WFH is dead and buried. Right to WFH bill is pointless

It does not make it untrue, either.

Some managers will believe the team work better at the office and some do not. Same also for the staff.

None of it really matters.

All that matters is the contract you signed and the working conditions attached to it.

When its matter of belief or a manager needs to stand behind people to get work done and know if work is being done. That's a workplace and a manager and management that doesn't measure output or have any metric for WFH or in the Office.

Because they hardly stand behind every desk 100% of the time. Which means the whole idea is a bust.

But it is true that arguing metrics in such an environment or such people is entirely pointless. It will fall back to what's in the contract.

Yes I understand VPNs very well but the point was that neither my previous or current work place had a VPN requirement or provided one for accessing emails, files etc because were all commercial cloud based rather than private servers. In the previous role the only exception was some specific (and very expensive) softwares that had a central licence server in the US for all world sites and the handful of people using that needed to vpn to that server to use the software even if working on-site.

The root cause of low productivity while working from home is lack of motivation. The top companies who have good review structures and have good recognition and reward system don't need to monitor productivity and force RTO. The poor performers are generally managed out of these companies. Unfortunately most companies are not like this and have poor management from the top down which leads to forcing everyone back to offices as managers are incapable of tackling the employee who does not adhere to RTO policies.

I think you are on the same side as many on here, we have just been side tracked by a comment about cloud versus VPN access.

I think there was a comment above about the "technology struggles" for smaller companies for remote working. I suppose a few years ago you might have been able to argue that a company couldn't afford to have a VPN server, despite what you and I both know which is it's never been easier to set up a VPN. However, most companies are now moving to the likes of Office365 which doesn't need a VPN. Like you, I would argue that many companies saying VPN access is a must when actually it is not, it is just down to ignorance on the part of individual managers(or is being used as an excuse).

Not entirely off-topic, just a different slant, a number of years ago I was having a chat with my dad about work. When he was my age, he had:

• A mortgage from his employer for the house he lived in
• A company car
• A secretary
• Two assistants

I pointed out to him that if he was doing the same job today, he'd get at most a laptop and a blackberry, and he could say goodbye to the other benefits including the secretary. In fact, Ive not had a work mobile that was issued to me in about 11 years. Considering most companies require you to have a smart phone, it's sadly funny that most now assume you have one already so dont offer it.

Nope its got nothing to do with the cloud or accessing internal networks or servers. I'm NOT talking about requiring a VPN for remote access vs cloud.

Its about forcing all activity through the VPN. So everything can be tracked.

Nothing to do with access.

You dont need to use a VPN to track users. I'm not advocating tracking employees habits, but if management is pushing return to office to do so, then it still boils down to stupid, lazy or ignorant management.

Thats too much work for some managers. They prefer the easier option of looking at a spreadsheet of who was in the office and who was not. It's all getting rather petty.

At this point I really can't tell what side of this discussion you are on.

I started working remotely fully during Covid (though despite what may be claimed by others, remote working was a thing long before COVID).

The general way to handle fulltime remote working by all employees was exactly as you described. A daily stand up meeting around 9 or 9.30. I assumed it was a subtle way of making sure everyone had gotten up during WFH!

Ive worked in places where daily-standup meetings were thing long before covid, and for places where everyone was in the office.

If you are a SCRUM master, or a project manager, then your day is just going to be wall to wall meetings anyway. If you are a people manager, or one of the aforementioned lazy, uninspired ones, continuing with a daily stand-up(every single day!) might seem too arduous, instead, force everyone back to the office and then just assume they are working while they are in the office.

@PatMcGoo you sound like the type of manager Id like by the way.

Its not unusual for me to be the only person in a meeting actually in the office. Feels ironic.