‘It didn’t come as a surprise’: UK workers on being forced back into the office
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/03/uk-workers-on-being-forced-back-into-office-cut-hybrid-working?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Posted by wappingite
‘It didn’t come as a surprise’: UK workers on being forced back into the office
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/03/uk-workers-on-being-forced-back-into-office-cut-hybrid-working?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Posted by wappingite
33 Comments
If you are in the UK look up the Flexible Work act. Covers working from home up to 4 days a week and reducing hours to meet reasonable adjustments and disabilities.
Hybrid working is fine, god forbid people can balance work and life.
>Richmond, a 61-year-old software engineer from Oxfordshire, left his remote working-only job in November because his mental health started to suffer during the Covid lockdown.
>“I can’t cope with the isolation of working from home,” he says. “It’s often assumed that people in roles like mine prefer it but the office has always been the mainstay of my social life.”
I just find it depressing that the office and in-person interaction with work colleagues would be the mainstay of someone’s social life.
Too many people who really love to micromanage every little thing.
I have been working from home now for 10 years
I go into the office once every 2-3 months for 2 days
When i do go into the office i have to block out work from my calendar for two days as absolutely nothing gets done
In my team of 6 people all of us are remote. We had the highest productivity in the company. Orders of magnitude more successful than other teams world wide
And then 4 days, and then 5. A few token moans, and then we’re all under the thumb again, poorer than ever. Unless…
It’s been 5 years. Its the new normal for a lot of people.
The proportion of people fully working from home has remained [stubbornly between 10 and 15% since mid 2022](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/whoarethehybridworkers/2024-11-11). Perhaps there is a rise in people who voluntarily did one day week in office being made to come in 3 days a week but I wonder if these articles keep coming up because they get so many anxious clicks from home workers like me.
Honestly, I think (given its now been five years since the pandemic) most companies who wanted to go back to full time office working, or change their arrangements, have largely done so by now if they wanted to.
I feel like the last really big company going back to office fulltime was Amazon. Other than that, I think most companies have kind of settled into their groove (many 2 or 3 days in the office, some fully remote, some fully in the office). I think hybrid tends to be the dominant form, but there are still a few fully remote roles. I personally like hybrid, I’d consider full time remote roles, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to fulltime in the office unless it was a 4 day a week job or a truly exceptional role with a large pay increase. There’s no appetite for it in my industry either.
3 days a week up from 2 for me. I dont mind being back an extra day but could do with some help financially with the extra train costs
They want people in the offices so they can keep renting them. Plus it puts money into nearby shops and transport. That’s all there is to it.
As always, you and your life comes second to profits
And those companies that are mandating a return to the office will then be shocked when staff leave
What’s with the suspicious flood of articles telling us that WFH is dead today?
Is this some sort of effort to convince people that returning to the office is normal and that everyone’s doing it?
I don’t think that’s true. Most “office workers” I know in London are hybrid with more days at home than in the office. A few are fully WFH.
And it’s certainly not true in my industry. If my company tried to end hybrid working, a lot of our best people would have the option to leave and work for someone else who is offering hybrid or WFH.
We don’t even have enough office space to get everyone in on the same day!
I am way more productive working from home as a software engineer its night and day
Ironically, RTO did come as a surprise to people working at The Guardian. The union leaked upper management’s plans to ambush people with an RTO policy to promote ‘quiet redundancies’.
Ah yes let me go back into the office for teams meetings all day with people not in the office all whilst being distracted multiple times a day by chatter and other stuff.
I love people being able to choose what they want. Fact is, if your job allows it, remote offers unbelievable flexibility and work life balance. If you crave that interaction then most places do allow you to go to some sort of office. Forcing people back is nothing but an agenda however.
I find myself in the minority of people who actually likes working in an office this side of Covid. It helps maintain clear separation from my personal life, its healthy to see other people in person (for me anyway…) and healthy to have a reason to leave the house most days. I also have a fairly easy commute though— I don’t think I’d have the same attitude if I was commuting to an office in London.
Anyway; working in an office is fine *in principle*, but businesses aren’t helping themselves. You need to give your workers a reason to come in besides “good for collaboration” (literally nobody cares about that). Where I work, our New York office have recently sold half the office space and removed the shared kitchen (cost cutting) so there’s now only a corridor with a vending machine you can take on-site breaks in. But they’re still asking people to come in more often… What’s the point?
Finally: I have a real pet peeve over businesses that maintain hybrid working policies but don’t give clear direction over which days to come in and which not. Hybrid working is a solution but only when it has an explicit structure. I’ve had plenty of days where I’ve made the commute in and found the rest of my team decided to WFH. If all of my conversations end up being over Teams, I may as well have just stayed home.
I work for an employer that has forced us to come back to the office every day…so I moved team to one that allows me flexibility to come in 3 days instead, which was working for me before. If things change, I’ll likely look at remote-first roles, because although I like working in the office I value the ability to do the school run and to be around with my daughter more.
Ultimately, I think many companies that have enforced forced RTO will suffer, because they will artificially limit their ability to hire well without paying more to justify their decisions.
Second post I’ve seen here today from the guardian with different headlines, they really want everyone back to the office don’t they.
It’s really depressing that , as a nation, we did actually see this coming and were just rolling over and letting it happen. Especially in positions where there is no reason to be in an office and it does not affect productivity.
This is down to one thing – control for managers and to ensure that Peele etc keep value in their properties that they’re renting for offices etc.
Small/ medium sized businesses renting small units don’t want to be wasting money.
Large businesses cannot advertise huge high rise offices for full whack if someone only fills it 50%..
But let’s continue to make the lives of the average worker more miserable. It’s a great example of British culture just accepting what’s happening and just moaning about it.
There should be strike action.
People need to drop productivity and have a few “accidents” in the workplace.
All the companies forcing RTO, and not even investing into the office. I get a single monitor if I am lucky at the office and due to hot desking I may not even get a desk and would have to work on the sofa on the tiny laptop screen. I’m used to a massive screen at home to work on. It’s damn cold too because the building is old and lets heat out easily.
I might like RTO a bit better if I could get an actual desk with proper equipment on it, but office work days usually mean nothing gets done.
It’s just another slap in the face for us disabled neurodivergent folk who need to work from home the majority of the time. I’ve worked remotely for the last ten years, I can manage my medical conditions, autism and other issues from home whilst being incredibly productive and high performing. When u worked in an office five days a week I usually was signed off work for 1-2 months a year with severe burnout and stress. I go into the office once a month which works perfectly for me and means I can stay in employment. For those who don’t have an understanding employer they’ll end up leaving their jobs and most likely have to claim benefits to survive as offices are not built for anyone with a disability.
If your job is exclusively rattling a keyboard while staring at a screen and being on phone/teams calls. Then its highly likely that you can do that from home and not need to be in the office.
There are exceptions to this but for the majority of office workers there is no specific need to travel to work to do it. There are plenty of good reasons to spend time in the office with your co-workers but doing your actual work is rarely one of them.
For some people its better for them personally and that’s the way they prefer to work. I have some colleagues who didn’t like having to work from home all the time during Covid and were glad to be able to get back. But for most people we like the choice.
Enforced return to the office is usually due to poor management. They don’t trust people are working because they cant see them or they are just stuck in their ways and think their preferences should be imposed on everyone.
Any company that tried to force me to come back to the office on a permanent basis for no good reason would soon get my resignation as I would be immediately looking for another job.
In reality I think the majority of places have accepted and in many cases are enthusiastic about hybrid working and see that it is the future. The dinosaur companies will eventually adapt or die out.
The British “stiff upper lip” really just seems like being continually okay with getting kicked in the teeth. By both the government and corporations.
In my experience the people that like to wander around the office, chat, and don’t produce much are the loudest when it comes to talking about how being in the office isn’t that bad. Those of us that are more productive at home generally just get on with it and don’t make much noise.
The annoying thing is, the anti-wfh crowd is always just “Margaret, 60, likes to spend break times chatting with colleagues”
Fuck off Margaret, how about you just go in to the office then?
“i have no life outside of work, so I crave going back into the office”
I fucking hate the people pushing that narrative. Get a fucking dog.
It’s purely the Rees-Mogg loving CEOs realising they can’t measure dicks with each other by having a workhouse full of slaves, and consider WFH something exclusive to them. They do nothing when they WFH, and so assume you don’t either. The more quality of life you have, the more they know you’re aware there is better things in life than their grey soulless office jobs for shit money and no career development.
This is the only reason it’s happening.
Of course big businesses cant get their head around a happy worker is a good worker. This will all have been decided down the gentlemens club or the masons meetings when the property owners started complaining they arent making as many millions as they used to cus office leases are being ended.
As usual the working person gets dicked in the ass cus some mega wealthy cunt wants to make even more money for themselves
I’m guessing a lot of people will be forced to change jobs if they have moved to another part of the country. This is just sacking by stealth as is happening in the USA
A lot of employers don’t care that productivity increases at home or you can do the work in half the time. Managers/employers feel they own you and want you under the thumb in the office, it galls them you could do work in half the time and spend an hour doing something else when they can’t ‘monitor’ you – it doesn’t matter that the work was still done, it’s about control. That’s why there’s no point in finishing your work quickly in the office, you won’t be allowed to leave earlier and you won’t be paid any more. Hell, if lots of people can get the work done at home maybe some would start questioning the need for all the middle management at all. It’s no wonder they want you back in the office.
‘If they make me come in to my work place, where I am contracted to work, I’ll leave’
Good – free up more space in the job market for people who aren’t wet behind the ears and would happily take your place in this current climate.