Remote working – increasing pushback from employers?

Bob – so you wouldn’t employ someone with caring duties then?  someone who had children to pick up from school?

The reasons someone can’t be flexible are irrelevant. Point is they can’t come to agreement on what each can give/accept, so they don’t get the job.

Well yes filling a shift on a clock with a competent body  is different to supplying deliverables with variables

I employ Joe. Joe works in my workshop as an engineer.

Joe wants to move into the field work side. He interviews and he’s the perfect skilled candidate.

I need to send Joe to a location where there is absolutely no way to travel home at night or even ona. Specific known day on command*

Joe says he cannot go because Joe has kids and is the sole carer

Should I give Joe the job.

*Joe doesn’t exist….. Joe isn’t even a chap with his name changed completely hypothetical but plausible situation for many in engineering

trail rat – I have directly quoted him.  He says folk need to do it and he will not employ people who will not or cannot

A lot of stockhom syndrome here 🙂

The reasons someone can’t be flexible are irrelevant.

Not in law.  It can amount to indirect discrimination

Is he doesn’t understand how anything but the NHS works.

Coincidentally, I was in a training day yesterday, half the room being former Scottish NHS nurses, oh boy, the NHS sounds like a complete and utter crap show for looking after it’s people. Its weird listening to people explain how they’re initially freaked out by an employer looking after them.

Caveat being, former NHS and probably was an opportunity for some venting.

Not in law.  It can amount to indirect discrimination

So you’d hire Joe out of fear.

And there is a nutshell is why the NHS is in a shit tip.

IANAL but I’m pretty sure companies don’t have to give jobs to people who can’t or don’t want to meet the needs of the business.

there’s always been an element of overtime from time to time. Reward for that overtime has varied from compensation to time in lieu, and sometimes no direct compensation.

I’d love to work in these industries where there’s never any need for overtime.

Overtime is absolutely fine, welcome even. Being expected to work for free is not. I routinely worked out of hours, the flipside being that I didn’t expect any shit if I rolled in at 10am or had to take a two hour lunch.

(then they have the nerve to ask us to pay them travel expenses)! Err, did we pay expenses when you were in the office full time? What does it say in your contract?

It’s work-related travel to somewhere other than their regular place of work, you absolutely should be paying their expenses. It matters not one jot what it says in their contract. Go see what HMRC have to say about it.

TJ, hypothetical question here. If you’re given a task to do, say get a tender pack out and you’re given 2-weeks to complete it, you agree to the deadline but find that after a week you may be struggling to hit that deadline for whatever reason, would you not work on a bit in order to ensure the deadline is met? Bear in mind you’re in charge of your workload and you’ve agreed to the deadline thats been put to you.

In this scenario, if you were really efficient and completed the work in 8 days, what would you expect to do with the other 2?

Should I give Joe the job.

You absolutely should offer Joe the job. It is down to Joe to reject it due to prior commitments. Otherwise, good luck with your legal battle for discrimination.

You absolutely should offer Joe the job. It is down to Joe to reject it due to prior commitments. Otherwise, good luck with your legal battle for discrimination.

That’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Let’s not forget that there is no obligation on anyone to give ANY feedback after an interview.

Ps I deliberately left out some key details – just to see how the blanks would be filled in.  Much the way I thought the usual suspects would go.

The team I’m in would go bonkers if we had to go team building every month… we have a life outside of  our pretty stressful jobs.   Half of them would leave and another half would go it they had to put up with what honestly sounds like a lads culture

But somehow manage to successfully manage projects where the daily spend is in million USD per day and up for weeks, months at a time

And yes we work from home a few days , and I pretty sure we have a good team feeling.  What are we doing wrong?

That’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

That’s as may be. But you cannot refuse to offer someone a job because they have children. If they cannot meet the requirements of the job then that’s a subtly different situation.

Is he doesn’t understand how anything but the bit if the NHS he was lucky enough to work for in a bygone era works.

FTFY

then they have the nerve to ask us to pay them travel expenses)! Err, did we pay expenses when you were in the office full time? What does it say in your contract?

I changed the majority of my team’s contracts so they are now home based, which allows me to pay expenses for occasional travel to the office.

That’s as may be. But you cannot refuse to offer someone a job because they have children. If they cannot meet the requirements of the job then that’s a subtly different situation.

He didn’t. He refused because they were unable to be flexible with a likely job requirement. If they cannot stay away and do site visits they cannot do site work?

It can amount to indirect discrimination

Indirect discrimination takes into account the  “objective justification” of policies that might result in discrimination against people with protected characteristics.

Applying it to our straw man…

In the case of Joe, is a role requirement of staying away objectively justifiable?

If it as an on the tools job covering a wide geographic area then it probably is.

Even for disability, employers are not obliged to make adjustments that are impractical, disproportionately costly or that may impact the health and safety of others. Nor are they expected to change the underlying nature of the job.

Now if it’s really occasional maybe someone else is happy for an extra few nights away with the all you can eat Premier Inn breakfast.

If you like Joe you can ask him about whether there’s a way he can manage x trips away with his childcare needs (I would).

When did work stop being a contract of employment whereby one party pays the other for doing a job? When did it become working for free, attending after hours stuff, answering emails outside of your contracted hours etc. At some point a lot of us have been had, including me!

That’s as may be. But you cannot refuse to offer someone a job because they have children. If they cannot meet the requirements of the job then that’s a subtly different situation.

I read the post you responded to as Joe couldn’t meet the operational needs of the business. Not, Joe has kids so can do one.

When did work stop being a contract of employment whereby one party pays the other for doing a job? When did it become working for free, attending after hours stuff, answering emails outside of your contracted hours etc. At some point a lot of us have been had.

I’ve been doing what I do for 25 years.  Other than the emails (it wasn’t such a thing in 1998 and I had a desktop PC) the package has always effectively priced that stuff in.

My contract will say 9-5 and sometimes more.  The market rate for my job reflects it’s not really  9-5.  I’m not working for free.

I’m ok with that, the industry is completely transparent about it. If it wasn’t like that I’d undoubtedly get a lower salary.

Often the really late stuff is some of the most challenging and interesting stuff we do (sometimes it isn’t though).

I take pride in what I do and I have to deal with people in some of the most stressful parts of their lives. I’m also personally liable for quite a lot of actions and obligations in my job as a matter of law even though I’m employed. So I’d rather get that call or email and deal with it.

I get some people don’t have that connection to their job.

I read the post

The salient point.

Even for disability, employers are not obliged to make adjustments that are impractical, disproportionately costly or that may impact the health and safety of others. Nor are they expected to change the underlying nature of the job.

I’ve recently heard an example of this with a wheel chair bound applicant for a role, but ultimately they couldn’t overcome the H&S problems. You cant discriminate, but you also cant break H&S requirements.

In the end, they offered a role somewhere else (but still accesible).

that sounds like mandatory overtime to me

Nope, not mandatory, beyond the standard vague clause in pretty much every private sector contract that says you may from time to time have to work beyond your contracted hours. Very vague, never seen it tested in anger.

So no, absolutely not mandatory. People can of course choose to work 9-5 and nothing more and I’ve had folk do that over the years. What tends to happen then in the peak periods is others pick up the slack. Sometimes that causes some grumbles that as a manager I have to resolve.

Ultimately what happens, and TJ you better strap in because this will likely send you into orbit, those that deliver the expected minimum standard tend to receive the standard in return. By that I mean in my experience those kinds of people generally receive the minimum pay rises, the minimum bonuses etc, whereas those that deliver more tend to get more be it compensation, development opportunities, promotions etc.

Us private sector managers have to sit down at the end of the year and rate all our employees. Across the entire company there will be a bell curve that those ratings have to fit. A bunch with work to do, a bunch with working well, and a bunch with exceeding expectations. Compensation is then distributed accordingly. This is the reality of the private sector and it always feels weird to those that spend their careers in the public sector. My best mate is a college lecturer. It blows his mind that people get performance rated and rewarded accordingly, whereas his entire college has their pay rises negotiated by their union, and get the same pay rise for everyone. None of them ever get their ability as a lecturer graded or ranked. I have to sit down at the end of the year, differentiate performance and look for reasons to rate people higher or lower than a peer. The reality is, doing contracted hours and nothing more is highly unlikely to get someone a higher end of year rating than someone who does do the occasional overtime.

And as for the various accusations of a “toxic workplace”, here are some horribly toxic things that have happened recently

Just 2 weeks ago we were awarded “Team Of The Year!!!” at our annual off-site conference with our colleagues across our much wider department, voted on by that wider cohort

Our twice a year employee happiness survey always scores 90%+ for my team since I took over as boss about 3 years ago. My teams happiness score is now consistently 20% higher than other teams in our wider department

In every employee happiness survey since I came in as boss, everyone has rated me 10/10 twice a year for the last 3 years

I honestly don’t know how they manage to get through the day in such a toxic place, but I suppose they have bills to pay

Oh and for those say the need for overtime is poor management or planning or whatever, I’ll try and explain as I would explain it to my Labrador

Let’s say your team makes widgets. In a typical month they make 100 widgets a month. You’ve got a team that can make those 100 widgets a month within their normal working day.

However a couple of months a year they have to make 500 widgets. Now in an ideal world you’d have enough heads to make the 500 widgets in normal working hours, but your finance director and HR aren’t going to let you hire those heads, because in the other 10 normal months, there wouldn’t be enough work to go around.

So  in those 500 widget months, everyone does a wee bit extra, the widgets get made on time and the clients who buy the widgets are happy, then it goes back to the normal 100 widgets.

But get this. There’s actually a couple of months where we maybe only have to make 20 widgets. In those months, it’s kinda chill and if folk want to maybe start a bit later, or finish a bit earlier, or take a long lunch, go to the gym mid afternoon, potter about the garden and keep an eye on their emails every now and then in case a widget order has came in, then I’m really cool with that and I encourage them to “nudge nudge, wink wink” enjoy the down time

However a couple of months a year they have to make 500 widgets

I could challenge the “have to” part of that – whats happened is that someone has agreed that they will make 500 in a month when they could’ve said “no they can make 100 a month but the next couple of months are looking quiet so we can do some extra then, or if you ask earlier next time we we can do them in advance” .

Team of the year and employee happiness surveys. There are two terms that make me want to vomit. The Americanisation of the workplace continues at pace. You make your place of work sound like a motivational camp.

Where I work the 500 widget months would be planned for and we would bring in agency staff for the duration. That, or we’d produce more widgets in the downtime in preparation for the peaks.

PDR’s or whatever you want to call them are a god awful way of reviewing people. So happy that this is my first year in a long time that I don’t have to conduct any. Moving away from managing people to managing strategies and third parties is the best thing that’s happened to me in my working life. So much less bullshit to deal with and can actually get on with the job.

I’ve often said, “I can work to rule if you want, but you won’t like it.”

I’m quite happy to work back to help make those 400 extra widgets. I’ll have next Tuesday off in return, thanks. But I’m doing you a favour and that has to be recognised; the point at which it becomes expected, demanded even, is the point at which you can stick your widgets up your arse. And if I’m being penalised by being passed over for pay rises for literally doing my job then I’m jobseeking.

whats happened is that someone has agreed that they will make 500 in a month

Unfortunately the majority of our clients want their widgets in January or April

A situation I have no control over because unfortunately I didn’t create the Gregorian calendar or decide that the financial year would start in April

Where I work the 500 widget months would be planned for and we would bring in agency staff for the duration

Ah so you enjoy dealing with incident/failure investigation as well that should keep the team busy the rest of the year at least.

What does your risk assessment and onboarding process look like for letting uncompetent people assemble your widget.

If that’s a known then it can be planned for. We have peaks where I work and manage them accordingly. This might require some overtime but it is put out to everyone on a voluntary basis and has no bearing on PDR’s or pay rises and career progression. Why would it as that would be absurd.

The Americanisation of the workplace continues at pace.

Oh I spent 16 years working for American companies. The stories I could tell you.

Anyone on here have to go through “The Oz Principle” management training stuff years ago? We all got given a wee card we were supposed to carry round with us, and when colleagues displayed sub standard behaviour you were supposed to whip the card out and show them the “BELOW THE LINE” side. Conversely exemplary behaviour would require the “ABOVE THE LINE” side to be shown

Good times

You make your place of work sound like a motivational camp.

It sounds horrendous. How is quintupling your output “a wee bit extra” unless they’re all tossing it off for the rest of the year? In the weeks where we only needed to make 20 widgets I’d make 100 anyway to stockpile for when some t**t in Projects wildly over-promises what we can actually deliver.

I’m going working for Funky P.

And if I’m being penalised by being passed over for pay rises for literally doing my job then I’m jobseeking.

You’re not being penalised you are being remunerated in line with your contract for doing your contract. But if you want more than base pay rise you’ve got to do more than base delivery.

What does your risk assessment and onboarding process look like for letting uncompetent people assemble your widget.

Well we’ve been a successful business for 17 years and counting so must be doing something right. I don’t work in HR or directly in Ops anymore so my answer is a shrug to your questions. Whatever they do it clearly works though so meh!

We all got given a wee card we were supposed to carry round with us

If you were my manager and enforced that policy, you’d be well advised to keep it lightly oiled because it’s following your extra widgets.

You’re not being penalised you are being remunerated in line with your contract for doing your contract. But if you want more than base pay rise you’ve got to do more than base delivery.

I know plenty of folk who just do their hours but are plain better at their jobs than those ‘putting the hours in’ and have been rewarded accordingly. It sounds like some of you work in god awful places. I don’t particularly like my job but I’m feeling lucky reading some of these posts.

When did work stop being a contract of employment whereby one party pays the other for doing a job? When did it become working for free, attending after hours stuff, answering emails outside of your contracted hours etc. At some point a lot of us have been had, including me!

I effectively work for free for about 1.5 hours a day when I WFH. I’m usually logged on by 0730. If they drag me into the office I will not be logged on and working until pretty much 0900.

I pretty much refuse to attend out of work events. I have a busy family life and a strong desire to ride my bike twice a week. I am not sacrificing any of that to keep colleagues happy. If they need to put the arm on colleagues to supplement their own non-work lives, then they’ve got the problem.

I refuse to have a work mobile and I’ve never put any work email, message groups etc on my phone. My job doesn’t demand it and I’m not having insecure people bother me with their hang-ups 24/7. **** that!

I occasionally get the odd comment that I’ve not liked work stuff on LinkedIn. I have an account, but never used it – career dick-measuring is not my thing. I just laugh it off and carry on. My performance in my role is always satisfactory or higher in my appraisals.

I actually enjoy working collaboratively and I’m often commented on as being a calm head in teamwork situations (in camera or in person). I just don’t feel the need to drag these people into my non-work life.

A job is a job. I will do it to the best of my ability in the time allowed (plus a bit more WFH). If that isn’t good enough, an employer can try to find someone else to do it.

If you were my manager and enforced that policy, you’d be well advised to keep it lightly oiled because it’s following your extra widgets

The Americans loved it

Us Scots, less so

whats happened is that someone has agreed that they will make 500 in a month when they could’ve said “no they can make 100 a month but the next couple of months are looking quiet so we can do some extra then, or if you ask earlier next time we we can do them in advance” .

At which point you aren’t asked again.

You could argue that maybe instead of doing 100 widgets for 10 month and 500 in 2, Bob should do 150 widgets monthly but at that point he’s exposed to the risk that the order doesn’t come in or isn’t as big as expected. And his company is then tying up money in unnecessary stock for 10 months of the year, it also reduces their ability to react to market changes. You only have to look at the ongoing shit show that is the bike industry at the moment to see the potential impacts of doing that.

If Bob and his team are happy with it, like he’s set out, then it’s obviously working. It would be disingenuous of him to offer employment to someone where there is a misalignment of expectations/requirements.

What does your risk assessment and onboarding process look like for letting uncompetent people assemble your widget.

Oh, stop it with your dirty talk you tease!