What are your thoughts on home/hybrid working?

[Matt N]

After years of primarily in-person working, the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new world of home working. Even with some return-to-office drives, recent estimates suggest that just over 40% of the UK population has some degree of home working involved in their job. This new innovation of widespread home and hybrid working is divisive; some like home working, feeling that it improves wellbeing and makes people more productive, while others dislike home working due to the isolated nature and feeling that people are less productive and exploit it for their own means. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; what are your thoughts on home/hybrid working? If you have the choice, what is your favoured working style? Are you a fan of full working from home? Are you a fan of full office working? Or does a blend of the two work better for you?

Personally, I can see the benefits of home working, but perhaps controversially for someone my age, I don’t think I could do a fully remote job and would want some degree of office attendance in my calendar. In my last job, I worked in the office 2 days a week, and this suited me well. It meant that I didn’t have to commute into the city every day and could have some quieter working days at home where it was just myself and my work, but it also meant that I still got to know my team and felt like a part of the team, and that I didn’t feel too isolated. I looked forward to my office days, and I did find that when I was in the office, I quite valued having chance conversations with my colleagues about different work things as I felt like I learned about things in a way I wouldn’t have working purely from home. As much as I’m an introvert and value my own space and time to myself, I think I would find a fully remote job too insular, and I found that going into an office a couple of times a week and having that occasional social interaction with my colleagues did improve my wellbeing.

The job I’m waiting to start has an advertised 60% office attendance requirement, but my team sounds a lot more geographically distributed than my old one and I’m told they are resultantly “flexible” on office attendance, so I’ll have to see how I find attending the office in the context of not having a team based predominantly in one location as I did before. But currently, I’m sceptical on whether I’d enjoy full home working and am an advocate of having some office attendance in the working calendar.

I’d be interested to know; what are your thoughts on home/hybrid working, if your profession offers you the option? Or even if your profession doesn’t offer you the option, I’d still be interested in knowing whether you’d value being able to work from home!

 

[CanobieFan]

Not available for my Job

Although a lot of my friends who have the ability to work fully remote have eventually opted for hybrid, just to get out of their houses. If I was in the position to be able to work remote I'm not sure if I would be committed to doing it 100% because I feel like I would miss the social aspect of it all. But I've also never really had traditional jobs

 

[Burniel]

Started a job in a traditionally office-based industry about 3 years ago, have been hybrid throughout and always found it strikes about the right balance. While many aspects of my job can more easily be done without the distractions of a busy office, there are definitely some collaborative activities that are better (and nicer) to do face-to-face.

I do think there are different flavours of hybrid to watch out for though. "Come in as often as you want/need in order to get the job done" is a very different proposition to "you must be in on these specific two/three/four days every week".

 

[Nicky Borrill]

I kind of have no choice, I cannot escape working at home. My home is my work place.

I do wish I could work remotely too though, as in whilst travelling. This would have been possible in my previous career, maybe I'll go back to that one day.