Forced back to the office?

If your employer demanded your return to the office...

  • I'd go back to the office

    Votes: 185 50.1%

  • I'd resign

    Votes: 71 19.2%

  • I cannot speculate

    Votes: 46 12.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 67 18.2%
  • Total voters
    369
We worked right through. Perhaps a week to get the essential services documentation sorted. 3 weeks for our staff to be back on the various sites.
 
I wouldn't call it "forced". Working in offices has been a part of employment and business since the 18th century. Despite our advantages to the contrary, many people and companies work better on premise. So these companies are merely returning to the normal operations before the pandemic and expecting their staff to do the same. if it wasn't for COVID-19 offices wouldn't have just randomly closed and sent people home. It was an extenuating circumstance.
 
R13... said:
Maybe so you are on hand in case you are needed to quickly get to a site? Assume that's what you do? Support customers?
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None of us deal with the public. We are a software development/maintenance company. Our clients are other businesses.

Even while working from the office, we never went to any of our clients' offices.

We don't have any of our own techies to support our own hardware, that is outsourced.

We can literally work from anywhere in the world, all we need is an internet connection. It just doesn't add up why they put the "stay in the province your house is in" clause in there. It further states that we have to request leave should we not be at the residence that the company has of you.

I'm not sure whether any of my colleagues actually pay mind to any of what is in that contract, because one of us is currently in the UK. :ROFL:

I, myself, also regularly work from a different province. There's no way they can reliably know my location based on my IP, and should they ask, I'll just say my fibre is down so I'm using LTE. Tsek :thumbsup:
 
Luckily we are being consulted as to what everyone wants.

But it's looking like the classic hybrid model - 50% split between home and office.

I mean sure, it's been fun'ish, but we used to go to the office 100%, so anything less is a bonus for me
 
We are given the choice to work from home or go back, but working from home should be ticking all the boxes. ( Stable internet, office space adequate to work in, quiet environment ..etc etc. )

I go into the office every now and then.

Currently, the company admitted to seeing a better work environment and productivity has gone up
 
George Netherby said:
We worked right through. Perhaps a week to get the essential services documentation sorted. 3 weeks for our staff to be back on the various sites.
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Mrs Netherby never has to go back f she doesn't want to. She does want to, but only 2 days a week.
 
Already done by us but hybrid.

Two days in the office, three wherever.

Already finding it great with face-2-face back again as too many people struggled to communicate effectively online. Ironic that it is the under 35s that struggled. Hearing the same from other companies.
 
I have been lucky to work from home from around 2017as much of my work is with teams in the Middle East and East Africa.
Going to the office doesnt really mean much as the only one in my team available is the boss.
 
Other Pineapple Smurf said:
Already finding it great with face-2-face back again as too many people struggled to communicate effectively online. Ironic that it is the under 35s that struggled. Hearing the same from other companies.
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I don't want to make fun of one of my colleagues accent, but he used to send me an email and then would come to my desk to explain what he wanted. Even when he explained what he wrote in the email I still could not understand and I would just say ja and amen to get him away from me.

The accent was only part of the problem, his breath smelled like schit! :oops:
 
Other Pineapple Smurf said:
Already finding it great with face-2-face back again as too many people struggled to communicate effectively online. Ironic that it is the under 35s that struggled. Hearing the same from other companies.
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That is surely due to them having a lack of experience. And young twitter-like comms can't be helping.
 
neoprema said:
I wouldn't call it "forced". Working in offices has been a part of employment and business since the 18th century. Despite our advantages to the contrary, many people and companies work better on premise. So these companies are merely returning to the normal operations before the pandemic and expecting their staff to do the same. if it wasn't for COVID-19 offices wouldn't have just randomly closed and sent people home. It was an extenuating circumstance.
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What do you call it when for nearly 5 years before 2020, I had been working from home. Then two years during the pandemic. Same company throughout, then tells me I have to go back to the office.

I'll tell you what I said to them, but it might offend your delicate sensibilities.
 
I suppose all those wanting staff back in the offices will be "obliged" to insist they're vaxxed too? Starting to smell a disguised rat, maybe the only way grabbamint can get more to go for it.
 
Go back to the office if they ask.

If you don't like it, quit. They'll find a replacement for you in a heartbeat who WILL happily go into the office.

#just_how_it_is
 
The_Ogre said:
A silly thing they put in our new contracts was that we are not allow to work from other provinces. I do not know what the logic behind that decision was.
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Why were you asked to sign a new contract? Curious about legal reasons one can get an existing employee to sign a new agreement, if the juristic entity did not close.

Trying to find out if there is a way our company could force us to do the same for some stuff in our contracts (beneficial to us employees) that they don't want to pay anymore.
 
r4nd0m said:
I get this and I have seen this personally. Not everyone has the capability to focus and actually get stuff done. Even with monitoring, you spend more effort in getting output from them.

What irks me is that to keep up the illusion of 'fairness', a wide brush is painted on everyone.

Why must performant and responsible individuals be curtailed because some bad apples need to be watched? Get the bad apples in and tell them the truth. If they're such dismal performers, why this grand facade to keep them in the first place?
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This is why sometimes the Amazon model works. Everyone knows exactly where the hell they stand.

We mollycoddle too much. It was because of this, everyone was asked to come back.

We have been back in office for 16 months already, but I realised I do prefer coming to office. Nothing beats having a random conversation about challenges ,etc instead of teams meetings.

In any case, we are blowing our competitors out of water as we have been back in office and in field for so long while they were still at home.

We do have the option to work one day from home. I would hope we could get three depending on our performance. Maybe something to ask HR
 
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