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Learning by osmosis gets rolled out a lot where I work. As far as I can tell it is utter bullshit.
As someone who's worked from home for 26yrs & counting (office is 2.5hrs drive away), I can assure you it isn't, there's lots of things I could see or learn from my colleagues or from the shop floor that I never have the chance to & often only get to know about when there is an eff up.
We are min of 2/3 days per week. We also moved to a new head office that can only accommodate about half of the people, and is more than 70 min commute by train. Which is the only public transport option in central London. I manage that, but if it was 5 days, I can go homeworker as my commute is too long and obviously the relocation expenses would have been crippling. It’s a good set up to be fair. What matters is building occupancy not staff presence. And at the moment, it’s pretty rammed Tues-Thurs.
What matters is building occupancy not staff presence.
Why?
What matters is building occupancy not staff presence.
There's a lot of homeless people that I'm sure would be grateful for somewhere warm to stay
What matters is building occupancy not staff presence.
Why?
Have you got a pension?
As someone who’s worked from home for 26yrs & counting (office is 2.5hrs drive away), I can assure you it isn’t, there’s lots of things I could see or learn from my colleagues or from the shop floor that I never have the chance to & often only get to know about when there is an eff up.
It isn't Osmosis though
We're on 2 days a week in the office. I have a fairly unusual role and work with people in Pune in India, Knutsford and London so I get no advantage from being in the office. I don't mind going in, I was doing 2 or 3 days a week in the office when I started 13 years ago. My commute is 55 miles and 1.5 hours and I chose to keep commuting so my wife didn't have to change her job and the children could stay in the same schools.
My issue with the return to the office full time, you haven't been given a decent pay rise in years, and the cut to expenses has been welcome. Now you expect me to take a pay cut because it suits you?
I'll also add in that at my particular employer, a lot of the folk that are desperate to be in and with others seem to spend all their time there (in working hours) rabbiting about inane crap.
Virtually every time I go in there are different groups of 4-6 who don't do a stroke of work before 10am and have spent the first hour nattering and gossiping. They're then the ones who are most vocal when the chimpering about returning to the office starts.
I think those people who moved away from their office during covid because they assumed it was going to become the norm were as naive as the bike industry assuming that bike sales would remain high after the pandemic. Most employers are completely stuck in their ways and seem to refuse to see it from any other angle. We got sent home and the role I was in at the time was customer facing at a university so I switched departments to a technical role which involved sitting in front of a computer everyday and applied for the hybrid working to become permanent for me on health grounds (I have IBD and being in an office makes me unwell because of the side effects) which they rejected on the grounds that 'it may become permanent anyway' which is great unless you have a disability which thrives in stress and now face the constant unknown deadline.
I now work in the same role for another university where I was hired to work completely remotely and I'm the healthiest I've ever been and have an amazing team of people and the talent pool the university is able to access because of the remote working is majorly to their advantage because of the nature of the role. It's all very well saying you can apply for flexible working but any company can just use one of the allowed reasons to reject your claim and then you've got to fight them to prove it which the stress of will put most people off who actually need the flexibility.
It isn’t Osmosis though
Both the Oxford Language and Cambridge Dictionary definitions available online of "osmosis" clearly cover the manner in which it's being used here as an alternative definition. Straight from Google powered by Oxford Language...
the process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, knowledge, etc.
That aside I'm not sure arguing about language is helpful. There are much more interesting angles to this debate such as people development, quality and ease of collaboration, wellbeing, productivity, work-life balance and home-work separation, knock on economic impacts on city centres and the property market, data security and privacy, confidentiality, access to resources, the balance of office costs, health & safety/DSE practicalities etc.
The work environment is ultimately not about individuals it is about teams/the organisation as a whole and what may be optimum for a single team member may not suit the wider needs of the team/organisation. If the organisation does not prosper or properly function then that is bad for everyone including staff ultimately.
Occupancy matters if you’ve just taken delivery of a new building you want it full. That it won’t accommodate the entire staff means that as long as it’s full, does it matter who’s in? In fact we have to book in via a pass to activate, and there are limited passes available on any day. So on really busy days you may not be able to come into the office, even if you need to. So the 2/3 days a week may be incompatible with spaces being available. That has yet to happen but the building is full. No company wants to run empty office overheads. The previous office was seven times larger and very empty when we left.
During Covid, I didn’t mover further away from the office. But the office moved further from me. I could just be a home worker, but believe that some office face to face contact is important. And I get a nice cycle commute.
Occupancy matters if you’ve just taken delivery of a new building you want it full.
Maybe I'm just controversial, but I'd look at that from the other side, both from the business perspective and the employee perspective.
If the building is at capacity all the time, space will become an issue and they'll have to get a bigger new building - if I want to wfh at all, it's a losing game to ever go in.
Pretty much the same thing from the business perspective, do I really want to have to buy another/a bigger building? And if I can cut costs by having a smaller building (as presumably you've already done so), could I cut them further by having an even smaller one in the future?
Basically, making people come in for occupancy's sake seems totally backwards. Wouldn't it be much more sensible to encourage people to come in as it actually makes sense for them to come in/they want to come in, and then right size the building accordingly?
Occupancy matters if you’ve just taken delivery of a new building you want it full.
Why?
An empty building costs, at worst, the same to run as a full one. If fewer people in you can zone the aircon, put lights on timers / motion sensors for the quieter areas... Hell, you could rent out unused office space to other companies and actually make money from it.
The only reason I can think of to desire a new building to be full is if you've just bought a new building and then have to justify the expenditure to higher-ups when it's half-empty.
Covid gave companies an opportunity to reassess working patterns. Mixed working has proven very popular, so any future offices can be planned and sized accordingly. Whether that is consistent with requiring people to come in five days a week, or even two or three is moot. Office occupancy is the corporate measure of success and efficiency, proportion of people attending three days is not. The latter is an individual metric for performance. And those can be flexible. Given the location of our new HQ, plenty of people had the option of full-time home working (including me). That or request relocation costs to move closer, or compensation for breach of contract. I think it’s a healthy compromise.
Office occupancy is the corporate measure of success and efficiency
To whom?
That's nuts.
Office occupancy is the corporate measure of success and efficiency
But don't you win that game by not having an office at all?
2-3 days here. Some do more, some do less. I'm 3-4 days depending upon when I'm needed, no less than three as I use those for my cycle commute days. Some staff can't realistically do more than two as they have been moved to shared office space with other Teams, and the space is tight. Then you have other staff who are rarely in but insist on a desk !
But don’t you win that game by not having an office at all?
I don’t think that’s how multinationals work. 😉
Occupancy matters if you’ve just taken delivery of a new building you want it full.
Sunk cost fallacy. And if being over-full means people can't come in that really need to, that's an additional cost on top of the building itself.
Trail_rats point about investment funds and the value of buildings was interesting, certainly fed into my feelings of a larger agenda at play.
So does city centre office building stock lose value due to WFH, and does forcing people back in really solve that? Why would a company care if their (presumably leased) office building was losing value?
Clearly I'm not an economist lol
This is (as with all things) complex, and I think a lot of it is puff in the RW press on behalf of commercial landlords (who’s shareholders include a lot of our pension funds etc).
In countries where there is a labour shortage (which includes the UK, and US AIUI) its going to be hard to force people to return to the office, as hybrid working might become a recruitment carrot?
I could work from home every day but I choose to go to the office. I don't have a sensible comfortable place to work at home. I live on the South Coast and house prices are such that my role doesn't pay enough to buy a property big enough to raise two children and carve out a small home office.
I find it very very difficult to educate and train new young staff entirely remotely but I'm expected to. More office presence would make this process easier and better for everyone but my employer is not one of those enforcing any form of mandatory office time.
WFH is, like a lot of things, complicated.
WFH is an incredibly contentious issue that I can see both sides of the argument, but like most things in life should be negotiable.
My company owns the office I work in so they encourage you to come in, however in another region, they were renting and decided it to be cheaper to give up the lease and make everyone work from home. Companies will do whatever they think is best for the company, but you do get the odd upper manager on a power trip who will make decisions on their own agenda whether it is good for the company or not.
A quick google comes up with some employees winning legal cases against their employers about WFH, so maybe a strongly worded letter to the HR department might be worth a shot, even if only for your record purposes.
Or get a letter from the doctor saying you have anxiety about having to work in an office and all the commuting faff/stress.
I guess I'm one of the corporate dinosaur management type who is keen for staff to return to the office. I'm a director for a large US based Investment Bank, we have approx 4000 UK staff and over 90,000 globally.
We haven't said how many days we would like people back, this is at the discretion of the individuals. But we try to encounrage it as much as possible. There is no single reason, its covers a large spectrum.
1. Personal health and well being. If my team members want to spend an hour chatting before cracking on with work. I'm OK with that. I want to see personal interaction. Lots of reasons why, but I want my team to get on well and actually enjoy working together. Once a month we organise a breakfast, 0930 until 1030. This is across all business areas/locations. Not everyone will appreciate it, but there are no nefarious goals. I just want my teams to socially interact with other.
2. Personal health and well being. I have a large number of reports, both direct and indirect. I want them to know who I am. I want them to feel like they can come and discuss anything with me. Going through a divorce and need a bit of slack, come and talk to me. Need any career guidance, lets go for a coffee and discuss. Completely open door.
3. Personal health and well being. Work / life balance Not everyone is good at finishing work at a certain time. Some people allow work to get on top of them, this may be ok for 6 months, a year, but I can track it better if they feel they can discuss it with me or with their manager. I can have a better visibility of what is going on when we meet face to face, people are more likely to give me an honest appraisal of the situation (both work and personally). (Not just me, but my managers can keep an eye out for their staff and so on)
4. Mentorship - I am the mentor for a number of my staff, covering different levels within our organisation. I meet each individual once a month, I'd like to think that for the junior members of staff, having face to face time with a senior manager is something that they see a benefit from. I learn an awful lot more about them than I would over a 30 minute zoom call. When we see each in the corridor, we chat about football, about rugby, about family life.
5. There are then the corporate benefits of the offices having staff working in the office - this really is secondary to my organisation. But we would be foolish if we did not think of these benefits.
I do understand that some people will still see the above and think it is archaic. However we take our responibility to individuals incredibly seriously. Investment banking/wealth management and risk management are notoriously high pressure environments to work in. We do our best to look out for our staff.
We also have local offices in a number of major UK cities. My job role is based in New York, however I spend 50% of my time in a small regional office. If people have moved away from their previous office, we are more than happy for them to attend a different office. If people have moved to an incredibly remote location, I would be ok with that. But this has been their choice, I would still expect them to come in to the office once a month (ish). I would want them to meet with their manager to discuss what is happening with their work, how does it fit in with their life etc. Nothing prying, just ensuring that they are ok.
Apologies if this is rambling, typing out as I commue in on a train. And I do appreciate the above could all be carried out with remote working, but I am not certain about how effective it is. Within my organisation we have a HR consultancy business, they have carried out really detailed studies on this topic.
So does city centre office building stock lose value due to WFH,
Yes, the value of buildings is based on demand. Once you start getting smaller businesses pulling out of various buildings or renting smaller areas, rental rates go down (supply exceeds demand) and the value of the business that owns the building drops, and the value of the building does too (part of value is based on how profitable it can be)
and does forcing people back in really solve that?
Yes. Full occupancy, pressure on space, increasing rent rates
Why would a company care if their (presumably leased) office building was losing value?
Because a shit load of these companies own (or have shares in) the leasing companies too.
So does your pension company as property is worth investing in. Well. It was.
I'm formally allowed 30% WFH, i usually do about that, one fixed day every week and then usually one other random day. Manager doesn't much care if i go more either. Neither does his boss.
And FWIW, if everyone turns up, we're about 20% short of chairs across the business. We have to move into conference rooms to work, and even then it's about 5% over capacity.
And the 30% is based on union negotiations and stipulations from the company insurance co.
Pros and cons to all office, pros and cons to all WFH.
A balance of a mostly in and some out seems to work pretty well for us at my place.
SW eng, FWIW.
I'm uncomfortable with the idea of business managers deeming themselves an authority on their employee's health and wellbeing and making important decisions on that basis.
Lots of people suffer enormous amounts of stress and anxiety as a direct result of the requirement to travel to and sit in busy office spaces. Open plan offices in particular have been shown to cause negative impacts on both physical and mental health.
So I think we should leave people's health and wellbeing to the medical professionals and well away from WFH decisions.
I guess I’m one of the corporate dinosaur management type who is keen for staff to return to the office. I’m a director for a large US based Investment Bank, we have approx 4000 UK staff and over 90,000 globally.
We employ twice that, just in the UK and have reduced our office space to the minimum - WFH is the norm for non-customer facing staff.
I'm back-office in Financial Services and went into the office once last year, and twice so far this year.
Before Covid I was about 3 days office and 2 days out/WFH - still live in the same place (90 mile round trip, but under an hour each way) AKA saving a packet.
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.
I listened to an interesting item some time ago about stuff that falls through the gaps becuase of the way government departments are structured. An example being Health and Housing - one of the factors creating long waiting lists for treatment is bed blocking because patients don't have suitable homes to return to (when I've been admitted to hospital in the past I seemed to get as many questions about my home as I did about my symptoms, but it was my house that set the conditions for me to be discharged)
Historically 'Health' and 'Housing' were the same department and improvements to housing provision were made on health grounds. We created the NHS and Social housing because they were two tools for solving the same health problems
That idea was extrapolated to transport - Transport is a stand alone department so solution to transport issues are - more of different forms of transport. More Public Transport, or more roads, or cycle provision or whatever. What Covid revealed was that the biggest move the country could make to alleviate congestion is to buy the country one big shared zoom license. That thought never occurred because transport and telecommunications are different government departments and treated as deferent topics even though they both tools for achieving the same goal.
For me, it's 2 day's a week WFH. On the odd occasion I work 3 days at home.
I have 50 odd mile round trip commute and this time of year is in the dark which I find tiring, often getting home with a migraine because of the headlights of the on coming cars.
But as others has said, I have very little personal contact with my colleagues when in the office. My team members all mostly work in different countries in different time zones. Local to me is CET.
Experience in my previous company was those I worked with (including my boss and his boss) were enthusiastic about wfh, but someone above them ordered everyone back 2 days into office for various reasons.
It was a 4-5 hour round 150 mile trip for me on the M25, M3. I was hired remote, but my contract said office based. They said this was for cost-centre purposes at the time. I quit as I couldn't relocate and didn't want to drive 4-5 hours a day twice a week on top of an already quite long day.
I was hired remote, but my contract said office based. They said this was for cost-centre purposes at the time.
I normally ask people to change the contract.
The world has changed with better connectivity so wfh is clearly possible - and it was proven during the pandemic that everything didn’t come to a crashing halt for the most part.
However, I think there is some balance here, and it depends what kind of job you’re in / your company.
Mine has now mandated 3 days a week in the office for staff who are also able to work from home. Some jobs are not doable from home such as staff working in the branches that are customer facing etc etc.
I’m good with it personally - I had enough time sat in the box room at home (setup as an office) over a few years to want to be in an office with actual live people in person. I find I actually work better in the office for whatever reason.
The blend of 3 days office / 2 days wfh is almost perfect for me. I wouldn’t want to go back in 5 days - but then I haven’t been 5 days in an office for probably 8 years as I’ve had sales roles where I’m out seeing customers / can work from home where I want to.
If someone has been hired remotely / in a home working contract then I think they have a genuine case to push back on going in the office - if the contract says office based or hybrid then it’s difficult not to.
Ultimately companies are paying our wages to do a job as they want it done - so if they want people in the office then it’s either like it or lump it. Vote with your feet and find another job that does offer full remote working if that’s what you want to do.
Some companies are bending over backwards to get people back in the office to some extent - my wife contracted for another large bank for a while a year or so ago - they were always doing events with free food / free entertainment etc in the office and were piloting taking your (lockdown) dog to work in the office with you.
I think when you have people new to the company / graduates / apprentices who are new to the world of work etc that it’s not helpful to leave them wfh on their own. Yes you have teams and zoom - but it’s not the same as being sat amongst other people who you can quickly ask a question.
Apologies if this is rambling, typing out as I commue in on a train.
An interesting read. "Employees being more efficient" didn't seem to feature, unless I bleeped over it? All of the benefits you describe are laudable, it sounds a great place to work. But is the outcome better for both employer and employees as a result? It reads like a LinkedIn job advert where perks include "statutory paid holiday" and "free parking." No-one ever went into an office because they wanted a cuddle. Well, almost no-one. 🙂
I could work from home every day but I choose to go to the office. I don’t have a sensible comfortable place to work at home. I live on the South Coast and house prices are such that my role doesn’t pay enough to buy a property big enough to raise two children and carve out a small home office.
You can work from home. Why not move somewhere which is more appropriate for your needs and cheaper?
Yeah it's happening, I know someone who moved from the South East to the North East to live the rural life after being told their role was remote, aside from 'the odd in-person meeting'. Fast forward 2 years and they're having to live with their parents 4 nights a week to save a 200 mile commute at their own expense.
It's sadly a debate that became a politicised argument. Unions and the like will tell you workers are 20% more efficient at home, partly because of a lack of distractions, plus an ability to mix work and home lives more efficiently. The likes of Forbes will tell you the opposite. The argument becomes so entrenched that facts become opinion and vice versa. How to you measure efficacy? The smart, but hard way is to measure output, the stupid, but easy way is to measure input.
One opinion that does seem to be a fact, the ones shouting the loudest about Office work, have the most to lose. The City Centre office space owners, the lunchtime meal deal providers, the transport providers etc.
I've gone back to being in the office as much as possible rather than WFH as its just far more effective in a small team (SW development), we just discuss ideas more frequently and have lots of impromtu discussions about technical issues. Personally it doesn't really bother me as I'm only a 20 min bike ride away from work. Although I did blow £3k on a pair of Apple Studio Displays at home, which barely get used now - might have to bring them into the office to get some use out of them.
I’ve gone back to being in the office as much as possible rather than WFH as its just far more effective in a small team (SW development)
It's more effective for *your* small team, maybe.
I'm *way* more effective as a software engineer wfh than in an office.
I took a role 2 years ago, they were desperate for people. So i told them right at the start, their office location doesnt work for me.
So id been WFH with rare visits into the office. However my contract actually said office based, managers discretion etc etc.
They reverted to wanting peeps in the office 3 days per week minimum. The location, as said, doesnt work for me so i told them 'bye bye'.
Back to contracting, full time WFH for a Copenhagen company.
Seems to be the way now with many others in my sector. 2 days WFH, 3 days office. Seems they have some big offices to pay for (or more like the client pays for it as a project fee, and if no ones in, client not paying.... hence bums on seats needed)
It’s sadly a debate that became a politicised argument. Unions and the like will tell you workers are 20% more efficient at home, partly because of a lack of distractions, plus an ability to mix work and home lives more efficiently.
It's also sad that the argument can't be phrased as 'hey we might be slightly less efficient but we're not clogging up roads/trains, we're spending more time with families/children etc. etc.'. The societal benefits as a whole should be massive but that seems to be getting overlooked.
I definitely agree with a lot of the reasons stated above for still going in to office, my new company seems like a great office and crowd of people, shame it's just too far away for more than once/twice a month!
the client pays for it as a project fee, and if no ones in, client not paying
Does the client come round and check? I'm not in Projects (though I dealt closely with plenty) but it seems an odd thing to charge for. We'd estimate and bill clients for engineering hours, not seat warmers.
The world of office based work is backwards. I find it staggering that we still insist on a set number of hours for some roles. I'm a big fan of judging people on what they do as opposed to where they do it and how long they spend sitting in one place. A hell of a lot of place I've worked seem to count being present above everything else.
The company I work for delivered more during lockdown than at any other time in it's history. I personally don't mind working from the office (well, the warehouse, office not so much). It's nice to WFH on a Monday though as it eases me back in to the week and doesn't involve getting up early for an hours worth of cycling. It also means I get more done as the two hours a day I'd spend commuting can be spent on working if needed. If I was forced in to the office then certain things just wouldn't get done as I'd strictly stick to my hours.
My work now mandates 2 days a week in the office (pro rata), but because of my long COVID they let me off with less. Which I'm very grateful for.
If i could manage it, I'd probably do 2 or 3 days a week in the office. I miss the social side and some stuff is just quicker when you can walk over to someone's desk for a quick chat. And I miss getting the exercise! But some stuff is far easier to do when you don't have the distractions.
My work has two compulsory "high occupancy" days for the office staff and there is a lot of pushback from some members of staff whenever increasing that number of days is raised. The claim that they are more productive at home isn't really born out by the company's performance over the years since Covid.