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Our company's just stipulated a second mandatory day in the office, with a requirement for a third day of your choice. I can understand why it's beneficial for teams that can work face to face, but I'm a trainer and ALL of our training is done online (a mistake, IMO - classroom-based face to face is SO much better quality, but online is cheaper so...), so it's a bit pointless for me, really. Still, it's nice to get out of the house. 🙂
(“more than 50% in the office”)
There's another consideration here.
Your "regular place of work" is defined as where you spend the most time. So if you WFH two days a week and are in the office for three then the journey is simply your commute. If on the other hand you WFH three days a week and are in the office for two then they should be covering travel expenses when you go in.
This was a loophole HMRC stood on several years ago. We had engineers who would travel to a site visit "from home" or "from the office" depending which was further away. Neither here nor there if you live five minutes away, but gets lucrative fast if your nearest office is an hour in the opposite direction.
You can't learn by osmosis, you can only absorb water, stop miss using words and get your own ones.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/osmosis
Not according to the dictionaries
Why? Nobody is forced to do a particular job. You know full well when you enter those roles that you need to be there in person.
You really need me to explain why we might still need Surgeons, teachers etc?
Face to face working is absolutely vital. Face to screen in a cubicle miles from home isn’t.
As many others have said, "it depends."
When I was in support I was in the office maybe half the time, for no good reason other than that was expected. The other half I was on the road or on site with customers.
When I was working as a developer, I absolutely had to be left alone. I was in an open-plan office and it was genuinely starting to affect my mental health. People would come to my desk, "have you got a minute?" and sure, because you've shattered my train of thought and I've just lost half an hour. I wound up moving the contents of two store cupboards into one, putting a desk in the other and closing the door behind me. WFH would have been a godsend.
When I was a manager, I had apprentices under me and physical work to do. I had to be in the office to babysit, mentor and take stuff apart. There were days where I'd work from home but it wasn't the norm, usually when the minions had their college day and I had a bunch of admin to catch up on.
When I moved to security the job was fully remote. I was in Accrington, my last remaining apprentice was in Burnley, my colleague was in Sheffield and my boss was in Lincolnshire somewhere I think. I'd met them all face-to-face but in the few years we worked together it was never all at once. There was absolutely no point in me going to an office other than for social reasons, I used to drop in on quiet days occasionally just to say hello to people, maybe on a MacMillan cake & coffee day or Comic Relief or some such. So long as I had an Internet connection and a mobile phone, I could be on the moon for the difference it made to my workday. It also meant I could work antisocial hours without needing to creep around an industrial estate on my own in the dark.
stop miss using words
"misusing."
You really need me to explain why we might still need Surgeons, teachers etc?
Im not sure I understand this post in the context of what it was replying to. I think the post you responded was highlighting that anyone that takes a job that requires being there in person accepts the requirement.
Funny isn’t it the example they give even shows that the would doesn’t mean that ?
I didn't find that funny. I did find it funny that your partial quote selectively missed the part of the entry that did cover the situation thought
the process of gradually learning or being influenced by something, as a result of being in close contact with it
The part time work that I do now is from home. I am much more productive at home than I was in the office before Covid. This is because the people in that office just won’t stop talking and the noise level ( and the inanity of the conversations) distracted me from what I needed to do which is concentrate on reading and understanding documents.
I didn’t find that funny
https://images.app.goo.gl/Mav16USmJwMUSaHj8
the process of gradually learning or being influenced by something, as a result of being in close contact with it
Is not what osmosis is, sure you can use it as an analogy but it's not what osmosis is. It's just been taken up by people to explain something they can't explain whilst wanting to sound clever. Happens all the time.
We now have door keycards being used to track how often individuals are in.
the cleaner gets to spend all day walking around while I’m chained to me desk
Change jobs and become a cleaner then
My place stipulated a maximum of 2 days per week, and quickly rented out 60% of the office space. I took that as indicating no minimum, so in the past six months I have been in three times, each time for an hour or so, just to drop stuff off. Nobody seems to care as long as the work is done.
explain something they can’t explain whilst wanting to sound clever
Ah now I get where your coming from.
Bit of a hot topic in the civil service - new government has repeated they expect 60% attendance in the office.
This coincided with a lot of centralisation and consolidation of locations. Several departments/locations don't have the space to achieve that, many people work in geographically split teams so have no one to work with in their local office, so why go in?
It would have been easy win in this year's pay negotiations to drop attendance to 40%, to make the money go further, but never mind.
I'm one of the weirdos who prefers working in the office, even though it costs me £20-25 a day. And we never hear from those who have no choice to go into the office due to space or other domestic situations.
You really need me to explain why we might still need Surgeons, teachers etc?
Of course not, but I can't see what that has to do with anything.
Sorry, started thread then went out with family!
I do sympathise with the junior workers in the office, both why they might want to be there, and the benefits of them being there.
I guess the point has also been made above that a bit of good management could ensure that people still get to work from home whilst also using anchor days or similar to guarantee overlap with the junior employees.
I also argued (although it fell on deaf ears) that when I was a graduate engineer, I was often to worried about asking 'stupid' questions in the middle of the office, but WFH makes it easier for someone to call a sympathetic senior (worryingly I think I was always the guy that graduates called with 'stupid' questions as I think they felt safe asking me them!). Also much easier to ping a busy senior a message asking for a five minute call 'when they're free' tgan trying to judge when someone isn't busy and going up to bother them in office.
I guess from a tin-foil-hat perspective I wondered if there was some sort of national level economic/capitalist agenda that wants people back in the cities, Appa TFL still reporting lower 'ridership' and I wonder how much budgeting or otherwise had been carried out on the basis of continually increasing ridership.
Change jobs and become a cleaner then
Absolutely a viable option and if I felt strongly enough about it I could make it happen. Likewise for those who don't currently WFH but would like to. We're all free to make our own career choices.
Your “regular place of work” is defined as where you spend the most time. So if you WFH two days a week and are in the office for three then the journey is simply your commute. If on the other hand you WFH three days a week and are in the office for two then they should be covering travel expenses when you go in.
Got a link for that Cougar?
I guess from a tin-foil-hat perspective I wondered if there was some sort of national level economic/capitalist agenda that wants people back in the cities,
Investment companies own building space so they want to see that used, there is a significant amount of economic activity associated with servicing office users which drops away if they have lower occupancy rates.
Bit of a hot topic in the civil service – new government has repeated they expect 60% attendance in the office.
We’re at 40% at present, largely due to moving to buildings without enough desks!
It seems much harder to get things done than pre- covid, teams are never about and it’s a lot more difficult to find out who you need to speak to when the office / team area is completely empty.
We also have a large number of roles that can’t be done from home and some which can’t be done effectively / for best practice should not be done from home. This has seen a lot of urgent work being dumped on whoever happens to be in the office and a degree of discontent has arisen from this.
I’m a software engineer and I think I’m quicker to turn to colleagues to talk something over if we’re in the same room than I am to get on a call with them for instance.
I'm a software engineer, and even if I'm sitting next to someone, I'd stick the question on slack first, before interrupting someone else's train of thought.
My employer (130 year old business) doesn’t have enough office space to go back to all in the office
Same with ours, we went from a building that holds 500 staff to one floor that fits 70.
Huge savings were made in doing this
The seemingly desperate need to drag everyone back into offices just smacks of insecure management and presenteeism. My employer gets far more out of me WFH than they do if I waste 75 minutes minimum a day travelling to and from. But I am pretty secure in my own role and don't need hand-holding.
As my employer is multi-site and very disparate in terms of where my likely contacts are based, I've lost count of the number of times I've travelled to a site for Meeting A, only to have to do Meetings B and C via Teams anyway - because I can't get from site to site quick enough.
My employer is also committed charter-wise to carbon reduction. A fact I will bring up if they insist on presenteeism.
WFH, I can work longer each day, save money on fuel, reduce my emissions and do more of the running around after kids in the evenings. Commuting time is an utter waste.
From the points above, though. I agree - I think I would have struggled earlier on in my career without physical attendance/presence. So, if 2-3 days in the office was badged as team-time with an emphasis on new/younger employees, I would go in more.
Oh yes - and my employer is pledged to make savings by shrinking our estate footprint by 20% - much of which will come from office space.
So they can't expect to make savings of this nature whilst requiring presenteeism of everyone.
I find it ironic that Amazon, with its cloud remote computing product, its online remote shopping portal, it’s portal “Amazon Turk” (used to tender for remote work) and it’s space program to, er, leave Earth, demands that the members of the cult of Bezos workers are “on prem” for 5 days a week.
In the cult of Bezos, that’s probably seen as the divine leader being generous as he is gifting you the chance to work from home for TWO WHOLE DAYS before returning to the temple.
That’s because Amazon wants to reduce its payroll but doesn’t want to pay redundancy.
The Amazon one is rooted in the culture - one of mistrust and adversarial.
The company knows, by and large it is exploitative - therefore it regards its workforce more as a necessary evil and one that will take a mile if given an inch. Mutual distrust. And that the big boss is a tinpot dictator.
Got a link for that Cougar?
A good question. It's how it was explained to us at work a few years ago so not directly. However, this seems to be the (wordy) explanation from HMRC:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ordinary-commuting-and-private-travel-490-chapter-3
The seemingly desperate need to drag everyone back into offices just smacks of insecure management and presenteeism.
This is my primary objection to it and is what I'm saying to recruiters. I have no issues with going into an office if there is a valid reason for me to do so. I am absolutely damned if I'm spending north of two hours in rush hour traffic five days a week just so that someone can visibly see that I'm working. It's madness. If I'm not working then you'll find out soon enough when the work hasn't been done.
I'm very heavily in Camp Cougar; me not doing my job is very obvious and very quickly seen (in the worst cases) and even the day-to-day grind jobs would not be improved by me physically being at an office. People are going to hate me no matter if I am talking to them in person or over Teams/Slack/whatever. I have no desk or office at my official place of work anyway, so rely on one of the other groups loaning me a desk when I am in.
If I was job hunting, ability to work remotely or, more realistically, not from Kista, Solna or central Stockholm is an early question now for me.
me not doing my job is very obvious and very quickly seen
I'm maybe pretty awkward, but the more I'm monitored, the less likely I am to actually do useful work.
find it ironic that Amazon, with its cloud remote computing product, its online remote shopping portal, it’s portal “Amazon Turk” (used to tender for remote work) and it’s space program to, er, leave Earth, demands
that the members of the cult of Bezosworkers are “on prem” for 5 days a week.
There is a funny skit about the zoom version of this
Premise is .... We are a company that develops remote working software for collaborative thinking and we want you to continue to use it....but oh no we need our employees in for the self same collaborative thinking.
That link is what I'm looking at as well Cougar. It seems clear that 40% defines a difference between a permanent workplace and a temporary one, if the timeframe is under 24 months. When I say clear, obviously that's within the context of it being a gov website!
I would agree though, that if an employer has allowed full remote for a decent amount of time then I don't see they have the regular pattern which would allow them to define the office as permanent?
Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Surely the reduction in overall commuting has a societal benefit. And over time, businesses that get the balance right will be more likely to succeed.
Three days in the office and two days WFH for me and I find that the perfect mix. I’m definitely way more productive at home when I don’t have people asking me if I want anything from Greggs or listening to the mad women I work with loudly talking absolute bollocks
But then i remember that I do actually like listening to the mad women I work with loudly talking absolute bollocks, because they’re very funny, and if you’re going I’ll have a cheese and onion pasty and a sausage roll chaser please 😀
We never really left. Over half our team are remote workers, with occasional (bi-monthly) office or training meets.
Those in the offices we've always worked flexibly, but with a 'get in there office for a day once a fortnight minimum' she's most staff choose to spend 50% or more of time in the office. It helps that we're a nice small employer, offer great tea and coffee for free, run an All Blacks style 'no dickheads' rule and generally have really pleasant offices which people live vaguely near.
IME, those resisting going back in either moved too far away in the pandemic to make it practical, or do less work and hours from home...
From my experience it's largely dependent on the role, the individual and their home set up.
Mine's a back office finance role with no real need for face to face interaction. I could easily do my role totally remote. I'm naturally an introvert who's happy spending the majority of my time on my own. From a purely selfish point of view I'm happier, healthier and financially better off working from home the majority of the time , and I genuinely think I am more productive working that way (they definitely get more hours out of me WFH).
That being said even I can understand the argument that some face to face interaction with your colleagues is beneficial, especially for younger trainees. I can also understand some people's personalities or home set up means they hate WFH.
I worked from home two days a week for a couple of years before Covid (and before that commuted 2 hours 5 days a week in same role for 15 years). Back then I thought I had a valid reason to request flexible working (disabled child) but had quite a fight to get it agreed as senior management were split (some against, some supportive). It probably got me a label as being a bit of a trouble maker, but it was a huge positive change to our family situation at the time. I also met some suprising (to me) attitudes from colleagues. There was a lot of teasing about shirking from home, some good natured, some not so (from people who were blatantly jealous or pissed off that I was allowed to WFH, or genuinely believed everyone who worked from home would do less work).
Fast forward to now a lot of those same people attitudes have changed (though some haven't!) and we now average two days a week in the office, which I think works well. Some other roles who have more client/ customer facing roles do more. I think there is a power struggle going on at the top at the moment where some senior management would like us in more, and some people are quite worried they will suddenly be forced to go back to 5 days in the office.
IME, those resisting going back in either moved too far away in the pandemic to make it practical, or do less work and hours from home…
Way too much of a generalisation.
Indeed. Very likely they are doing more work and more hours at home, just not trying to travel at the same time as everyone else to an office. A five day a week rush hour commute, week after week, month after month, can be far more crushing than actually doing a bit more work.
As for the regular/temporary place of work… you can have several regular places of work, all of which you commute to so can’t claim any tax benefits for… 2 days a week in your branch office, once a month at HQ, a couple of days a week at home… all regular, any travel just being a commute.
In a previous life I occasionally worked from home before wfh was a thing. It never ceased to amaze me that I could rattle off a weeks worth of correspondence in a decent afternoon of quiet. I was in the public sector where response times were very much the big thing, and it seemed an absolute no brainer to work like that if you wanted to clear the backlog of correspondence that weighed heavy on our department
The arguments that are generally made for going back to the office full time seem in the whole quite weak and more often than not are disingenuous.
I get that some like the office environment, or that face to face time has advantages etc etc. But when the likes of mogg and the daily telegraph are banging the drum then there's something not right in my view.
I note that the county council (Cambridge?) is no longer being pursued by the government to ensure staff are all present. Largely on the basis that the authority has shown themselves to be more effective and efficient following a 4 day week trial. I know it's not quite the same thing but it is an example of where the facts have at least been established and the previous government proved to be wrong
It seems that technology has given us the opportunity to really tackle issues around congestion, commuting, child care etc. We really should be making the most of it and seeing how we can use it to our advantage. Maybe in the future we'll find out it was a wrong thing to do but right now I'm not seeing any better options
IME, those resisting going back in either moved too far away in the pandemic to make it practical
Also, this is phrased like poor planning, but in reality, the pandemic was four years ago. A lot of people have taken roles on the basis that they're able to do them remotely.
When I say clear, obviously that’s within the context of it being a gov website!
Well, I laughed. 😀
Like many things, it's a few people taking the piss who ultimately spoil it for the rest of us. That article is dated 2014, which 'feels' about right for when my employer at the time had a crackdown on it. We then had engineers (because of course we did) refusing to come in more than twice a week for fear of being reassigned as office workers rather than home workers.
As far as their roles went it didn't really matter. We had better resources available more immediately in my Lab, including test circuits which mirrored the customers' site configurations, but there was little reason why we couldn't ship out kit if they wanted to work from home.
There was a brief conversation around insurance being invalid/nonexistent if they were burgled, I argued that we routinely didn't pay for insurance with DPD anyway because it was cheaper overall just to take the hit on a loss. Eventually I set up a terminal server backwards so they could ring us up, ask a minion to plug box 2 into terminal port 5 and DSL port 3 then telnet to the device's serial port just as if it was on the bench next to them. Literally the only reason to come in after that would be so that we could have a senior engineer (who we farmed out to customers at £1,000/day) put things in and out of boxes rather than the lad on Work Experience doing it.
Work smarter, not harder or longer.
We are expected to be in 2 or 3 days a week. I just ignore it and go in once a week just to get out of the house and see people. None of the people I work with are in the office when I am and are even less inclined to go in. I think in our case its because a couple of the directors dont like WFH themselves and so want everyone else to turn up aswell. The short answer is though we wont all fit in the building any more
Like many things, it’s a few people taking the piss who ultimately spoil it for the rest of us
Makes not to add this to death and taxes