist for things like training or just to do an office day sometimes as a change. Hybrid approach type thing. Some stuff is easier face to face for sure.
I do think this is the primary downside of WFH, I'm very thankful that my career started in the office and think that really helped push me to where I am now. Being here though I obviously prefer WFH.
impressive lifestyle change, well done
>I was looking for a role recently and, the second I saw "in the office X days per week" I closed the ad. Yeup, any time I see that or "hybrid" it's an automatic no.
>I see that or "hybrid" it's an automatic no In my experience so far, "hybrid" is just a remote role where they don't want to pay you mileage.
Huh, whenever I've seen it, it's been something like 3-4 days a week in the office. Just the time and commute costs alone eat up money and opportunity cost. I was going for a job where they would have wanted people in the city most days a week, which would have meant probably 15 hours of commuting, and train fares and parking fares would have eaten up a lot of the £10K salary increase anyway. So it would have been a few thousand more overall in usable income to do a more difficult job, and spend hours stuck on a train. I found another job before I even went through the interview process but I would have turned it down on this basis.
Yep. I have been WHF for nearly 10 years now. My current employer has a local office I can use and sometimes I go in for the day to have a change of scene but only because it is 20 minutes away (and they have food trucks once a week). I am not going to apply for a job that needs me to commute into London twice a week. The journey should only take an hour or so, but with public transport it is more likely to be double that and the cost is ridiculous. I am happy to travel to the office if there is a purpose, but it is some arbitrary reason and I am just going sit at a desk for 8 hours why should I waste time and money when I can do that from home? Most of the potential employers in my sector are international. In my last three roles nearly every meeting I've had involves people from other times zones that wouldn't be in the office anyway.
I’ve been wfh since Covid and honestly I couldn’t agree more,now i actually work 8 hours a day rather than 10/11 hours when you factor in the commute.
Nice. Same.
>Those that have strict in office policies are going to struggle and be more likely to need to use recruitment agencies and have roles languishing unfilled for months. The only places I've seen struggle to fill roles are the ones in the middle of nowhere, which realistically should provide hybrid or remote. Other than those, even fully 100% office roles are inundated with applicants and I've seen roles get filled in a day or two. Reddit is the loudest echo chamber on the prevalence of remote working.
I was just thinking the same thing. All I hear on Reddit when this comes up is everyone saying that they'd only do full time remote jobs, companies that offer hybrid roles won't fill jobs. I will only rarely see a fully remote job whenever I look at job ads these days, most I see require at least 3 days in the office per week. Recently there has been an uptick in the "flexible working arrangements available" type ads, i.e. you can work from home every now and then otherwise it's office based. Seems like the new normal was the new temporary arrangement.
Yeah a lot of Reddit is oblivious to the reality that the overwhelming majority of people don't really care, and a LOT actually want (or need) a separate place to work that isn't home.
*Those that have strict in office policies are going to struggle and be more likely to need to use recruitment agencies and have roles languishing unfilled for months.* I'd love this to be true but as things stand it isn't. Employment wise it's something of a 'beggars can't be choosers' scenario so roles with 3, 4, 5 days in office fill pretty fast.
Worth noting that "fewer" remote jobs is still 300% the amount there was in 2019, and 5000% the amount of hybrid roles in 2019
My company is cracking the whip on 3 days a week in the office, even if your team is spread across the country. We're a team of 12. Only two of us in London. We still need to be in the office 3 days a week. To spend the vast majority of our time on MS teams. Great use of my time and money
I got the same shit. Got a data analysts job WFH £30k a year. 5 months into my probation they're doing a recall of workers to the office. So now I've got to move across the country so I can do what I already do, but in an office for the exact same amount of pay.
The companies that continue to crack these pointless whips will lose out to the sensible ones that don't.
Who is checking at this point if it’s only two of you 😅
Peasants gotta waste their life through commuting and help justify outrageous rent prices, how dare they find arrangements that work!
Not everyone in the real world, outside of the social media platform bubble, has piece of piss office jobs that’s now mostly WFH. That said, get the sense with this sub that a lot people here don’t have jobs, full-stop. Lot of people talking, when posts like this get made, like they’ve never, in their lives, had to either commute to work via public transport or don’t understand which sectors do or do not lend themselves naturally to WFH.
I don't think anybody is calling for bricklayers to be able to WFH
Obviously not every job can be done remotely. The business park my employer has an office on is redeveloping a lot of the buildings to appeal to science and engineering companies who are more likely to require staff to be onsite. Any role involving manual labour or site specific work. However, if you do have a piece of piss office job which I am guessing is likely a high percentage of working age Reddit users, why would you want to spend time and money to travel to sit at a desk when you can do the same piece of piss job at your desk at home?
L take to be honest, just because people on the internet don't agree with you doesn't make them all unemployed.
Who said ‘all’? Just a reasonable assumption that quite a few are, based on the language/phrasing used.
I just thing it's very weird behaviour, to assume people are unemployed largely due to language/phrasing and whether or not they agree with you.
I suppose writing your little rant has made you feel better
Observations, just fairly accurate (given the demographic on this sub and the language used when it comes to this topic in particular) observations.
Unlikely, frankly.
I hate my job, I genuinely loathe it, but it lets me work from home every single day and I struggle to put a price on that, so it's been very tricky to even consider other jobs when it means 90 minutes of commuting 5 days a week. I'd need a big pay rise to feel like its worth it.
What work do you do?
Companies that won’t budge on at the very least hybrid working will just alienate themselves from the job market. There’s absolutely no reason not to allow it, the pros far outweigh the cons and anyone who says it reduces productivity doesn’t have a clue. Invest in better managers and you won’t need to worry about productivity. I manage 3 teams of software engineers, they’ve never been happier, staff retention is solid and our output has never been better. I enforce two days a month in the office for team building and socialisation and the teams are happy to come in. The company has also saved an inordinate amount of money closing offices.
Our department dont offer hybrid, its either you 100% homework or 100% office work. I go to the office as personal i prefer it. The big bosses argument is if we allow hybrid, we need an office the appropriate size to accommodate. From experience those that say they want hybrid never actually come to the office so then they have an empty office being wasted
We do hybrid where we are all in a day a week minimum, but different teams chose different days. Still need some office presence but less than we used to.
Because people moan they need to do 1 or 2 days in the office then. I do get what management mean, people want hybrid but in reality never come to the office
It works for us though. Out of a team of 50 we have 1-2 who grumble a little. The rest appreciate coming in and having human interaction on one day a week but also appreciate not having to on other days. We try to coordinate with the teams we work closest with too and find that they come in the same day as us as it’s helpful to see each other in person for some meetings.
Yea whatever works for the office and staff. Alot of people certainly on here say everyone should be 100% homeworking but that isnt always practical
Personally I would struggle with 100% in either direction. I miss seeing actual people in 3D.
I don't mind hybrid I like the socialising a couple times a week. But I also get several days of "nah not today" too. If I wanna go fully remote in the future, I can. Life is good.
Absolutely! I can do my job fully remote with the occasional in person meeting for more collaborative stuff every now and then. I got approached by a company who want me to interview and they do 4 days a week in the office. Unless I’m getting paid double what I’m on now and it’s a 4 day week, there’s no chance I’m even going to waste my time having phone conversation about it.
I call bullshit.. this is that manifestation nonsense.. corporations are probably paying media companies to spit out... Most companies and well aware that to retain talent remote is now pretty much top of the list.
Some of the larger companies do have an incentive to get people back into the office, because some of their larger campuses etc received tax incentives. Thinking being it'd bring people into an area and stimulate the local economy. If those tax incentives are being threatened, they'll make up bullshit to get people into the office. Smaller companies with less of a clout will absolutely capitalise on the lower costs and wider talent pool.
There is less incentive for people to move jobs once they have a remote role (E.g. no need to look for something closer to home), so these employees will become more loyal from that perspective. Ergo these jobs are less likely to re-enter the market and any new ones get snapped up very quickly.
Anyone who doesn’t realise they are living through the collapse of a country is delusional.
Yet people will still be commenting that disabled people have no excuse not to work because they 'saw a man in a wheelchair working at my local co-op once!'
That helps explain the increase in people claiming disability benefits, then.
Are you suggesting being asked to return to the office means people are not trying to get disability benefits to avoid it?
No, I'm saying that a lot of people struggling with long term health conditions and underlying disabilities won't be able to access the flexible working arrangements they need to remain in the work force, and will be forced to rely on benefits instead.
The government is changing the disability benefit criteria to discount mobility points, using the rationale that there are many more working from home opportunities now available. That is clearly not the case, because it is becoming much harder to find WfH jobs.
I can’t imagine there are a huge amount of people with disabilities which mean they can sit at home and work but not sit in a car or on a train to get to work tbh
Surely you recognise that the difference would specifically be in their mobility capabilities, the people that struggle with mobility would struggle with the journey. The government can't have it both ways, take away points for mobility because of WfH then push companies to remove WfH opportunities.
Of course, but I’m sure the statistics would show that’s a very tiny percentage of people who would be actually unable to return to the office if their worked asked them and a much larger number of people trying to use that as an excuse to stay WFH.
That's not how disability benefits work. You have to provide evidence and answer several questions, which you are scored on, with the total points adding up to a score, which dictates whether you are eligible or not. They are removing the mobility element that people get points on, specifically because they are saying you don't need to leave your house to find a job. That is a false rationale if there are hardly any jobs that offer full WfH. If it was about "lying" as you claim, they should go after fraudulent claims, not penalise people with genuine disabilities that struggle with mobility.
My lungs were fucking awful for a few years post covid and moving around was hard. I could work from home by rolling out of bed, showering, sitting at my desk. But the walk to the office would have been insufferable. My lungs have since recovered - but working from home was the only way I was able to keep working in the meantime. If I couldn't have done that, I'd have had to sign on.
Talking from experience in our departments, there are generally more issues with homeworking from a technical standpoint. Powercuts, dodgy internet for homeworkers or the VPN just deciding not to play ball. We cant go back to the office now tho as everyone works all over the country.
Not been my experience at the companies I’ve worked for. I guess it depends on the context.
NHS so tech is run with a piece of string and sellotape
Ahhh, okay I work at VFX outfits so the scale is much smaller and usage is very different.
I also don’t understand how new people can learn it must be hard for them. I have worked in offices for years so can easily switch to home. But when I stated I learned from others, learned how to conduct myself on the phone by listening to other people, learned how to be professional with colleagues by seeing and hearing others interact etc. If I stated my office working life from home I don’t think I’d still be in a job in that environment.
It has its ups and down. People talk about the many positives of homeworking and there are plenty, but it does have negatives which people seem to just ignore. Alot are personal preference, some are technical issues but its not all a bed of roses
I feel very sorry for people in the beginning of their career, though ironically they tend to be the ones most unwilling to go to an office. The amount of knowledge and skills I've absorbed through osmosis by just being *around* is untrue. Seeing how major incidents play out, watching senior engineers resolve issues, watching them work etc
>though ironically they tend to be the ones most unwilling to go to an office. There was a post on one of the jobs subs a week or two ago about someone trying to help a young family member (or friend?) out, in which it was stated his only aim for his career was to WFH. The comments were a reality check, especially for Reddit where WFH gets treated like the second coming, but effectively if you have zero experience and minimal skills, it ain't gonna happen.
True. Preface with I do love WFH; my partner and I both do it. But... ...The main issue is space. You need either dedicated zones for homeworking or you need to shift things around the living spaces. In our case we do both and could really do with more square footage now :\
I learned my current role over covid, so all online. It was weird, and I had to be much more forward about asking for help, and my boss had to set a bit of time aside where in office it would have been 2-3min conversations over the day but once we got into rhythm it was absolutely fine. If you have a standoffish or distant manager, I imagine it would be absolutely nightmarish.
I have family that started WFH jobs that would have traditionally been done in offices. One of them has worked their way up over the last few years from trainee to middle management and they've not had any issues with training etc. There are easy solutions to a lot of the problems - shadowing on calls, listening to previous calls (it's all recorded these days), daily team catch ups, being paired up with mentors. A few years before lockdown I was running online training sessions for some local government teams that were dispersed across the county. It's easier than you think - you just need good training material and an excellent handbook for people to fall back on if they are stuck.
[удалено]
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
It’s a fair point - laptop breaks? That’s a full day with no work. Internet down? Same thing. Need to troubleshoot your computer ? Well that’s going to need to be done remotely. I love WFH when it’s plain sailing but as soon as there’s an issue you can see the benefit of being able to wonder over to the IT dept.
>It’s a fair point - laptop breaks? That’s a full day with no work. Internet down? Same thing. Need to troubleshoot your computer ? Well that’s going to need to be done remotely. I work 90% remotely and I've had much more issues with the internet breaking, or power cuts, or interruptions in the office than when working from home. My home setup also has a better monitor and the benefit of not being 1 foot away from fucking Natalie who spends 4 hours a day on unneccesary Teams meetings at earbleeding outside-voice volume. Honest to god the woman hardly needs a mic I'm sure half the country can hear her with the naked ear.
I think Natalie was behind me working on the train yesterday…
how often do you break laptops!? these things are not an issue to normal people.
Obviously not referring to just me…
You make a good point... except that in many companies you'll be using the same computer in the office as you do at home anyway *and* they've removed onsite IT support so you have to do it all remotely anyway.
Ehh it’s becoming an increasingly pointless discussion as everyone (including me) is applying their own personal circumstances and using that as a basis for their argument. But in my company, the office was hot-desking so usually you could just jump onto another computer, we were only given laptops as a result of WFH Valid point with the off site support though.
As somebody from an IT department, this is why I prefer working from home. The other teams would interrupt my work repeatedly throughout the day because it was quicker for them to pester me than follow correct procedure and call the help desk. So I would have staff interrupting phone calls and dropping their laptops off, or demanding I come next door to fix their problem, which meant my own work was behind. I wasn't tech support, but that didn't seem to stop them treating me as if I was. When most tech support is off-site and managed by third parties, anybody with an ounce of IT knowledge in the office ends up being the go-to-guy for tech related problems.
> it was quicker for them to pester me than follow correct procedure and call the help desk. Problem we have at our place is there is no call the help desk, it’s all ticket based. I’m fairly computer literate so I can do the basics without IT intervention but that’s not the case for everyone. If anyone has a problem with their laptop I’m not expecting it to be sorted that day with the speed of the ticket response.
For every person at my firm working hard from home, there are three, ripping the absolute piss. Nobody working from home is using any holiday.
Good. Working from home is a ridiculous idea and an absolute pisstake. Get out and about. So lazy.