Employees will have right to request remote working under new laws - Irish Examiner

techdiver

I Irish Examiner are reporting that the government are drawing up legislation as part of the "Making Remote Work: National Remote Work Strategy".

It could be one good thing to come out of the disaster that is covid. Employers have been shown that remote working can and does work in roles where it is possible and resistance to it has no basis anymore.

Some employers, including mine have been quite flexible on this front for many years, but as someone who still commuted 3 days a week for the midlands top Dublin I feel I have gotten my life back again during the pandemic. I would dread the thoughts of returning to the same grind again after all of this and fully intend to negotiate more days at home.

The full article is here:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40207493.html

listermint

Element of this but Element of be careful what you wish for. Jobs can just as easily be off shored at far lower cost again.

I don't know how I fully feel about this.

techdiver

listermint wrote: »

Element of this but Element of be careful what you wish for. Jobs can just as easily be off shored at far lower cost again.

I don't know how I fully feel about this.

I understand the concern, but offshoring isn't as easy as just setting up a guy in a house in Bangalore. It's more nuanced than that. Also, we have been hearing about offshoring in one form or another for years and if anything the opposite has happened in many cases. There is more to cost than salary.

gaming_needs90

techdiver wrote: »

I understand the concern, but offshoring isn't as easy as just setting up a guy in a house in Bangalore. It's more nuanced than that. Also, we have been hearing about offshoring in one form or another for years and if anything the opposite has happened in many cases. There is more to cost than salary.

I work in quite a niche and specialised engineering field and as the poster above describes, offshoring is not that simple.

We have thousands of people working in Bangalore and it seems to work, but just about. There are cost savings compared to an Irish site (major savings vs US site) but there are major drawbacks. There is an extreme turnover rate in general (Common in tech due to the proliferation of companies) which hampers projects but, more importantly, there appears to be a general culture of "hiding" things from management IMO. This is simply due to each company site competing with each other for investment and resources.

"You can definitely do this project by X"
"Absolutely."

X date comes.

"Oh, unfortunately we need more time"

on and on

There are a lot of 'soft' barriers to offshoring that hurt businesses. On paper it may look great but then the practicalities hit.

I suppose you could say the same about eir's new call centre in Sligo :pac:

listermint

techdiver wrote: »

I understand the concern, but offshoring isn't as easy as just setting up a guy in a house in Bangalore. It's more nuanced than that. Also, we have been hearing about offshoring in one form or another for years and if anything the opposite has happened in many cases. There is more to cost than salary.

Lads I'm fully versed in off shoring back to front. I'm also fully versed in the costs.

Equally I'm fully versed in how wages rise to the surface with these decisions.

It has to be a concern only the fool hardy would think their skills aren't replaceable and or that even if their matched 40 percent companies would be happy getting half the effort at one tenth the cost. They make it up throwing head count at it.


Don't be complacent.

listermint

gaming_needs90 wrote: »

I work in quite a niche and specialised engineering field and as the poster above describes, offshoring is not that simple.

We have thousands of people working in Bangalore and it seems to work, but just about. There are cost savings compared to an Irish site (major savings vs US site) but there are major drawbacks. There is an extreme turnover rate in general (Common in tech due to the proliferation of companies) which hampers projects but, more importantly, there appears to be a general culture of "hiding" things from management IMO. This is simply due to each company site competing with each other for investment and resources.

"You can definitely do this project by X"
"Absolutely."

X date comes.

"Oh, unfortunately we need more time"

on and on

There are a lot of 'soft' barriers to offshoring that hurt businesses. On paper it may look great but then the practicalities hit.

I suppose you could say the same about eir's new call centre in Sligo :pac:

Fully agreed and have suffered similar outcomes several times over.

But that doesn't negate the fact that the same off shoring keeps occuring. It always looks great on paper to the financial pullers in HQ. And that's generally the highest concern.

It's become less so recently but on the flip side off shoring firms have increased their quality . Its not ten years ago now where they have to be micro managed to the nth degree. I've seen both sides of the coin.

gaming_needs90

listermint wrote: »

Lads I'm fully versed in off shoring back to front. I'm also fully versed in the costs.

Equally I'm fully versed in how wages rise to the surface with these decisions.

It has to be a concern only the fool hardy would think their skills aren't replaceable and or that even if their matched 40 percent companies would be happy getting half the effort at one tenth the cost. They make it up throwing head count at it.


Don't be complacent.

Depends on the industry really. In tech just throwing engineers at a project rarely has the desired effect. There is a famous book about this exact phenomenon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

I agree in general though that there is no room for complacency. Leo was on RTE and basically said this, but also alluded to the fact that we would be better off ahead of the curve as apposed to behind it.

KaneToad

This should have been done years ago. It helps with so many of our issues...

Environment
Housing
Infrastructure
Schools
Health
Work Life Balance
Transport
Sustainable communities
Elderly living in own communities for longer

It's a no brainer. If anything the 20% objective is too low. If it is not significantly higher then a lot of the above issues will not improve. People will not be able to move away from the sprawling Greater Dublin area just because they have 1 day working remotely.

We should have a balanced growth across all our major cities and towns.

Successive govt have failed dismally at decentralising depts under their direct control. This new objective may follow a similar path, I fear.

Naos

listermint wrote: »

Lads I'm fully versed in off shoring back to front. I'm also fully versed in the costs.

Equally I'm fully versed in how wages rise to the surface with these decisions.

It has to be a concern only the fool hardy would think their skills aren't replaceable and or that even if their matched 40 percent companies would be happy getting half the effort at one tenth the cost. They make it up throwing head count at it.


Don't be complacent.

What's stopping companies doing it now?

FinishingTime

listermint wrote: »

Element of this but Element of be careful what you wish for. Jobs can just as easily be off shored at far lower cost again.

I don't know how I fully feel about this.

Listermint fear you may be right... At the end of this pandemic there will be bills need paying & a quote from an economist i heard on the radio about people thinking they are in a Brave new working world not knowing that they have already lost their jobs... it may only become obvious at the end of all this & then become be a grim reality.

The Spider

Should have been done years ago, I work in tech so may be different, but the amount of people from 'down' the country who had to move to Dublin for jobs and found themselves stuck in not only rental traps but sharing houses with complete strangers and having worse lives than people from their home counties, towns or cities who never went to college and had jobs in bars or whatever but still managed to buy houses in their home towns is astonishing, god knows if I had the option back in the early 2000's to work from and move home I would've jumped on it.

Ireland being Dublin centric has meant that people with what would be considered decent jobs, have nothing to show for it after years of work, and living in rental accomodation, work should allow you to better your living situation and not live month to month. And all those people moving up from the country put huge pressure on house prices so that many Dubs were priced out of living in their hometown.

And lets not get started on the misery of the commute in the mornings for people who did manage to buy a house, but its miles from where they work.

Outsourcing has been around for years I dont see it changing that every company will now head to India for staff, not going to happen, if anything this will even things up around companies that paid lower wages but offered work from home as a perk, people who put careers on hold or took jobs less than what they would have been able to achieve in Dublin will now have the chance to take those jobs.

And finally on companies outsourcing, if your staff are based in ireland, but not Dublin, its still easy enough to get people into the office a few days a month for face to face comms.

Mrs OBumble

KaneToad wrote: »

This should have been done years ago. It helps with so many of our issues...

Environment
Housing
Infrastructure
Schools
Health
Work Life Balance
Transport
Sustainable communities
Elderly living in own communities for longer

It's a no brainer. If anything the 20% objective is too low. If it is not significantly higher then a lot of the above issues will not improve. People will not be able to move away from the sprawling Greater Dublin area just because they have 1 day working remotely.

We should have a balanced growth across all our major cities and towns.

Successive govt have failed dismally at decentralising depts under their direct control. This new objective may follow a similar path, I fear.

Except that very few homes rely have adequate facilities for long term remote working.

I'm not even talking broadband. Just lockable rooms that will only be accessed by the employee.

The Spider

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Except that very few homes rely have adequate facilities for long term remote working.

I'm not even talking broadband. Just lockable rooms that will only be accessed by the employee.

Absolute nonsense, last time I checked 99.9percent of offices in Dublin dont have individual lockable rooms for employees either, they have open plan offices with everyone on top of each other, with a desk and a few drawers you can lock, in fact you'll more than likely have more privacy at home than you would in an office.

Outkast_IRE

The government should give a small tax break for both employers and employees to encourage this as it will help carbon targets, roads , public transport, health benefits etc.

listermint

gaming_needs90 wrote: »

Depends on the industry really. In tech just throwing engineers at a project rarely has the desired effect. There is a famous book about this exact phenomenon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

I agree in general though that there is no room for complacency. Leo was on RTE and basically said this, but also alluded to the fact that we would be better off ahead of the curve as apposed to behind it.

Agreed. But the strategy would have to be all encompassing. Tax benefits. Green credentials because of minimised carbon etc.

If people are coming up with a strategy around this I hope they round it out entirely.

Mrs OBumble

The Spider wrote: »

Absolute nonsense, last time I checked 99.9percent of offices in Dublin dont have individual lockable rooms for employees either, they have open plan offices with everyone on top of each other, with a desk and a few drawers you can lock, in fact you'll more than likely have more privacy at home than you would in an office.

No: they just have policies that say employees-only in working areas, and visitors must be accompanied by an employee at all times, and escorted from the building. It's really painful lurking outside a toilet block waiting for someone, but I've had to do it more than once.

This week, I've been taking support from employees in a SME organisation that's currently 100% WFH. Quite a few clearly had children in the background (wouldn't be acceptable in non-pandemic times). About 30% had woeful broadband, which was the cause of their issue. I had to parrot the "you need to contact your broadband provider, or get an alternative one" line - knowing full well that in some cases there are no better alternatives in the places these folks are living. Two told me they were sitting at the kitchen table - ergonomics, yeah!

Augme

For a lot of people there are definitely significant gdpr and privacy concerns. In a pandemic they are easier to ignore given the lack of an alternative but once over they will be harder to ignore.

caviardreams

Surely it would be "reasonable" for an employer to say - you can work from home 3 days a week, but you need to be on-site for the purposes of developing and understanding team culture, developing deeper relationships and understandings with colleagues, collaboration and keeping tied in with vision and mission etc., in order to help you work more effectively from home for the other 3 days?

I think the sense is though that employees will now be able to say I want to work completely remotely, and unless it's absolutely essential to be on-site e.g. a hairdresser or whatever, then they will have to say yes to full remote working? I find that tough on the employer as there are some intangibles like culture, feeling personally and emotionally connected, the sense of a shared experience/struggle working together on something, picking up on things happening in the rest of the organisation etc. that come from 1 or 2 days a week working together etc. which can be very valuable in an organisation in terms or effectiveness, even if the individual may not see it themselves.

thomas 123

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

No: they just have policies that say employees-only in working areas, and visitors must be accompanied by an employee at all times, and escorted from the building. It's really painful lurking outside a toilet block waiting for someone, but I've had to do it more than once.

Apple have a few thousand staff working from home in Ireland. This is to highlight to you that if they can do it whats stopping any other business from a privacy perspective?

Video calling in has replaced onsite visits in many companies also, I don't think anyone would be expected to host company visits in their house in fairness.

"Thank you for joining me today president Xi, Oh, here is my computer, and that concludes the tour" - lol

thomas 123

Augme wrote: »

For a lot of people there are definitely significant gdpr and privacy concerns. In a pandemic they are easier to ignore given the lack of an alternative but once over they will be harder to ignore.

Such as?

lawred2

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Except that very few homes rely have adequate facilities for long term remote working.

I'm not even talking broadband. Just lockable rooms that will only be accessed by the employee.

What on earth is a lockable room in an office context?

And who needs those outside of maybe security services?

lawred2

I would have thought part WFH would be the best solution for most going forward.

100% WFH could prove very hard to achieve for a lot of operations. Onboarding becomes more difficult.

Maybe AR could help there. Imagine sitting in your home office partaking in an AR meeting. Or AR work colleagues in close proximity for certain durations of the day.

Tigerandahalf

The climate issue will surely push more people to WFH. It makes sense. So many people are doing long commutes in diesel cars when they could easily work fulltime from home.

With climate becoming such a big issue I can see employers and organisations having a type of BER rating where they will pay taxes based on their carbon footprint.

If you have 100 workers and they all wfh or walk/cycle to work you will pay less tax and vice versa.

The savings that people will make could be put into a compulsory pension scheme or even a free healthcare scheme.

I don't see a loss of jobs to abroad. If an employee in Bangalore defrauds a company how are you going to bring them before the law?

I do think people should have to live in Ireland. Let people spend their money here rather than in Spain or Portugal and the locals there don't need outsiders taking up their housing.

CrazyFather1

Lockable rooms :-) next someone will mention you need a panic room for your laptop :-) I would also suggest they read up the company policies on why they have to follow around visitors in their offices.

Most companies are offering work from home budgets, so you can buy monitors etc to help with ergonomics. Also options like taking chair from the office or buying a chair for your home office.

If you look down at the breakdown of staff, the cost to the company yes wages make up part of it, but also the cost of office space, laptops etc. If you are comparing Ireland v other countries our wages only make up part of it. Having to pay a couple of million for rent also makes us less competitive. If a company can give you lets say 1k to set up a home office and off you go then suddenly Ireland becomes a lot more competitive.

Or even they say you can use a hub 2-3 days a week to shorten your commute. Also when companies are moving to Ireland they look at our infrastructure, so it is less likely for companies to move over if staff cannot rent/buy a house close to office. But if we can say that everyone will work from home 4 days a week and 1 day in office then it makes us more attractive As people can live further from office location, instead of a 2 hour commute everyday, doing it once a week is it a lot better.

Allowing people to live outside a major hub like Dublin also means the cost of living goes down. Potentially wage benefits.

in reality if people are looking to get the information off your laptop I can tell you they aint walking in the door, they are coming in across the network

CrazyFather1

lawred2 wrote: »

I would have thought part WFH would be the best solution for most going forward.

100% WFH could prove very hard to achieve for a lot of operations. Onboarding becomes more difficult.

Maybe AR could help there. Imagine sitting in your home office partaking in an AR meeting. Or AR work colleagues in close proximity for certain durations of the day.

Most people will not be 100% WFH, some times it is just easier to have a big meeting face to face. But instead of 5 days a week in office you maybe have to go in 1-2 days, that is a huge decrease for some people.

Antares35

We were surveyed and one of the questions was how we'd like the days split. I selected one in the office, four at home. I'd love to be able to arrange meetings etc predominantly for that day, because I just find zoom to be a pain the àss to be honest. All that not knowing where to look, looking at your big mug on screen like the back of a spoon reflection and the awkward delays as people talk over each other and apologise And I miss the face to face sometimes too, who doesn't? But not enough to want to go back to the way things were.

I was commuting 2 hours a day (and I live in Dublin, where I work). Before I started driving to work, I used Luas P&R and was let down so many times by the thing not working/ crashing etc I just gave up. But even commuting two hours a day (which isn't bad compared to some), that's over a working day per week, sitting in the car.

is_that_so

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

The climate issue will surely push more people to WFH. It makes sense. So many people are doing long commutes in diesel cars when they could easily work fulltime from home.

With climate becoming such a big issue I can see employers and organisations having a type of BER rating where they will pay taxes based on their carbon footprint.

If you have 100 workers and they all wfh or walk/cycle to work you will pay less tax and vice versa.

The savings that people will make could be put into a compulsory pension scheme or even a free healthcare scheme.

I don't see a loss of jobs to abroad. If an employee in Bangalore defrauds a company how are you going to bring them before the law?

I do think people should have to live in Ireland. Let people spend their money here rather than in Spain or Portugal and the locals there don't need outsiders taking up their housing.

The WFH paradigm is a lot more complicated than just being at home. The climate impact is not really a justification at all, as we move towards more climate friendly technologies. There will also need to be a solution to the potential isolation and productivity issues. It may also require locations so that people can congregate as one cannot nor should not spend a working life at the end of a screen. Sectoral requirements are also part of the equation.

storker

caviardreams wrote: »

Surely it would be "reasonable" for an employer to say - you can work from home 3 days a week, but you need to be on-site for the purposes of developing and understanding team culture, developing deeper relationships and understandings with colleagues, collaboration and keeping tied in with vision and mission etc., in order to help you work more effectively from home for the other 3 days?

I think with 2 days on site and 3 WFH or 1:4 alternating between the two it could work. I'm loving 100% WFH but would have no problem with a split arrangement like that. When you've been spending 3 hours per day on your commute, going from 5 days of that per week even just to 2 is huge. I always hated the idea of hot-desking but here it makes sense for those one or two days on site. My permanent desk is in my home office.

I suspect that the number of people looking for 100% WFH all the time would be quite low.

CrazyFather1

is_that_so wrote: »

The WFH paradigm is a lot more complicated than just being at home. The climate impact is not really a justification at all, as we move towards more climate friendly technologies. There will also need to be a solution to the potential isolation and productivity issues. It may also require locations so that people can congregate as one cannot nor should not spend a working life at the end of a screen. Sectoral requirements are also part of the equation.

I disagree the climate justification is huge, if 2000 people are travelling daily into an office and that is reduced to lets say 500 per day to that office that will have a huge decrease in CO2. Plus it will also take pressure off the public transport system in major cities.

As I said above most people will never be 100% work from home, office locations to get out of the house and also central hubs in smaller towns to mix will give options.

thomas 123

is_that_so wrote: »

It may also require locations so that people can congregate as one cannot nor should not spend a working life at the end of a screen. Sectoral requirements are also part of the equation.

Firstly this is being done by many WFH companies already.

Secondly technology already allows video calling, many would argue regular congregations actually lead to less productivity.

Bethesda(A video game company) works in an office, they have a policy that meetings must be held standing up, why? So employees don't waste time talking about things that do not need to be discussed. This was in a documentary I watched on the company foundation so it may not be the case anymore but I am sure other posters may have more examples.

Ultimately what I am trying to say here is fringe cases or whats ifs without a factual basis should not lead to progress stifling.

I am sure many an employer was not too happy when the idea of the weekend was introduced back in the day.

I'd be happy to work from home 2 or 3 days a week when this pandemic is over. But I'd like to get into the office too. I've been working from home since May 2020. Happy enough but not sure I'd like it long term.

It can be good crack in the office but on the other hand I dont miss the bitching and moaning and petty grievances.

The Spider

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

No: they just have policies that say employees-only in working areas, and visitors must be accompanied by an employee at all times, and escorted from the building. It's really painful lurking outside a toilet block waiting for someone, but I've had to do it more than once.

This week, I've been taking support from employees in a SME organisation that's currently 100% WFH. Quite a few clearly had children in the background (wouldn't be acceptable in non-pandemic times). About 30% had woeful broadband, which was the cause of their issue. I had to parrot the "you need to contact your broadband provider, or get an alternative one" line - knowing full well that in some cases there are no better alternatives in the places these folks are living. Two told me they were sitting at the kitchen table - ergonomics, yeah!

You’re reaching here, you really are, children will be in the background when schools and childcare facilities are closed due to the pandemic, so suck it up everyone has to.

Unless you’re working on some seriously top secret stuff that security issue is ludicrous most people don’t, apple as has been pointed out before has thousands of remote staff in Ireland as does Shopify and others.

Oh and what about contractors? Contractors can work from home if they wish as they are regarded by law as individual businesses, and if they have to show up and work at the same desk every day using company equipment rather than their own, then as far as the law is concerned they’re an employee and not a contractor so will have the same protections as an employee.

When I contracted and any time I worked with contractors people came and went as they pleased.

Broadband is a fair point, and theoretically if your broadband is terrible it could be used as a reason that you can’t work from home, although don’t know where that would stand in a court of law.

Can’t understand how people don’t see this as a good thing, although it’ll probably scare the bejaysus out of the networking types, the people who spend their days talking and having coffee to be moved up the chain, while they can keep an eye on their teams.

Also I suppose some management types like to keep an eye on everything someone on their team is doing, and keeping potential challengers for their position in their team at bay.

If everyone is working from home that guy or girl who gets on with the CEO could be doing work for them without the managers knowledge, or without the manager figuring out how to take most of the credit. (Doesn’t happen everywhere but does happen especially in political organizations)

adocholiday

I live in South Wicklow and pre-pandemic I was commuting to Dundrum every day by car. My employer was flexible with time so I was thankfully able to avoid the rush hour on the M11 and my commute generally was an hour each way. I didn't mind it to be honest I was in a routine and it worked for me but I also knew no different.

Since Leo gave his speech from the US last March I've been 100% working from home and the benefits are clear to see. I have better sleep, I eat a healthy breakfast and go for a short walk before work. No stressful commute, no worrying about traffic jams. I sit at my desk and do my work like I always have. If I have some downtime during the day, which I think most people do now and then, instead of pretending to work I get some light chores done. At the end of the day I turn off and I'm already home. Again no stress, maybe get another stroll in, eat dinner at a reasonable hour and have the evening to myself. Before I was getting home at 7, evening already gone and would have to do chores etc.

WFH has had such an immensely positive impact on my life and my productivity at work hasn't dropped a jot. In fact I'd say I'm more productive because I have less distractions. My health has improved, both physical and mental, I'm spending much less than I was because I'm not getting coffees and lunch out, and I have so much more time to myself to indulge my hobbies etc.

I think given the choice I'd like to work 2 days in the office and 3 from home in the long term, but I will never go back to 5 days per week in the office if I can help it.

Marty1983

I work in the public service in a area which would not typically be known as innovative. I could not have imagined 12 months ago that WFH would be successful. Like everyone else we have KPI's and the productivity has certainly gone up in many areas. Granted the people in the office who stand around chatting will no doubt slack off at home but for the majority its benificial. Removing the commute, cost of parking etc has had a huge impact on my own personal mental health.

you2008

is_that_so wrote: »

The WFH paradigm is a lot more complicated than just being at home. The climate impact is not really a justification at all, as we move towards more climate friendly technologies. There will also need to be a solution to the potential isolation and productivity issues. It may also require locations so that people can congregate as one cannot nor should not spend a working life at the end of a screen. Sectoral requirements are also part of the equation.

The climate impact is huge, myself used to do 60km per day on diesel before the pandemic. I am sure you don’t need me to teach you how to do the maths. i can not believe people can not see the bigger pictures here, for years we are talking about the rural Ireland this is the only chance to turn it around.

is_that_so

you2008 wrote: »

The climate impact is huge, myself used to do 60km per day on diesel before the pandemic.

Really not a fan of doing this but fixed that post for you. My point was about new technologies coming in but pontificate away.

thomas 123

is_that_so wrote: »

Really not a fan of doing this but fixed that post for you. My point was about new technologies coming in but pontificate away.

None will be as impact-full as a mass work from home movement in the next 5-10 years though. I think it also opens doors for a lot of people to low-mid market EV's for short school runs now that they will be working close to schools and local amenities right?

Many more people could become more interested in projects like this https://communitypower.ie/our-story/ once they finally exit the time sink that is the rat race.

Your argument goes both ways.

CrazyFather1

Another consideration about working from home is roads. The wear and tear on roads would be massively reduced if more people are working from home.
If the government and companies are pushing work from home it also needs to work both ways. Working from home should be promoted but the government need to resolve the SEAI grant system for home owners. At the moment the "grant" for most items is just used as extra cash for contractors. The home owner is not getting the benefit. Take solar PV for instance, the price to home owner went up 3k when the grant was introduced. This has to be sorted out so working from home people can avail of solar PV and install easily if they are a home owner

Lots of consideration if the government went about this right but they probably won't.

thomas 123

CrazyFather1 wrote: »

Another consideration about working from home is roads. The wear and tear on roads would be massively reduced if more people are working from home.
If the government and companies are pushing work from home it also needs to work both ways. Working from home should be promoted but the government need to resolve the SEAI grant system for home owners. At the moment the "grant" for most items is just used as extra cash for contractors. The home owner is not getting the benefit. Take solar PV for instance, the price to home owner went up 3k when the grant was introduced. This has to be sorted out so working from home people can avail of solar PV and install easily if they are a home owner

Lots of consideration if the government went about this right but they probably won't.

That's a great idea, might be worth mentioning to local TD's.

Augme

thomas 123 wrote: »

Such as?

Any area of work where you need to mention a customer/client personal details on a call. If you use any paper files for clients.

AndrewJRenko

The Spider wrote: »

Absolute nonsense, last time I checked 99.9percent of offices in Dublin dont have individual lockable rooms for employees either, they have open plan offices with everyone on top of each other, with a desk and a few drawers you can lock, in fact you'll more than likely have more privacy at home than you would in an office.

lawred2 wrote: »

What on earth is a lockable room in an office context?

And who needs those outside of maybe security services?

CrazyFather1 wrote: »

Lockable rooms :-) next someone will mention you need a panic room for your laptop :-) I would also suggest they read up the company policies on why they have to follow around visitors in their offices.

You don't need a locked room in an office scenario because you have control over who gets in and out of the office area. You lose this control in a WFH scenario. You don't know who's nosing around at the desk, or listening in on the call or video chat.

It could be a nosey spouse or sibling, or the overnight guest of the housemate that you've never met or whatever. There is a substantial loss of control, which has substantial impacts for security, GDPR, confidentiality.

is_that_so wrote: »

The WFH paradigm is a lot more complicated than just being at home. The climate impact is not really a justification at all, as we move towards more climate friendly technologies. There will also need to be a solution to the potential isolation and productivity issues. It may also require locations so that people can congregate as one cannot nor should not spend a working life at the end of a screen. Sectoral requirements are also part of the equation.

This is getting into some important areas. The 'water cooler' chats that employees have are often a very important communication channel, helping people to build relationships and understand what is going on in other parts of the organisation. Cutting out or drastically reducing all of these chats is going to have a long term impact.

thomas 123 wrote: »

Firstly this is being done by many WFH companies already.

Secondly technology already allows video calling, many would argue regular congregations actually lead to less productivity.

Bethesda(A video game company) works in an office, they have a policy that meetings must be held standing up, why? So employees don't waste time talking about things that do not need to be discussed. This was in a documentary I watched on the company foundation so it may not be the case anymore but I am sure other posters may have more examples.

Stand up meetings are discriminatory against people with disabilities and older people.

Bigmac1euro

Most of what I’ve read here makes sense but it’s not realistic. Our government are dinosaurs for the most part. We all will be or most will be 9-5 Monday to Friday stuck in a crash on the m50 before you know it. Stop dreaming. I work for a semi state company and they already tried to drag people back during a lockdown which caused a big row between management.
I’ve heard some of the senior mgmt (also dinosaurs) are pushing to get people back ASAP. So something tells me productivity is not as good as it was. Nobody has the pressure of their peers overlooking their work sitting 3 foot away.

I don’t think we’ll convert to even a half week from home and most companies will go back to BAU working 9-5 in office.
Enjoy the time home with your families while you can folks because it’s all going to be over in the blink of an eye.

thomas 123

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Stand up meetings are discriminatory against people with disabilities and older people.

You will throw anything in the ring to try further this wont you?

Sure making a person in that predicament come to work is way worse in that case.

Sonic the Shaghog

I suppose one thing that may help against outsourcing is wage cuts depending on locations like what happened with Facebook slashing wages of those leaving SF

I mean I'm sure lots of Dublin jobs have a salary bump for the location so if someone is moving out of there and driving in 1 or 2 days a week there's savings to be made there for companies

CrazyFather1

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You don't need a locked room in an office scenario because you have control over who gets in and out of the office area. You lose this control in a WFH scenario. You don't know who's nosing around at the desk, or listening in on the call or video chat.

It could be a nosey spouse or sibling, or the overnight guest of the housemate that you've never met or whatever. There is a substantial loss of control, which has substantial impacts for security, GDPR, confidentiality.




This is getting into some important areas. The 'water cooler' chats that employees have are often a very important communication channel, helping people to build relationships and understand what is going on in other parts of the organisation. Cutting out or drastically reducing all of these chats is going to have a long term impact.



Stand up meetings are discriminatory against people with disabilities and older people.

If you have random people walking around your house you have bigger issues than work from home to be honest

It won't suit everyone, I don't think anyone is saying that. But it should be an option for people that it does suit

CrazyFather1

Sonic the Shaghog wrote: »

I suppose one thing that may help against outsourcing is wage cuts depending on locations like what happened with Facebook slashing wages of those leaving SF

I mean I'm sure lots of Dublin jobs have a salary bump for the location so if someone is moving out of there and driving in 1 or 2 days a week there's savings to be made there for companies

You will see posts on boards of people who are willing to spends days sitting in a car because they want "Dublin wages"

You have already seen the likes of eBay advertising job which are remote only and have a lower basic wage as you don't need to travel., I expect this to come more common

irelandrover

CrazyFather1 wrote: »

If you have random people walking around your house you have bigger issues than work from home to be honest

It won't suit everyone, I don't think anyone is saying that. But it should be an option for people that it does suit

I have people in my house that aren't random to me but are to my company. They haven't signed a non disclosure agreement that I had to to work with some of our clients.

WFH is a risk to the privacy of clients. Maybe my wife's friend visits while I'm on a conference call and she overhears something she shouldn't.

thomas 123

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You don't need a locked room in an office scenario because you have control over who gets in and out of the office area. You lose this control in a WFH scenario. You don't know who's nosing around at the desk, or listening in on the call or video chat.

It could be a nosey spouse or sibling, or the overnight guest of the housemate that you've never met or whatever. There is a substantial loss of control, which has substantial impacts for security, GDPR, confidentiality.




This is getting into some important areas. The 'water cooler' chats that employees have are often a very important communication channel, helping people to build relationships and understand what is going on in other parts of the organisation. Cutting out or drastically reducing all of these chats is going to have a long term impact.



Stand up meetings are discriminatory against people with disabilities and older people.

By the way there is this thing called a password on most computers.

Furthermore the most basic IT systems now have 2FA when accessing any software containing PII.

If you happen to be in a business that for some reason keeps your customers PII on paper;
- Get your door lock.
- lock your filing cabinet.
- your employer will still be responsible for any breech, but may take sack you as a result.
- you personally shouldn’t be leaving notes around your house contain sensitive information. The same way you wouldn’t be leaving them in an office common area.

The Spider

Sonic the Shaghog wrote: »

I suppose one thing that may help against outsourcing is wage cuts depending on locations like what happened with Facebook slashing wages of those leaving SF

I mean I'm sure lots of Dublin jobs have a salary bump for the location so if someone is moving out of there and driving in 1 or 2 days a week there's savings to be made there for companies

This wont work to be honest, in fact companies down the country who were paying lower wages will more than likely have to raise them now that they'll be faced with competition from Dublin companies and multi nationals poaching their previously untouchable staff. For instance if someone is a great software engineer or UX designer living in Limerick or Clare and working for one of the local firms there, they can now work for the higher paying Dublin companies and still live in Clare.

Tech companies will compete for the best talent and more often than not that means money, in fact now it definitley means money, this legislation will remove one of the perks that smaller or lower paying tech companies offered and that was working from home, now every company offers it, so it's no longer a perk its a work standard.

Appreciate that the above applies to tech companies, however arguablly it can be applied to call centres etc.

NewbridgeIR

The vast majority of my company have been WFH since March.
They already had a WFH policy from around 2014 - most people worked 1-2 days at home each week, a few did 3 days. It was left up to each team to organise themselves - generally we were all in on one particular day (usually Monday) so we could have meeting, discuss cases, etc.

At this stage, I don't think any of us would like to continue 100% WFH. While the work gets done and productivity hasn't dropped, the isolation and lack of team-bonding is getting to some people. We expect that when restrictions ease, vaccines are rolled out etc - we will end up moving to a 1-2 days in the office and 3-4 days at home situation. Which would be an acceptable compromise.

Sonic the Shaghog

The Spider wrote: »

This wont work to be honest, in fact companies down the country who were paying lower wages will more than likely have to raise them now that they'll be faced with competition from Dublin companies and multi nationals poaching their previously untouchable staff. For instance if someone is a great software engineer or UX designer living in Limerick or Clare and working for one of the local firms there, they can now work for the higher paying Dublin companies and still live in Clare.

Tech companies will compete for the best talent and more often than not that means money, in fact now it definitley means money, this legislation will remove one of the perks that smaller or lower paying tech companies offered and that was working from home, now every company offers it, so it's no longer a perk its a work standard.

Appreciate that the above applies to tech companies, however arguablly it can be applied to call centres etc.

They said the same about Facebook and Twitter in the US and it's the opposite happened. If it's an area with a skills shortage well then you'll always get more to get and keep you regardless