Abusing working from home

[jaybee]

I work in IT and we have a policy which is basically that you can work from home generally 1 day per week when appropriate and at the managers discretion. Usually this is granted after passing probation and you negotiate your selected day of the week based on your personal preference vs business requirements.

Unfortunately over time, it has become very slack and so "flexible" to the point it is arguably abused by some and there is a fear that it will be ruined by these individuals where it will be stopped entirely. Some of the issues we face with it are:

1: People not asking for permission and just working from home when they feel like it
2: People giving extremely poor excuses for working from home
3: People not doing much work when working from home and disappearing/going quiet for long periods
4: People not communicating as much from home
5: People communicating/doing too much from home (possibly trying too hard to ensure they are viewed as doing enough work)
6: People feeling they cannot leave their computer in case they are skyped/emailed with something urgent and appear to be slacking off when not available instantly.
7: People strategically booking appointments for days when they DO NOT normally work from home, and then taking those days as work from homes days in additional to their normal designated home working day.
8: As above extending holidays by taking additional days as "work from home" when in reality they just want an easy ride for a couple of extra days.
9: Using any travel delay - even minor - as an excuse to work from home
10: Missing vital events, collaborative efforts and meetings by prioritizing home working first.
11: Major issues occurring with minimal staff on site to be able to speak to someone first hand
12: People having really poor microphones/comms setup at home if at all, causing a lack of communication for any meetings or team conversations for that day.
13: Response speed during major incidents taking longer
14: People blaming remote connectivity issues on their poor broadband speeds
15: People having powercuts and "broadband" issues seemingly all the time
16: People using work from home to prevent sick days totting up by stating that they will work from home whilst ill. In reality they are in bed doing nothing. i.e. Genuinely ill sometimes.


The list can go on and on...

The biggest issue is the effect it is having on the business and the way our team is perceived. The amount of work that is not getting done due to the amount of people working from home is quite bad. When Joey works from home Monday, Danny on Tuesday and Jonny on Wednesday, that's really disruptive and hard to book meetings. The people that are pro work from home will tell you that "I can do everything I can in the office at home", but the issues is...you can't. Sometimes face to face is sooooo much productive in a room with all the necessary people in. Skype and conference calls have their place, but the amount of issues we have trying to get everyone in on a call in a timely manner is untrue. Then you have the conference call bingo of "can you hear me" among other classics such as, "bit of an echo", "I'm getting a delay" and "sorry I was on mute".

I also feel a lot of team spirit is lost when everyone works from home. You miss out on office banter and general information that you can give to someone instantly by turning to your side and using your voice. Conversations and discussions can happen quickly around a screen and collaboration is just better being more productive.

Having said all that, yes working from home is great sometimes. The benefits of it breaking up the week and the grind of the commute is refreshing and helps keep us sane. Sometimes working from home is good if you want to immerse oneself in some long piece of code or something. Other times it can be distracting.

If I cared about the business I work for and I set the standards, I would have to ban working from home until respect had been earned back. I'd do a reset and see how many people could come in reliably for a few months. We also have issues with sickness and attendance generally so it would be a good test.


What are your thoughts on home working and do you face any of these issues at your workplace?

 

[jaybee]

Should also be noted that some places pretty much enforce working from home 1 day a week by implementing hot desking and not providing enough desks!

Yes, this is actually how it started originally apparently a few years ago at my place.

In answer to all the other questions and points, I can just summarize by saying that yes, management is extremely poor currently. Another issue is actually that one of the key managers that should be addressing these issues, is one of the very people stretching what is acceptable and also has a very poor attendance record.

Simply down to poor management if people are getting away with all of that, I don't understand how you could doss off that much and not get pulled up on it. Must be barely any work that actually needs doing.

It's the complete opposite, permanently. We are hugely busy.

I think it depends on the role. Currently in my team, it's causing major disruption.

 

[jaybee]

Indeed, this sort of toxic attitude from a few people, leads to flexible, progressive working practices being revoked or otherwise policed/conditioned to oblivion.

Yes. The old saying, "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" comes to mind.

I can totally understand why some places - as old school as it may appear - just don't have a policy in place at all for work from home, i.e. they don't do it. As a manager it's so much easier to not have to deal with it and it simplifies everything.

I would totally miss it for sure if it went and it would be a bit of a "told you so" moment for the people that are doing the above things.

 

[jaybee]

Bumping this old thread back up to see how people are finding work from home these days, since there seems to have been an even bigger push and shift towards wfh nowadays in IT roles. It's becoming expected now for most candidates that apply for any jobs at my current workplace.

I'm a little bit more in favour of it for my personal role and team, in that I believe we have quite individual "heads down" roles where even if we are in the office, we tend to be working on our own stuff/code more and more and often even put headphones on/in to minimize distractions. Not always....but....a lot of the time. Plus - selfishly - my commute is now dire. We got new management recently and he is big into wfh.

 

[jaybee]

Expected by the candidate that they will be able to WFH. Yes, many use hot desking. I'm at a different place to when I posted the OP and people don't take the mick and work hard even from home. Better place.