If Work From Home becomes a thing...

ELM327 wrote: »

.............. productivity.

Lots of p1ssholes want more then productivity, the contact-ability and being at the desk is paramount to their cultures.
Many who work in these places buy into it of course, it pays the bills etc and playing ball results in satisfactory performance appraisals and possible promotions etc. Folk who don't see it for what it is are obviously happy enough to buy into it, in fact many thrive in such a culture.
Like, handing the head finance guy the info he wants, that you just got off someone else (as the head finance guy can't ask contractors in some places) must be some feeling, back of the net stuff

seamus

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.

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

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

not a bad problem to have it seems

Lumen

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.

Lumen wrote: »

I think you have the causality the wrong way round.

Profitable companies can afford for people to be unproductive.

very small workforce, less than 500 people, people are very productive but organised we arent.

but would we make more money if we were more organised? maybe, but we would need a lot more staff as well!

Cyrus wrote: »

very small workforce, less than 500 people, people are very productive but organised we arent.

but would we make more money if we were more organised? maybe, but we would need a lot more staff as well!

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.

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.

I wouldn’t want to work for an organisation that doesn’t let you come and go as you please to do chores and other necessary things. To go for a walk to clear your head and to have lunch when you want (sometimes when you can). To own your own diary, as long as you get the job done and manage up and down and sideways as appropriate. I had no idea that there were still so many archaic office practices out there, focussed on presenteeism rather than productivity. It sounds truly awful, and I can see why these kind of companies are going to have a real problem with WFH.

Electric Sheep

: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"

bladespin

Electric Sheep wrote: »

:eek:

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

I love that quote, a friend of mine has it on a plaque on his office wall.

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

bladespin wrote: »

I love that quote, a friend of mine has it on a plaque on his office wall.

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.

bladespin

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.

Cyrus wrote: »

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.

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.

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.

storker

Electric Sheep wrote: »

Nobody on my team has scheduled breaks. We come and go as we lease as long as we are there for scheduled meetings.

I wouldn't work somewhere where I had to ask permission to take a break.

I did once - in a call centre. It wasn't that bad, since the restrictions make sense in such an environment. In many other environments, of course, they wouldn't.

storker wrote: »

I did one - in a call centre. It wasn't that bad, since the restrictions make sense in such an environment. In many other environments, of course, they wouldn't.

There's a flip side to that....

Contact centers also have some of the highest turnover rates in the industry, ranging between 30-45%, more than double the average for all other occupations. And the average call center agent lifespan is just two years.

storker wrote: »

I did once - in a call centre. It wasn't that bad, since the restrictions make sense in such an environment. In many other environments, of course, they wouldn't.

It sounds like many folk work in places where a call centre esque culture is both present and seemingly bought into by the employees. Mental.

seamus

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.

Augeo wrote: »

It sounds like many folk work in places where a call centre esque culture is both present and seemingly bought into by the employees. Mental.

A lot of people don't have experience of alternative ways of doing things. Some are unable to learn new things. They will literally do the same thing every day for years. Same route to work regardless how long it takes. Same lunch etc. They do the same with work.

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

beauf wrote: »

There's a flip side to that....

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.

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.

storker wrote: »

True but I wouldn't just put that down to the restrictions. ...

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

Cyrus wrote: »

curious to hear what your other measures of success are?

It depends on the industry............. a large (or small for that matter) construction company could be tremendously profitable but if they had a number of lost working time accidents than that would taint the success graph quite badly as they might struggle to get future projects, that's ignoring the human element as there's no such thing as an accident really, someone's always done something wrong these days the experts claim.

In the likes of medical device manufacturing there might be great profit but if a large percentage of the customer base (hospitals who have patients as customers) are waiting on devices and backorder etc is frequent, the company itself would look at the back order metric as well as the overall profit.

Companies can also be considered to be acting unethically if they are making more than what's considered a fair and reasonable profit..... Along other lines, would a profitable company be considered successful if folk weren't comfortable working there, if there was a bullying culture, a high turnover of staff, lots of folk on sick leave due to stress/burn out.

It's all quite subjective........... the bottom line ultimately is crucial but it can't be the only important/crucial metric

Cyrus wrote: »

curious to hear what your other measures of success are?

There are lot of organisations which don't generate a profit. Even those that do they might be some years before they do generate a profit. So it's logical that there have to be other types of metric of success.

Kevhog1988

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

ELM327

beauf wrote: »

There are lot of organisations which don't generate a profit. Even those that do they might be some years before they do generate a profit. So it's logical that there have to be other types of metric of success.

Look at Amazon for instance. Or Netflix. Loss making for years
Same as tesla.

storker

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.

beauf wrote: »

There are lot of organisations which don't generate a profit. Even those that do they might be some years before they do generate a profit. So it's logical that there have to be other types of metric of success.

they may never generate profit, lots of tech companies in that category down the years, when everyone ultimately realises the music has stopped (wework for example) are the previously identified metrics of success still valid or were they only valid when people assumed profits were to come