We need to adopt a no-commute culture

Elessar · 12-12-2019 9:46am #1

Interesting article in the IT today from a software firm CEO that talks about the need for a no-commute culture here. He argues that with climate change and the work life balance cost of commuting, incoming generations of workers will demand remote working jobs and it might even be the next big thing in attracting talent.

He makes a good point of the likes of Facebook, Google & Microsoft buying up properties in the city for hundreds of millions of euro, only to have their staff commute in and use the company cloud services to do their job. Which could easily be done from home.

What's AH's take on it? Would no commute be an incentive for you in a job?

Link: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/innovation/chris-horn-we-need-to-adopt-a-no-commute-culture-1.4110977

12-12-2019 9:47am

would be a huge incentive

there is no reason this isnt happening on a technical basis, so the lack of movement towards it is puzzling

Ulysses Gaze · 12-12-2019 9:52am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

would be a huge incentive

there is no reason this isnt happening on a technical basis, so the lack of movement towards it is puzzling

People issue. A lot of managers would hate it.

riemann · 12-12-2019 9:56am

Much more difficult to indoctorinate people into your little data mining cult if you don't force them to socialise with 'free beer' and table tennis tables.

Anyone who knows someone who works for google or facebook will not be surprised by this.

Genuine skilled IT contractors have been working remotely for years, and making serious coin.

TheValeyard · 12-12-2019 10:41am

Not possible for the vast majority of people. They need to go to work. They need to travel to work.

LirW · 12-12-2019 10:44am

riemann wrote: »

Much more difficult to indoctorinate people into your little data mining cult if you don't force them to socialise with 'free beer' and table tennis tables.

Anyone who knows someone who works for google or facebook will not be surprised by this.

Genuine skilled IT contractors have been working remotely for years, and making serious coin.

But... But... Having a bit of craic!!!

whisky_galore · 12-12-2019 10:47am

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

People issue. A lot of managers would hate it.

People can't be stood over and watched, no pointless meetings, middle management would become obsolete.

Slowyourrole · 12-12-2019 10:49am

There are certain ideas that, no matter how factually or logically based they are, simply don't sit well with people because they seem too far out of an established status quo. Working from home is one. Criminal rehabilitation is another. Universal Basic Income is another. Even basic welfare and online shopping were once concepts that seemed completely outrageous.

Tabnabs · 12-12-2019 10:49am

If we were to homeschool our kids that would be the biggest single step in reducing commuting traffic on the roads.

Followed quickly by free public transport, all carrot not stick approach.

JohnnyFlash · 12-12-2019 10:49am

I own a business that supplies industrial kitchen equipment. I don’t need to spell out the challenges of having my employees working from home.

Working from home has been discussed and promised for 30 years now. Like the paperless office and artificial intelligence. Behind it all is a consultancy selling hopium.

12-12-2019 10:52am

i dont buy the managers argument. train managers to move from a presenteeism to a task/goal mindset. and that's accepting that 'most managers' have that outlook to begin with, which isnt my experience.

and i dont see valeyards case

lets say half of irish jobs could be made remote, which i think is probably not too far off. lets start there.

the amount of services jobs that would be made available down the country as a result in time would also be significant

Slowyourrole · 12-12-2019 10:55am

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

I own a business that supplies industrial kitchen equipment. I don’t need to spell out the challenges of having my employees working from home.

Working from home has been discussed and promised for 30 years now. Like the paperless office and artificial intelligence. Behind it all is a consultancy selling hopium.

100% working from home is certainly nor for every job. But businesses can do it even to small degrees. If you had a very informative website an detailed online ordering system you could reduce your on site admin requirements. Many accounts and hr stuff can be done from home with a partial presence on site. If the manufacturers you use had a similar approach you could probably have all your purchasing done from a keyboard in somebody's home too.

Duke of Url · 12-12-2019 10:58am

Deleted User wrote: »

i dont buy the managers argument. train managers to move from a presenteeism to a task/goal mindset. and that's accepting that 'most managers' have that outlook to begin with, which isnt my experience.

and i dont see valeyards case

lets say half of irish jobs could be made remote, which i think is probably not too far off. lets start there.

the amount of services jobs that would be made available down the country as a result in time would also be significant

Do you think removing the Social aspect of a Team environment in the workplace is a good thing?

Also can you expand on how Security policies can be strictly adhered to where many people house share with people outside the organisation you may work for?

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 10:59am

If I was dictator of Ireland I would pass a law that anyone with a primarily computer-based job or even those who spend an amount of time writing reports secondary to their main job would have to work from home at least one or two days a week.

It would solve a lot of commute problems and make people happier.

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 11:01am

Duke of Url wrote: »

Do you think removing the Social aspect of a Team environment in the workplace is a good thing?

Also can you expand on how Security policies can be strictly adhered to where many people house share with people outside the organisation you may work for?

The security one is easily solved.

They might go for lunch occasionally where they live thus spreading our business more locally.

Del2005 · 12-12-2019 11:02am

It's a health and safety issue, in my company they spend a fortune on ergonomics and regularly audit employees. How can a company ensure that their employee is working in a safe manner at home and what happens when said employee gets injured? The company is responsible for their safety when they are working for them regardless of where that work is done.

screamer · 12-12-2019 11:02am

Working from home is very possible for people who just need a laptop or mobile equipment.
There’s a trust issue to it and certainly on the flip side if everyone worked remotely there would be no sense of team. A mixture of both office and remote is certainly possible and leads to greater work life balance and retention. However, it seems that for indigenous Irish companies who could offer this, it is a mad notion, combined with cultures of I’m the boss, you’ll do what I say. And they wonder why they can’t attract nor retain talent. In the future I believe and not too far away, work will not be set hours based but be blended to allow people to start and finish as it suits their life, so long as they get their work done.

screamer · 12-12-2019 11:04am

Del2005 wrote: »

It's a health and safety issue, in my company they spend a fortune on ergonomics and regularly audit employees. How can a company ensure that their employee is working in a safe manner at home and what happens when said employee gets injured? The company is responsible for their safety when they are working for them regardless of where that work is done.

Policy, very easy to do. Employee is responsible for all that, and you’d be surprised that no one will want to be back in the office full time once they’ve had the luxury of remote working.

jjpep · 12-12-2019 11:04am

Personally, I don't even consider jobs that don't allow for the option of remote working.

Take the point that that can't happen in every type of job.

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 11:05am

Del2005 wrote: »

It's a health and safety issue, in my company they spend a fortune on ergonomics and regularly audit employees. How can a company ensure that their employee is working in a safe manner at home and what happens when said employee gets injured? The company is responsible for their safety when they are working for them regardless of where that work is done.

How are people doing it now two in my family at the moment and its getting more common, one in my family has an office int the spare bedroom with an office chair my sister works from the kitchen table both do not do it full time though.

screamer · 12-12-2019 11:05am

mariaalice wrote: »

If I was dictator of Ireland I would pass a law that anyone with a primarily computer-based job or even those who spend an amount of time writing reports secondary to their main job would have to work from home at least one or two days a week.

It would solve a lot of commute problems and make people happier.

And give the companies some sort of tax credit kick back to incentivize it...... in the name of carbon reduction

nkl12xtw5goz70 · 12-12-2019 11:06am

It would have huge advantages — easing traffic congestion (fewer commuters), easing the housing crisis (fewer people have to live in Dublin and other urban centres), and potentially rejuvenating rural Ireland. Concerns about productivity and management are mostly misguided; studies on remote working generally find that remote workers are more productive, and there are numerous ways to have video meetings nowadays with coworkers and managers. Some successful companies (e.g., Basecamp) are 100% remote and thriving. So it can be done.

CelticRambler · 12-12-2019 11:10am

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Working from home has been discussed and promised for 30 years now. Like the paperless office and artificial intelligence. Behind it all is a consultancy selling hopium.

My office is paperless. I signed three contracts in the last week, none of which required a single sheet of paper. Phone call to agree terms; pdf e-mailed to me from my future workplaces (3-600km away); signed digitally, sent back.

I will have to set foot in each location next year, but will integrate that with general tourism. One of my T&Cs for any employer is that my daily commute while I'm there has to be no more than 500m.

Will review things in the new year - am seriously considering moving entirely to remote working in a consultative role during the hours of darkness so that I can spend more time with my vegetables while I can see them.

So the hopium's in plentiful supply here.

NuttyMcNutty · 12-12-2019 11:11am

Fix the public transport already and stop tinkering around the edges, more people that work from home the more shops around your workplace close, I'm sure they would be happy.

whisky_galore · 12-12-2019 11:11am

Tabnabs wrote: »

If we were to homeschool our kids that would be the biggest single step in reducing commuting traffic on the roads.

Followed quickly by free public transport, all carrot not stick approach.

However poor certain aspects of the education system are, I can only imagine how low the standard of education would be if left up to mommies and daddies.

Ush1 · 12-12-2019 11:13am

Elessar wrote: »

Interesting article in the IT today from a software firm CEO that talks about the need for a no-commute culture here. He argues that with climate change and the work life balance cost of commuting, incoming generations of workers will demand remote working jobs and it might even be the next big thing in attracting talent.

He makes a good point of the likes of Facebook, Google & Microsoft buying up properties in the city for hundreds of millions of euro, only to have their staff commute in and use the company cloud services to do their job. Which could easily be done from home.

What's AH's take on it? Would no commute be an incentive for you in a job?

Link: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/innovation/chris-horn-we-need-to-adopt-a-no-commute-culture-1.4110977

Neither of them are in the city?

12-12-2019 11:13am

Duke of Url wrote: »

Do you think removing the Social aspect of a Team environment in the workplace is a good thing?

Also can you expand on how Security policies can be strictly adhered to where many people house share with people outside the organisation you may work for?

the social aspect of a team environment would have to be accepted as a mainly positive item. for many people, it isnt!

secondly, you dont have to work in a cupboard to work remotely. office hubs provide a separate workspace that separated work from home, and if one needed the habit comforts of people around thats that box ticked too

the thrust of your point also seems to suggest that a team bond relies on a shared-site. not at all my experience.

your security policies point is a little unclear to me, but presuming its IT based then id need to know your specific concern. plenty of products out there providing remote access with no lower security for practical purposes than on-prem.

if your talking about other people being around....then do what you would have to do anyway, lock yr laptop when away from it.

if you're talking such sensitive material that it's not an option, look, fine. take that small percentage of the pot and put it into the "cant be done remotely for now" pile.

most of it very manageable imo

Ficheall · 12-12-2019 11:14am

I work from home. I've taken advantage of that to take almost 20 flights this year, and about 30 in 2018. Not sure it's doing the environment any good.

12-12-2019 11:16am

Del2005 wrote: »

It's a health and safety issue, in my company they spend a fortune on ergonomics and regularly audit employees. How can a company ensure that their employee is working in a safe manner at home and what happens when said employee gets injured? The company is responsible for their safety when they are working for them regardless of where that work is done.

seriously?

an audit covers this already, and an agreement on safe practice. insurance is an issue, but find me a company that doesnt already think insurance is an issue tbf

lads, this is already happening all over the place. the answers to most of these objections is "exactly like it would work in the office already" for many of them

jam_mac_jam · 12-12-2019 11:17am

I think a lot of it is cultural in that people just expect to have to work in a work location. I think it will change and is starting to change.
They are bringing it in in my work at the moment, some of the management really don't like it. Its fine for them of course just not the plebs which they feel they have to watch like kids in school.
If you can't trust your employees to be working at home or you don't have a way to know that, goals, tasks completed then you have more problems that you need to worry about.
I really hope it catches on, there are a huge number of people who could work from home quite easily.

seamus · 12-12-2019 11:18am

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

People issue. A lot of managers would hate it.

There's quite a lot of resistance to it, because it represents a significant change of mindset. It's a large social upheaval. And people tend to resist such upheavals point blank, without considering whether it's a good thing or not.

My father commuted to a job. So did his Dad. And his Dad. And his Dad.

Commutes may have been shorter 80 years ago, but for a long, long time people have been getting up in the morning, and leaving the house to make a trip to a place of work.

It sounds insane, but telling people that's going to change causes a substantial amount of people to go into lockdown and denial. They've structured the basic routines of their lives around commuting, and they will resist any external attempt to change those routines without even considering the benefit of the change.

There are definitely management who begin to panic at the thought that they can't just walk up to someone's desk to check if they working, but I don't think the big resistance comes from there.

The crux of the management issue is this:

If you can't trust your employees to be working at home or you don't have a way to know that, goals, tasks completed then you have more problems that you need to worry about.

A dosser will doss whether they're at home or at work. At work they'll just find better ways to doss and be a bigger drain on company money than if they sit at home dossing.
If someone thinks that an employee can be considered to be "working" on the basis that they're at their desk from 9-5:30, then either the employee doesn't do anything, or the manager hasn't a clue how to manage people.

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 11:19am

The next big thing...working from home person complaining that their partner thinks because they are at home all-day the housework should be done and dinner made :P

12-12-2019 11:21am

two lads reporting to me, we're in the same room.

i can see if things are getting done or not without lifting my head, and the printer is for ryanair tickets only.

everything we use is already accessed online or could be

not sure weve approached each others desks all year but to talk football, and we do most of that over whatsapp.

eastie17 · 12-12-2019 11:21am

Absolutes are never the answer.
Most workplaces that are office based encourage some of it.
but too much of it and the person can become isolated. A few years ago HP almost mandated home working, it nearly broke them.

This excerpt from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/when-working-from-home-doesnt-work/540660/ article sums up the differences best for me:

If it’s personal productivity—how many sales you close or customer complaints you handle—then the research, on balance, suggests that it’s probably better to let people work where and when they want. For jobs that mainly require interactions with clients (consultant, insurance salesman) or don’t require much interaction at all (columnist), the office has little to offer besides interruption.

But other types of work hinge on what might be called “collaborative efficiency”—the speed at which a group successfully solves a problem. And distance seems to drag collaborative efficiency down. Why? The short answer is that collaboration requires communication. And the communications technology offering the fastest, cheapest, and highest-bandwidth connection is—for the moment, anyway—still the office.

12-12-2019 11:23am

the answer i keep getting when i ask when working 2 days a week or whatever from home is going to become available in my dept- unions object to it!

hots · 12-12-2019 11:24am

low-commute not no-commute for most is the best scenario imo, there's still benefit to face-to-face understanding, benefit to socialising with people or chatting sh/t in general. WFH is great but 100% WFH isn't for most people.

ancapailldorcha · 12-12-2019 11:24am

Is there not a risk of increasing social isolation, though? It all sounds great but this idea of encouraging more people to spend less time around others would probably have its own set of consequences.

Duke of Url · 12-12-2019 11:25am

Deleted User wrote: »

the answer i keep getting when i ask when working 2 days a week or whatever from home is going to become available in my dept- unions object to it!

When you are talking about remote working.

What line of business are you talking about?

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 11:25am

Monitoring is changing though.

As one of my daughter's work is mostly on the computer its remotely monitored in some way her boss does not need to come near her, if he does not want, she can look at the monitoring herself she printed it off and showed it to me its graphs and the like I am not sure exactly how it works but suspect as long as the employee stays above a certain baseline they are left alone.

CelticRambler · 12-12-2019 11:26am

Deleted User wrote: »

and the printer is for ryanair tickets only.

People are still printing transport tickets on paper? :eek:

12-12-2019 11:29am

Duke of Url wrote: »

When you are talking about remote working.

What line of business are you talking about?

project/helpdesk management specifically

public sector in a wider sense

other posts- agree that 100% remote working aint necessarily the aim, disagree that "remote working" means "no time around people"

ohnonotgmail · 12-12-2019 11:29am

I have the option of working from home when i want. I never avail of it. Work is work and home is home.

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 11:29am

eastie17 wrote: »

Absolutes are never the answer.
Most workplaces that are office based encourage some of it.
but too much of it and the person can become isolated. A few years ago HP almost mandated home working, it nearly broke them.

This excerpt from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/when-working-from-home-doesnt-work/540660/ article sums up the differences best for me:

If it’s personal productivity—how many sales you close or customer complaints you handle—then the research, on balance, suggests that it’s probably better to let people work where and when they want. For jobs that mainly require interactions with clients (consultant, insurance salesman) or don’t require much interaction at all (columnist), the office has little to offer besides interruption.

But other types of work hinge on what might be called “collaborative efficiency”—the speed at which a group successfully solves a problem. And distance seems to drag collaborative efficiency down. Why? The short answer is that collaboration requires communication. And the communications technology offering the fastest, cheapest, and highest-bandwidth connection is—for the moment, anyway—still the office.

Complete remote working is not a good idea two days a week is ideal.

MaryKon · 12-12-2019 11:31am

Right so, let's have a gander

*major shifts in housing market, everybody suddenly happy to live down the country and Dublin property value goes down
*major shift in business and purchasing habits due to increased demand in rural areas and the obvious decrease in Dub and the other 2 cities
*budget takes a hit from major drop in revenue from fuel, road tax, tolls, fines etc
*voters are now spread out across the country instead of one or two spots

Yeah, no. Not gonna happen.

mariaalice · 12-12-2019 11:32am

Deleted User wrote: »

project/helpdesk management specifically

public sector in a wider sense

other posts- agree that 100% remote working aint necessarily the aim, disagree that "remote working" means "no time around people"

The public services will the very very last to do anything like this and may never adopt it dut to the unions.

Duke of Url · 12-12-2019 11:33am

mariaalice wrote: »

Monitoring is changing though.

As one of my daughter's work is mostly on the computer its remotely monitored in some way her boss does not need to come near her, if he does not want, she can look at the monitoring herself she printed it off and showed it to me its graphs and the like I am not sure exactly how it works but suspect as long as the employee stays above a certain baseline they are left alone.

So your daughter works from home. She then prints out monitoring data (Confidential?) and shows that to someone outside her organisation( You)?

Stevieluvsye · 12-12-2019 11:33am

Imagine Civil Servants being allowed to work from home............Fcuk sake

Bawnmore · 12-12-2019 11:33am

I work from home 99% of the time (travel 30 mins for face to face meetings sometimes and to client sites other times) and will find it very difficult to go back to being in an office. Before now, I've worked for a mix of big corporations (Microsoft, Dell, HP) and small agencies. That said, there have been people who started with us who it didn't suit due to feelings of isolation and difficulty keeping motivated (he says, typing a forum post at 10.33).

arctictree · 12-12-2019 11:34am

My wifes workplace tried to bring in a working from home policy. Union objected to it massively. Were talking about insurance, health and safety etc etc. Idea was abandoned eventually.

12-12-2019 11:35am

seamus wrote: »

The crux of the management issue is this:
A dosser will doss whether they're at home or at work. At work they'll just find better ways to doss and be a bigger drain on company money than if they sit at home dossing.
If someone thinks that an employee can be considered to be "working" on the basis that they're at their desk from 9-5:30, then either the employee doesn't do anything, or the manager hasn't a clue how to manage people.

Pretty much although there's also the aspect of responsibility and accountability. If the employees are at their desks, then the manager is ultimately responsible for their performance and behavior. If the employees are at home, then the manager is no longer the central focus for upper management.

I worked for a financial company who introduced working from home for the whole department, and paid for the upgrades to peoples infrastructure to ensure that they'd be available to work. Massive failure.

People who work in IT are expected from the beginning to work to deadlines that they tend to set for themselves, and project management is an essential part of their work. That allows them to knuckle down and do the work from home, ignoring all the distractions. In our case, with people from various financial backgrounds, many people didn't focus on their jobs, the way they would have in the office. They succumbed to distractions making incredible excuses for their failures. These are professionals with the intention to progress upwards for promotions, not people just doing a job. Not dossers, since dossers typically pick less stressful roles.

In the office, the number of excuses and distractions are limited, and can be managed. Outside, not so much. But you're right in that it comes down to the manager. Personally, I don't think it works for many job types unless we start educating people in how to effectively manage themselves, starting in school as opposed to waiting for them to begin working before learning how to do it. In spite of a decade working, it's only once I started writing books, that I learned to manage myself properly.

12-12-2019 11:36am

MaryKon wrote: »

Right so, let's have a gander

*major shifts in housing market, everybody suddenly happy to live down the country and Dublin property value goes down
*major shift in business and purchasing habits due to increased demand in rural areas and the obvious decrease in Dub and the other 2 cities
*budget takes a hit from major drop in revenue from fuel, road tax, tolls, fines etc
*voters are now spread out across the country instead of one or two spots

Yeah, no. Not gonna happen.

feel this is likely to be a "thing", definitely

We need to adopt a no-commute culture

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