Back to the Office

[sintec]

Alas I work at Manchester Victoria, one of the major public transport hubs for the NW, and can only attest at how especially in the last few months the traffic has actually got WORSE than it was pre-COVID. And now less people are wearing masks, get ratty when you ask them to show respect and distance to other patrons, and in general have returned to treating customer facing roles just as (if not worse) poorly as they had before. And I could get sick off any of them at any time. It's a woeful, terrifying situation to be in.

That sucks Hawk. I've never understood why some people are such dicks to staff. I've got a friend who works at an opticians who reports similarly toxic behaviour from entitled customers. Have never understood why people think it's ok to behave like that.

[IndigoPrime]

Tiplodocus: your company sounds like a case study for how to reframe office work. If it pulls this off, it will be well positioned for the future and surely have relatively strong staff retention. Good to hear some folks are getting this right.

[Jim_Campbell]

Tiplodocus: your company sounds like a case study for how to reframe office work. If it pulls this off, it will be well positioned for the future and surely have relatively strong staff retention. Good to hear some folks are getting this right.

If enough companies break rank from the "back to the office, plebs" push then there may be no putting this genie back in its bottle — people, like my wife who's worked for the same company for the last decade, will leave companies that insist on a return to The Old Ways™ and look for jobs with companies that aren't dicks about this stuff. Faced with the prospect of haemorrhaging skilled, trained staff or just letting the poor bastards carry on working from their dining room table, I think a number of those companies might relent.

[Tiplodocus]

Tiplodocus: your company sounds like a case study for how to reframe office work. If it pulls this off, it will be well positioned for the future and surely have relatively strong staff retention. Good to hear some folks are getting this right.

I'm as surprised as anybody. It does help that the nature of where I work (business change) is suited for this kind of thing. And I do have a fairly understanding hierarchy of managers. I imagine some of our Branch and Contact centre teams might not have the same view as me.

[Barrington Boots]

Back at home today after a couple of days in. On one level being in the office was quite nice in that it was a change of scenery, talking to people face to face that I haven't spoken to in a while etc. On the other hand, commute. Plus the sheer needlessness of it.
The feeling in my place is mild anger / frustration that management have imposed this partial return but it doesn't seem to apply to them. I have a feeling people will just accept it and move on, but hopefully there'll be some pusg back against it. There will be from me, certainly.

Tiplodocus, your place does sound like a a model example of how this should be run.

Hawk, that does suck. I took the train Friday for the first time in forever and the bulk of passengers were masked up although there was an unsurprising correlation between people who were aggressive / drunk / blast music out of their phones and not wearing a mask. Numbers on the trains were very low, but I'm not sure if school holidays and the heat were a factor. I really, really don't want to be getting a train during thos pandemic.

If enough companies break rank from the "back to the office, plebs"..

This is 100% the hope!

[Barrington Boots]

Yesterday I was in the office all on my own. Not really sure what the point of that was.

There's a mild fear here that if we press the issue on this then the mandate will change back to 'everyone in all the time' but it's a fairly ridiculous situation at the moment.

[broodblik]

I am so glad that our policy is the reverse, you need a very good reason why you are at the office. We even need to get approval to go to office and you must be very specific on the time off arrival etc.

[Barrington Boots]

Having been back to 100% WFH since the new measures came in in December, we've been told it's back to 100% in the office from end of January with all flexible / hybrid working to be abandoned.

Some of us are pushing back, but I fear minds won't be changed and the outcome will be me getting a new job, which I really don't want to do as I like this one and I haven't been in the job market for a looong time.

I'm angry but mainly so disappointed that after all the platitudes and talk of work life balance and building back better, it's build back as it was before.

[IndigoPrime]

I imagine this will be the way for a lot of companies, some of which will be all shocked when loads of people quit for organisations that are more flexible. If output and productivity hasn’t been affected, why mandate people work in an office? It makes no sense.

[Jim_Campbell]

Some of us are pushing back, but I fear minds won't be changed and the outcome will be me getting a new job, which I really don't want to do as I like this one and I haven't been in the job market for a looong time.

I'm angry but mainly so disappointed that after all the platitudes and talk of work life balance and building back better, it's build back as it was before.

Precisely what my wife is experiencing right now. She's trying to push back for the moment, on the grounds that the covid situation is current;y worse than it was when the Govt brought back the WFH advice in December, and that the Chair of the BMA has described the Government's decision to relax covid measures as clearly "not guided by the data"… but I fear this will be a losing battle.

I've suggested that she digs her heels in, simply because insisting on a return to the office right now is demonstrably unsafe and if they sack her for refusing to do it, she can take them to the cleaners.

[Jim_Campbell]

If output and productivity hasn’t been affected, why mandate people work in an office? It makes no sense.

Again, precisely the argument my wife is having. Her department (which she runs) has operated perfectly effectively for almost two years on a 100% WFH basis. Where is the business case for forcing employees back into the office when they don't want to go?

The only answer that's been offered is: "It's our business culture to conduct operations face-to-face."

Transl: "We don't care about your increased risk of catching covid, get back in the office because we say so."

[IndigoPrime]

More like: “We don’t trust you to work fully from home, regardless of actual experience and/or facts” and possible also “We value presenteeism more than productivity”.

[Tjm86]

It would be interesting to see how much of a geographical spread there is on this.  Out west here the tendency seems to be more towards hybrid working. 

My dad works for British energy over in Gloucester.  He was saying that they are selling up their old office and moving to smaller ones.  Staff will homework for the most part but book desks when they do need to actually be physically present.  One of our neighbours works in Bristol and works from home most of the week.

It does feel a little bit like companies closer to London are pushing more for getting folks back to the office.  There is a cynical view that some of this is driven by Tory supporting property developers who are worried about all those shiny offices in London and the South East going empty.

How much truth there is to that, I don't know.

[Jim_Campbell]

It would be interesting to see how much of a geographical spread there is on this.  Out west here the tendency seems to be more towards hybrid working. 

Dunno. I think it's more the kind of business, how long its been running, and possibly a generational thing with senior management. My wife's office (the UK head office for the business) is in Nottingham. A friend of mine works for a software company out of their Leicester office. They've completely closed all their other sites (mostly down south, saving them a fortune) and are basically maintaining the Leicester office for people who want to go in and work there. They're absolutely fine with everyone else working remotely as a permanent arrangement — my friend doubts he'll ever set foot in the office again.

[Hawkmumbler]

I'm noticing a very worrying trend, really just an evolution in what was already the norm, among hospitality companies. We've become increasingly disposable, and any concerns we might externalize about personal safety is dismissed as "we're doing what the government advises".
33 out of 45 employees across four branches off with positive results? No problem, just pull double or triple shifts. Whats that, those 12 staff members are tired and complaining they want adequate reimbursement for their work? Well they get their hourly contracted so thats not our problem, if they keep complaining terminate them, they're within their six month probational period.

It's so. So exhausting out there guys.