At our place, most people want to spend most of the time working from home, with the odd day working in the office. Nobody wants permanent work from home or work in the office.

Same. You can see companies now starting to compete on the 'type' of WFH benefits. Our company is already talking about how many weeks/months you can spend overseas while you WFH on top of things like furniture purchases to help WFH.

People say they want to have an "odd day working" in the office, actually mean they just want to meet with colleagues for lunch or something or just pretend they are okay subjecting themselves to the commute and all this dance once in a while to show loyalty to the company.

It's all bs.

People who really want to work in the office are those with not so great circumstances at home and they treat it as an escape. They are often the loudest advocates for coming back to office because they are afraid of being stuck at home if company decides to close the office.

Companies should recognise that and perhaps fund hot desking space for them.

Yeah, I remember having a very young child at home. Office was a welcome calm environment, no one ever screamed at me demanding to be fed and changed NOW

I'm not sure if I would jump ship immediately if they removed remote working in my firm, but I certainly would be looking around for a new job. Thankfully, my firm seems to have realised that people like hybrid working so isn't pushing to get people back full time in the office. Well, at least not in my department...

I would also think that the best way for new staff would be to start in the office for at least a month before starting remote working. That way they get up to speed, and IT don't need to start shipping out hardware before someone has actually passed their trial period.

I had 2 employees take that gamble with me when furlough came to an end. Neither of them have a job now. For this to work there has to be either a source of plentiful jobs in the market for them to go to, or the government is supplementing your income somehow. People can't live off nothing. In the shot term a talented few will be able to pull off this trick, but those jobs are relatively scarce. For everyone else, stop coming into work, you'll be out of a job, no matter what you read in the media.

Whatever the reasons, most people would be mad to jump ship before having sorted something else anyway.

I don't think many people will be in a hurry to leave without having found something else, per normal, but they will start looking.

And I'm not sure about the scarcety - the job boards are full of remote/hybrid working.

The question is, have you replaced them? I would, as many others, have said would wait for the right ship to sail past then I would be bidding you a not very sad farewell.

Yes, lots of people out there are still desperate for a job. The only people that can afford to wait for the right job, are either those people with sufficient savings, or have other income (therefore they are not relying on the job anyway). The vast majority of people do not have that.

HR will become very adapt soon at identifying those people clearly willing to jump ship. Why invest time and money in someone that demonstrates on their CV that they will have no company loyalty. Covid has created a false sense of job security due to furlough and a benefits system that has had the enforcement side of it's operations suspended. That money pot can't last forever, and in the UK there's a full-steam-ahead movement since brexit to strip people of their employment rights. There is going to be a very sudden switch from this work-when-you-like utopia we seem to be in, to a sudden panic for financial security when the government attitude switches tack to claw all the money back it is currently spending to keep people out of work. Got a pension pot? We'll tax that. Got bank savings? We'll tax that. Own your own home? we'll tax that. Not got a job? Your benefits will stop unless you can demonstrate a willingness to work.

Neither of them have a job now.

If I was going to quit, I would have taken few months off. Maybe take time to learn some new skills or do some travelling.

I agree, this only works if there is a job available in a company that is WFH that you get.

I am of the opinion that as Covid becomes accepted as here to stay, businesses will slowly return to on site activities, probably not at the same scale due to cost but some will be back in the office.

...for years that the technology to work from home has actually been available.

But of course, it hasn't been the technology, it's been the idea that managers cannot watch what their staff are doing and that lack of trust.

What lockdown has generally proven in my experience though, is that without 2+ hours a day commuting, people will work far more flexibly - they are free to drop their kids off at school before they sit down and can nip to the post office to send that parcel, for example. But they tend to be more productive overall because when you can get out of bed a bit later, you feel fresher from the get-go.

The only people who really want to push for people to be back in the office (notwithstanding those jobs that need someone to be in a specific place, of course, due to the very nature of that work) are those very same managers who must be wondering what their job is actually for.

If people had that flexibility remotely, why wouldn't they have it in the office?

I've always done post office runs and such, why would a business allow this whilst remote if they weren't doing so in an office?

I do feel people would rather not have the commute, than have to simply work in an office.

More than half of UK workers would consider jumping ship if a hybrid work option were withdrawn by their company

If they could find another job offering working from home with the same pay.

I work for a 24x7 emergency service and pre-pandemic the business justification to have have IT staff in the office was in case of problems (e.g. network/server).

(A) The business is 24x7

(B) IT are only onsite around 23% of the time annually

(C) Lots of the businesses busiest and most critical times there's no IT there (Friday nights, bank holidays etc)

Given the above, the reasoning for having IT physically onsite was always flawed and WFH during Covid has had no impact at all on delivering IT services and fixing the occasional problem such as a physical switch reboot.

Prior to the current recommendation of WFH which started yesterday, the new IT justification for trying to get people back into the office was that they we're worried they'd lose the desks/office space. Err, these would the same desks that would no longer be required if staff were working from home!

I'm a grumpy old BOFH who never left his desk and never talked to anyone when I WAS in the office, so there's no detriment there AND the office is on an indistrual estate in the middle of nowhere with sod-all external services such as coffee\sandwich shops; shopping or pubs - so WFH also has no impact on local businesses either.

A proper permanent WFH policy would allow us to recruit talent from outside of the local 50 mile radius we current use which means we really struggle to recruit in IT - we have medical staff who work 350 miles away and never come into the office, yet IT who implement the technology allowing the business to do this are expected to pointlessly commute to the office every day.

I'll be voting with my feet and P45 before wasting 2 hours a day of my own time going back into the office.

This seems all backwards really, IT has been working remotely for decades without it being considered "WFH".

Especially out of hours work.

Having someone onsite at all times as remote hands is a good compromise though.

I have always felt that these long commutes are generally self inflicted though.

Losing two hours per day on commuting, morning for dressing up - you have to look sharp, then whole day pretending you are working so micro managers can have their hard on.

Then losing another hour on mandated lunch - having overpriced processed food in stuffed cafe or queuing to company microwave praying someone is not going to heat up their smoked fish before you.

Then there always going to be that guy, usually a manager, who is tired of his family at home and will be pestering everyone to join him at the pub after work "for a quick one" - and people will be joining in hope he will look favourable at their quarterly review and maybe they get that dreamed 1k raise.

Haha no thanks.

Don't get me started on employers not compensating workers for use of their homes as a company office.

"...Don't get me started on employers not compensating workers for use of their homes as a company office..."

But they don't usually compensate for commuting, clothing (where there's a dress code, even smart casual) etc.

In the scheme of things I bet most people spend less working at home than they do for all of the above.