If Work From Home becomes a thing...

salonfire wrote: »

Away from your desk for an hour is not a break.
It's going awol.

People gets breaks at lunch time and usual scheduled times in the morning and afternoon.

People coming and going as they please throughout the day will make WFH not feasible for many organisations.

If you have scheduled breaks and lunches and consider 1 hour away "awol" you are not working in an adult organization.
That's micromanaged, crunch the numbers, rats on wheels hell.


I take my breaks, coffee, lunch whenever I want. I start work when I want. I finish when I'm done for the day. That could be 10am to4pm or 8am to 10pm.
I could take 2 hours at lunch or 15 minutes.
I could go for a ten minute walk every hour, an hour long walk at 3 pm, or work right through. I spend a lot of time on Boards during the day as it forms part of my thought process when working on a project or data problem.

(I should add, this was the same when we worked predominantly in the office. We had WFH as wanted before covid)

If someone needs me (or anyone on my team) we have phones with teams, outlook, whatsapp, slack, and a myriad of other ways.
Don't confuse contactability and presenteeism with productivity.

The "urgent demands require people at their desk" scenario details a perfect example of a business in chaos, and it's funny that people stand by it like it's the norm.

- Asking for urgent reports at the last minute
- Scheduling important meetings with less than 24 hours notice
- Requiring employees to drop what they're doing to help with an issue
- Needing an employee to be personally available to provide information

If these are common scenarios in your company, then you have a problem. These things should be the exception, once a month or less. Or, you should have a dedicated people whose job it is to manage these scenarios - such as a receptionist or secretary - while everyone else gets on with their day-to-day.

Ultimately it is as Lumen says - if being highly responsive is part of the job description, then there will be a trade-off. More specifically, highly responsive employees are less productive at complex, detailed or long-running tasks. Likewise, high-latency employees are less productive at short, simple, time-sensitive tasks.

If you have an employee whose main role is project work or complex tasks, then by persistently (more than once a week) bothering them with urgent requests and meetings at short notice, you are drastically reducing their productivity.

Urgent unforseen issues can't be avoided, but if it's a daily occurrence then you have to ask yourself whether it's really urgent & unforeseen or if it's just incompetence.

Cyrus wrote: »

sounds exactly like my company, we made a 9 figure profit last year,

not a bad problem to have it seems

I think you have the causality the wrong way round.

Profitable companies can afford for people to be unproductive.

:eek:

seamus wrote: »

The "urgent demands require people at their desk" scenario details a perfect example of a business in chaos, and it's funny that people stand by it like it's the norm.

- Asking for urgent reports at the last minute
- Scheduling important meetings with less than 24 hours notice
- Requiring employees to drop what they're doing to help with an issue
- Needing an employee to be personally available to provide information

If these are common scenarios in your company, then you have a problem. These things should be the exception, once a month or less. Or, you should have a dedicated people whose job it is to manage these scenarios - such as a receptionist or secretary - while everyone else gets on with their day-to-day.

Ultimately it is as Lumen says - if being highly responsive is part of the job description, then there will be a trade-off. More specifically, highly responsive employees are less productive at complex, detailed or long-running tasks. Likewise, high-latency employees are less productive at short, simple, time-sensitive tasks.

If you have an employee whose main role is project work or complex tasks, then by persistently (more than once a week) bothering them with urgent requests and meetings at short notice, you are drastically reducing their productivity.

Urgent unforseen issues can't be avoided, but if it's a daily occurrence then you have to ask yourself whether it's really urgent & unforeseen or if it's just incompetence.

"A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"

beauf wrote: »

Generally if you are more organised you can do more with less. Doing more things with more , isn't really that impressive.

Saying you can run a business without email, or computers, doesn't invalidate that email or computers have value.

i have worked in a lots of companies, large multinationals with 1000s of employees, large semi states with 1000s of employees, big accountancy firms, small plcs etc etc.

We get things done more quickly than anywhere else, if we want to go into a new jurisdiction we do it in weeks, some of the other places i worked in would take years.

We dont necessarily do it right and we encounter problems along the way and afterwards, but to do it properly would require more people, more functions, more specific skillsets.

And it doesnt appear to be an impediment to making money.

and what else is anyone in business for.

Lumen wrote: »

Much as I sympathise and to some extent agree, in my experience the kind of people who would elevate that sentiment to a wall plaque are a right pain in the hole to deal with.

Fortunately when WFH I don't get to read people's wall plaques.

I can understand his position, responsible for outsourcing various services, always last minute due to poor organisation in other departments, think he was literally pushed to it.

I'll admit I see the same every day, customers imagine you're sitting by the phone waiting on their call, wanting work done tomorrow when I've a calendar full for the next month; then the drama begins all over again.

beauf wrote: »

Funny how so many places say the same thing. yet when they look back they'll see how they improved over time. The only difference is how slow or fast they are to embrace progress and how resistant they are to change. Some will always put institutional roadblocks to change. That is usually cultural, systemic, and usual driven from the top down. As in your own example of the CTO, or owner driving bad habits.

absolutely its the owner and we work around it, things have changed a lot over the last 5 years re systems, processes etc

but there is only so much you can do when the owner doesnt buy in.

Cyrus wrote: »

sounds exactly like my company, we made a 9 figure profit last year,

not a bad problem to have it seems

Many very profitable companies are poorly run. Profits are really only one measure of success. Many very profitable companies also go to the wall when times get difficult. Or they get really quickly beaten in their core market by a new competitor, because they cannot get their sh1t together quick enough to adapt.

There are people in all companies who pull of heroics. Who deal with interruptions and still get their work done. That doesn't mean the company is doing OK. Heroes burn out very quickly, they move to a new company. Eventually all your heroes will be gone

Lumen wrote: »

Much as I sympathise and to some extent agree, in my experience the kind of people who would elevate that sentiment to a wall plaque are a right pain in the hole to deal with.

It's a sentiment that one person cannot implement on their own. Otherwise they become the jobsworth who refuses to step when it's necessary.

But as a company attitude; as a goal to strive for - "do not make your poor planning someone else's emergency" - it's the kind of thing that can make a work environment great. Rather than being dragged off your nromal work and having orders barked at you because of an emergency, instead the instigator is contrite for their failure, appreciative of your fast help, and as a result will make efforts to prevent this emergency occurring in future.

seamus wrote: »

Many very profitable companies are poorly run. Profits are really only one measure of success. Many very profitable companies also go to the wall when times get difficult. Or they get really quickly beaten in their core market by a new competitor, because they cannot get their sh1t together quick enough to adapt.

There are people in all companies who pull of heroics. Who deal with interruptions and still get their work done. That doesn't mean the company is doing OK. Heroes burn out very quickly, they move to a new company. Eventually all your heroes will be gone

It's a sentiment that one person cannot implement on their own. Otherwise they become the jobsworth who refuses to step when it's necessary.

But as a company attitude; as a goal to strive for - "do not make your poor planning someone else's emergency" - it's the kind of thing that can make a work environment great. Rather than being dragged off your nromal work and having orders barked at you because of an emergency, instead the instigator is contrite for their failure, appreciative of your fast help, and as a result will make efforts to prevent this emergency occurring in future.

curious to hear what your other measures of success are?

storker wrote: »

True but I wouldn't just put that down to the restrictions. There's low pay for a start, and a workforce that tends to be quite young and will move on to something else quickly enough.

I might be biased, though be cause it was 20 years ago and the centre I worked in was quite well-run.

i worked in one one summer when in university, the main issue is the people calling in you get dogs abuse, work enviroment was fine for what it is. the majority of my colleages at the time were studends as well tho, so a pretty transient work force.

Back to the office 2 days a week next week. Happy with that as im in a startup and welcome it to build a rapport

beauf wrote: »

Kinda defeats the purpose of industry wide statistics on it then doesn't it.

I'm not sure what you're saying here.