" Working from Home "
WELL, i guess that this all started with the inception of 'Covid',BUT WHY is this still allowed to continue ?? SO many companies/businesses are letting their staff work remotely still !!
My complaint stems from a recent vehicle malfunction,in which i was asissted by a major breakdown company.Having to 'hold-on' (" an assistant will be with you shortly " )costing me over £70 in mobile top-up fee's !! When there was a response i got " Oh sorry for the delay,I'm working from home " !!!!???? Well,while you were out in the garden,cutting the lawn or digging the potatoes ,Im stuck on the M25 trying to GET HELP !!
Have any of you had this exasperating experience ?? Distant responses from foreign lands,children and dogs in the background of the phone?? Waiting ages for a reply or response !!
Any company or business that is still using ,employing these "working from home " tactics are still presumably the same wages as if in the 'office',yet still carrying 'office overheads '.TIME FOR THIS PRACTICE to STOP !!
Your comments would be interesting 
.
Comments
-
I am puzzled how you have racked up £70 in mobile fees? My contract gives me 1000 minutes a month, which according to my trusty calculator is just over 16 hours?
Surely the test of working at home is whether it can be carried out as efficiently as being in an office and in most cases I would have thought it could be. Both my sons work from home at times, the wasted journey time into work can be used more productively on real work. OK I fully accept that it needs to be monitored but if there is no difference it will be far easier to recruit people to work from home than asking them to commute. Obviously there are some jobs where it is just not an option but it is suitable for many roles. If anyone is getting bad service and they think that people not being in the office is the cause they need to take that up with the company/organisation as a separate concern.
David
1 -
I've had the phone answered on numerous occasions since Covid by people working from home and have to say that my experience differs entirely from your Triky.
I find call centres to be the worst for clarity of speech and background noise usually accompanied by the talker speaking or appearing to, could be technical, too quietly. A word of praise for CAMC here as their system doesn't seem to have these glitches, a rather unexpected bonus.
My most recent experience with an insurance discussion, not CAMC, was extremely helpful, with a clear and concise manner.
1 -
I'm on 'pay as you go' David.Waiting for ages for a contact to reply ,is how the amount happened !! I'm about to change that contract though !!
0 -
Triky, you need to sort out your mobile phone contract/spend. I spent 5 hours sorting out my broken email a fortnight ago, and nothing like the issues you have had with spend. PAYG is always the most expensive way of running a mobile. Look at a simple rolling monthly contract, you can often find one for as little as £4 per month,and you can opt to stay inside your given minutes/texts, so you won’t ramp up huge costs. Or, opt for something like I have, 25gb and unlimited phone minutes and texts for just £7 per month. Also, be very aware that some agencies/banks etc….. operate premium rates often close to £1 a minute. My phone is blocked for these numbers, I can usually find a non premium number for the same company.
All my experiences of folks working from home have been very good. It’s the scattered across the World call centres that are a nightmare for background noise. And hard to understand accents. Good luck with it. Any decent rescue service would give you a call back as well. Name and shame I say😁
1 -
When 3 started charging her 30p per minute on PAYG, OH went onto a rolling monthly contract elsewhere, and now I too have moved from a fixed term to rolling monthly. We have also done away with our landline as we never used it. Lots of good monthly deals available for mobiles.
Both our children work in IT, son has worked from home for over 20 years now and daughter since Covid. Son does have a designated office, should he wish to go there, it changes every so often. He lives “out in the sticks” in a farmhouse in Ayrshire, so quite a bit from his office, and spends more time in California (on business) than in any UK office.
Daughter’s employer allows all staff to work from home if they wish, though she does sometimes have a few meetings in the office. They have downsized their office premises, so she no longer has a designated desk space.
With 2 little ones, she likes the flexibility to be able to work earlier and/or later to complete her work if she needs time off for taking the children to, for example, school/nursery, dentist/doctor etc. The time previously spent commuting is also able to be utilised more usefully, and the money saved pays the larger heating bills.
There are of course many jobs that cannot be done from home, but IT work is ideal
1 -
Nothing wrong with working from home....if you have the right attitude. Company managers etc. who know their staff will be aware of those who are suited to working this way and be grateful that they have trustworthy and diligent employees. They will be rewarded by the efficiency of their employees. Sadly, there will always be some that do not work well this way and might 'take advantage' of the situation. Ultimately they will not advance well in their career. All over the country there are thousands of people who have 'worked from home' for years - they are the self-employed.
1 -
I had no choice. There was no office for me at company HQ.
After 13 years working from home with either zero / minimal support, and having to provide the necessary IT at my own expense, I was glad when the day finally arrived for me to retire. That was before Covid.
I was forced to go freelance and treated as part of the gig economy with no guaranteed work so my income was extremely variable and precarious. I remember one month I had no work at all. Taking holidays was tricky. I had to be "on demand" available 7 days a week for urgent work. It was a case of taking advantage of the fact that the permanent job market was effectively closed to me because of age discrimination. In my line of work the agencies and employers all want youngsters.
My brother has just retired after finding himself in a similar situation of having to WFH for several years (different company). In his case the company closed the office and converted it into an additional production area. All management meetings taking place remotely. He is glad to jack it in.
Obviously these examples are not the same as WFH 3 or 4 days a week. I understand the pros and cons, and benefits including cost savings for both parties. WFH will continue for the foreseeable future.
0 -
Our neighbour's daughter is employed by a University and "works" from home three days a week out of her official 4 day week. It's funny how working from home includes an hour plus on each of three mornings and the same in an afternoon visiting her parents when it's coffee time. Her father thinks it's OK that she can get away with it.
When I was working from home I invariably worked an average of two hours extra each day (without extra pay). I boils down to the conscience, or lack of, of individuals I suppose
3 -
Well before passing judgement like that perhaps ask yourself how do you know what her 'shifts' actually are?
How do you know that she doesn't starts her set work or duties an hour earlier and work an hour extra in the evenings to allow her the time to have time with her parents - which sounds like a good thing? Or working some time on Saturday, Sunday or her day off? Surely one of the benefits of working from home is the flexibility to work around things.
She will have been set an amount of work to do and if this work is done to her employers satisfaction (and as she is still employed it is?) then it's up to her how and when to do it. As long as it is done then she is not getting away with anything and nothing to do with her workrate or conscience or what ever you did?
2 -
Not quite the same as WFH, but back in the late1980’s, I worked a a Facility Manager in a Leisure Centre. I could pick and choose most of my hours to work, my Council bosses were delighted to have someone who did this as “Leisure” is a 24/7 business, and anyone who only does the 9-5, 5 days a week, weekend off routine simply does not have a finger on the pulse of everything that is going on, public/staff issues, and opportunities to increase provision and therefore income. I did this all my working life, right through Area Management, and Principal Officer status. Occasionally, (it was pre the internet revolution) I would work at home if I had a report to finish, or needed a quiet environment to prepare for important meetings. It’s about trust, both ways.
Many WFH environments are very controlled, Big Brother hanging over your shoulder all the time. You have to pick and choose your options to suit if you can.
0 -
I think it wrong to assume that people working from home do so unregulated? They will still have to meet productivity targets and in this world of modern technology that is not difficult to monitor. Obviously it depends on what sort of home working is being undertaken. If it is customer facing within prescribed hours then people have to be available during those hours. However there are many types of home working where there might be an advantage in using what some might see as anti social hours to complete work. Whilst I was at work I would often do monthly reports and staff appraisals in my own time as I found working in the evening both peaceful and productive. It wasn't a requirement of my job but it is possible that people that do work from home find they are more productive at quieter times of day which allows them the freedom to do other things at other times of day.
David
3 -
How is that relevant in any meaningful way though?
The only important or relevant matter is the relationship between the daughter and employer and her T&Cs of her contract and how happy they are with her.
Also it is the employer or her direct line manager that sets her work and duties and is responsible for ensuring they are met. You are not her employer and therefore have no idea if they are or not. As I said It is for the empoyer's to decide if she working well or not.
Additionally I have to say that if you do know them all very well then casting aspersions about her work and conscience on a public forum would be a puzzling thing for me to do.
PS who's David?
2 -
I think it is far too easy to make assumptions about people's work habits when working from home without any real justification for those assumptions (no matter how well you know the person concerned). One of our close neighbours has worked from home for several years (for the MoD); often when I get up in the night (I'm of the age where that is becoming increasingly frequent!
) I notice that the light in his study is on - should I assume he's still working? Or maybe he just forgot to turn the lights off when he went to bed. But then it's really none of my concern, is it?I seem to remember some research a couple of years back showing that folk working from home were generally far more productive than their peers working "in the office" (or wherever) with the constant temptation to stop to chat to colleagues, visit the coffee machine, answer phone calls etc etc.
As said above, if the individual's line manager is satisfied, where is the problem?
2
