London: the unlockening/relockening

[Winot]

I know someone who recently started working in the civil service and it seems they don't really want people to come in - they have reduced the amount of office space available and made it hotdesking for everyone but the more senior people. There's not physically space for everyone to come in at the same time, you have to book a desk in advance and as a result it's not possible to sit with the team that you are actually working with.

That's the Whitehall office - it seems that their offices in other places outside of London are a bit more relaxed and have better attendance.

One factor seems to be that quite a lot of the more senior people nominally working in the London office have actually moved out of London in the past few years and it's now quite time consuming and expensive for them to come in.

Mrs W's department sold off a lot of space before the pandemic and had booking/hotdesking. But since lockdown reopening there is an edict from on high to work an average of 60% in the office. It's not being followed so the consequence is that it's easy to find a desk and sit with your team (if they're in).

The other thing that's happened is a push to get more people to work in offices outside of London (a good thing imo). There's effectively a recruitment freeze in London. So teams are effectively split across 2-3 sites which means all meetings are online - which dissaudes people from coming into the office in person.

 

[Pickman's model]

I know someone who recently started working in the civil service and it seems they don't really want people to come in - they have reduced the amount of office space available and made it hotdesking for everyone but the more senior people. There's not physically space for everyone to come in at the same time, you have to book a desk in advance and as a result it's not possible to sit with the team that you are actually working with.

That's the Whitehall office - it seems that their offices in other places outside of London are a bit more relaxed and have better attendance.

One factor seems to be that quite a lot of the more senior people nominally working in the London office have actually moved out of London in the past few years and it's now quite time consuming and expensive for them to come in.

My impression is that the more senior people don't really get it that a quite alienating work environment has been created for the younger folk who might have a less comfortable home setup and who actually want to live in London rather than two hours away.

I still think there's an understimation of the long term effects (in all sorts of organisations) of the experienced staff hiding away in their comfortable home offices.

One thing that report says/claims is that London has a different age profile to other cities - in London there's a marked tendency for the older staff to be less likely to come in, while in other cities they are actually more likely to come in than the younger ones.

Sounds like your friend has started working in the highest echelons of the civil service

 

[kabbes]

Environmentally, it seems madness to travel (and consume) unnecessarily. So it seems to me that rather than (a) try to turn back the clock; or (b) wail and moan, we instead need to find a way to address the problems that arise through home working in the context that it’s here to stay. A big part of the problem I’ve seen to date is that management are still in denial about this, so they’re unwilling to undertake any initiative at all that would indirectly validate WFH as an option.

 

[kabbes]

To add to the above: I do recognise that it is difficult to solve the problems. But, for example, lots of of the people I work actually live within 30-40 minutes of me. Instead of us all travelling every day into a place 60-120 minutes away from all of us, what if work places were willing to be imaginative about using this kind of small-group regional proximity on a flexible basis? I don’t know if that could work, but I do know that even having a conversation about it would be considered taboo right now.

 

[pbsmooth]

As above everyone in my office has settled into doing 2/3 days. Younger people more likely to do more days. A few outliers but most people do recognise the benefits of coming into the office - work and social benefits. But we are talking about teams who used to do 5 days.
The issue that doesn’t get solved is the fact the office space required to allow everyone to be in on a Thursday but nobody in on a Friday is quite inefficient for the bean counters. Not to mention all the businesses around offices.

 

[teuchter]

The other thing that's happened is a push to get more people to work in offices outside of London (a good thing imo). There's effectively a recruitment freeze in London. So teams are effectively split across 2-3 sites which means all meetings are online - which dissaudes people from coming into the office in person.

Yes, that matches with what I've been told.

It might be a good thing to have offices outside of London ... but it seems silly to have teams spread across different offices because as you say that gives no-one an incentive to come into the office. It would make more sense to have teams based together in the same office surely.

 

[teuchter]

But, for example, lots of of the people I work actually live within 30-40 minutes of me. Instead of us all travelling every day into a place 60-120 minutes away from all of us, what if work places were willing to be imaginative about using this kind of small-group regional proximity on a flexible basis?

Isn't the problem with this that that 60% of the people you work with might be 30-40mins away, but the other 40% might be 3 hours away?

In the end this is why cities exist ... a place that is central to the largest number of people.

I've observed something like this in reverse - academic institutions that are located outside of London where 75% of a research team actually lives in London. And since Covid, most of them simply never go to the institution that employs them, instead doing everything by video call or maybe informally meeting in London. This seems to defeat the purpose of a physical institution and to some extent the point of a university (clue somewhat being in the name).

 

[Sue]

I work in an international company. My immediate team is in the US (three different locations including both East and West coasts), Europe and a couple of us are in the UK. (Just me in London though.) The wider teams I work with are spread across three different European countries and various US locations.

So I go into the office maybe one day a week but that's optional -- I'm there really for the social interaction or if I've something on in Central London in the evening. It's actually really easy for me to get to the office -- it's a bus ride away and the stop is right outside my office but I'm less productive when I'm there so...

Some teams go into the office a lot more but that's because they're in the same location. I think it works pretty well and gives a lot of flexibility.

To add to the above: I do recognise that it is difficult to solve the problems. But, for example, lots of of the people I work actually live within 30-40 minutes of me. Instead of us all travelling every day into a place 60-120 minutes away from all of us, what if work places were willing to be imaginative about using this kind of small-group regional proximity on a flexible basis? I don’t know if that could work, but I do know that even having a conversation about it would be considered taboo right now.

A good 15 years ago, I was in a team where we did this. Instead of going into the office in London, we met at a local office as it was much more convenient for all of us.

 

[Winot]

Yes, that matches with what I've been told.

It might be a good thing to have offices outside of London ... but it seems silly to have teams spread across different offices because as you say that gives no-one an incentive to come into the office. It would make more sense to have teams based together in the same office surely.

Yes but the teams predate Covid so in order to increase numbers outside London and keep the teams together you'd have to forcibly relocate people.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

In the end this is why cities exist ... a place that is central to the largest number of people.

Yes but the teams predate Covid so in order to increase numbers outside London and keep the teams together you'd have to forcibly relocate people.

yes.

a London job (not exactly central London) I had a few years ago, we had me (from near Reading) and other team members from near Southend, Rugby, mid Sussex, Watford, the Kent Coast as well as people more local. Anywhere 'outside London' would have ruled some of us out.

i don't know what the answer is. my current job started in early 2022 on mostly wfh-ing, which was then a 'temporary' arrangement and is now formalised (expectation is to get there minimum of one day a month). i've found it fairly hard to get the hang of the fuzzier bits of the job that you usually pick up on an informal basis by hearing what's going on in the office / talking informally to people.

on the other paw, i'm not out of the house for 12 hours a day to do an 'office hours' job or longer whenever there's a cock up on the railway...

 

[teuchter]

Yes but the teams predate Covid so in order to increase numbers outside London and keep the teams together you'd have to forcibly relocate people.

Are these teams that pre-Covid would all have worked in the London office? What seems to have happened (at least in some cases) is that during the Covid phase, members of those teams relocated out of London, without there having been any formal agreement, in the long term, about expectations for coming into the office.

And now that they are re-located, something they chose to do, they are reluctant to come in because, predictably, it's expensive and time-consuming.

Because they tend to be the more senior employees, they have some leverage and so they can kind of get away with it. But this seems to be somewhat at the expense of others.

 

[Winot]

Are these teams that pre-Covid would all have worked in the London office? What seems to have happened (at least in some cases) is that during the Covid phase, members of those teams relocated out of London, without there having been any formal agreement, in the long term, about expectations for coming into the office.

Not really. More like Team A works in London, then Person 1 (who works for Team B in Birmingham) applies for job with Team A (during Covid) and gets it so now Team A is split even if Person 1 goes into Birmingham office.

Since then there's a been a recruitment freeze in London so if there's a gap in Team A it can only be filled by someone from Birmingham (or Leeds) office.

 

[kabbes]

Isn't the problem with this that that 60% of the people you work with might be 30-40mins away, but the other 40% might be 3 hours away?

It is, at least in principle. But in practice, circumstances on the ground will vary. The way to cope with it is surely to trust people to find the best solutions that work for them, rather than to presuppose a template to be imposed on everyone? But that requires letting go of management theories based on control and distrust.

In the end this is why cities exist ... a place that is central to the largest number of people.

The problem is that they can actually just be places that are inconvenient for everyone.

It may be that a team arranges to meet in small groups in different places every day, for example.

 

[pbsmooth]

work isn’t the only reason (young) people want to move to cities, of course. so saying, ‘good news, our office is now in Swindon!’, isn’t going to work for lots of people and companies.