Being forced to move back to dublin to work from the office 4 out of 5 days.

Would you take a pay cut to be allowed wht days a week? the rent savings would make it possaible i imagine.

This nonsense again? Plenty of places have full WFH and more have majority WFH and lots of people get promoted from those availing of WFH. Productivity is easily enough measured for those working on site, in office or from home in most jobs

This has nothing to do with the OP’s issue though. If your company is requesting you to be in an office, your choices are to be in the office, or leave the job.

If you're not going to the office and your colleagues are, then definitely, without a doubt you have less chance of advancement. You can call it nonsense to comfort yourself all you want, but being socially available and outgoing is more important when it comes to getting higher level positions. You can quietly do your job at home and hit all your targets, but ultimately unless you are irreplaceable (vast majority of people are replaceable) then they're not going to promote you if you opt to stay home because it just looks bad. They'll think you are good at the kind of job that doesn't require in-person interaction, which doesn't apply to high level positions.

But who am I only a line manager and professional in a firm of specialist consultants, who have spent the last 18 months considering the implications of longer term 'working from home' and greater demand from our people for precisely that.

There’s no need for that. For instance, I’m Batman, and this is the Internet, where anyone can claim to be whomever and whatever they want, it’s irrelevant and doesn’t make their argument.

That being said…

Family friendly policies have to be for everyone, no matter what there status is. Otherwise it is discrimination. The source who have suggested it is discrimination is the irish legislation, namely the Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015. A person is said to be discriminated against if they are treated less favourably than another is, has been or would be treated in a comparable situation on any of the nine grounds. Family status is one of the nine grounds.

It’s not quite so clear cut as that either. Certainly it’s discrimination, but whether the policy amounts to unlawful discrimination (be it either direct or indirect discrimination), is what matters. The employer should be able to demonstrate the legitimate aim of the policy, and the Acts permit positive action. The OP is not at any disadvantage because of their family status, they are at a disadvantage because of their proximity to their workplace. They are not being treated unfairly as all employees are subject to the same conditions, and those employees with children are not being treated unfairly either. That’s notwithstanding the fact that the OP doesn’t have children who they are responsible for, and other employees do, so their circumstances aren’t similar on the family status grounds either.

The last thing I’d recommend doing in the OP’s circumstances is to go claiming they are the victim of unlawful discrimination by their employer, and instead would suggest they sit down with their manager and try and work out a more reasonable and amicable solution. It’s a tough spot to be in, but there’s no need to make matters worse by being antagonistic towards their current employer.

So the company wanted people to come in for at least one day a week.

You and others ignored that extremely reasonable request.

They are now taking a stricter line, most likely due to the non adhering to the previous policy.

The issue seems to be in the mirror.

Happening in a lot of places certainly.

Pity they don't spend as much time on productivity metrics as they do on presenteesim.

But you have to work with the system you're given.

Have to agree though with others though that if the corporate will is to get people back on the office playing the discrimination card will not a be a good long term play.

Positive discrimination is not illegal, only the negative discrimination is. Don't be jealous ;) In your case, it doesn't effect you that someone else in the company can work home more days. That's none of your business and just the heads up that you shouldn't discuss it with anyone within the company as it's unethical. Your work place is as stated in the contract. If you don't agree with that, you should consider changing the employer to something closer to your home place, or move closer to your work 😉

Obsessively focused on things that have nothing to do with productivity says all you need to know.

Trade unions are bad for our economy. Employees should work more and complain less. If an employer expects the employees to work in office, so that's what they should do, but instead they are being nosy and gossiping around about who has exceptions, even though it has nothing to do with them directly. If they don't like the request, it's time to look for another job.

If the union gets the employees access to better terms and conditions it has everything to do with them.

That's true and appreciated. But it's way too often when I see unions being too greedy in regards to wanting more weight and power. It has to be a healthy balance. I have little respect to unions as they make feel employees immune from being let go, even if it would themselves at fault of something... This makes a company which should focus to making business, partly a social club trying to accommodate everyone and being way too cautious about everyone's feelings trying to keep relationships between the employees and the employer good. This makes employees lazy and too sensitive, instead of focusing to work, efficiency and improvement.

Does this actually happen, or are we talking about 1980s stereotypes from UK sitcoms? I'm not aware of any situations were unions have developed an immunity for staff from being fired. What kinds of organisations do you this happening in?

Ha, ha. I've you'd ever done any actual productivity measurement you'd know that it's far from simple.

The company has developed a KPI which gives credit for correctly working out leads/cases that will never show a profit and closing them fast, and credit for effectively resolving the very profitable ones, even though they can have some big legislative delays which look unproductive. They believe it's the best performance measure they've ever had . I don't really understand all the calculations behind it - and neither do the case-handlers, which is causing some problems in applying it.

Ironically, they've also found that % of assigned cases with an update each day gives a close-enough proxy for the fancy KPI. This is absolutely activity, not productivity - but it's quick to calculate, and transparent Leads to some interesting discussions.

OP how often did you do the 1 day a week in the office or did you ignore it completely since it was brought in? We have a specific day they want everyone in on as it's easier to do any group meetings & to try to get some company culture back after so long with everyone remote. There's a recognition that that day isn't always possible for everyone (I do meetings in other offices for example so won't always be able to be in my home office), however they want you there more than not. At first it was only that day that you had to come in but now we have a 3 in the office, 2 at home policy. Some have negotiated other arrangements with their managers but that is on an ad hoc basis if their managers are willing.

Look it was a gamble to move so far away from your office in the hope you could work permanent from home but realistically you should have maybe had that conversation with management before this came in. There's someone in my Dublin office who moved a good distance away during Covid (back to family area with their own family) but at the time of moving, had a discussion with their manager about what the setup would be when normal office work resumed. They do 2 days max in the office now but that was sorted long before everyone came back.

Lots of us have retained WFH and I intend to keep it that way.

There are plenty of companies offering hybrid or fully remote work. If my company tried to force us back into the office I'd leave and get work elsewhere - so would many of my colleagues.

Maybe if you and your colleagues hadn't rolled over you might be enjoying a similar level of flexibility.

If I started a company in the morning, it would be a bit rich of I didn't have the right to choose whether or not my employees could work from home.

I think OP should push a bit further in the first instance without the threat of resignations.

Maybe (ignorantly) say you know of person x, y etc (in and email) who have the privilege and say there is a precedent. They might not be willing to put the "cos they've a family" bit in an email tho.

I guarantee you nobody has *written* that policy

But they did ask him to go in 4 days a month. He was asked to do 1 day in the office a week and ignored the request.

Why should his boss believe him that he'll definitely do 2 days a week?

I also think that working from home is now here to stay, and all in all it is a great thing, which I massively appreciate myself. That said, I think that some people really need to get a grip on themselves.

OP, you were asked to come in to the office one day a week, which you refused. I do not mean any offence at all, but to speak bluntly you must be genuinely living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that was a reasonable thing to do.

If it was the other way round, say they asked for four days out of five in the office, then I could somewhat see where you are coming from. The fact that you did not agree to even coming back in one day a week though could very well have set a tone which will not be agreeable to you in the future. Such as you seem to be seeing right now.