[Politics] Tory meltdown finally arrived [was: incoming]...

[Audax]

1. As predicted it is already dragging on beyond the elections because the Met won't issue any further penalties until after. Not political at all. Oh no.

2. Why is the Dick still there so many months after being resigned by the Mayor?

1. They are still issuing penalties. They just aren't announcing when they've done it.

2. She's resigned (before getting pushed, but still *she* resigned) and gave a date for that to take effect. Not sure when that was, but it's still in the future. It was recently brought forward, again not sure when to. But regardless, she's actually not involved in this investigation anymore.

 

[Audax]

The facts don’t bear JRM out, and the private sector have already moved on, aware that dragging people across town in dreadful traffic does nothing for them.

Absolutely this. Where I work, pre-pandemic I was in the office 4 days a week and WFH the 5th. Additional WFH days were available by special request, but needed to be justified. I'd literally just had in-principle agreement from my line manager to switch from 4/1 to 3/2 when the pandemic hit.

By the end of the pandemic, the policy had more than flipped. It is now a policy of WFH as much as you want, the office is there if you need or want it. But no requirements to actually go the office on any sort of scheduled basis. My work week is now 0/5 and head into the office when I feel it would be beneficial.

For me: it's saving up to 4 hours a day commuting. That's made me more flexible on a work basis, as before the pandemic if I was in the middle of something and my normal leave-time had arrived, I would drop that work, go home, and not resume working on it until the following day. Now, if it's only 30-60 minutes extra work I just carry on and finish it. And I normally don't "claim it back" either. I get a lot more time to spend with my family, and it's also made it a lot easier for my wife to work a 30-hour week (as I can handle school run twice a week, which I couldn't do before). Bonus there is the government gets an extra person in the NHS they otherwise wouldn't have had - purely because of WFH being possible.

I waste less of my work week on the road, I spend less as a result (I was spending £45 a week on fuel driving a Prius, would be more like £55/wk now if I was still driving the Prius. I now have a Zoe, I've already reduced the expected 4 year mileage for the lease and saving £50 per month as a result [from what was already a saving vs the Prius] and I'll be doing it again soon, probably shave another significant chunk off). I get more sleep, which makes me more productive. Instead of taking a whole day off work because I need time for an appointment near where I live, I only take the time I need for the appointment.

For my employer - full WFH policy means they can access a much, much larger pool of potential applicants for open positions. Because location is now irrelevant when hiring. Currently live in Wales or Scotland and don't want to move to London? No worries - WFH and make the trip to the office occasionally.

There is actual research evidence into working from home that provides a bit of balance. Rees-Mogg's tone is entirely lack of trust and wanting control, but for what it's worth research has shown work from home tends to increase productivity because many people work longer hours (this is true for me - my commuting time is often spent working now instead), fewer distractions at home can also help (i.e. less small talk and casual conversation), and work can be more inclusive around carers' needs, inability to travel etc...but...knowledge sharing in teams and between teams suffers, innovation can suffer, some people struggle with the social isolation, work-life balance can go wrong (true for me again) and careers can suffer because sometimes, wrongly, being seen in the office is seen as preferential.

As with all things there are proven positives and negatives...personally I work somewhere that hasn't yet mandated any office time, but I go in a couple of times a month anyway, and I'd happily go in a couple of times a week just for the social aspect of being with colleagues if we were all there the same time. There's no negative difference in my productivity sitting at a desk at home compared to sitting at a desk in London though.

Suspect that research is going to need to be updated for the post-pandemic world, as well. One thing the pandemic definitely achieved: giant strides forward in technical solutions for supporting WFH teams. I'm not just talking about improvements to products like Teams, Zoom, Figma, Miro, LucidChart/Spark etc - but also things like where I work the meetings rooms are now fully setup as "hybrid" work spaces supporting both in-office and WFH. Some rather cool things ae possible now - such as our meeting rooms when connected to Zoom, there's an AI solution that instead of just being a single video feed that shows a group of people, actually picks out all the individuals in the room, at puts together a split screen so those at home can see all the individuals easily.

The technical solutions for optimising WFH are only going to continue improving now he pandemic has put impetus behind it. There will be enough private sector companies like the one I work for that have switched to fully embrace WFH to drive it forward much faster than was happening prior to the Pandemic.

And, as others in this thread have alluded to, there's going to be movement in the labour market as a result. Anyone who a) is predisposed to see and want the benefits of WFH and b) finds themselves working for a company that supports full flexible working, is c) unlikely to ever go back to an enforced office based employment contract *unless* that contract is paying well over the odds.


JRM's (and BJ's) position on WFH just baffles me immensely. The civil service could probably make a lot of efficiency savings if they embraced WFH. Certainly where I work, the net benefit has outweighed any negatives.

 

[BLOCK F]

Some good and some bad.
I have experienced difficulty in dealing with both private business and public sector bods who have been working from home., but in this this day and age, if managed properly, surely home working is a good thing and should be beneficial to employees, employers and don’t forget the general public or customers who may want to access information from the home workers. This is where I have found that WFH can cause problems, not least of all communication between different departments.Grrr……..please note WSCC! and a firm of solicitors who shall remain nameless.
WFH is fine if it works for ALL parties including the general public/clients/customers.
Our youngest works a mixture of home and office based. It seems to work for him and his employer. I don’t know about the customers though……….wait for it, he works for Palace.

 

[BLOCK F]

Duplicate post.

 

[East Staffs Gull]

WFH enables employers to reduce office space and salaries, over time.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

this makes me wonder now... it is against the instinct of Tories. what has Rees-Mogg actually said, anything about wfh being skivers? or the cost of offices and cost of London weighting are unnecessary for those wfh? seem once everyone has cried outrage at being asked to go into office, decisions become easier to cut offices and London weighting. as you say, more flexible labour doesnt need those things. cut back on public transport too next. is Rees-Mogg going thinking a step ahead here?

Boris Johnson called home workers skivers.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...ing-home-after-denouncing-it-skivers-paradise

JRM wrote a passive agressive letter to workers in his department.

[tweet]1518447412624437248[/tweet]

 

[KZNSeagull]

As an aside - a COMPLETE DULLARD just got a mention in the House of Commons from the DCMS minister. Things are taking a turn for the worse....

 

[beorhthelm]

Boris Johnson called home workers skivers.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...ing-home-after-denouncing-it-skivers-paradise

JRM wrote a passive agressive letter to workers in his department.

[tweet]1518447412624437248[/tweet]

seems from the article, looking past the silly messages, that Rees-Mogg is indeed looking at driving an agenda around cost savings. continue the move of CS jobs out of London and other city based locations, out of offices altogether. without a single office, that large employer isnt needed and the jobs disperse around the country. or, logically, other countries? just saying, be careful what you ask for, changes could lead to lower wages, reductions in transport, reduced office use, shop use etc.

the article notes the DVLA which i recall has been far from a poster child of home working, but a example of what goes wrong. i'd venture that wfh at scale needs careful planning and management. do staff have right access to systems and people, do processes work remotely (they should, in IT we know what assumption is the mother of), do staff get proper support when at home, have suitable work environment?

 

[GrizzlingGammon]

JRM is now distracting Starmer.

 

[beorhthelm]

 

[Lever]

JRM is now distracting Starmer.

View attachment 147259

Really funny! Thanks!

 

[hart's shirt]

"No, you can't play left back."

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

seems from the article, looking past the silly messages, that Rees-Mogg is indeed looking at driving an agenda around cost savings. continue the move of CS jobs out of London and other city based locations, out of offices altogether. without a single office, that large employer isnt needed and the jobs disperse around the country. or, logically, other countries? just saying, be careful what you ask for, changes could lead to lower wages, reductions in transport, reduced office use, shop use etc.

the article notes the DVLA which i recall has been far from a poster child of home working, but a example of what goes wrong. i'd venture that wfh at scale needs careful planning and management. do staff have right access to systems and people, do processes work remotely (they should, in IT we know what assumption is the mother of), do staff get proper support when at home, have suitable work environment?

DVLA and a potential 15 week wait for a passport shows that WFH shouldn’t be used in all settings, these are two important documents.

If the department can’t run properly they need to be back in the office full time

 

[BBassic]

DVLA and a potential 15 week wait for a passport shows that WFH shouldn’t be used in all settings, these are two important documents.

If the department can’t run properly they need to be back in the office full time

I'm in the middle (I hope) of my 15 week wait for a passport. Entirely my fault as I'd booked my holiday before checking the date on my passport. Sod all to do with them WFH

 

[portslade seagull]

JRM is now distracting Starmer.

View attachment 147259

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

I'm in the middle (I hope) of my 15 week wait for a passport. Entirely my fault as I'd booked my holiday before checking the date on my passport. Sod all to do with them WFH

It’s shouldn’t be that long of a wait though.

The home office advice last year was don’t apply as the staff are WFH

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

I'm in the middle (I hope) of my 15 week wait for a passport. :

It surely it wouldn't be 15 weeks if the staff weren't WFH ?

 

[BBassic]

It’s shouldn’t be that long of a wait though.

The home office advice last year was don’t apply as the staff are WFH

It surely it wouldn't be 15 weeks if the staff weren't WFH ?

I'm going on speculation but the wait could also be down to a large amount of people, locked up indoors for the best part of two years, all wanting to go on holiday the first chance they get and realising too late that their passports are out of date.

It's not going to be solely down to Jeff working at his kitchen table in his pants.

It'll be a confluence of shitty circumstance. And I'm entirely at fault for my part of it.

 

[usernamed]

It surely it wouldn't be 15 weeks if the staff weren't WFH ?

WFH should have zero impact on wait times. The work remains the same regardless of where somebody is based.

There was a period of about eight weeks at the start of the first lockdown where public services were genuinely impacted as everyone was completely unprepared, only 10% of staff had kit to work from home, and instructions were to stay at home. After the first few weeks, there was a huge effort to issue laptops and improve VPN access to cater for business mainly being carried out remotely.

I can’t speak as to all government departments, but I know the one my ex works for had ironed out the show-stopping issues by week eight, and things like phone services were being staffed remotely (albeit at reduced hours to begin with)

What is far more likely, and endemic across the Civil Service is that “delivering value for the taxpayer” can actually mean “chronically understaffing public services, and people are just going to have to wait. If it’s important enough, they’ll hold for 45 minutes on the phone, or wait 16 weeks for their vital document.”

Nobody wants to pay for gold-standard public services, so we can’t really expect to have them. An increase in wait times are to an extent a by-product of the political choices the country has made.

 

[highflyer]

I haven't got much to add except to say that, as a long-term lazy arse slacker, I have found it equally easy to be unproductve at work or at home.

The main difference being that when I slack off at home it usually inolves something relatively positive, like going for a walk or doing some baking. Whereas at work it involves leaving a work related document on my screen whilst staring out of the window and day dreaming about Victoria Cohen-Mitchell, a hot tub and game of trivial pursuit with forfeits*.

I should also note that I've rarely if ever had a bad review, never been sacked and always left work with good references. Which suggests that I am either a consumate bullsh*tter or that my actual value is not directly tied to the number of hours spent tapping at a computer. LIke many others (and unlike all those people who actually do/make real stuff), I have a bullsh*t job and if I didn't do it, hardly anyone would notice and the world would be much the same place. So maybe it's time drop the victorian era obsession with the protestant work ethic and chill a bit about how people arrange their lives and choose to get their work done.


*this may be a little niche, but I bet I'm not the only one.