Returning to work (no more WFH)

Oh I forgot to mention there's only going to be 70% of desks available going forward. The numbers don't really stack up...

Yeah will be interesting. My work are mandating 50% time in the office. Having worked an insane amount of hours this year I’m feeling completely burnt out and belligerent. I’ve lined-up a number of informal calls with other firms to discuss their plans for the future - I think it really helps to be armed with knowledge as to how the rest of the market is approaching things. It’s much easier to tell your current place to fuck off if you know rival outfits are offering a more flexible approach.

Ultimately I just want to be treated like an adult. My output has been ridiculous (by my office’s own assessment) over the last year and a half, so why try to force me back in?

For context, I asked our Managing Partner if I could work from home one day a week about two months before the first lockdown. He told me it would seriously damage my career. Quite keen to get into it with him and vote with my feet if he continues to be a prick.

Quite keen to get into it with him and vote with my feet if he continues to be a prick.

I really hope people hold firm and vote with their feet, I know I will if I have to go back to anything more than a couple of days but of course it relies on other places being accommodating.

I've got to go in for first day next Wednesday and am dreading it already, how will I get a days worth of work done in an office and if I need to work late I've got 2 hours of day gone due to commuting etc.

My place is about to start a trial of minimum 3 days in the office on the basis that a lot of the work we do requires collaboration. With offices all around the UK the non-London offices have loved this WFH period as they say they have been on an equal footing and felt they have been able to influence things more. Will be interesting to see how things pan out on that front.

For the days I have to be in the office I'll end up arriving late and leaving early to do the nursery/school run. I won't be making up the lost work hours in my own time because this time around the office managers had a choice. Before lockdown, mass WFH was an unknown entity and at least where I am it has been shown to work very well in most cases. I'm not going to be penalised for their choice when I could easily have worked from home that day with higher output, happiness, and fatter wallet.

Yep me too. I recognise that I am very fortunate to have a job that can be done remotely and in a sector where there are plenty of job opportunities around - so I can afford to be a bit blasé about the whole thing. I’d no doubt be less confrontational if the fallbacks weren’t around.

no mandate at ours yet but I never want to go back to an office ever again

Similar for us. No point making people go in if they're just going to sit around and not talk to anyone, we can all do that at home. Not ideal for COVID though

I went into the office last week and took a few photos to use as emergency Teams backdrops. Until there is a critical mass of people in the office I’d have to find a desk and do video calls anyway; now I can fake it

excellent idea! I am going next week but I never turn my camera on

Not heard a peep back

And as if by magic, my work from home perma role is confirmed. Ha.

a lot of the work we do requires collaboration

I think someone mentioned this earlier on. I've never heard that my role needs such serious innovation and collaboration so much from senior managers and their hangers-on until recently.

Before about three weeks ago, the word never crossed their lips, nor did they ever show much concern for the apparent boost to people health from face-to-face working.

I'm a software developer, the only collaboration I've ever needed has been one to one with a BA or other devs, and that's been far better managed using WFH tools. I've literally had days in the past where I've come into the office, put earplugs in and not spoken to anyone for hours (not proud of that!).

Yeah the collaboration is a real get out.

We all started working from home about 6 years ago, I actually speak to my colleagues more since we all moved to WFH than when we were in the office...

the collaboration

I think I'm going to start correcting people whenever I hear this word to 'chat' or 'talk'. Or capitalise it maybe, 'The Collaborations'

Being in the office is starting to get in my tits again now, other people are there. It was great when there were 3 or 4 of us in a 20m room.

The big issue I'm finding with people in the office only a few days a week is that we are obviously having more Teams calls, etc now so you're in the office with people yelling into a laptop.

Everyone in on Tuesdays and Wednesday for a 6 week trial. Not too wild about it but better than a could be - daft to let people pick their own days so you're just on Teams calls from an office having paid £20 to get there.

First day back so far. Very limited space to lock up bike, no shower, bollocks out in open plan changing room (they locked the shower cubicles), no non dairy milk for my tea, Haller locker units piled up so high when you walk onto my floor it's like that scene from the raid where the swat team look up and face their soon to be painful death, twats talking loudly on teams, shit ring tones, boring as fuck print outs on the wall of old projects, people printing out drawings like it's a new craze, aircon unit on full blast when it's 14 degrees outside, only me and my director in from my team both sitting too close to one another with nothing to talk about after 9.07am, £10 spent on a wrap and some fruit, aforementioned collaboration space machine being used by slouching directors to talk about which human rights atrocity hot zone to pitch for new projects in.

Welcome back. Offices are great eh?
Been back since the end of March. Fucking hate every minute of it.

deja vu @jono84 sounds like my office in every way, i returned ahead of the crowd about three weeks ago. Today we were about 50% capacity not sure the social distancing measures will cope. Most parent workers due back next week, when school resumes.

My commute has also got much busier. But I prefer this than living alone and WFH. At least for three back-to-back days I can switch off my laptop, forget about work by the time I reach my front door 40 minutes after leaving the office. Also I have been doing major detours commuting home and just enjoy being out on my bike riding through different places between Clerkenwell and East Ham

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Went back today for the first time in 18 months.

1.) the covid security was laughably bad/non existent.
2.) my stuff was still there, untouched
3.) I was worn out/achieved a lot less - you spend most of the day being distracted/asked questions

My place has pretty much given up on the covid security stuff (other than annoyingly closing the showers/changing rooms).

I think it's because the offices have been open for pretty much all this year and some people were coming in. Those coming in were, generally, less concerned about covid so most of the protocols fell out of use and as the office has got busier no one has bothered to reinstate them.

People are meant to be back 2 or 3 days a week, not sure what, if anything, is happening with those who are more vulnerable.

Read this thread with interest - especially 'Collaboration'.

Well before the pandemic, 'Collaboration' and also 'New Ways of Working' were the buzzwords used to encourage large parts of the organisation I work for (big UK bank) towards partial home working (saving office costs) and away from face-to-face to meetings (saving travel costs).

This has allowed and encouraged teams to be increasingly split across different cities/countries/continents, and works reasonably well.

It is odd that the exact same buzzwords are now being used to try to encourage people back into offices some of the time. But it's been made clear we shouldn't expect to ever go in again for a day's work that can be done at a desk, and the buildings have been redesigned around that; and that the budgets for travel just to meet colleagues will not come back.

So there seems to be a lot of expensive communication about a notion of 'coming together occasionally' from tomorrow, which just happens to be exactly 18 months since the 'WFH if you can' order, but no actual plan to do so, apart from senior management meetings.

I just don't see 'critical masses' of people going back at all. Interested if other City/Wharf workers in big companies find themselves in the same position?

There’s more of a structured plan for returning to the Canary Wharf bank office I work(ed) at, but the plan for the foreseeable future seems to be ‘most people in for some of the time’. It’s at managers’ discretion, though, with a pledge of no monitoring, so it’ll be interesting to see who returns – many seem to want to (I don’t and nor do I need to for my job).

‘Collaboration’ has also been bandied about as a sizeable plus for being in the office, which is odd given the anonymous hot-desk misery with no meeting rooms of the before times.

consultancylyf means returning to an office is more often than not predicated on client preference. no fucking way i'm going back to getting on a train at 5 in the morning / staying in a shit hotel for 4 days a week - fah-huck that noise. i'll quit before it comes to that.