WFHd

The last few months I have been surprised at how aggressively a newspaper like the Daily Telegraph in the UK is campaigning against WFH. In a near endless number of articles and opinion pieces I read that WFH basically is the reason for everything that's wrong in the UK. And to be honest, I don't understand where the venom comes from. I work in a place where WFH (under the name of hybrid) working is slowly becoming the standard. And not only that, it's a move that is enthousiastically pushed ahead by my employer. Some of my co-workers have to virtually be pushed out of the office. The changes are roughly; the office where I work will roughly be halved in surface and we will only have flexible work stations that you can't even reserve, so you come to the office at your own risk. You may not find a place where to work. I personally went from having a private room at that office to not having a fixed place to work in the first time in my work history. Meetings, which we have a lot, are not supposed to be held at the office either. If we can use Teams, we use Teams. Only in case there's a necessary or court mandated face to face meeting necessary we have to go to the office. Otherwise you're not supposed to go to the office. Unless it's for printing, socializing and the like. I love it; it means I can work from whereever I want. And with the daily morning-meetings I can actually multi-task as dog walker 9 times out of 10. I spread the actual working over the rest of the day, combined with a very generous availability by phone.

Besides this, there is no negative effect on the work we deliver. To the contrary, most work is done faster than before.

Of course I should say, that this happens in a country with an unemployment rate of 3,2% and as I write this a higher number of vacancies than the number of people looking for jobs (obviously jobs and qualifications don't always match).

But what's the deal here; where does the hostility come from ?

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Originally Posted by Hazir

But what's the deal here; where does the hostility come from ?

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Three words: commercial real estate.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Three words: commercial real estate.

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Like we don't have that?

In Amsterdam 6.2% of office space is empty. That number is expected to go down.

The Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers who are billionaires with substantial real estate investments.

I'm amazed at how many companies are trying to force people to come back into the office after working at home has proven to be very effective. What the hell is the deal?

Middle management. Work from home has shown that they don't know how to do their job effectively or that they're not needed for other people to get their own jobs done

It's just another expression of the conservative impulse to control people—to keep tabs on them and prevent them from doing things their own way—and bears some of the hallmarks of a culture war issue. In addition, WFH has an impact on how various workplaces function, and it requires some adjustments even for those who choose not to WFH (eg. more irregular hours, more difficult to just pop in with a question or request, etc); for many people, that's too much to ask. You can find dozens or hundreds of specific advantages and disadvantages, but, at the end of the day, it boils down to culture.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

I'm amazed at how many companies are trying to force people to come back into the office after working at home has proven to be very effective. What the hell is the deal?

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Me too, WFH may even encourage me to delay retirement. Which given the state of the job market is something very desirable.

The day I stopped using my office desk it became significantly easier for people to reach me for appointments and planning.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

The Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers who a billionaires with substantial real estate investments.

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Aha, these people really use their newspapers like $10 whores don't they?

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Originally Posted by Aimless

It's just another expression of the conservative impulse to control people—to keep tabs on them and prevent them from doing things their own way—and bears some of the hallmarks of a culture war issue. In addition, WFH has an impact on how various workplaces function, and it requires some adjustments even for those who choose not to WFH (eg. more irregular hours, more difficult to just pop in with a question or request, etc); for many people, that's too much to ask. You can find dozens or hundreds of specific advantages and disadvantages, but, at the end of the day, it boils down to culture.

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But, if control doesn't mean getting more out of your employees, what's the point?

I agree it takes all sorts of adjustments, but in the end it's just a update of procedures taking into account the technical possibilities.

DM's are seriously a step ahead compared to informal dropping in for questions. There is a non-offending ability to make people wait till you're ready for them, yet they get their instant information almost as fast as when they walked into your door. If you get tired of typing you simply switch to teams.

I did notice that younger co-workers are relatively more reluctant to WFH. Though there are some old war horses who absolutely seem to hate it.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

Middle management. Work from home has shown that they don't know how to do their job effectively or that they're not needed for other people to get their own jobs done

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I seriously doubt the people who I tell to their faces that I consider a good manager a manager who doesn't cause trouble for me to reach my targets, have that much influence.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

I'm amazed at how many companies are trying to force people to come back into the office after working at home has proven to be very effective. What the hell is the deal?

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It's called control. For too many bosses, being able to control their workers is more important than having them hit their targets.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

I seriously doubt the people who I tell to their faces that I consider a good manager a manager who doesn't cause trouble for me to reach my targets, have that much influence.

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They are the ones that have the most influence on their bosses' decisions. If they feel that the department isnt performing at peak because of their own issues, all their boss is going to hear is that WFH is holding back performance.

It was pointed out to me that WFH is going to be a legal right in The Netherlands. A law to that effect was adopted by the 2nd chamber of parliament and will proceed to the 1st chamber for confirmation.

I haven't seen the law yet, but I understand that requests for WFH have to be granted and facilitated, unless the employer has reasonable objections based in the nature of the work done.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

It was pointed out to me that WFH is going to be a legal right in The Netherlands. A law to that effect was adopted by the 2nd chamber of parliament and will proceed to the 1st chamber for confirmation.

I haven't seen the law yet, but I understand that requests for WFH have to be granted and facilitated, unless the employer has reasonable objections based in the nature of the work done.

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I wasn't aware of that, but I did have a meeting with the CFO of my agency this week and he was very clear that work from home is here to stay one way or another.

My employer allows working from home, although it depends from role to role how much. We do have quite a bit of physical paperwork still (not all processes are electronic yet, it's a bit of a hassle for pharma) so we do need some presence in the office. They're already taking advantage by reducing the amount of offices and desks since there won't be 100% attendance anyway. Although we do have a departmental thing in September with mandatory presence for half the day, so I'm curious if we'll have enough desks that day :p

Side note, but there's a lot of changes in labour laws this year!

I find this whole discussion fascinating because it's obvious that the vast majority of us fall into a very narrow realm where WFH is feasible. A huge proportion of workers, even in the West, have no practical option to WFH - maybe they're in an in-person service industry, or they work in manufacturing, or some other hands on field. More broadly, a whole lot of jobs work a lot better in person, even if they can be theoretically done from home.

My role is about half hands on research and half various forms of paperwork (protocol/report writing, meetings, presentations, etc.). Obviously the former can't be done remotely, but the latter tends to benefit from some in person time as well. The office is always full of activity and interesting discussions and collaborations. We have whiteboards covered with various sketches of designs and notional datasets that came precisely from a few people bouncing ideas off of each other. When you're working in person, you hear about the successes and challenges of your team on a day to day basis, and can much more quickly volunteer to help (or ask for help!) when you realize there's a useful synergy involved.

Obviously some days are just meetings all day, and some days you just need to buckle down and write/research/etc. But the in person dynamics can be extraordinarily valuable in some work environments, especially interdisciplinary collaborative environments like e.g. an R&D organization.

My work has always been flexible on WFH and has obviously gotten a lot more so since Covid hit. But we all voluntarily show up in person on most days just because it helps us do our jobs better. I willingly sacrfice 1.5 hours of my day to commuting each day when I come in when it's not strictly required by my plans, and it's almost always worth it.

I have no doubt that some managers are doing this to be spiteful, and that some jobs don't benefit from in person synergies. But I suspect that's the exception and not the rule for most workers. Either they need to work in person, or they benefit from doing so most of the time.

I would say that the vast majority of people *who have office jobs* have jobs that can be done as well or better from home.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

I would say that the vast majority of people *who have office jobs* have jobs that can be done as well or better from home.

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I would say you should define what you consider an "office job". For instance most jobs in a doctor's office cannot be done as well or better from home.

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Originally Posted by Being

I would say you should define what you consider an "office job". For instance most jobs in a doctor's office cannot be done as well or better from home.

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Most jobs in a doctor's office are done outside of the doctor's office. There are far more clerical than there are those that see or work with patients, and even the doctors spend a good deal of work time without being face to face with patients.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

Most jobs in a doctor's office are done outside of the doctor's office. There are far more clerical than there are those that see or work with patients, and even the doctors spend a good deal of work time without being face to face with patients.

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Well I dunno 'bout clerical... 0: ) :o

I could do a lot of my routine outpatient follow-up from home—in theory. We've found that video/phone follow-up is often just as good as physical visits for many of our routine follow-up contacts. They're more convenient for many patients, and free up more time for those patients who really need physical visits. Our neurosurgical service has been able to shift almost half of their routine follow-up visits to video. Our healthcare system doesn't really have the ability to support the IT & security infrastructure for doing that from home, but I have no doubt it's aound the corner. A number of our radiologists already routinely work from home—some from other countries in the EU. There are also private digital health services that are designed to enable people to work from home. A lot of my research work can also be done from home.

There are a number of advantages to being at the hospital though. Easier to stay on top of things, to quickly answer questions and address problems, etc. You get to hang out, learn from each other, be inspired, benefit from chance encounters.

Typically I plan my work around the answer from a medical professional to my questions; 'do you need a consultation with this person, and if yes, do you need it to be face-to-face?'. In a surprising high number of cases doctors tell me that a face-to-face meeting has no added value.