Working from home worth it?

I almost 100% work from home, with occasional UK and foreign travel for site visits when I cannot get out of just attending remotely, and then the odd internal mandatory BS meetings.
However, I would happily make it 100% if I could. I specifically moved into this role, with the view to moving out of the south (which we did), and working almost 100% WFH. My last role was about 90% WFH, but had a lot more travelling to clients mostly in London and events abroad. My roles before that were up to 50% of my time travelling internationally, when I looked after 16 countries, and even further back 100% office based.
I would be very reluctant to take on any role that mandated any sort of time in the office. I would likely take a considerable pay cut before I even considered going back to any sort of forced office attendance.
I see my wife and kids every day, walk to school to drop the kids off in the mornings, and I have time to have dinner with them in the evening. I Work in a nice environment of my choosing, under my own terms, and don't have to deal with anyone else's nonsense. Not to mention the time and money wasted travelling. I can even take time to make proper food in the day. I can take my lunch hour whenever I fancy it, and do whatever I want during the time.
This lifestyle is worth more to me than anything else :)
 
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For my new job I will have to be on site 4 days a week which is fine. I did enjoy WFH initially but I always have a better time on site and my mood is negatively affected when I do WFH.
 
Bounce said:
Just out of interest , what kind of jobs is everyone doing to be working from home? Am I right in thinking a lot of IT jobs will be home based?
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Mine is a mixture of Education and Projects. The latter, not a technical role but enough technical knowledge to implement new custom systems and work with our suppliers to develop/integrate them.

I am 100% remote except for a KIT day every 2 months, which requires 5-hours travel each way and an overnight stay. Working for an organisation of under 20 employees, I am the exception rather than the norm. Nominally, hybrid working is supported and several staff have some form of flexible working, but most of those are still 4/1 office-based. Post-pandemic, there was a push to have staff return to the office and the business has only reluctantly embraced the hybrid model. Only one new employee has joined on a proper hybrid contract (2/3). In my case, I work remotely due to a property purchase and relocation.

WFH is a major improvement in reality. I have a dedicated work space and a singular role that I can perform without needing office presence. I am more productive with less interruptions. My tri-monitor desktop set-up is much better and not at the mercy of ageing tech. It's easier to work around school runs, and I don't particularly miss the 'social' aspect of being in an office - and I definitely don't miss office politics. Commute and cost isn't factored in as I didn't have those previously anyway.

The only real limitation is sometimes missing context in meetings, where people are yabbering over each other and the office soundbar cuts off the audio. And occasionally not being able to reach colleagues averse to picking up a phone.
 
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I am a pharmacist by training myself and have left pharmacy all together about 7 years ago.

I now work in the Pharma industry and my role(s) have become increasingly WFH since lockdown (from 1 day WFH to full WFH now).

I don’t think I can ever go back to the office and being home based has helped massively with childcare and it also gave me an opportunity to run an e-commerce business.

Feel free to reach out in PM if you have any questions :)
 
Bounce said:
Just out of interest , what kind of jobs is everyone doing to be working from home? Am I right in thinking a lot of IT jobs will be home based?
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I think it's not so much "IT" as those service industry roles where productivity is measured in intellectual capital rather than physical productivity. That's a fancy way of saying jobs you can do sat at a desk with a computer and telecommunications, which (due to digitalisation) is encapsulating more and more jobs over the years. Covid lockdown obviously accelerated this trend by forcing the hand of organisations, e.g. 5 years ago the idea that you'd have a distributed callcentre (routing calls to people's homes) was pretty rare.
IT naturally lends itself to this although you might have certain roles like on-premise infrastructure engineers that need to travel to various sites performing maintenance and upgrades etc.
 
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I've worked fully remote, I've worked hybrid, I've worked in an office every day - ultimately what I've come to learn is:

If you have a good home setup (I do) then working from home is great.

If you have good colleagues sat around you (I do) then working in an office is great.

If you have both the above then having the flexibility to do either, whenever you want, is great.

I enjoy working from home, I enjoy working in the office - two different experiences with different rewards.

I can see why the costs would be a big factor, especially given season ticket costs in London - a season ticket here is €365 and there company pays that anyway so it's really no issue. Actually I cycle to the office most days because it's faster than the tram or subway.
 
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I'm only in the office one day a week and the boss is fairly flexible there too. He basically doesn't really care as long as the job gets done, which it does. I go in the one day most weeks just to show willing but I'll never go back to anything even remotely resembling full-time in an office.
 
I'm seriously starting to worry / have second thoughts about accepting a job that's 3-4 days in the office vs. my current role, which is 95% remote.

Problem is this new role is better in every other conceivable way.
 
My firm wants 2 days in the office (Tuesdays being the team anchor day) and that works really well for me. I like the flexibility and choice of environment but also do like going into the office and seeing people in person.

A lot of competitors to my firm are trying to get people back in full time and it’s not going well for them.
 
Participant said:
I'm seriously starting to worry / have second thoughts about accepting a job that's 3-4 days in the office vs. my current role, which is 95% remote.

Problem is this new role is better in every other conceivable way.
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Try it and then if it's not working out you can always change jobs again. The fact a new role is better in every other way than your current job implies to me you need a move anyway, otherwise you'll just stagnate.
 
HangTime said:
Try it and then if it's not working out you can always change jobs again. The fact a new role is better in every other way than your current job implies to me you need a move anyway, otherwise you'll just stagnate.
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That's it.

Go for the job, grab the new skills/experience/interest that comes along with it, square it up with your CV and move on in a year if you're finding the office attendance isn't working for you.
 
Working from home is the best thing to happen for me in my career.

It means I can live anywhere. But requires full time WFH.
Soon as you get any "hybrid" you have to start thinking about location.

I don't think any realistic salary would pull me away from WFH now.

I'm on 55 and even 75 wouldn't pull me away.
 
With all the cuts going on at the moment and upcoming. Many companies are cutting office space before cutting staff.

My previous employer went hybrid during the pandemic. Reducing their office space from 3 floors down to 1 one floor. Making a big saving.
 
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I took a job last December asking for "2 or 3 days in the office". That's now become 2 days maximum when my immediate team are also in. I'm not going back to 4 or 5 days unless I'm either desperate or the job/pay/secretary* is worth it.






* That's a joke folks.
 
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rumple9 said:
As people work from home more and also the possibility of the 4 day week, just what is the point of HS2?
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Better transport links are a good thing but the business case is diminished. I think the majority of people commuting long distances are doing office based jobs that have experienced a shift toward hybrid/remote.

One of the issues I think is that the focus has been on "how can we make big urban work hubs more accessible to more people?" whereas arguably the optimal solution is to decentralise and reduce the need for workers to be in physical proximity. So instead of "get people to London/Brum/Leeds/Manc faster" it should be "reduce the need for people to be in those places".

Let's be honest the impact of the pandemic on working patterns was a big accelerator so it makes sense to reassess. Very shortly before the pandemic my employer at the time was looking to move hundreds of jobs out of London and said they'd considered making some of those roles remote/hybrid but had dismissed it as not workable for their business, so were expanding in a Northern city instead meaning the prospect of redundancies if you wouldn't move up North. The idea of people working largely from home wasn't taken seriously as an option by a lot of business leaders but now their hand has been forced.
 
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Personally I don't really work from home at all. Now that I'm hanging up my boots on the current place I'm making more use of it but honestly people working together in person is so much more productive and fruitful. I can see companies genuinely losing competitive edge because of it.

I fully agree with the flexibility and my mantra to my managers was to always cascade that down, showing full flexibility with no questions asked was imperative, trust is key. And people responded well to that and there is no tension.

It helps that we have actual functioning public transport and pay extremely generously with a good reward culture. People are incentivised to be the absolute best. Will be interesting to see what my new company like. Def more conservative I think, but at my level I think I'll have a fair amount of flexibility.

But maybe in my early mid thirties I'm already a boomer at heart? ;)
 
I'm about to start a new job, more local to me which I will be going into the office 2-3 days a week. Currently doing on average 2 days a fortnight an office 2 hours away from me. I'm looking forward to being around people more and having chance to exercise my social skills more frequently.
 
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