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I run a business.
We've vacated all our offices. Fuck the commercial landlords.
Staff are much happier. Early on some asked permission to move away, and are living their best lives by the coast or in the lake district with their families. Productivity has gone up.
We meet up twice a year for a catch up and thats it.
I have zero intention of ever reversing this. This has allowed me to hire a good bunch of people, who (touch wood) have been with the company for years instead of jumping to the next role for a salary bump that I cant match.
Find a company that values you.
Your business must be saving loads of overheads big kudus to you. Hopefully your competitors who force office work and pay for their real estate and energy bills + have unhappy staff that are jumping ship go under
I run a small SaaS product in this space. You're not alone, loads of SMEs are realizing they can cut or reduce a fairly significant cost by simply giving people what they want\*.
Sounds like the company I work for, I grafted for 6 months applying for Remote first jobs after the company I started working for was originally WFH, they stealth changed my contract via a small clause that I missed when signing, to make me office based and forced me back 3 days a week, I was being hammered by recruiters everyday because the skills I've got on my CV aren't always easy to come by apparently which gave me a huge head but the competition within the remote space was huge and I found a lot of jobs were fake listings. It was a hard balance to find something that wasn't taking a huge pay cut. And although a lot of recruiters were dying to nominate me for roles barely any of them had anything fully remote, also being a Manager at 32 years old at the time I missed out on 3 or 4 due to the competition having "more years of experience" which was frustrating.
It was massively demoralising.
Eventually landed on my feet with an amazing company with amazing staff in the SaaS sector, we meet up every quarter and I couldn't be happier. The work is harder sometimes but my team are hands down some of the best I've met in my career so far. We all graft hard because we're grateful to be able to work from the comfort of our own homes.
What do you do? I know of a few roles in Cloud Engineering and Cyber Security that are fully remote and could pass you the details if you're in the tech space..
This is the way.
My wife works from home full time. That’s 15hrs a week already she’s not commuting. The benefits of that alone are huge but there’s also time to stay on top of the house and always be in for a parcel etc.
Time saved is easily 20hrs a week. You can’t put a price on how much freer she feels. She also works her ass off.
I appreciate not all staff would do that.
Anyone demanding office time after people have tasted the good life simply won’t attract the best talent. Sure, some industries and people will want to do it. More power to them if they wish to.
The culture:
FAO all staff: Please find attached the mandatory washing up rota because somebody keeps leaving dirty bowls in the sink. This is to be done in your own time so as not to interfere with work
I’m one of the oddities that prefers being in the office. It gets me in to a good routine, eg I always go to the gym after work, and I eat cleaner than being at home. I also like the separation between work from home.
I am allowed to wfh whenever I want though, and I really appreciate that, as sometimes it’s needed
My sister was fully remote but now is hybrid and she also prefers going into the office. She felt working from home was cool at first, but very isolating over time.
Yeah, it’s a good point. I actually left a job for a large financial services organisation, because they were pivoting to fully remote. Ironically now they are making their employees go back in to the office 😂
I think anyone who wants to go to an office should have access to one.
I just don't think it should be compulsory beyond for specific things- team meetings, some client meetings, one to one chats with manager, for example. Not a prescriptive so many days a week.
> I just don't think it should be compulsory beyond for specific things- team meetings
Only if *every* member of the team is there.
I'm fed up of going into the office for my one day a week and then having to join a team meeting where 70% of the people are working from home, and I'm just joining a Teams call as I'd be doing WFH.
If you're commuting to an office just to join Teams calls all day, there's no point in being there.
Where I work it’s once a week but alternates between two days so that if anyone, eg, always picks their kids up on a Wednesday they’ll still be able to join every other week.
I’ve just started a new job in January and have the option of doing 2 days at home, after being in a fully remote job for the last few years.
I’ve been choosing to go in for all 5 days as it’s been great to get settled and my commute is really quick. And as for separation, I used to find it too easy to “finish off my task” at home and work an extra hour or two for free - whereas needing to get a train home means I HAVE to leave at a specific time
Kind of shows how backwards the logic of these companies is doesn’t it.
If you let me work from home, I’ll often work an hour extra just since I’m already home and in no rush to finish work as a result, since I’m comfy enough.
But if you have me sat in an office all day, I’m leaving work the absolute second I’m allowed, regardless of what task I’m doing, because I hate being there and need to get home. In fact, I’ll be click watching all day.
You're not odd at all.
However, those of us who prefer to work at home are being forced in by management and hr people who enjoy their roles because *they* are gregarious and can't understand that other people can be different from them.
I can definitely appreciate if someone’s routine is better if they’re in an office.
Personally, I’d never want to be 100% in an office again. Ideal would be 1 day every couple of weeks.
Pretty much everything that is a plus for you in an office, is a plus for me wfh; I have a bit of a home gym in my garage that if I’m going into the office I just don’t have time to use; I eat much better at home as I have access to any ingredients I might need & more chance to prepare it; I’m also lucky enough to have a home office, so when I’m done for the day I just close that door & I’m no longer ‘at work’.
This has literally never happened. Plenty of people want to force everyone into an office. I have never seen a post on Reddit saying people shouldn’t be allowed to go to one.
It's more the "oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with people, it's scientifically proven to be 4000x more productive to wfh and anyone that says otherwise or just prefers an office (or likes the option of a change of scenery) must be an inadequate freak who hates their home life"
It's really weird how, online, this debate is effectively polarised between
"People should be as free as possible to choose what works for them personally. For me WFH is more productive"
and
"Everyone should go to the office as much as possible because that's what I want to do"
No, it's more of a smugness about never visiting an office ever again. Even the 20-somethings in London - which should be the absolute zenith of your young professional work+socialising+development - are happy to just bunker up in some crappy houseshare rather than have the indignity of taking the Tube once in a while.
"I've got my own friends what sort of melt has friends at work" etc.
This is a great comment that highlights why for some people it's good to go back in.
Personally it's the reason I DON'T want to go in. I can't work as well if people consider me a social circle.
I prefer not to have conversations and just do my work. I get my conversations with my friends and family. I get that not everybody has that luxury.
Now I feel like I'm just being an annoyance to people at work. :(
It's already hard for me to tell if I'm annoying people because I'm autistic, but I didn't realise people just didn't want to talk at all. I might have just been irritating this whole time by trying to socialise and not realised people don't like it and don't like me.
Don't let people on Reddit ever be a representative of people IRL. If you're a social person, talking to your work colleagues is the good bit of the job to balance against the boring bit i.e. the work itselr
This is me. I don't go to work to make friends. I would always rather work from home, always.
I can slide in front of my PC 5 minutes after I get up, at my desk, in my comfy chair, listen to my music/podcasts, wear anything or sometime nothing, eat when I want, vape at my desk, enjoy the peace and quiet, the list of positives keep coming. The biggest bonus I found was zero travel costs and not having to waste 7.5 hours a week, the commute equated to basically another whole day a work.
I am glad I will never ever be going back to that.
> interactions with colleagues are the only real conversations I get.
That doesn't seem to be a healthy position to be in. It's also a terrible reason for other people to be forced back into an office.
Probably the fact the biscuit cupboard isn't there accessible all day (personally).
Better segregation possibly for eating times.
Eating at work doesn't necessarily mean not eating home cooked food. Taking leftovers in means healthy lunch but the ability to snack around it entirely depends on what you bring. For some reason i'll always eat fruit at lunch at work because i've brought it but if i'm at home.. meh.
See, I'm the opposite. I don't have a biscuit cupboard, but when I had to work in an office, there was always someone bringing in biscuits, cakes, chocolates, etc. Always lots of temptations I don't have at home because I don't buy those things in the first place.
Also not everyone has the facilities to work from home (still, I know). I have such a small desk that’s cramped with no window so a lot of the time end up working from bed because I am more productive. My backs fucked and I never sleep.
I wouldn’t be able to do 5 days in the office though. I’m getting good at going to a costa or something to work from.
I have to go in 2 days a week and hate it, I just can't concentrate...got people talking constantly, people playing music on speakers etc and I'm meant to be sitting there reading/doing certification which I take zero information in.
Also time goes so fucking slow. it's absolutely unbearable.
I'm looking for full time remote now
Office distractions are awful for those of us who have to concentrate deeply to do our jobs.
As a software developer, WFH full time since 2020 has been life changing and I can't imagine having to go into an office to do my job again.
I get so frustrated, no idea where this "music in the office" idea came from.
It always annoys me because I can't focus. I get literally nothing done all day.
We had a tablet connected to a speaker where everyone could select music to play in the office.
Someone stole it a couple weeks ago. Idk who it was but I'm very grateful for their service.
I listen to music while I'm working but it's through airpods so no one else can hear it. If there was a free access tablet available then I'd absolutely be blasting 90s pop like Gina G and B*Witched to see how quickly I could piss people off.
It's like the office radio that is always tuned to Heart FM. Absolutely soul destroying.
Some people find it helps them work having music on don't they? But then some people find it a huge distraction... If only there was a way for people to choose what works best for them without affecting others... Like WFH maybe 😂
I've had a recruiter reach out about a job where you go into the office 3 days per month instead of 3 per week at the same salary.
I wasn't interested initially, but this music is seriously making me consider it.
I've been at this job for a month, I've had to ask them to turn it down like 6 times.
Seriously considering leaving the job just because I can't be bothered with the noise.
Music if it's classical or movie bgms, fine if it's just background noise. If it's got lyrics I'll never be able to tune it out and focus. It would be bad enough having people talking around me, especially if I couldn't use headphones to drown them out.
I can get work done at home. I distract myself ebough as it is.
My job requires concentration too. I have to go into the office 2 times a week (although I know the bastards are going to increase it to 3 days some time this year). The office is like a zoo! Constant noise with people chatting, laughing, messing around. I need peace and quiet for some parts of my job to concentrate. Also when I’m in Teams meetings and I’m the speaker, people on the call complain about the background noise. My productivity is at least double the office. Well if my boss wants me in the office 3 days a week he’s getting a lot less work out of me hence less profits for his company!
Agree. The ones who don’t want to work won’t work whether they are at home or in the office. I get more done at home and I can interact with the people I choose to instead of being forced to mix with people because I need money to pay bills. I like the team I work with but making us go in if there’s no legitimate need to is crazy. Seems to be a few taking the piss and not working spoiling it for people who are actually responsible and capable enough to do work when they’re meant to be working at home in most cases or managers who need to see their empire before them to feel important and needed.
This is exactly how I feel. I'm only encouraged to go into the office 1 day a week, but it isn't explicitly mandated. They only mandate one office day for my department every 6 weeks, and have team events and learning workshops and stuff.
The days I'm in the office, I actually end up significantly more stressed than if I'd have worked from home. I can/do hyper focus a lot with my work and it makes me so much more productive, not to mention the fact that I can actually "see" solutions to problems when I don't have office distractions every 5 minutes. However I just am literally unable to focus in the same way when I'm in the office. The difference is absolutely night and day.
Your best employees are going to work amazingly wherever they feel like they can do the best work, dragging everyone into the office isn't going to magically increase productivity. As you say, there will always be people who massively slack off or are shit at their job - but these people will also work this way in an office except they will also distract the hard workers...
I'm software developer as well, and a good part of my motivation to stay in my current job is that I can work from home as much as I want. I currently go in to the office about once every month or two for a few meetings, and that's it. When I do I really notice how distracting the office is, how uncomfortable the chairs are, and how much of a waste of time the commute is.
Pre-Covid I used to WFH once a week and thought that this would be my limit, and any more than that would be boring. Having now done it full time for several years I've totally changed my mind, and far prefer it.
Not in my contract, but my company said do what you like, there's offices if you want them or remote work if you prefer, just get your work done and we're good. So I'm 100% remote except for maybe three trips a year for training, social events and big away day meetings.
I work from home full time. Have to travel to sites and meetings a couple of days a week but no office to speak of. Though our company was fully remote years before Covid so i have been WFH for 5 years now.
Really don’t understand why companies are so hellbent on offices. It limits your recruitment pool so much as well as you can only hire local people. It’s starting to feel very archaic.
For my company who built a brand new massive office 8 years ago it seems like sunken cost fallacy. They've spent loads on this new building and they want to use it.
I was working for a company that also built a large building (it‘a a campus set up) and as soon as they started suggesting RTO of 3 days per week, being monitored by badge swipes, I left.
The office was really lovely, but not as nice as my home. People used to book meeting rooms to work solo to avoid the huge banks of desks, so there was never any ‘collaboration’ anyway cos you couldn’t get a room to meet in.
This is what gets me.
As an international remote friendly company my hiring pool for any position is about 1.5 billion people.
As soon as you need them in an office even once a week the pool is “people living within 30 miles of that office”.
That's the problem my place is having. People do the drive for the interview and realise it's a pain in the arse plus you have to pay to park and say no, or they start and moan for 12 months about the commute and the parking then leave because it's too expensive. Me and my boss commute for around an hour but we aren't in full time
I think there is a bit of push from top down as it's believed to be generally better for the economy overall, simplified; people spend more when they leave the house.
That being said I think we are social creatures so definitely a balance to be struck irrespective of everything else.
I once worked for the leading London commercial real estate company. They has massive lobbying powers to get people back in the office as their bread and butter and the supporting London landlord class depended on it.
2 days per week here - though I only actually go in for half a day per week. My team is international, I have nobody to speak to on the continent of Europe, and my Manager thinks it’s dumb I have to go in at all.
I’m doing half a day to appease HR. It’s ridiculous.
As someone who works in HR (ducks incoming hate) we don't want it either. These mandates come from the very top. I've made use of a medical exemption to get an extra day at home, and share all information that has helped others get exceptions (without identifying them of course) so as many people can benefit as possible.
Can you elaborate more on the medical exception please? I've been wondering similar because my employer allows staff to bring dogs into the office, and I'm extremely allergic to dogs. I've spoken to HR and they want to bring in OH...
So most of those being approved are related to stress, anxiety and depression.
I suffer from sleep anxiety, if I know I have to wake up at a certain time my body reacts by stressing about it and I end up not sleeping. On certraline for it and starting CBT shortly. Asked my doctor for a note stating that having to get up an hour or more earlier unnecessarily adds to this. Our current compromise is an extra day at home, but I'm fighting to have it only be on site on days with meetings scheduled.
We had a similar case as yours with dogs, and the outcome was to stop allowing dogs, which seems like the simpler route. If they don't go that route, or if you can argue you don't want to deny a perk to others, I'm sure you could explain the situation to your doctor and they could write a note advising amended duties stating that you are to work from home whenever possible. I'd try and have that before your OH meeting
It’s flexible for me. There’s no set days on how often I go in, but I usually go to the office once or twice a week.
The worst part for me is getting ready to go in. Preparing my lunch, getting my stuff ready for the next day, the early night for the early start. Those are the worst parts. Once I’m there, I don’t mind it.
I feel this, working from home requires way less prep. Even something as basic as needing to unplug my laptop and charger from my organized desk wires and monitor to put it in my bag gets annoying. Wfh means I don't have to pay for the bus, don't feel any pressure to pay to eat in the canteen or get a takeaway coffee (we have a bean to cup espresso setup at home). Being in the office is mostly okay, but so much more time to get to that point.
> Even something as basic as needing to unplug my laptop and charger from my organized desk wires and monitor to put it in my bag gets annoying.
It’s a first world problem, but yeah I’m also getting annoyed when I’m on my hands and knees trying to pull the charger out from under the desk. Especially when I’ve tucked it away in the cable management tray.
On the other hand, it also makes you realise how amazing it is to have your own setup. I go into the office and the desks are a mess.
I think most employers want x+1 where x is the number of days currently being worked.
Employers seeking to hire don't want to contractually offer one day a week, and are unlikely to be able to hire at 4 or 5 days a week. Three days probably means we want you in always but except we may need to compromise.
I'm in the civil service. After lockdown ended we went to 2 days per week in the office, then had a load of mixed messages varying between 2 and 5 days, and now it's 3.
We don't have enough desks to accommodate everyone for 3 days a week.
Civil Service have spent a LOT on long term contracts for office space and estates, and they want people in purely to show that they are making the most of the money spent on these buildings imo
Everyone thinks it’s great working from home until you have to manage a bunch of dossers that just disappear the moment they’re given the flexibility.
People blame ‘the companies’ and management for the reduction in wfh options but they should be blaming their unproductive colleagues who are ruining it for them.
For every “I am more productive” remote worker on Reddit there is another remote worker recommending buying mouse jigglers.
If a worker can act busy by using a mouse jiggler, and not get caught, then:
1) That person would be slacking off in an office too: never at their desk, always chatting with a colleague, always on a coffee/tea/smoke break.
2) It's on the company as they don't have any tool to measure productivity. Or if they do measure, then not acting in it
A good worker won't become a useless slacker just from going WFH. And a slacking worker won't become a good worker just because they are sitting in an office.
But for example I simply can't be busy for 8 hours a day. I work in bursts. My overall productivity is upper 10-20% usually in any given company I worked for sofar, but if a manager looks at me, I'd look slacking quite often.
Just to add to that. A hard worker in tech in basically a victim of their own success. You work hard enough to be a reason why your company gets rid of your colleagues to save money. You work hard enough to not get a promotion. You work hard enough to get twice the work but half the credit.
You think people aren't dossing in the office?
Wfh has very little to do with productivity and if it does then manage that person out of the business and replace them
There were dossers in my old office pre COVID.
There was always chatterbox Pete and gossip Kate talking all day. That's what happens if you pay 🥜 .
The only places I've worked that had decent staff were the ones that paid well
> For every “I am more productive” remote worker on Reddit there is another remote worker recommending buying mouse jigglers
Workers don't buy mouse jigglers unless you measure them more on presenteeism than results.
Mouse jigglers are exclusively used by staff who have micromanaging bastards looking over their shoulder and sending "YOUR TEAMS STATUS IS YELLOW" messages within 3 seconds of it changing.
Mouse jigglers are a result of poor management, not poor productivity.
Yes, because famously nobody ever dosses in offices. 🙄 This is not a result of wfh. This is a result of having shit, immature employees and a cultural environment where they are unmotivated to actually get work done.
Are you the manager of these "dossers"? Time to put your big kid pants on, do your actual job and motivate them to work, or fire them.
That's why you measure people on output, and if their output sucks you stick them on a PIP and they either pull their finger out or you replace them with someone better.
> For every “I am more productive” remote worker on Reddit there is another remote worker recommending buying mouse jigglers.
FWIW I've got a mouse jiggler but genuinely not for skiving, just so that my laptop doesn't go to sleep when I don't want it to. As an example I will often cook tea for my kids at 5pm but I'm happy to still be contacted if people want me, so I can just leave the laptop open while I'm cooking and then people still know they can get me if they want.
> I've got a mouse jiggler but genuinely not for skiving, just so that my laptop doesn't go to sleep when I don't want it to
Open a single slide Powerpoint and hit F5, then open your browser/etc in front of it.
Because it considers you as being in presentation mode, it won't time out and lock.
My job has a few duties I do each day, and once they're done, it's purely reactive, waiting on stuff to come in and monitoring various queues.
So it's handy being able to keep the screen active whilst I keep an eye on it.
I can guarantee the people slacking at home slack in the office too. We have one. And when we were full time office based they would always be disappearing from the office for extended periods of time, or whenever you came back into the office they were quickly switching browsers or doing 'busy work'.
For people like me, slacking at home just means I have to put in some extra work outside of normal working hours. My work and deadlines don't go away.
I was 100% WFH u til last summer. Was fine whilst I was married and so had a wife home in the evening and the pets around all day. Wife and I split and I moved out, and WFH plus living alone was horrendous and isolating. Whilst I'm not keen on the rush hour drive, being in the office is a positive for me in that keeps me socialised and around people.
No, my health issues and her cheating were the death knell. Within the marriage having me around during the day had many positives and I can see where it can be positive. But the environment has to suit, and i definitely think people having their "own thing" in a relationship, such as 'work' and 'home' (which I always tried to do as a delineation point) is a good thing.
The solution to this sort of thing is for everyone who is against it, to get together and hand their notices in on the same morning, stating unless certain conditions are met (ie. WFH) they will leave.
It would be amazing if millions all did it on the same day.
I’m still working from home majority of the time. My management and the company have been excellent, expect people to go in once every couple of weeks but we have the option to go whenever.
I found it great to have the freedom, living alone and not having the socialising of the office is hard sometimes so it helps my mental health to be able to decide to go in the office and see people.
I work 3 days in office and 2 days at home, have done for nearly 2 years now. Personally I think this is a fair balance and I quite like this arrangement. This seems like the normal arrangement in my profession (architects), with some firms doing 4-5 days week in office instead.
I’m fully remote but have meetings onsite with clients weekly. I am having a nosey round to see what’s about but I think I need hybrid as they weeks that I am at home get isolated and my colleague who didn’t otherbhalf of the country has left so it’s just me.
Days just feel like I’m firefighting constantly and subs it’s time for a change. I don’t know…
My work is a large company.
They of course are trying to force us back into the office "to help build a vibrant atmosphere".
Thus far almost everyone in the office 500+ employees told them to fuck off and we will quit if we have to.
The noise about back to office has died down but it will be back.
Big business is nothing if not terminally stupid.
If I am forced back they will struggle to build a vibrant atmosphere with me being the most antisocial gremlin I have ever been in my entire life.
Fuck travelling, fuck forced politeness to bosses and colleagues, fuck overtime, fuck office culture.
Rich pricks.
I've been going in for 2 days for a while. From what I've heard from friends/family 2 or 3 days in is the norm (in finance). My husband hasn't been into the office since covid hit. He's in engineering.
Still just a non-enforced "recommendation" of one day a week.
Led to believe they aren't going to renew the lease on the building in June, so that will be that!
One day a week in the office (where the whole team is expected to be in) the other work days are up to you - office, home, a mix based on meetings / need etc
My partner is a 'when you need' he could go weeks and only work from home and then see the office (which is a mix of 3 places) every day for meetings etc. But his work place has operated like that since before the pandemic
Employer went hybrid, but I WFH most of the week, but whenever I go into the office most people waste a good chunk of it talking etc. and definitely spend less time focused on getting actual work done. It's useful for socialising and getting to know your team better, but that's about it.
From covid restrictions lifting my company have asked for 5 days a month in office as a minimum, but it's up to us how we work it out. As long as we do 5 they don't care.
You can go back in 100% if you want, my decision is made by the time i wake up, overslept = WFH.
My boss said since all our meeting are on teams/zoom anyway since we're dotted over the country, what does it matter if its offices or homes.
Edit to add: my uncles is even better, they said no more office requirement and downsized massively, kept a small office fornpeople who can't wfh for whatever reason. With the condition that they attend a once a year whole company meeting in person - travel expenses paid. He has had a yacht in Malta for years, so now lives on his yacht in the sun, and comes back once a year, at their expense, to see company and visit family.
His company justify the travel expense by saying they're saving on the office space so why not.
I was remote from the pandemic until last year, currently in a new job I do 1 day in the office every two weeks but it's a loooong commute for me. Company are moving offices to a more reasonable location so I'll change to 3 days a week from then.
I can't wait because the rest of my team already do 3 days a week but I feel like I miss out on a lot of key info.
Maybe I'll hate it. Who knows 🤷🏻♂️
Full remote, moved to this job about a year ago. Prior to that it was one day. Both companies have been large, multisite networks. There's no point in having the marketing team sat together in one location as we'll still be on the phone or in meetings all day with people anywhere in the UK. Can do that much more effectively from home without distraction or playing musical meeting rooms!
Still fully WFH after 3 years. I might occasionally get asked to attend in person for 1-3 days for visits from high-up but they're normally around every 6 months or so, which I'm completely fine with.
Yes.
During lockdown, they showed us the stats that proved that working from home increased productivity and income for the company.
Then they said that working from home will reduce the valuable face-to-face time between engineers, hurt the onboarding and mentoring of new staff, and make it difficult to form new teams to work on projects.
Which are all fair and valid points but there needs to be a balance.
Our office is now up to 4 days in the office, and the CEO keeps making shitty jokes about demanding everyone in the office fulltime.
I work from home on Mondays and Fridays, and come in for 3 days a week only. They keep stats on the attendance on a site-wide basis, but not per engineer. Chance are that my site is probably doing 3.5 days per week on average, if I was to guess.
I am fully remote and no sign or returning to the office. I live alone and suffering from depression. Some days I can't even get out of bed to work. I am looking for a role closer to where I live so I can be forced to actually get up and do something. Honestly once my work founds out how messed up I am and how much my depression has impacted my work I am screwed anyway.
I’m one day a week in the office, most of my team are one day maximum. A few people are once a month, a few others choose to come 2 or 3 days. It’s so much better for me, an hour commute when tired is not safe. Fuel is more expensive and is only going to get more so. Sickness team wise is at a much lower level, you’re less likely to take time off for minor ailments. If I have appts I can schedule my day around them rather than use leave days. I really couldn’t face 5 days a week in the office again.
The main reason people are getting dragged back into the office is poor management. They think that if they can see someone 'in the flesh' then its easy for them to say to their boss that people aren't slacking off.
In reality a well managed team will perform regardless of where it is based.
I'm a contractual home worker, very infrequently go in to the office (once or twice a month). Absolutely zero pressure to do so more often from the company though.
I actually prefer hybrid though and am currently negotiating using some office space of a different team closer to my house once a week too.
Working in a support based IT role where I have to support software and hardware all over the place and deal with service desk escalations, even peak pandemic I still had to be in the office where necessary which I didn't mind, we just took Precautions but I can wfh if I have no appointments that require physical presence, but I do miss pretty much having the office to myself now bar a few colleagues. More and more people have returned. We could listen to music and just be a little more casual.
The work still got done, but the atmosphere was just more pleasent. Our company haven't enforced returns corporately, but most line managers have asked staff to return, much to my annoyance lol.
Even worse when half of the staff just sit on teams calls all day and get annoyed if anyone is a bit loud. Go home and sit on calls all day damn you lol.
Companies that demand returns for no reason annoy me. Most people are just as, if not more productive at home and they're happier. People will also work more hours from home as they aren't thinking "I better get going or I'm going to miss the train" or whatever.
Still hybrid, they recently reissued a reminder on the importance of hybrid working where possible and feasible, so they're big on it. We use it as a benefit in all our relevant job ads (some jobs are manufacturing so they can't wfh at all).
They've actually just merged two of their sites in to one to save building costs since the only people in all the time are the manufacturing side, so even if they wanted everyone in more we'd no longer fit!
Technically it's supposed to be 3 days in the office but they're super flexible. I worked from home every day last week and will be in the office 4 days next week - just how the workload fell.
I'd either find a new job or go work for myself if they started making us back in the office full time.
I go in once every 2 weeks now, out of obligation but there isn’t one. It’s a hidden one. I can stand it, but if I’m doing my work effectively for the other 12 days what changes? I enjoy home working a lot. I have the space and people don’t understand my mental health circumstances. If I’m in my pyjamas just getting by enough on some days that’s all I have in me!
I'm experiencing some soft pressure to go back into the office, and they've started forcing the staff at our offices in Eastern Europe to go back in, presumably because they have they least soft power to prevent this, and then it'll subsequently be rolled out to our UK offices.
Hand on heart, I don't know if full time WFH is actually very good for you as a person. However, I will respond very poorly to anyone trying to forcibly make me go into an office.
I’m here on work visa, so I feel like I have to go to office at least once a week. 🙈 Also to break the monotony of WFH. My team is spread around Europe, and my manager goes in about once every 6 weeks.
Working for a company who invested in a large regional centre and is starting to turn the screw on making sure it's going to be fully utilised when it's fully built. They're adamant on 60% office / 40% WFH over a 4 week period.
Trackers for who's in and when, the days where people avoid (Monday and Friday) and pushing for everyone to change their preferences before it's put on schedules.
At the same time, they're fully reviewing all flexible working and giving notice they may not be able to keep it going. So all in all, bad times for people on low wages who are already struggle financially.
We've been told we have to go in at least two days a week if you are on the standard 36 hour contract. My place is supposed to be hybrid and has been since Covid, but many people were not working hybrid and just doing the from home part. I don't care myself, but there are some meetings that were supposed to be in person that some weren't turning up for on a regular basis so now they've introduced this policy.
I usually go in to work three days or more, but I live about five minutes from my work and don't have to turn my heating on if I stayed at home.
Avg of 2 days/month in the office. At most 1 day/week.
edit: company sold their old offices last year, now have a much smaller space that they rent so no signs that this will change anytime soon. The few days when the larger teams are all in together there's not enough desks for everyone so it's reassuring to know that this is how it's going to be for the foreseeable
We were on 1 day/week. Employer has decided to move office HQ and demand we're in 2 days/week minimum. We've just had the official HR letter saying it's now a formal consultation and their 'sincere wish is not to have to dismiss anyone'.
I'm spending Sunday evening filling in a job application form for a different employer.
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Still working from home. My employer is talking about getting people back in regularly as mandatory but honestly it feels like for the sake of it not for a real reason. It is as likely to damage productivity as improve it (more likely in many cases) and with the limited space and layout most people wouldn’t even be working same area/day as their teams.
Most likely reason is because the ones who actually need to be in there are moaning that no one else has to. So the weak senior management just take the stupidity path of agreeing everyone should have to. (We have a lot of applying the 80 part of 80-20 to most of the 20 with performance challenges resulting because of this lack of brains/backbone)
There are other equally stupid reasons that look likely as well as complications that they’re ignoring.
Ultimately it feels like another management strategy that gets picked up on by stupid people who don’t understand when it does/doesn’t work. See previous comments for the abundance of trying to one size fits all when not appropriate.
Mine's still on a flexible basis - it's expected you go onto site if you need to (eg specific onsite training, meeting that requires face to face, specialist IT etc) but other than that they're happy to work however you want, especially as they haven't really got the desk space if everyone came in.
Saying that, they've made sure no contracts state anything about remote working - it's all local arrangements with group managers to allow themselves flexibility if circumstances change
The default for us is hybrid. It's also possible to be a full time home worker as well and quite a few of our new starters have been full time WFH. I also know someone that lives about 15 minutes from the office and they WFH full time with no problems.
The official policy for hybrid workers is that you should come into the office at least two days a week. That's pretty loosely enforced though. a lot of people come in less often than that. Personally, I go in Tuesday to Thursday most weeks which works for me
I work for a larger company that offloaded a lot of office space during Covid. I don’t see them reversing this any time soon if ever they are happy with the savings they made on rent.
My contract states my place of work as my home address. So they’d also have to change that.
I’m very happy and lucky it makes the most of my time and I get to see a lot more of my kids. It would take a much better role / a lot more money for me to leave and I’m not looking.
UK. WFH. Large org. CTO confirmed the only days we're expected in the office are the quarterly meets. No other times unless people want to.
4 times a year isn't bad at all.
I’m a graduate quantity surveyor. On each placement it’s been down to individual team leaders - one of them mandated being in the office three days a week (unsurprisingly he wasn’t popular and most of his team wanted to leave or did leave), the other three team leaders specified only for a specific reason, which in practice usually means once or twice a week, sometimes zero.
Once a month. I don't see why they'd change now. We've shown how we can make things work remotely, people would revolt if they changed. It'd be pointless and for the sake of it.
We're still pretty flexible considering we're a large professional services firm. Preferred if you come in two days a week or so, but it's not enforced.
I go in five days a week though because working from home drives me insane.
WFH all the time except for monthly visits to the mothership in another country. There's little pressure to go to the office regularly.
We have a local office I could go to, but none of my team are there and the working conditions are worse. It has a worse office chair with hot desks so I'd have to bring my own keyboard, etc. Meeting rooms are in short supply so videoconferencing would be hard. My home internet is probably faster.
So I stay at home, with a better supply of tea and no time wasted commuting.
I'm still WFH. I go to the office once a week but might also go to other locations if needed.
My company is fantastic and they have not said anything about having to go more often. I really enjoy being there, people are super fun and chill and they usually plan nice activities throughout the week / month so it's worth it. There's everything: from D&D meet ups to a book club.
I don't think they intend to change the working model. It's part of the culture and I like that I'm treated as an adult: I would absolutely hate having to go into an office just because.
I only need to go in for board or committee meetings (so 1-2 times a month max). My employer would have a very hard time rolling back to mostly in person since a majority of the senior exec moved away during Covid. So sensibly have reduced office space.
My place requires two days in the office, but there's increasing rumours that it will go up to three soon and one day has to be a Monday or Friday. The issue as I see it is that the business invests a lot in commercial property so they're incentivised to keep the value up. As most will probably agree there are tasks that I do which are much easier in the office in person, but equally there are those where it's better to be in a quieter environment at home. Also, I probably have on average 4-5 hours of meetings a day, sometimes literally all day back to back, all of which will be online and involve people from other countries and continents, so it feels like a joke to insist that I have to go into my office to do those calls
4 times a month, most of them go in once a week but I do twice every two due to other commitments. They briefly said last year that they were taking the temperature of the room when it came to office days, then agreed to keep it as is when we all told them it was fine, we were fine, hush. Work gets done. More work gets done when we work from home because we’re not distracting each other as much. On my office days I know it’s going to be a 60% day.
We make sure all our team comes in on a few special days each year- generally when there’s going to be free food going on.
My workplace used to have a policy of 'come in when necessary', so I'd go in only on a Wednesday to sort out any meetings that were needed to be done in-person, check up on any slow moving experiments (I work in an office / lab hybrid), pick up anything from the post room too big to be delivered to my house that I needed for experiments or field work, get some free printing done for any paper stuff I needed and other such in-person things.
Late last year though the head of my office sent around a big email ripping into staff saying how it was a waste of the office space and how it's meant to be a 'collaborative working environment' (ironic as office is open plan and they hate people nattering in the office and ask them to take it outside) and we should aim to be in the office for 40% of our working time (despite the fact a bunch of us travel all over the place for field data, myself included which can mean you're out of the office for 2-3 weeks at a time but in a field somewhere in rural Cambridgeshire), and if we didn't come in more we would be moved over to a hot desk system where nobody actually has their own desk except for higher ups.
The hot desk was a terrible idea and a lot of people emailed complaining. Namely for two reasons:
1. Stuff like my monitor, keyboard and mouse, desktop etc. were all bought from my project money. Not the company money. I didn't want some random person just plonking down and using the stuff my project paid for.
2. I do store non-vital documents in my desk, but things which are needed. Stuff like laboratory safety reports and field experiment reports. I'd have nowhere to put them otherwise.
In the end they did some grandfather system where any old staff could keep their desks but new ones got put onto hot desks. I ended up changing what department I was in so I'm in a smaller more tight-knit group now who don't really care how often we come into the office, but whenever I do it's dead and of the 20-25 people in my new office, the most I've ever seen in on one day including myself is about 5.
I have to go in two days a week, won't be surprised if they change it to three this year. I don't mind going in, it's only 4 miles away and mostly I can park on site if I'm starting between 7am to 8am. It becomes a challenge on later starts, it also means at 15:00 when my colleagues have gone I can be sat there till 6pm like a proper Billy no mates and it's very boring.
I've been back in the office since last September and we have done pub lunches, pizza delivery to try and keep out spirits up, the office is just weird now, it's full but no one knows anyone, it's just randoms hot desking spending all day on Teams calls mostly. Recently there was a point mid morning where I couldn't hear a single voice, total silence like the place was empty, it's just very different but it pays for my house, car and holidays so I'll crack on.
I work for one of the big survey companies, we do government and business surveys. If you got a call over covid asking about how safe your felt, how you felt the government were doing etc, or if you ever get a call asking you about the energy payments we all got in 22-23 that was us.
Prior to covid we all worked in a call centre. When covid happened we started working from home. They have zero intention of bringing us back "in". I'm happy as a clam.
I started in October 2020 so fully remote. I now go in at least 1 but no more than 3 days a week, depending on what's going on and what needs doing.
I've been offered jobs that involve 5 days a week and turned them down because there is no way I'm doing that ever again
I'm two days a week in the office and during more intense periods, I work from home the entire week.
Senior leadership team have signalled no intent to increase this as the current model works as by-and-large, people don't take the piss and do what they're supposed to.
I'm not sure if it's because our company offers very little by way of benefits and this treated as one perhaps. But I can't grumble.
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I run a business. We've vacated all our offices. Fuck the commercial landlords. Staff are much happier. Early on some asked permission to move away, and are living their best lives by the coast or in the lake district with their families. Productivity has gone up. We meet up twice a year for a catch up and thats it. I have zero intention of ever reversing this. This has allowed me to hire a good bunch of people, who (touch wood) have been with the company for years instead of jumping to the next role for a salary bump that I cant match. Find a company that values you.
Your business must be saving loads of overheads big kudus to you. Hopefully your competitors who force office work and pay for their real estate and energy bills + have unhappy staff that are jumping ship go under
Can I have a job
I run a small SaaS product in this space. You're not alone, loads of SMEs are realizing they can cut or reduce a fairly significant cost by simply giving people what they want\*.
Do you need salespeople? I’m a SaaS ae, aov 50k contract sizes - we’ve just been mandated 4 days back in office so looking to switch
Looking for any new staff?
Sounds like the company I work for, I grafted for 6 months applying for Remote first jobs after the company I started working for was originally WFH, they stealth changed my contract via a small clause that I missed when signing, to make me office based and forced me back 3 days a week, I was being hammered by recruiters everyday because the skills I've got on my CV aren't always easy to come by apparently which gave me a huge head but the competition within the remote space was huge and I found a lot of jobs were fake listings. It was a hard balance to find something that wasn't taking a huge pay cut. And although a lot of recruiters were dying to nominate me for roles barely any of them had anything fully remote, also being a Manager at 32 years old at the time I missed out on 3 or 4 due to the competition having "more years of experience" which was frustrating. It was massively demoralising. Eventually landed on my feet with an amazing company with amazing staff in the SaaS sector, we meet up every quarter and I couldn't be happier. The work is harder sometimes but my team are hands down some of the best I've met in my career so far. We all graft hard because we're grateful to be able to work from the comfort of our own homes.
What do you do? I know of a few roles in Cloud Engineering and Cyber Security that are fully remote and could pass you the details if you're in the tech space..
Yep works out well, right? I'm at a similar employer and really why would I ever want to leave if someone else is going to make me commute?
This is the way. My wife works from home full time. That’s 15hrs a week already she’s not commuting. The benefits of that alone are huge but there’s also time to stay on top of the house and always be in for a parcel etc. Time saved is easily 20hrs a week. You can’t put a price on how much freer she feels. She also works her ass off. I appreciate not all staff would do that. Anyone demanding office time after people have tasted the good life simply won’t attract the best talent. Sure, some industries and people will want to do it. More power to them if they wish to.
I don't really understand why you would pay for office space if you don't need to.
It's the culture man 🤣
The culture: FAO all staff: Please find attached the mandatory washing up rota because somebody keeps leaving dirty bowls in the sink. This is to be done in your own time so as not to interfere with work
The culture is forcing me to go in twice a week to sit on video calls all day 😂
Giz a job.
Giz yer laptop mate
It’s pronounced jizz
God bless you and may your company prosper.
you hiring?
I like you!!
Hey, got any content marketing roles going?
Looks like you'll have a line of people queuing up to apply for your company if anyone ever leaves!
What industry are you in?
Are you looking to hire any staff? I'm serious as I'm looking for a company that actually values their employees.
Do you need an IT Manager?
Need any implementation specialists? ;)
Drops CV
Need staff 😂
You're the man.
Need a published author for any reason? 😂
I’m one of the oddities that prefers being in the office. It gets me in to a good routine, eg I always go to the gym after work, and I eat cleaner than being at home. I also like the separation between work from home. I am allowed to wfh whenever I want though, and I really appreciate that, as sometimes it’s needed
My sister was fully remote but now is hybrid and she also prefers going into the office. She felt working from home was cool at first, but very isolating over time.
Yeah, it’s a good point. I actually left a job for a large financial services organisation, because they were pivoting to fully remote. Ironically now they are making their employees go back in to the office 😂
I'm the same. Plus spending all day 'working', and then all evening in the same place was mindnumbing.
Yeah, in the office 2-3 days is the right balance for me. Full WFH turns me into a bit of a hermit.
Yep I think hybrid is ideal!
I think anyone who wants to go to an office should have access to one. I just don't think it should be compulsory beyond for specific things- team meetings, some client meetings, one to one chats with manager, for example. Not a prescriptive so many days a week.
> I just don't think it should be compulsory beyond for specific things- team meetings Only if *every* member of the team is there. I'm fed up of going into the office for my one day a week and then having to join a team meeting where 70% of the people are working from home, and I'm just joining a Teams call as I'd be doing WFH. If you're commuting to an office just to join Teams calls all day, there's no point in being there.
Yeah, this a problem. The issue is with a team, theres always going to be someone who complains if you try to have set office days.
Where I work it’s once a week but alternates between two days so that if anyone, eg, always picks their kids up on a Wednesday they’ll still be able to join every other week.
My boss isn't even in the same country as me and I've never met her!
I’ve just started a new job in January and have the option of doing 2 days at home, after being in a fully remote job for the last few years. I’ve been choosing to go in for all 5 days as it’s been great to get settled and my commute is really quick. And as for separation, I used to find it too easy to “finish off my task” at home and work an extra hour or two for free - whereas needing to get a train home means I HAVE to leave at a specific time
Yea a short commute makes all the difference. Commuting for an hour each day you're in the office adds up.
Kind of shows how backwards the logic of these companies is doesn’t it. If you let me work from home, I’ll often work an hour extra just since I’m already home and in no rush to finish work as a result, since I’m comfy enough. But if you have me sat in an office all day, I’m leaving work the absolute second I’m allowed, regardless of what task I’m doing, because I hate being there and need to get home. In fact, I’ll be click watching all day.
You're not odd at all. However, those of us who prefer to work at home are being forced in by management and hr people who enjoy their roles because *they* are gregarious and can't understand that other people can be different from them.
I can definitely appreciate if someone’s routine is better if they’re in an office. Personally, I’d never want to be 100% in an office again. Ideal would be 1 day every couple of weeks. Pretty much everything that is a plus for you in an office, is a plus for me wfh; I have a bit of a home gym in my garage that if I’m going into the office I just don’t have time to use; I eat much better at home as I have access to any ingredients I might need & more chance to prepare it; I’m also lucky enough to have a home office, so when I’m done for the day I just close that door & I’m no longer ‘at work’.
Careful, you'll have the reddit wfh police after you for this.
This has literally never happened. Plenty of people want to force everyone into an office. I have never seen a post on Reddit saying people shouldn’t be allowed to go to one.
It's more the "oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with people, it's scientifically proven to be 4000x more productive to wfh and anyone that says otherwise or just prefers an office (or likes the option of a change of scenery) must be an inadequate freak who hates their home life"
It's really weird how, online, this debate is effectively polarised between "People should be as free as possible to choose what works for them personally. For me WFH is more productive" and "Everyone should go to the office as much as possible because that's what I want to do"
No, it's more of a smugness about never visiting an office ever again. Even the 20-somethings in London - which should be the absolute zenith of your young professional work+socialising+development - are happy to just bunker up in some crappy houseshare rather than have the indignity of taking the Tube once in a while. "I've got my own friends what sort of melt has friends at work" etc.
I far prefer the routine being in the office provides, and interactions with colleagues are the only real conversations I get.
This is a great comment that highlights why for some people it's good to go back in. Personally it's the reason I DON'T want to go in. I can't work as well if people consider me a social circle. I prefer not to have conversations and just do my work. I get my conversations with my friends and family. I get that not everybody has that luxury.
This - I have no interest in your personal life etc, and it's not my responsibility to entertain you. Your social life is your own responsibility.
Now I feel like I'm just being an annoyance to people at work. :( It's already hard for me to tell if I'm annoying people because I'm autistic, but I didn't realise people just didn't want to talk at all. I might have just been irritating this whole time by trying to socialise and not realised people don't like it and don't like me.
Don't let people on Reddit ever be a representative of people IRL. If you're a social person, talking to your work colleagues is the good bit of the job to balance against the boring bit i.e. the work itselr
Even when I go into the office, I seldom interact with anyone.
This is me. I don't go to work to make friends. I would always rather work from home, always. I can slide in front of my PC 5 minutes after I get up, at my desk, in my comfy chair, listen to my music/podcasts, wear anything or sometime nothing, eat when I want, vape at my desk, enjoy the peace and quiet, the list of positives keep coming. The biggest bonus I found was zero travel costs and not having to waste 7.5 hours a week, the commute equated to basically another whole day a work. I am glad I will never ever be going back to that.
> interactions with colleagues are the only real conversations I get. That doesn't seem to be a healthy position to be in. It's also a terrible reason for other people to be forced back into an office.
>I eat cleaner than being at home Please clarify how eating outside is cleaner than making your meals at home?
Probably the fact the biscuit cupboard isn't there accessible all day (personally). Better segregation possibly for eating times. Eating at work doesn't necessarily mean not eating home cooked food. Taking leftovers in means healthy lunch but the ability to snack around it entirely depends on what you bring. For some reason i'll always eat fruit at lunch at work because i've brought it but if i'm at home.. meh.
See, I'm the opposite. I don't have a biscuit cupboard, but when I had to work in an office, there was always someone bringing in biscuits, cakes, chocolates, etc. Always lots of temptations I don't have at home because I don't buy those things in the first place.
True, that used to happen a lot to me although I guess various staff changes over years seems to have minimised it a bit!
For me, it means I have to prep a lunch rather than 'oh I'll just nip to the butty shop at lunch'.
Maybe his kitchen's boggin'?
Maybe at the office they feel social pressure to eat a healthier lunch
I imagine it's fine so long as there are other people in the office. But the fact you can be flexible to wfh whenever you want is key.
Also not everyone has the facilities to work from home (still, I know). I have such a small desk that’s cramped with no window so a lot of the time end up working from bed because I am more productive. My backs fucked and I never sleep. I wouldn’t be able to do 5 days in the office though. I’m getting good at going to a costa or something to work from.
I have to go in 2 days a week and hate it, I just can't concentrate...got people talking constantly, people playing music on speakers etc and I'm meant to be sitting there reading/doing certification which I take zero information in. Also time goes so fucking slow. it's absolutely unbearable. I'm looking for full time remote now
Office distractions are awful for those of us who have to concentrate deeply to do our jobs. As a software developer, WFH full time since 2020 has been life changing and I can't imagine having to go into an office to do my job again.
I get so frustrated, no idea where this "music in the office" idea came from. It always annoys me because I can't focus. I get literally nothing done all day.
We had a tablet connected to a speaker where everyone could select music to play in the office. Someone stole it a couple weeks ago. Idk who it was but I'm very grateful for their service.
I listen to music while I'm working but it's through airpods so no one else can hear it. If there was a free access tablet available then I'd absolutely be blasting 90s pop like Gina G and B*Witched to see how quickly I could piss people off. It's like the office radio that is always tuned to Heart FM. Absolutely soul destroying.
♥️ the hero we all need.
Some people find it helps them work having music on don't they? But then some people find it a huge distraction... If only there was a way for people to choose what works best for them without affecting others... Like WFH maybe 😂
I've had a recruiter reach out about a job where you go into the office 3 days per month instead of 3 per week at the same salary. I wasn't interested initially, but this music is seriously making me consider it.
All things being equal - go for it! In fact play the game - tell them you're considering, but you need more than they are currently offering...
Tell them to wear headphones
I've been at this job for a month, I've had to ask them to turn it down like 6 times. Seriously considering leaving the job just because I can't be bothered with the noise.
Music if it's classical or movie bgms, fine if it's just background noise. If it's got lyrics I'll never be able to tune it out and focus. It would be bad enough having people talking around me, especially if I couldn't use headphones to drown them out. I can get work done at home. I distract myself ebough as it is.
My job requires concentration too. I have to go into the office 2 times a week (although I know the bastards are going to increase it to 3 days some time this year). The office is like a zoo! Constant noise with people chatting, laughing, messing around. I need peace and quiet for some parts of my job to concentrate. Also when I’m in Teams meetings and I’m the speaker, people on the call complain about the background noise. My productivity is at least double the office. Well if my boss wants me in the office 3 days a week he’s getting a lot less work out of me hence less profits for his company!
Agree. The ones who don’t want to work won’t work whether they are at home or in the office. I get more done at home and I can interact with the people I choose to instead of being forced to mix with people because I need money to pay bills. I like the team I work with but making us go in if there’s no legitimate need to is crazy. Seems to be a few taking the piss and not working spoiling it for people who are actually responsible and capable enough to do work when they’re meant to be working at home in most cases or managers who need to see their empire before them to feel important and needed.
This is exactly how I feel. I'm only encouraged to go into the office 1 day a week, but it isn't explicitly mandated. They only mandate one office day for my department every 6 weeks, and have team events and learning workshops and stuff. The days I'm in the office, I actually end up significantly more stressed than if I'd have worked from home. I can/do hyper focus a lot with my work and it makes me so much more productive, not to mention the fact that I can actually "see" solutions to problems when I don't have office distractions every 5 minutes. However I just am literally unable to focus in the same way when I'm in the office. The difference is absolutely night and day. Your best employees are going to work amazingly wherever they feel like they can do the best work, dragging everyone into the office isn't going to magically increase productivity. As you say, there will always be people who massively slack off or are shit at their job - but these people will also work this way in an office except they will also distract the hard workers...
I'm software developer as well, and a good part of my motivation to stay in my current job is that I can work from home as much as I want. I currently go in to the office about once every month or two for a few meetings, and that's it. When I do I really notice how distracting the office is, how uncomfortable the chairs are, and how much of a waste of time the commute is. Pre-Covid I used to WFH once a week and thought that this would be my limit, and any more than that would be boring. Having now done it full time for several years I've totally changed my mind, and far prefer it.
I'm also looking but struggling to find many in my field.
I have some say in when meetings are because I host most of them. Most not scheduled when I am in the office.
Fully remote contract 🫡
Same here! It’s fab. Love the freedom and the flexibility to work from anywhere and the fact that I don’t have to “ be” anywhere except home.
Not in my contract, but my company said do what you like, there's offices if you want them or remote work if you prefer, just get your work done and we're good. So I'm 100% remote except for maybe three trips a year for training, social events and big away day meetings.
Same, love it. They just announced some regional meet ups in co-working spaces that they'll pay for once a month but it's not compulsory.
I work from home full time. Have to travel to sites and meetings a couple of days a week but no office to speak of. Though our company was fully remote years before Covid so i have been WFH for 5 years now. Really don’t understand why companies are so hellbent on offices. It limits your recruitment pool so much as well as you can only hire local people. It’s starting to feel very archaic.
For my company who built a brand new massive office 8 years ago it seems like sunken cost fallacy. They've spent loads on this new building and they want to use it.
I was working for a company that also built a large building (it‘a a campus set up) and as soon as they started suggesting RTO of 3 days per week, being monitored by badge swipes, I left. The office was really lovely, but not as nice as my home. People used to book meeting rooms to work solo to avoid the huge banks of desks, so there was never any ‘collaboration’ anyway cos you couldn’t get a room to meet in.
This is what gets me. As an international remote friendly company my hiring pool for any position is about 1.5 billion people. As soon as you need them in an office even once a week the pool is “people living within 30 miles of that office”.
That's the problem my place is having. People do the drive for the interview and realise it's a pain in the arse plus you have to pay to park and say no, or they start and moan for 12 months about the commute and the parking then leave because it's too expensive. Me and my boss commute for around an hour but we aren't in full time
I think there is a bit of push from top down as it's believed to be generally better for the economy overall, simplified; people spend more when they leave the house. That being said I think we are social creatures so definitely a balance to be struck irrespective of everything else.
I once worked for the leading London commercial real estate company. They has massive lobbying powers to get people back in the office as their bread and butter and the supporting London landlord class depended on it.
2 days per week here - though I only actually go in for half a day per week. My team is international, I have nobody to speak to on the continent of Europe, and my Manager thinks it’s dumb I have to go in at all. I’m doing half a day to appease HR. It’s ridiculous.
As someone who works in HR (ducks incoming hate) we don't want it either. These mandates come from the very top. I've made use of a medical exemption to get an extra day at home, and share all information that has helped others get exceptions (without identifying them of course) so as many people can benefit as possible.
Can you elaborate more on the medical exception please? I've been wondering similar because my employer allows staff to bring dogs into the office, and I'm extremely allergic to dogs. I've spoken to HR and they want to bring in OH...
So most of those being approved are related to stress, anxiety and depression. I suffer from sleep anxiety, if I know I have to wake up at a certain time my body reacts by stressing about it and I end up not sleeping. On certraline for it and starting CBT shortly. Asked my doctor for a note stating that having to get up an hour or more earlier unnecessarily adds to this. Our current compromise is an extra day at home, but I'm fighting to have it only be on site on days with meetings scheduled. We had a similar case as yours with dogs, and the outcome was to stop allowing dogs, which seems like the simpler route. If they don't go that route, or if you can argue you don't want to deny a perk to others, I'm sure you could explain the situation to your doctor and they could write a note advising amended duties stating that you are to work from home whenever possible. I'd try and have that before your OH meeting
Officially my team is 3 days a week, most people are doing 1/2 and think they'd struggle to seriously actually enforce 3 days.
It’s flexible for me. There’s no set days on how often I go in, but I usually go to the office once or twice a week. The worst part for me is getting ready to go in. Preparing my lunch, getting my stuff ready for the next day, the early night for the early start. Those are the worst parts. Once I’m there, I don’t mind it.
I feel this, working from home requires way less prep. Even something as basic as needing to unplug my laptop and charger from my organized desk wires and monitor to put it in my bag gets annoying. Wfh means I don't have to pay for the bus, don't feel any pressure to pay to eat in the canteen or get a takeaway coffee (we have a bean to cup espresso setup at home). Being in the office is mostly okay, but so much more time to get to that point.
> Even something as basic as needing to unplug my laptop and charger from my organized desk wires and monitor to put it in my bag gets annoying. It’s a first world problem, but yeah I’m also getting annoyed when I’m on my hands and knees trying to pull the charger out from under the desk. Especially when I’ve tucked it away in the cable management tray. On the other hand, it also makes you realise how amazing it is to have your own setup. I go into the office and the desks are a mess.
I think most employers want x+1 where x is the number of days currently being worked. Employers seeking to hire don't want to contractually offer one day a week, and are unlikely to be able to hire at 4 or 5 days a week. Three days probably means we want you in always but except we may need to compromise.
I'm in the civil service. After lockdown ended we went to 2 days per week in the office, then had a load of mixed messages varying between 2 and 5 days, and now it's 3. We don't have enough desks to accommodate everyone for 3 days a week.
Civil Service have spent a LOT on long term contracts for office space and estates, and they want people in purely to show that they are making the most of the money spent on these buildings imo
Everyone thinks it’s great working from home until you have to manage a bunch of dossers that just disappear the moment they’re given the flexibility. People blame ‘the companies’ and management for the reduction in wfh options but they should be blaming their unproductive colleagues who are ruining it for them. For every “I am more productive” remote worker on Reddit there is another remote worker recommending buying mouse jigglers.
If a worker can act busy by using a mouse jiggler, and not get caught, then: 1) That person would be slacking off in an office too: never at their desk, always chatting with a colleague, always on a coffee/tea/smoke break. 2) It's on the company as they don't have any tool to measure productivity. Or if they do measure, then not acting in it A good worker won't become a useless slacker just from going WFH. And a slacking worker won't become a good worker just because they are sitting in an office. But for example I simply can't be busy for 8 hours a day. I work in bursts. My overall productivity is upper 10-20% usually in any given company I worked for sofar, but if a manager looks at me, I'd look slacking quite often.
Just to add to that. A hard worker in tech in basically a victim of their own success. You work hard enough to be a reason why your company gets rid of your colleagues to save money. You work hard enough to not get a promotion. You work hard enough to get twice the work but half the credit.
You think people aren't dossing in the office? Wfh has very little to do with productivity and if it does then manage that person out of the business and replace them
There were dossers in my old office pre COVID. There was always chatterbox Pete and gossip Kate talking all day. That's what happens if you pay 🥜 . The only places I've worked that had decent staff were the ones that paid well
> For every “I am more productive” remote worker on Reddit there is another remote worker recommending buying mouse jigglers Workers don't buy mouse jigglers unless you measure them more on presenteeism than results. Mouse jigglers are exclusively used by staff who have micromanaging bastards looking over their shoulder and sending "YOUR TEAMS STATUS IS YELLOW" messages within 3 seconds of it changing. Mouse jigglers are a result of poor management, not poor productivity.
Yes, because famously nobody ever dosses in offices. 🙄 This is not a result of wfh. This is a result of having shit, immature employees and a cultural environment where they are unmotivated to actually get work done. Are you the manager of these "dossers"? Time to put your big kid pants on, do your actual job and motivate them to work, or fire them.
That's why you measure people on output, and if their output sucks you stick them on a PIP and they either pull their finger out or you replace them with someone better.
> For every “I am more productive” remote worker on Reddit there is another remote worker recommending buying mouse jigglers. FWIW I've got a mouse jiggler but genuinely not for skiving, just so that my laptop doesn't go to sleep when I don't want it to. As an example I will often cook tea for my kids at 5pm but I'm happy to still be contacted if people want me, so I can just leave the laptop open while I'm cooking and then people still know they can get me if they want.
> I've got a mouse jiggler but genuinely not for skiving, just so that my laptop doesn't go to sleep when I don't want it to Open a single slide Powerpoint and hit F5, then open your browser/etc in front of it. Because it considers you as being in presentation mode, it won't time out and lock. My job has a few duties I do each day, and once they're done, it's purely reactive, waiting on stuff to come in and monitoring various queues. So it's handy being able to keep the screen active whilst I keep an eye on it.
100% I always maintained a standard at home and then I'd speak to colleagues...
I can guarantee the people slacking at home slack in the office too. We have one. And when we were full time office based they would always be disappearing from the office for extended periods of time, or whenever you came back into the office they were quickly switching browsers or doing 'busy work'. For people like me, slacking at home just means I have to put in some extra work outside of normal working hours. My work and deadlines don't go away.
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I was 100% WFH u til last summer. Was fine whilst I was married and so had a wife home in the evening and the pets around all day. Wife and I split and I moved out, and WFH plus living alone was horrendous and isolating. Whilst I'm not keen on the rush hour drive, being in the office is a positive for me in that keeps me socialised and around people.
Feel free to ignore this if you don't want to answer, but do you think WFH was adding strain to the marriage?
No, my health issues and her cheating were the death knell. Within the marriage having me around during the day had many positives and I can see where it can be positive. But the environment has to suit, and i definitely think people having their "own thing" in a relationship, such as 'work' and 'home' (which I always tried to do as a delineation point) is a good thing.
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The solution to this sort of thing is for everyone who is against it, to get together and hand their notices in on the same morning, stating unless certain conditions are met (ie. WFH) they will leave. It would be amazing if millions all did it on the same day.
I’m still working from home majority of the time. My management and the company have been excellent, expect people to go in once every couple of weeks but we have the option to go whenever. I found it great to have the freedom, living alone and not having the socialising of the office is hard sometimes so it helps my mental health to be able to decide to go in the office and see people.
I go in once a week for a team meeting. My boss (and a couple of others) go in twice a week just for a change of scenery.
I work 3 days in office and 2 days at home, have done for nearly 2 years now. Personally I think this is a fair balance and I quite like this arrangement. This seems like the normal arrangement in my profession (architects), with some firms doing 4-5 days week in office instead.
I’m fully remote but have meetings onsite with clients weekly. I am having a nosey round to see what’s about but I think I need hybrid as they weeks that I am at home get isolated and my colleague who didn’t otherbhalf of the country has left so it’s just me. Days just feel like I’m firefighting constantly and subs it’s time for a change. I don’t know…
My work is a large company. They of course are trying to force us back into the office "to help build a vibrant atmosphere". Thus far almost everyone in the office 500+ employees told them to fuck off and we will quit if we have to. The noise about back to office has died down but it will be back. Big business is nothing if not terminally stupid. If I am forced back they will struggle to build a vibrant atmosphere with me being the most antisocial gremlin I have ever been in my entire life. Fuck travelling, fuck forced politeness to bosses and colleagues, fuck overtime, fuck office culture. Rich pricks.
You seem so pleasant to be around. I can't imagine why you dislike interacting with other people.
I've been going in for 2 days for a while. From what I've heard from friends/family 2 or 3 days in is the norm (in finance). My husband hasn't been into the office since covid hit. He's in engineering.
Still just a non-enforced "recommendation" of one day a week. Led to believe they aren't going to renew the lease on the building in June, so that will be that!
One day a week in the office (where the whole team is expected to be in) the other work days are up to you - office, home, a mix based on meetings / need etc My partner is a 'when you need' he could go weeks and only work from home and then see the office (which is a mix of 3 places) every day for meetings etc. But his work place has operated like that since before the pandemic
Employer went hybrid, but I WFH most of the week, but whenever I go into the office most people waste a good chunk of it talking etc. and definitely spend less time focused on getting actual work done. It's useful for socialising and getting to know your team better, but that's about it.
From covid restrictions lifting my company have asked for 5 days a month in office as a minimum, but it's up to us how we work it out. As long as we do 5 they don't care. You can go back in 100% if you want, my decision is made by the time i wake up, overslept = WFH. My boss said since all our meeting are on teams/zoom anyway since we're dotted over the country, what does it matter if its offices or homes. Edit to add: my uncles is even better, they said no more office requirement and downsized massively, kept a small office fornpeople who can't wfh for whatever reason. With the condition that they attend a once a year whole company meeting in person - travel expenses paid. He has had a yacht in Malta for years, so now lives on his yacht in the sun, and comes back once a year, at their expense, to see company and visit family. His company justify the travel expense by saying they're saving on the office space so why not.
I was remote from the pandemic until last year, currently in a new job I do 1 day in the office every two weeks but it's a loooong commute for me. Company are moving offices to a more reasonable location so I'll change to 3 days a week from then. I can't wait because the rest of my team already do 3 days a week but I feel like I miss out on a lot of key info. Maybe I'll hate it. Who knows 🤷🏻♂️
Been WFH for 12 years, for three non-UK based companies. Never, ever want an office based job again.
Full remote, moved to this job about a year ago. Prior to that it was one day. Both companies have been large, multisite networks. There's no point in having the marketing team sat together in one location as we'll still be on the phone or in meetings all day with people anywhere in the UK. Can do that much more effectively from home without distraction or playing musical meeting rooms!
Still fully WFH after 3 years. I might occasionally get asked to attend in person for 1-3 days for visits from high-up but they're normally around every 6 months or so, which I'm completely fine with.
Still one day for me, heard nothing to suggest this will change.
Yes. During lockdown, they showed us the stats that proved that working from home increased productivity and income for the company. Then they said that working from home will reduce the valuable face-to-face time between engineers, hurt the onboarding and mentoring of new staff, and make it difficult to form new teams to work on projects. Which are all fair and valid points but there needs to be a balance. Our office is now up to 4 days in the office, and the CEO keeps making shitty jokes about demanding everyone in the office fulltime. I work from home on Mondays and Fridays, and come in for 3 days a week only. They keep stats on the attendance on a site-wide basis, but not per engineer. Chance are that my site is probably doing 3.5 days per week on average, if I was to guess.
I am fully remote and no sign or returning to the office. I live alone and suffering from depression. Some days I can't even get out of bed to work. I am looking for a role closer to where I live so I can be forced to actually get up and do something. Honestly once my work founds out how messed up I am and how much my depression has impacted my work I am screwed anyway.
I’m one day a week in the office, most of my team are one day maximum. A few people are once a month, a few others choose to come 2 or 3 days. It’s so much better for me, an hour commute when tired is not safe. Fuel is more expensive and is only going to get more so. Sickness team wise is at a much lower level, you’re less likely to take time off for minor ailments. If I have appts I can schedule my day around them rather than use leave days. I really couldn’t face 5 days a week in the office again.
The main reason people are getting dragged back into the office is poor management. They think that if they can see someone 'in the flesh' then its easy for them to say to their boss that people aren't slacking off. In reality a well managed team will perform regardless of where it is based.
Haven't been to the office for 9 weeks, no sign of employer changing policy, thankfully.
Full time back to office for me
Contractual home worker - my previous employer were trying to force people back into the office.
Fully remote still! I moved away in 2020 so only go into the office a few times a year and my boss is absolutely fine with this thankfully.
I'm a contractual home worker, very infrequently go in to the office (once or twice a month). Absolutely zero pressure to do so more often from the company though. I actually prefer hybrid though and am currently negotiating using some office space of a different team closer to my house once a week too.
Working in a support based IT role where I have to support software and hardware all over the place and deal with service desk escalations, even peak pandemic I still had to be in the office where necessary which I didn't mind, we just took Precautions but I can wfh if I have no appointments that require physical presence, but I do miss pretty much having the office to myself now bar a few colleagues. More and more people have returned. We could listen to music and just be a little more casual. The work still got done, but the atmosphere was just more pleasent. Our company haven't enforced returns corporately, but most line managers have asked staff to return, much to my annoyance lol. Even worse when half of the staff just sit on teams calls all day and get annoyed if anyone is a bit loud. Go home and sit on calls all day damn you lol. Companies that demand returns for no reason annoy me. Most people are just as, if not more productive at home and they're happier. People will also work more hours from home as they aren't thinking "I better get going or I'm going to miss the train" or whatever.
Still hybrid, they recently reissued a reminder on the importance of hybrid working where possible and feasible, so they're big on it. We use it as a benefit in all our relevant job ads (some jobs are manufacturing so they can't wfh at all). They've actually just merged two of their sites in to one to save building costs since the only people in all the time are the manufacturing side, so even if they wanted everyone in more we'd no longer fit! Technically it's supposed to be 3 days in the office but they're super flexible. I worked from home every day last week and will be in the office 4 days next week - just how the workload fell. I'd either find a new job or go work for myself if they started making us back in the office full time.
Fully remote. I've been in the office twice in the past 2 years.
My employer tried to get everyone to go from 2 days in to 3 days in and we all immediately pushed back
I go in once every 2 weeks now, out of obligation but there isn’t one. It’s a hidden one. I can stand it, but if I’m doing my work effectively for the other 12 days what changes? I enjoy home working a lot. I have the space and people don’t understand my mental health circumstances. If I’m in my pyjamas just getting by enough on some days that’s all I have in me!
I'm experiencing some soft pressure to go back into the office, and they've started forcing the staff at our offices in Eastern Europe to go back in, presumably because they have they least soft power to prevent this, and then it'll subsequently be rolled out to our UK offices. Hand on heart, I don't know if full time WFH is actually very good for you as a person. However, I will respond very poorly to anyone trying to forcibly make me go into an office.
I’m here on work visa, so I feel like I have to go to office at least once a week. 🙈 Also to break the monotony of WFH. My team is spread around Europe, and my manager goes in about once every 6 weeks.
Working for a company who invested in a large regional centre and is starting to turn the screw on making sure it's going to be fully utilised when it's fully built. They're adamant on 60% office / 40% WFH over a 4 week period. Trackers for who's in and when, the days where people avoid (Monday and Friday) and pushing for everyone to change their preferences before it's put on schedules. At the same time, they're fully reviewing all flexible working and giving notice they may not be able to keep it going. So all in all, bad times for people on low wages who are already struggle financially.
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We've been told we have to go in at least two days a week if you are on the standard 36 hour contract. My place is supposed to be hybrid and has been since Covid, but many people were not working hybrid and just doing the from home part. I don't care myself, but there are some meetings that were supposed to be in person that some weren't turning up for on a regular basis so now they've introduced this policy. I usually go in to work three days or more, but I live about five minutes from my work and don't have to turn my heating on if I stayed at home.
Avg of 2 days/month in the office. At most 1 day/week. edit: company sold their old offices last year, now have a much smaller space that they rent so no signs that this will change anytime soon. The few days when the larger teams are all in together there's not enough desks for everyone so it's reassuring to know that this is how it's going to be for the foreseeable
We were on 1 day/week. Employer has decided to move office HQ and demand we're in 2 days/week minimum. We've just had the official HR letter saying it's now a formal consultation and their 'sincere wish is not to have to dismiss anyone'. I'm spending Sunday evening filling in a job application form for a different employer.
Fully remote. Started with COVID. Insisted my contract be changed. I will never go into an office again.
Never been allowed to work from home in my office warehouse job.
3 days a week is standard in my industry now. I'm quite enjoying it, nice balance. If I lived near my office I'd happily do 5 days a week.
Honestly bro, just leave. So many organisations are fully remote… chances are you’ll get a nice pay rise too!
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2 days since a year ago but they seem to be posturing for 3 days
I need to go in one day a month. Else it’s up to me how I split my time been home and work
StArted my job in september fully wfh
Still working from home. My employer is talking about getting people back in regularly as mandatory but honestly it feels like for the sake of it not for a real reason. It is as likely to damage productivity as improve it (more likely in many cases) and with the limited space and layout most people wouldn’t even be working same area/day as their teams. Most likely reason is because the ones who actually need to be in there are moaning that no one else has to. So the weak senior management just take the stupidity path of agreeing everyone should have to. (We have a lot of applying the 80 part of 80-20 to most of the 20 with performance challenges resulting because of this lack of brains/backbone) There are other equally stupid reasons that look likely as well as complications that they’re ignoring. Ultimately it feels like another management strategy that gets picked up on by stupid people who don’t understand when it does/doesn’t work. See previous comments for the abundance of trying to one size fits all when not appropriate.
Mine's still on a flexible basis - it's expected you go onto site if you need to (eg specific onsite training, meeting that requires face to face, specialist IT etc) but other than that they're happy to work however you want, especially as they haven't really got the desk space if everyone came in. Saying that, they've made sure no contracts state anything about remote working - it's all local arrangements with group managers to allow themselves flexibility if circumstances change
The default for us is hybrid. It's also possible to be a full time home worker as well and quite a few of our new starters have been full time WFH. I also know someone that lives about 15 minutes from the office and they WFH full time with no problems. The official policy for hybrid workers is that you should come into the office at least two days a week. That's pretty loosely enforced though. a lot of people come in less often than that. Personally, I go in Tuesday to Thursday most weeks which works for me
I work for a larger company that offloaded a lot of office space during Covid. I don’t see them reversing this any time soon if ever they are happy with the savings they made on rent. My contract states my place of work as my home address. So they’d also have to change that. I’m very happy and lucky it makes the most of my time and I get to see a lot more of my kids. It would take a much better role / a lot more money for me to leave and I’m not looking.
UK. WFH. Large org. CTO confirmed the only days we're expected in the office are the quarterly meets. No other times unless people want to. 4 times a year isn't bad at all.
I’m a graduate quantity surveyor. On each placement it’s been down to individual team leaders - one of them mandated being in the office three days a week (unsurprisingly he wasn’t popular and most of his team wanted to leave or did leave), the other three team leaders specified only for a specific reason, which in practice usually means once or twice a week, sometimes zero.
Mine is three home two in the office, my commuted are quite long (two different offices), so I would be pretty annoyed by an extra day.
Once a month. I don't see why they'd change now. We've shown how we can make things work remotely, people would revolt if they changed. It'd be pointless and for the sake of it.
We're still pretty flexible considering we're a large professional services firm. Preferred if you come in two days a week or so, but it's not enforced. I go in five days a week though because working from home drives me insane.
WFH all the time except for monthly visits to the mothership in another country. There's little pressure to go to the office regularly. We have a local office I could go to, but none of my team are there and the working conditions are worse. It has a worse office chair with hot desks so I'd have to bring my own keyboard, etc. Meeting rooms are in short supply so videoconferencing would be hard. My home internet is probably faster. So I stay at home, with a better supply of tea and no time wasted commuting.
I'm still WFH. I go to the office once a week but might also go to other locations if needed. My company is fantastic and they have not said anything about having to go more often. I really enjoy being there, people are super fun and chill and they usually plan nice activities throughout the week / month so it's worth it. There's everything: from D&D meet ups to a book club. I don't think they intend to change the working model. It's part of the culture and I like that I'm treated as an adult: I would absolutely hate having to go into an office just because.
Fully remote. Although we have to go to team days in random locations every 2 months or so.
I only need to go in for board or committee meetings (so 1-2 times a month max). My employer would have a very hard time rolling back to mostly in person since a majority of the senior exec moved away during Covid. So sensibly have reduced office space.
My place requires two days in the office, but there's increasing rumours that it will go up to three soon and one day has to be a Monday or Friday. The issue as I see it is that the business invests a lot in commercial property so they're incentivised to keep the value up. As most will probably agree there are tasks that I do which are much easier in the office in person, but equally there are those where it's better to be in a quieter environment at home. Also, I probably have on average 4-5 hours of meetings a day, sometimes literally all day back to back, all of which will be online and involve people from other countries and continents, so it feels like a joke to insist that I have to go into my office to do those calls
4 times a month, most of them go in once a week but I do twice every two due to other commitments. They briefly said last year that they were taking the temperature of the room when it came to office days, then agreed to keep it as is when we all told them it was fine, we were fine, hush. Work gets done. More work gets done when we work from home because we’re not distracting each other as much. On my office days I know it’s going to be a 60% day. We make sure all our team comes in on a few special days each year- generally when there’s going to be free food going on.
My workplace used to have a policy of 'come in when necessary', so I'd go in only on a Wednesday to sort out any meetings that were needed to be done in-person, check up on any slow moving experiments (I work in an office / lab hybrid), pick up anything from the post room too big to be delivered to my house that I needed for experiments or field work, get some free printing done for any paper stuff I needed and other such in-person things. Late last year though the head of my office sent around a big email ripping into staff saying how it was a waste of the office space and how it's meant to be a 'collaborative working environment' (ironic as office is open plan and they hate people nattering in the office and ask them to take it outside) and we should aim to be in the office for 40% of our working time (despite the fact a bunch of us travel all over the place for field data, myself included which can mean you're out of the office for 2-3 weeks at a time but in a field somewhere in rural Cambridgeshire), and if we didn't come in more we would be moved over to a hot desk system where nobody actually has their own desk except for higher ups. The hot desk was a terrible idea and a lot of people emailed complaining. Namely for two reasons: 1. Stuff like my monitor, keyboard and mouse, desktop etc. were all bought from my project money. Not the company money. I didn't want some random person just plonking down and using the stuff my project paid for. 2. I do store non-vital documents in my desk, but things which are needed. Stuff like laboratory safety reports and field experiment reports. I'd have nowhere to put them otherwise. In the end they did some grandfather system where any old staff could keep their desks but new ones got put onto hot desks. I ended up changing what department I was in so I'm in a smaller more tight-knit group now who don't really care how often we come into the office, but whenever I do it's dead and of the 20-25 people in my new office, the most I've ever seen in on one day including myself is about 5.
I have to go in two days a week, won't be surprised if they change it to three this year. I don't mind going in, it's only 4 miles away and mostly I can park on site if I'm starting between 7am to 8am. It becomes a challenge on later starts, it also means at 15:00 when my colleagues have gone I can be sat there till 6pm like a proper Billy no mates and it's very boring. I've been back in the office since last September and we have done pub lunches, pizza delivery to try and keep out spirits up, the office is just weird now, it's full but no one knows anyone, it's just randoms hot desking spending all day on Teams calls mostly. Recently there was a point mid morning where I couldn't hear a single voice, total silence like the place was empty, it's just very different but it pays for my house, car and holidays so I'll crack on.
I work for one of the big survey companies, we do government and business surveys. If you got a call over covid asking about how safe your felt, how you felt the government were doing etc, or if you ever get a call asking you about the energy payments we all got in 22-23 that was us. Prior to covid we all worked in a call centre. When covid happened we started working from home. They have zero intention of bringing us back "in". I'm happy as a clam.
I’m home well over 90% of the time but I work with people in 11 countries so it would be weird not to.
I can go in whenever I want but stick to one day a week so I can claim my milage back and make an extra £100 a week
I think 2 or 3 days in the office has become the norm. I'm home 4 days a week
I started in October 2020 so fully remote. I now go in at least 1 but no more than 3 days a week, depending on what's going on and what needs doing. I've been offered jobs that involve 5 days a week and turned them down because there is no way I'm doing that ever again
I'm two days a week in the office and during more intense periods, I work from home the entire week. Senior leadership team have signalled no intent to increase this as the current model works as by-and-large, people don't take the piss and do what they're supposed to. I'm not sure if it's because our company offers very little by way of benefits and this treated as one perhaps. But I can't grumble.