Working From Home

On 19th July UK Government guidance to work from home ended. However, my social media feed is busy with recruiters and other professional services people stating their expectation that WFH will continue for them. It seems that most companies are accommodating this change. For example, Deloitte is giving all 20,000 of its employees in the UK the ability to choose to work from home forever as it embraces flexible working permanently. Expectation is building. Anecdotally, I am hearing of people turning down jobs they have been offered as the companies won’t allow them to work from home 5 days a week. I read in the Telegraph yesterday that employees have started bringing legal action and employment tribunals against their bosses following the end of the requirement to work from home https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/workers-sue-bosses-disability-discrimination-told-return-office/ On a personal level, I have predominately WFH for the last 5+ years. Don’t get me wrong, it has its advantages (most notably a huge reduction in my commuting times), however I do miss a number of things that I think are better when going into work and meeting people in the flesh, such as collaboration, celebrating successes and generally having a bit of fun whilst you work.

Things in the manufacturing world are not so simple as for others in different sectors. Most of my manufacturing leader network continued going into their factories as normal throughout the pandemic. Clearly people on the shop-floor also continued going in to carry out their critical roles, though many people in support functions such as finance, HR and marketing have been WFH. Now, manufacturing leaders tell me they are experiencing real challenges with ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ cultures with those able to WFH and others that can’t. They also tell me this is starting to affect them attracting talent.

I am really interested to hear the thoughts and experiences of my manufacturing leader connections on this issue..