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Employer changing the boundaries

NAS75504

The office I work at started operating an ‘agile’ working policy last month, whereby employees work a couple of pre-agreed days in the office, a couple at home. Working only a 4-day week means I only need to go in on Thursday. Though as you can imagine, after working from home since March 2020, this transition was tough for me, but I’ve started to get used it. But now things appear to have changed...

When agile working was first floated, my boss at the time said it would be very flexible, and even though it was important to show your face now and again, you could work some weeks solely from home if you needed to focus on a particularly demanding or time-precious job. One such job has just appeared in my schedule for Thursday. But after asking my current boss (the boss of my previous boss, who’s since left), he says I have to come in the office, stipulating that I must attend at least one day a week, no exceptions. Though I don’t like switching my Thursday routine, I would do it, but it’s now Wednesday and I don’t work Friday!

 I’ve tried to make the case that working in the office on this particular job would be harder and probably result in a poor result, because of the noise and distractions. He knows about my diagnosis, so why is he suddenly being so inflexible? Is there anything I can say or do about it? It’s not just the immediate situation I’m concerned about, it’s the ongoing uncertainty and inflexibility.

Sorry about the length of the post! Any advice welcome. By the way, I’m a copywriter at an advertising agency - probably why it’s so wordy :-)

Parents

  • What kind of organisation do you work for? Does it have a HR department? 

    Perhaps you need to consider what you need to be able to do your job well and put forward a case for a plan being set in stone as "reasonable adjustments". I think many people see us as functioning well amongst non-autistic peers and don't see the internal struggle we face to meet expectations. 

    When I started my new job in April, I had to change my usual lunch time from 12 because this team plan meetings at that time (why would anyone plan meetings at lunch time?!). I think a normal person would just accept lunch is no longer going to be at 12pm and move it to a different time but my internal emotional response to this change was really quite intense considering it is ONLY lunch time. I can rationalise this, I just can't easily adjust to it regardless! 

    Like you I would love a set day of the week in the office. I also only have one day as I'm a 3 day worker, but every week my day in changes. This bothered me less than the lunch hour because my previous pandemic-time job was entirely wfh so I didnt have a set routine anyway, but I still would like the predictability of a certain day being my day in. 

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  • What kind of organisation do you work for? Does it have a HR department? 

    Perhaps you need to consider what you need to be able to do your job well and put forward a case for a plan being set in stone as "reasonable adjustments". I think many people see us as functioning well amongst non-autistic peers and don't see the internal struggle we face to meet expectations. 

    When I started my new job in April, I had to change my usual lunch time from 12 because this team plan meetings at that time (why would anyone plan meetings at lunch time?!). I think a normal person would just accept lunch is no longer going to be at 12pm and move it to a different time but my internal emotional response to this change was really quite intense considering it is ONLY lunch time. I can rationalise this, I just can't easily adjust to it regardless! 

    Like you I would love a set day of the week in the office. I also only have one day as I'm a 3 day worker, but every week my day in changes. This bothered me less than the lunch hour because my previous pandemic-time job was entirely wfh so I didnt have a set routine anyway, but I still would like the predictability of a certain day being my day in. 

Children
  • in reply to M

    Thanks for your reply - my work set up sounds quite similar to yours. I have got an HR department, but hopefully I won’t need to go through them now. I gently reminded my boss about our pre-agreed “reasonable adjustments” - I.e. the flexibility to work on high focus jobs from home - and he completely changed his tune, saying, “where possible, please try to come into the office at least one day”.