Fear of being ordered back to office affecting UK staff wellbeing, poll finds
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/15/fear-of-being-ordered-back-to-office-affecting-uk-staff-wellbeing-poll-finds
Posted by CaseyEffingRyback
Fear of being ordered back to office affecting UK staff wellbeing, poll finds
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/15/fear-of-being-ordered-back-to-office-affecting-uk-staff-wellbeing-poll-finds
Posted by CaseyEffingRyback
24 Comments
I’ve been enjoying being in the office a couple of days a week. I’ve found it valuable for my own wellbeing, as well as building connections, and context around the work I’m doing.
On the days I do, I enjoy the commute as a time to “leave work behind”.
I never thought I’d say that!
Anyone pushing for office-based working just isn’t fit to be in a position of power. It’s as simple as that.
Return to office mandates are just a cheap way to trim headcount.
Demand everyone return to the office, 10% refuse and will resign, and you don’t even need to pay redundancy.
One of the few respites from the relentless shit if the last 15+ years has been the saving in time and cost of commuting. I’m not going back to the old way.
> A fear of being ordered back to the office is having an impact on workers’ wellbeing, according to a poll, after a string of companies issued return-to-office mandates.
The large company I work for doesn’t even have enough office space for the people that want to work in the office, let alone the people that don’t.
To be fair here, for many people that can add almost 1hr 30mins a day, every day. Then the added travel cost.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I am significantly more productive in my own space than being crammed in a room with a multitude of people who dont want to be there.
Then because I am more productive, if I manage to get work done ahead of time, I can use additional time to improve my work-life balance by doing the washing up or something.
There isn’t really a benefit for most people to be in offices these days other than the “social aspect”. But quite frankly I’m there to do a job, not socialise.
I was ordered back into the office after 3 years of WFH. I quit my job and have not looked back
For me it’s not being in the office that’s the problem, its the cost and time of the commute.
If I could teleport each day at no cost to the office then teleport home no problem. Currently I’m spending about 10 percent of my income for the privilege of attending office to earn the other 90% of my income.
I do think being in the office is healthy to an extent. It gives us social interaction and a change of environment. But I think it’s unfair forcing people back in there all the time when it may be unnecessary. I think it would be more realistic and fair to split it up half the work week in the office and the other half at home if the employee chooses.
“More than a third (38%) of workers surveyed said recent news stories about companies hardening their stance on office attendance had negatively affected their wellbeing,”
Feel the moral to this story is stop reading media stories which are designed to install this negative affect
I blame Rees-Mogg for this. We had a great balance of wfh with the occasional day in the office once or twice a week. He made that statement then all of a sudden management are pushing for more required appearances in the office. For no reason other than to be there.
I know the vast majority here are gonna be pro-WFH but for me it’s terrible. I get distracted far too easily and my productivity plummets compared to when I’m in the office.
Had one office job as a young un’, it was terrible and I didn’t last long.
Now I have an “office” job but the whole company is pretty much WFH. I do actually really enjoy my job, but I’d hate it being in the office and wouldn’t last long, I’ve always had very active roles.
I have no issues with on-site roles in any form, but in a role or job you WFH to then change that, is just non-sensical to me, especially as financially it doesn’t seem to make sense.
That said, my company has been fully prepared for WFH with many metrics measuring productivity (which may deter some), but I work hard so it’s never been an issue for me, or for the team I work with, which is probably the best team I’ve been a part of.
My company, instead, closed the only office we had early this June.
So now we cannot go even if we wanted to.
And people who work remotely wonder why their favourite cafes and pubs aren’t there anymore.
Can confirm. Partner works for scottish quango. The threat of being ordered into an office on the other side of the country after being assured by management she was safe to move further away is causing some stress.
12-16 hours commuting per day for someone with physical disabilities on a daily basis is the suggestion, but /only/ 3 days a week.
I’m old school and like the office work luckily I have the chance to be Hybrid.
this is the solution ppl shouldn’t be force to go back to the office, they should be given the choice and employer should encourage office and create better social in office.
I got to the office 3x time a week and we organise every first Tuesday of the month a small cake competition to encourage other to come at least that one time a month and it work well.
Honestly in today’s age company that are not able to embrace the WFH or Hybride life style are just proving how stupid and not interest about their employee well being they are.
I think a problem is that a lot of people banked on WFH to be a secure option in for the future and moved far away from their jobs to nicer houses in nicer locations. They will obviously find if near impossible or affordable to commute to the office every day. Its a gamble some people took that may now not pay off.
The job market has been split with in office, hybrid and fully remote. The fully remote jobs dont pay as well so even if people who cant return to the office and resign, you either stuck with the work available in your local market or competing with many others for remote work opportunities that do not pay so well.
My take on this is that if there is no requirement to be in an office to work, then it should be optional if the output of productivity stays the same. In the case the company explicitly hired someone as a WFH / Remote employee, then that would be a renege on the job expectations.
I fully believe there is nothing more effective than a group of people working together, in person, in a professional setting. I miss the time when I used to go to the office and 90% of the people I worked with day-to-day were there. I could talk to them as people, I could work with them directly and I didn’t have to chase gaps in calendars or pray for a slack reply to get an answer to a simple question.
***But*** my company was one of many who realised WFH is a super-power in its own right. My teams are scattered between 6 countries, my manager is in a 7th, his manager is in an 8th… The best people from around Europe pulling together to achieve results in-spite of the limitations of being remote is something we never would have dreamed of doing 10 years ago.
And now that the corporate leases on these multi-million pound office spaces are up for renewal, they suddenly begin to mandate we return to work… Just so I can sit at a desk on calls for 8 hours a day. No productivity gain, just a loss of my own time and money.
Really glad we’re talking about this. This hasn’t been discussed almost daily since the pandemic at all
I’m happy to have a hybrid arrangement where I only need to go into the office 40-60% of the time. I will not be accepting a 100% return to the office. I enjoy having extra money and an extra 2 hours a day to socialise and focus on my hobbies because I don’t have to commute.
My employers are more than welcome to install tracking software on my laptop if they don’t think I’m actually working from home. There is no need for me to have to go back 5 days a week and waste my precious time and money when it can be done at home most of the time.
My commute is half an hour each way without accounting for traffic, over an hour each way once you add in Bristol rush hour. Remote working saves me thousands a year in fuel and thousands more a year from reducing the number of days we send my son to nursery.
A return to the office full time would mean me taking a big effective pay cut and losing out on hours of family time every day. Any company that demanded that of me can do one. Thankfully the company I work for has no plans to force everyone back to the office. They’re actually looking at downsizing the office space they lease to a few hotdesks and meeting rooms.
I’m sure if an employee working from home wasn’t working, then they’d be pulled up. I work from home and put in many hours of good work. However you could argue that employers may be taking advantage of employees working from home due to the reduction in running an office. A bit like companies and organisations that expect their employees to use their cars for work purposes. Complaining about people working from home is a bit of a political distraction technique.