Civil servants told to spend more time in the office - Irish Times - Mod warning #526

this is it at the end of the day, I’m a civil servant and I love wfh. But I signed up for 5 days in the office, even if I signed up while their was blended working it wouldn’t have been in my probationary contract. Workers have absolutely zero say in it unless they have wfh in their contract.

WFH or no WFH, I think the PS and CS needs serious reform on how job performance is managed.

Its one of the reasons why it takes so long to do anything in this country.

DSP are taking the "lead" with this as their changes were expected to come into effect this week, with two weeks notice.

According to Eilis O'Hanlon, Sunday Independent, all civil servants only work one day a week in the office!🤣

Nah, just can't understand that people work in various roles, companies and industries, and that WFH isn't a one-size-fits-all policy.

It'sACoolDay for wild, cliched generalisations based on historical tropes.

Be interesting to see. They kinda rolled over on everything in recent years. If they do that this time, they will disappear.

Maybe, the people whose taxes pay the wages if Civil Servants want them to be in the office.

I know I do.

Lazy enough at work, I can only imagine the levels of idleness at home.

TTry calling the RTB and see how great the WFH service is.

You can hear the TV in in the background ffs

A lady I know looks after another families kids as well as her own : at the same time as working from home. Not surprised she does not want to go back to the office.

Frost Spice: nobody ever became unemployed from the civil service.

So she's holding down three jobs. Why don't you do the same if it's possible. Seems no lose strategy no?

That's sounds like you got through to them.

Ask them for a copy of the call.

All that’s needed is everyone to ignore it, the unions just tell their members to continue doing WFH and all stay united on it - if they do that there is nothing that can be realistically done. This is the type of thing that’s much harder to rally against in the private sector as there isn’t the same collective power or the far far higher bar for any level of disciplinary action.

More dinosaur stuff anyway attempting to drag people back to offices for no good reason.

I couldn’t see everyone ignoring it. Especially if it’s 1 day to 2 day. 2 seems pretty standard across the civil service.

A writer called Alvin Toffler wrote a book years back, called Future Shock. It sold well with both the author and the book becoming famous as a result.

I recently came across another book of his in a second hand bookshop, published in 1980, on what he believed the future would look like. Called The Third Wave, I decided to buy it to see what someone back then thought the future would be like.

One chapter titled The electronic cottage deals with work from home. He quotes executives in a number of big US companies on the subject, and according to them at the time he wrote the book between 10% and 75% of jobs in those companies could have been done at home if their staff were provided with the equipment available at the time - and with improved communications technology, he reckoned that number would skyrocket. Remember that this was in 1980.

In other words, work from home has been possible for almost two generations in certain industries. All that is keeping the old model going is the management system, which is out-dated and to a large extent unnecessary - in much the same way that so much of the secretarial staff became unnecessary as soon as widespread computer literacy came about.

Unlike the old secretarial staff, which were the lowest rung in office culture and without much political clout, the middle management strata will fight tooth and nail to retain their positions of (relative) power and prestige, but in the long run they will either demonstrate their usefulness - or they'll go the same way as all the other dinosaurs.

A lot of the public sector services are outsourced. You can be sure there's no room for slacking off under those companies. WFH makes sense - reduces stupid traffic which stresses people out, gives people more of a work/life balance. Spending hours a week sitting in traffic - there's something wrong with that when you don't have to.

In my current job, using work time for leisure/chores isn't possible, as there is always something to do, but in my last job there was occasionally quiet time (balanced with it being utterly insanely busy other times) and I had literally nothing to do - therefore I watched TV, keeping a close eye on my work phone. Made up for the stress of the mad times. It would be the same in the office - you'd browse online, stick on headphones, go on Boards, message friends, go over and chat to colleagues who are similarly quiet.