I am not going to condemn all working at home. It would be hypocritical to do so, as I often work from home. That saves time battling bad transport systems and allows me to work without interruptions or distracting noise.
Going to the office regularly is needed to socialise ideas, keep in direct contact with colleagues, be there to mentor and advise new recruits and to have informal meetings to exchange ideas and keep up to date with problems.
Getting this balance right is difficult. Done well by people with a good work ethic Ā part working from home raises productivity. As much office work is filling in and drafting things on a computer you can do that as well from home as the office without the wasted travel time. Done badly where home distracts the employee with many other things and they miss the trends,ideas and problems going to the office would let them pick up.
Each senior manager needs to work out when and where collaborative working in person is needed and when working from home might boost productivity. In a mixed business where some employees need to be the workplace every working day there is even more need to come to a fair settlement over home working for those who can.
My observation of central government post Covid was that offices were too empty. Meetings with Ministers often saw the MP, Minister and private Secretary in the same room but the senior officials at home. Clearly Ā taxpayers are paying a lot of money for large swathes of expensive Ā central London office accommodation which is not used. Use it or lose it.
August 29, 2024
Good morning.
First off let commend our kind host for his excellent interview yesterday on Talk Radio. You do seem a lot happier, Sir John now that you are an independent voice.
—–
As someone who can both work from home and on site and has experience of both, I have to say it is a ‘horses for courses’ choice. My work does requires me to be ‘there’ when needed and technology (software) allows me the freedom and flexibility to work from home without compromise. However I have found that working from home requires enormous self discipline and a rigid work routine.
One downside of working from home that I have encountered is health. Working from home and not being very active means I have put on a lot of weight hence, under this current contract I have elected to work exclusively on site working from home for one day recently when the car had to have a service. I am currently cycling to and from work on all days despite having the choice of mixing things up.
I work in the Private Sector and have to meet fixed deadlines. Failure to comply is NOT an option. I wonder how well the Public Sector workers would fare if the same rules applied ?
PS Vauxhall Bridge is still a pain, Sir John š
August 29, 2024
As a power station operation and maintenance manager I never had the luxury of WFA
The turbines couldn’t be fixed from home but I did find dealing with some office staff of various suppliers that it was at times difficult to source things as they weren’t up to date with matters.
WFA works for the public sector because there’s no incentive to produce any outcomes and much of their work is counter productive
It doesn’t really matter because it’s only taxpayer ls money
I see Keoth was photographed next to a large Siemens industrial gas turbine of the type I maintained
He will need many of these to back up his ridiculous windmills creating good well paid jobs in Germany.
August 29, 2024
Mark, I agree with this; fixed deadlines are the key to success, whether working in an office or at home and measuring productivity is tricky because the government never gives any indication of what productivity they expect from each public sector worker. Is it calculated based on the turnover of chargeable work, i.e., a passport clerk? Do they have to get so many passports ready per week with the person’s passport charge totted up against their cost inc a % to their Manager/Supervisor/Dept Head, inc. overhead (computer/software/chair/office cost, etc)?
The government is taking over so much regarding employing people, from the rate you pay them to equal pay claims taken out of their hands like this week’s Next debacle and then saying it has to be backdated! I’m surprised we are not told what the productivity measure is supposed to be!
August 29, 2024
+++
I saw a marvellous GB news panel/interview prog.
JR with Mr Farage proving that genuine debate is possible.
The socialist āequaliserā dragged on for ālevelling upā or something, didnāt really get that bit!
August 29, 2024
It worked for me for thirty years with great success. I visited businesses throughout the UK and the rest of the World as and when necessary. I was self employed with one staff. If I did not work I did not eat. Nobody in the UK supports the self employed.
For public employees it is down to the work ethic of the individual and the management control. Experience suggests there has been a lack of either. Ultimately it is a case of horses for courses. I would add that in the public sector failure is cushioned by the taxpayer, in the real world it is sink or swim.
August 29, 2024
Why should everyone else support self-employment? I say this as someone who employs myself. You are supposed to put into your charge your holiday pay, sick set aside, and any other provisions you wish to put aside for yourself, taking out insurance cover etc.
The public sector is taking too much, too much for pensions, too much for sick, duvet days, volunteering (how is it volunteering if they’re expecting to draw their normal income!).
I’d also like to know how someone in the public sector can receive Ā£170,000 worth of gifts and not have benefits in kind tax of 40% on that.
August 29, 2024
They shouldn’t be receiving gifts at all – that way leads to corruption as we are seeing now.
Someone else paying Ā£16,000 for clothes and specs strikes me as very weird anyway particularly as Starmer is a multi millionaire so should be able to afford his own stuff, like the rest of us have to.
August 29, 2024
My “city boy” son moved back home for the 2 years of lockdowns/restrictions rather than live, work and pay for a very expensive city flat he shared with a friend. I was very impressed with his discipline and work ethic, but then he is in a highly paid, senior role.
I very much doubt that his level of discipline and work ethic is widely spread amongst those who were able to work from home and I know for a fact that it is absent in much of the Civil Service – and not just at junior levels where the jobs can be pretty tedious. Within the Civil Service, the disciplinary procedures are so pathetic that if someone was WfH and quite obviously skiving off and not delivering, nothing would happen ….. particularly if they have a “protected characteristic” which basically makes them untouchable.
The time saved on travelling will not improve productivity in the Public Sector. And I doubt if it will raise it in the private sector either.
The risk, for everyone WfH is that if you can do it from your home then someone living in, say, India or Poland (with much cheaper accommodation and cost of living) could also do it from their home. It becomes an incentive for employers to outsource their administrative and junior managerial positions and cut costs.
If I was still at that stage of life, I’d be reporting into the office very regularly.
August 29, 2024
But then Donna you can observe admin staff in places such as Town Hall offices slacking daily , eating at their desk, filing their nails , talking about where they are going tonight , keeping phones on hold and when they have one thing to do , they are overrun with work !
August 29, 2024
Council staff, HMRIC and MOD are truly pathetic. It does not surprise me one jot productivity has collapsed.
I know a computer worker for council working from home and a DEI person working from home claiming they are more productive, most see them doing normal household chores, going for walks etc. The second role strikes me as trying to find a problem rather than any solution to create harmony.
MOD the same and no one I speak to can get through to HMRC! Police staff work from home! Osborneās first job was to give HMRC 2,000 more staff when cutting back elsewhere for austerity!
This is all about setting the scene for net stupid to control people, monitor by mobile or computer, not allowed to use cash, not allowed to use hurry words on line as work from home grows, Cooper re-instigates non hate crime back to policing. Taxes hiked public services dire- I wonder if all services could be reduce staff and increase work rate!
Private sector for failing targets public sector promoted for failing targets!
August 29, 2024
I strongly suspect some policy wonk has calculated that if the Government encourages WfH they can save Ā£squillions on having to upgrade our over-congested transport network …. both rail and roads …. which were built for a population of around 58 million and are now coping with an (undeclared) population over over 70 million.
How to solve congestion on the railways and cattle-truck conditions? Get people to commute only 3 days a week and WfH the other 2.
Policy Wonk won’t have factored-in that, effectively, it will mean massive congestion will continue from Tuesday – Thursday whilst Mondays and Fridays will be “same level of service, for a fraction of the paying passengers” since the vast majority will want their WfH days to be either side of the weekend.
And of course, the loss-of-productivity costs won’t have been properly calculated, just as they weren’t for the HS2 debacle when DfT calculations assumed that time spent sitting on a train was unproductive …. ignoring the fact that the railways all have Wifi.
These people don’t live in the real world.
August 29, 2024
Working from home is a middle class scam. Those who actually create material wealth cannot work from home. Those who create sweet FA and whose material well-being is reliant on those who cannot work from home are now merely parasitic, which of course they no doubt enjoy. Who delivers and stacks those supermarket shelves? It’s not Father Christmas. Who fixes a leaky boiler or mends your broken car? It’s not the tooth fairy. Who empties those overflowing refuse bins? Who builds those properties for Labour’s new electorate from the ME and Africa? It’s not Bobby the Builder with this arse showing over his cement caked jeans
Anyway, we can moan but in fifty years time the UK will no longer exist. The royals will have fled to Australia or Canada and Parliament will be a place of worship. I’ll still be punching St Paul who refuses me entry into the good Lord’s rest home for the eternally miserable
It’s game up for shithole Britain. You can thank Labour and Tory snakes for our demise
August 29, 2024
Home workers can be very entitled.
As a home worker it is not possible to provide the support available in an office. I support IT and the expectations of remote workers is unrealistic, sometimes you need the machine in front of you. The Remote workers then complain that they can’t work despite having a back up machine being written into their home working agreement. Who then do the managers pressure for a solution – the home worker or the IT tech and which one is working to the SLA?
Too many remote workers want the best of both worlds and this is indicative of their productivity.
Home working can be a productivity benefit with the right infrastructure and mindset, too often it isn’t. Civil servants should be three days per week in the office at least.
August 29, 2024
Being a hypocrite is not so bad. Firemen say āDonāt enter a burning buildingā and do so themselves. Working from home would not work for them.
Working from home is far more productive for many others, especially freelancers who are self-motivated to use their time efficiently. However, it appears that civil servants, who are paid irrespective of how effective or worthless they may be, tend to skive.
August 29, 2024
The āHome Officeā now creates the spectre of officials being paid by the government, not doing what they are supposed to do, but living a life of Riley in bed, watching TV, spreading nuisance on their mobile phones, and doing whatever they like in their free time without care of supervision or accountability. Not good.
August 29, 2024
Well it does rather depends on what the āworkā is. I do a bit of both but about 60% is from home now. I often wake up a about six and have done business banking, replied to staff emails, look at cashflows, accounts, a few phone callsā¦ by 10am I have done 4 hours and might then have a late breakfast. Will be over apple and blackberry crumble today.
Work made hugely less efficient by the fact that is take ages to get anyone on the phone. Especially the land registry, HMRC, banksā¦ when you have to. Huge delays in court evictions, probateā¦ too.
So much so called work is only needed due to daft red tape on planning, employments, complex tax systems, net zero lunacyā¦ essentially parasitic and pointless jobs that lower overall productivity and make us far less competitive.
August 29, 2024
Clearly Starmer cannot be trusted an inch over reversing Brexit (or on reducing migrants) but then neither could we trust Sunak with his dire Windsor Accord and failure even to attempt to reduce low skilled migration. We of course cannot trust a worse Starmer says as we have seen already. Now he want to prevent with the EU what he calls āa German far right partyā Does he mean one like the. National Socialist NASI party. I suspect he thinks about 70% of UK voters are far right because they want lower immigration, less crime, lower taxes, no two tier justice, no net zero, cheap reliable energyā¦
August 29, 2024
Good to see a group of experts have asked the government to postpone or alter the public inquiry into the Lucy Letby case over concerns about the way evidence was presented to her trial. They had concerns over the way statistics and the science around newborn babies were presented to the jury at Letby’s first trial.
It certainly should be delayed it seems to me that there was no evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that any crime was committed let alone crimes by Lucy Letby.
I remember the two cot death statistical errors most people and juries, and lawyers/judges do not grasp statistics and probability. Let us hope she does not have to wait 20 years to be released.
August 29, 2024
In the two Cot Deaths in one family probability case the prosecution āexpertā quoting the odds did not even understand his Maths A level probability. Such a basic error or perhaps worse was it a lie?
August 29, 2024
I have an uneasy feeling about the guilty verdict of Lucy Letby.
I have worked in the NHS all my life and have seen the clanning and finger pointing,the squirming out of problems and the evil blame culture.I have seen mixes of a too strong feed causing insulin levels to rise,I have seen babies gulping when being fed with a naso gastric tube and much more How can the earlier deaths have slipped through the net and not been investigated.Was Lucy on the ward all by herself at every death.These questions must have been asked or are they just listening to the evidence by others trying to hide their mistakes.?
August 29, 2024
Off Topic. from BBC website.
A think tank has blamed “woeful budgeting” at the Home Office for repeated overspending on asylum support.
Over the last three years, the department’s initial estimated budgets for asylum, border, visa and passport operations amounted to Ā£320m.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said it had ended up spending Ā£7.9bn over the period, Ā£7.6bn more than forecast. The IFS also warned the department had submitted figures it “knows to be insufficient” for this year.
Government departments submit estimated spending to Parliament up to four times a year, so that MPs can approve the use of public money in advance.
According to Treasury guidance, departments must ensure their estimates are “consistent with their best forecasts of requirements”, which the IFS report says “certainly does not appear to be the case” for the Home Office.
IFS research economist Max Warner said estimates should not be “unrealistically low” and fail to identify spending “that the government knows will occur but does not want to budget for”.
August 29, 2024
Oops talk about a Black Hole – to quote the Beatles
“Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”
August 29, 2024
I would guess that doing a survey on the roads in and leading into Wokingham that figure would appear small!
August 29, 2024
Working from home can work for the self-employed who are paid on a piece-work basis but it is very unproductive to have employees who get paid a wage almost irrespective of productivity or efficiency working from home.
August 29, 2024
+1 that is a good general rule of thumb. It also forces the Civil Service to acknowledge that they are functionaries and NOT on the same level as Wealth-creators.
Like most women I have 2 jobs. The job of maintaining my household takes most of the day. I do all the other work between about 2.00am and 8.00am. Undisturbed apart from the dogs getting up with me and walking around our boundaries to ensure no cat or squirrel has trespassed. I think I probably get 10 normal hours work done in those quiet hours.
But Iām not paid by anybody else. I do the work because I want to.
August 29, 2024
Work from home? For whose convenience?
So we all do it and lose our towns and cities?( Already underway)
Working from home = turning your once private space into a factory/office.
In buildings built for other ideologies.
And all for what?
A pension turned into a benefit that can be snatched in a heartbeat?
August 29, 2024
I worked from home for 30 years. But I worked for myself developing software on contracts where milestones and delivery were specified. If I loaded about and didnāt deliver, I didnāt get paid. People working from home for private companies will invariably have targets to meet. Some of the people working from home for the public sector are clearly, given the drop in productivity, loafing about and getting paid under false pretences.
August 29, 2024
Sir John,
There are some people who will work without supervision and others who won’t.
As a retired psychiatric nurse I never had the opportunity to work from home, other than when granted study time for my continuing professional development requirement. This is where one must complete so many hours per year of study, in order to maintain one’s registration.
I can see that, for the employee, there are time and potential cost saving to working from home. No travel costs and no expensive coffee costs. Why anyone would pay three and a half quid for a cup of coffee several times a day is beyond me, unless it’s just about being fashionable.
I cannot see many advantages for an employer other than potential premises savings however, that may be wiped out through loss of productivity, if the employee lacks the self discipline to work unsupervised.
It would be interesting to see some figures to compare productivity for home working and office working for public sector staff. I would imagine within the private sector, owners and managers would have looked and the figures for their company, and ensured those that needed it were in the office whereas, those that could handle the self discipline could work from home.
August 29, 2024
There has always been the option under the law to apply for flexible working arrangements including working from home which the employer has to have a good reason to reject. I partly worked from home for years on that basis despite my US employer disliking such an arrangement.
August 29, 2024
I am too old to have experienced WfH for much of my working life though I did so in semi-retirement. My two sons and son in law do WfH for two or three days a week. Two are partners in professional firms, one is self employed. The nature of their work, and modern communications makes this possible. They say it saves a lot of commuting time and better productivity. But they say they definitely need regular face to face contacts. They are concerned about the difficulties new hires can have in getting up to speed with what their business is all about and how it operates if they are absent from the office.
My experience on the receiving end as a consumer of services provided by employees WfH has been mixed. More often than not it has involved long waits for replies to phone calls and occasionally being provided with bad or even wrong information. I am unconvinced about it as a consumer on the receiving end of WfH
August 29, 2024
Sir John
Everyone is different and has different objectives, so working from home should be one option.
But there needs to be perspective, I canāt see steel workers working from home, so does that mean they are penalized, and it doesnāt make sense for those that are part of the human interface i.e. forward-facing retail to work from home.
The ones that seem to be morally wrong are those people that get London Weighting so as to compensate travel in and out of the City each day, but now working at home more than travelling ā do they give up this money? That then unsettles local labour markets. Then we have the high-profile GP from Surrey that made it into the media that actually lives in the South West and only does telephone consultations because they never get to the local Surrey GPās Practice/Medical centre ā is that what we expect.
Different work practices should be allowed but manipulating a condition if not a regulation that if something suits left leaning Metro London it should be applied universally.
The real thing is that WFH can only pander to a minority of the Country.
August 29, 2024
Indeed and people who have to travel to work should be allowed to deduct commuting costs from taxation as it is clearly wholly needed to do the job. Unless they are expected to sleep in their cars in the car park.
August 29, 2024
The big one here is London is not the UK. Governments keep disrupting a whole country to fit in with this one little bit of Metro Land.
The City(financial centre) is a big deal for London and a big deal in UK income earned. But in our modern ‘World’ with LLM it is a no longer needed hub, the business, they money creating, has effectively moved into the ‘cloud’. That means lower costs, from that stems low cost tax regimes being better homes and that means actual big, big loses for the Chancellor who is then having to find alternatives for the holes they themselves are creating. As it is the Government that is driving business from the UK. In essence the ‘City of London’ as we call it is morphing into just a word for a business that is stateless.
Then again if Governments knew how to manage, control expenditure all this thrashing around in the breeze would not be a thing
August 29, 2024
Like many others Iāve really appreciated your recent TV appearances on GB News and Talk Radio. Millions of working folk do not work from home, those that do are certainly fortunate especially as travel time and expenditure is avoided. My concern is how Junior Staff in this category are trained and supervised? I cannot see how this can achieved remotely. Working from home requires discipline and focus and a home environment is full of distractions and tempting attractions. For those working in the Public Sector funded by the tax payer how is supervision and office rigor going to be achieved? As a tax payer my experience post covid is Public Sector performance and productivity has reduced. Is this because of working from home?
August 29, 2024
Many self employed people work from home in one form or another, even if it is just to complete necessary paperwork etc, but self employed people usually have a very different mindset to most PAYE employees. No work no pay.
I worked from home for 30 years, but I simply could not bind myself to a desk for 8 hours a day, all day, every day, Thus I arranged my day to suit the way I worked with visits to site, to prospective customers and suppliers, in order to break up the monotony.
I was fortunate to be able to have a complete dedicated office at home with all necessary equipment, but quite how some people are supposed to cope when working from a small flat, or house where work interferes with your normal domestic living arrangements, would certainly not be for me.
As you comment rapid communication, simple social interaction, discussion, mentoring, training, and general people management is very difficult when people are spread far and wide.
I would suggest the majority of people are far less efficient when working from home, and that will become more apparent as time moves on. !
August 29, 2024
Mark Zuckerberg says White House āpressuredā Facebook to censor Covid-19 content
Meta boss regrets bowing to government power and says he would not make the same choices today. Good can we have an apology from Ministers, the BBC, SKY, Brien OāNeil, OFCOMā¦for all their covid lies on Masks, The Origins, vaccines safety, lockdowns billions, vaccine effectivnessā¦they got almost everything wrong.
Also āthe vaccines were unequivocally safeā dope or liar Sunak.
August 29, 2024
I had a colleague whose wife started to work from home after covid. She disturbed him all day long with her constant texts. Eventually, I told him to put his phone away and take it with him on his breaks. She went out to walk their pet as well as taking a lunch break, during which she was on the phone with him because she may have been lonely at home; she went to view houses when she was looking to move in work time. When their kids were sick she was ‘at work’ but caring for them (which is a big benefit and advantage for women working from home), she popped out to pick up her eldest child from school to bring back home. However, her public sector employer must have been happy with her, or it would have shown up in her work.
August 29, 2024
Your view is based on big cities, and you avoid who has the right to decide who works where. If you work in a small town how much travelling time is there, not much.
Every employer must have the right to decide who works where. It might make sense to allow home working sometimes, but the time must be monitored. Is it right to let someone fill out forms at home early and then have the rest of the day off? If that happens it’s not much of a job. Time for employers to decide if such an employee is needed.
August 29, 2024
Working from home has a security risk that hasn’t been mentioned. The employer doesn’t know who is in the house and has access to what is on the desk or screen. There is no control over discussions about other people’s business, and the risk of GDPR offences is higher. High-level workers often have a home office, but that is not the case for everyone.
August 29, 2024
+1
August 29, 2024
Ever heard of vetting?
August 29, 2024
How do you vet every visitor to that personās home during working hours? Do you vet their entire family if they work from home? Do you put cctv on their computer? If you donāt think this is a possible risk you canāt work in risk assessment or security and if you do work in those two functions you may be part of the problem that companies experience.
August 29, 2024
I will example that, A-tracy, where I believe it is disgraceful – I would use more severe words.
My meds have been under discussion with my Medical Centre. I was told I would be contacted by a clinical pharmacist, my doctor was not available. I was and discovered early she was at her home. I heard her baby but she did confirm it without difficulty.
I found she had access to my personal medical records as I asked her to check if something I had said to the centre was recorded. She checked, and it wasn’t.
The fact is, if anyone at her home looked over her shoulder my details could be seen.
That’s what has been allowed recently. Standards and efforts are at the bottom now.
She was however nice to talk with, unlike the Medical Centre staff.
August 29, 2024
I know a nurse who was severely disciplined and nearly lost her job for checking someoneās medical records and passing the information to a friend. It is difficult enough to control data security in a workplace.
I have concerns if a personās medical records or bank details, passport information, or a families probate information or other personal confidential information can be accessed easily from someoneās home without any track and trace on that, time stamps that records if a personās details are searched – the home office is not as secure as the workplace environment.
August 29, 2024
The Government offices in London after Covid were ‘very empty’ and that still applies.
If the Chancellor is so desperate for cash that she can cold heartedly condemn to death by cold her pensioner fellow citizens, then maybe she can deduct the London Weighting and travel costs these lazy lot are not now needing.
Of course that would take a real ‘difficult decision’ not like the faux ‘difficult decisions’ she is currently making and some courage to see it through, especially as it would incur the wrath of her paymasters, the unions. So that’s not going to happen, just more squeezing of the lower income people in October to fill her self imposed dreamed up ‘black hole’.
August 29, 2024
Off topic, yesterday saw ‘Passes for Glasses’ Starmer in Germany ‘inspecting the troops’ He looked a complete wally, not knowing what to do having presumably not been advised how to do it and was shoved around into position by the German Chancellor. What an embarrassment. Like a young Biden and showing us all up.
August 30, 2024
Graham
Yes I noticed too, not a good look for a supposed leader,.
I wonder who is pulling his strings at home.?
August 29, 2024
I worked for an organisation that saw employees scattered around this country, Europe and America. So when I did go into the office I could briefly socialise but the colleagues I actually worked with were better contacted with conference calls, which was easier to do from home.
Public servants are a different matter, given their low productivity – Ministers should insist they attend their office full time until productivity increases. Those that then earn the trust, with a job well done, would be allowed to WFH.
The whole subject of WfH is about the work ethic. Without that properly established and with no trust that employees are doing their job properly WfH should be seen as a perk to to the high achievers.
August 29, 2024
I’ve got no problem with the self-employed or the private sector working from home, however I do have a problem with the public sector and public funded job working from home …..they treat it as a jolly
August 29, 2024
614 illegal economic /criminals arrived in the UK yesterday from the safe country of France ā¦.Our PM is in France today, maybe heās asking for our money back
August 29, 2024
In my last role, I worked for a multinational where it was common practice for most staff not to come into the office on Mondays or Fridays. For the first time (in a very long time) my commute was a very pleasant 20 minute drive with virtually no traffic that ended in a large car park with ample free space. Interestingly, I found Mondays and Fridays to be profitble days to be around physically.
Our Enterprise sales people loved having customers for Friday morning meetings, followed by lunch. These leaders of industry, finance and government then had a head start on their weekend pilgrimages onto the Cotswolds or West Country. On Mondays, it was lunch followed by a meeting, which obviously worked for those returning from such weekend delights.
Being available, meant I was often asked to present my products to these clients, as part of our overall solution. Wonderful access if your role is in sales and marketing. Unless I had other appointments, I was in the office every day at 8.30 and leaving at 18.00 – Monday to Friday. However, I never looked at emails in the evening at home or worked weekends again. After many years of running my own business, this was absolute bliss!
By contrast, my son (on the eve) of his recent holiday with us, was still doing email at 2.00am the morning we were due to leave. He was then sat in the airport departure lounge at mid-day in a meeting with his boss. He’s very well paid and has competant managers he can delegate to but is expected to be available 7×24. I worry about him….
August 29, 2024
There are a lot of people who work in industries where turning up for work is essential and I think it unfair that some can take the easy way out and dress in pyjamas all day and work to suit themselves. It encourages lack of discipline (just as not wearing uniforms at school has done) and a sloppy attitude to life and work in general.
August 29, 2024
There are jobs that can be effectively done from home and there are jobs that can’t.
Certainly it should not be part of employment law that any employee has the RIGHT to work from home, unless it it is part of their contract of employment agreed with their employer.
August 29, 2024
My experience of work was such that being moved to an open plan office was bad for my job which involved thinking about complex matters – where idle chatter was an utterly distracting phenomenon. Previously I had a small office to myself, so I could close the door and get on with work but still be there for somebody who wanted to talk to me. In essence there is not one ‘size that fits all’- it all depends on the work. So whilst nowadays I could work from home, nevertheless I would miss both the tea-room interactions and being easily available for work questions.
August 29, 2024
The comments have nailed it. WFH is right for some who are very disciplined and motivated and whose income depends on them working hard.
But it is not suitable for those who need supervision. Most civil servants do, and there are far too many of them.
Sadly, we already know that Sir Keir is a soft touch and will do nothing about it. We have already seen he is a pushover for the unions as he will be for the EU. So, the chance of him disciplining the Civil Service and returning them to the office is nil.
As I have said, China, Russia, India and other countries are not encouraging WFH. In the UK, eventually, the private sector will collapse under the weight of the public sector!
August 29, 2024
Ed Miliband has bowed to Greenpeace by refusing to fight a climate lawsuit brought against two of Britainās biggest North Sea oil schemes.
As someone elsewhere has stated there is a lack of understanding what and how oil is used ā 15% is used for moving society around, 85% is the lubrication of society. As an illustration the 85% is used to create the banners that just stop oil use to publicise banning of oil(their banners) and puts shoes on their feet.
Replace all that with imports and you are in dire straits. Although Labour would be pleased to restart financing Putinās war on the World. Windmills canāt create raw material for clothing or footwear, they canāt create the plastic needed for the tyres of EVās. Windmills canāt create the lubrication needed for the Windmill itself to function. Windmills cant create the raw materials needed for the WFH tribes keyboards or device screens, internet cables etc. to keep in contact. Its and endless list that is hampered by the spouting of illiterate numpties.
August 29, 2024
I would add that some companies work 24h-hr days six or seven days a week by passing the work packages to teams around the world. This is perfectly possible in a business where the work packages are captured electronically.
Another factor is that office space is expensive. Hot-desking and working from home have long been recognised as cost saving measures.
The idea that a government should dictate to organisations how they run their businesses at this level is utterly absurd. Government organisations are different. All are controlled by the government so it can and should mandate how they operate. Most operate only locally. International operations are the exception and these have long been used to som eemployees working odd hours from home or office, and remotely to suit different time zones.
In both private and public sector organisations some people need to work in isolation from others for long periods. Bringing them into the office to do the same there is an unnecesary distraction and expense.
It should be a matter solely for private organisations to decide these matters for themselves without government interference.
August 29, 2024
I do not believe it possible effectively to perform a supervisory role from home or supervise people working from home for project work. For example, in the IT industry I was a systems analyst which meant I designed and installed computer systems with the use of programmers. Being on site, I had a very clear view of the abilities or lack of them of maybe sixty people on site and would allocate work accordingly and would be able to closely monitor their progress. The consequence of someone tackling an IT task beyond their ability can be dire and can put a whole project timescale into jeopardy.
August 29, 2024
Working from home can be good for the right people at the right time. If people know each other well, and are good at their jobs, it can be very effective. If they individually have the energy to pull it off. Where it doesn’t work is where trainees are involved who need to learn by observing, or even experienced people learning something new. It doesn’t really work when there are multiple cultures involved which do not fully understand each other. It can be especially good if people have individual bits of work to do where avoiding the disturbance of the office helps.
August 29, 2024
Dear Sir John,
As others have noted, the work-from-home movement is mainly a London phenomenon. And that is mainy because, at a guess, between 500,000 and a million people face daily journeys to work and (even worse) back home lasting a hour or more door to door. And normally on crowded and enervating public transport . That was bad enough when there was only one breadwinner. Now that there are usually two it is a disaster for family life.
Having commuted to school, albeit for only eight stops on the Underground, I quickly decided that I could not spend my working life that way and opted to rent a small flat in the centre. It has probably cost me well over Ā£1 million over the years, one way or another, but kept me relatively bug-free and often sane.
London is a great world city but office workwise it is not fit for purpose. Before German reunification, I had the privilege of spending several days touring ministries in the small-city political capital of Bonn and was delighted to see how much more relaxed it was than London, almost campus-like.
If this Government insists on planning a series of new small well-connected cities, please will it ensure that each one has a government campus dedicated as headquarters to at least one ministry. (Plus a prison preferably).
August 29, 2024
A word of warning. In the organisation I am most familiar with, I cannot off-hand recall over many years a single case of someone who did not work at the main office being promoted. Per contra, they tended to be high on the list of disposables when budget cuts were required. I doubt that is unusual.
August 30, 2024
“Is working from home a good idea?”
I read here on fewer and fewer occasions. But today, this title caught my eye.
For an infurating title to an article, it takes some beating.
All the ( I really don’t know how to describe parliamentarians these days; puppets, or muppets ), occupants of Westminster scurried home in 2020 and exhorted us all to cower in our own homes in like manner.
Some people ( who commented on this blot ) put forward, that to do so was an insane idea, that not least it would help destroy the UK pension funds which have significant investments in commercial real estate. Office blocks and so on. But the idiocracy, knew better ( actually, know nothings ) carried on from their tax funded ‘home communications studios ).
Now, after nearly four years, it seems to be dawning on the idiocracy, that lock-down, might not have been such a good idea after all.
Reply Yes, and I was against their lockdown saying it would do too much damage