"Get off your Pelotons and back to the office"

[TonyRPH]

croyde said:

PeteinSQ said:

croyde said:

Yeah, our line manager is still working from home, or time in a villa on the Med, whilst the rest of us have slogged it into the office all through this mess.

I'll give her this, she does answer phone or reply to emails and texts on a Friday night and over the weekend.

Does make me laugh that she's sending us emails from beside a pool whilst sipping on a Pina colada, telling us that we need to be in extra early on a Monday morning.

All for £80k a year.

wow, surprised there hasn't been a mutiny.

There are rumblings.

But why? Because if she's doing her job effectively, why should it matter from where (or how) she's choosing to do it?

Jealousy can be a nasty thing...

[Countdown]

TonyRPH said:

But why? Because if she's doing her job effectively, why should it matter from where (or how) she's choosing to do it?

Jealousy can be a nasty thing...

I thought the rumblings were because [b]she's[/b[ WFH in the Med whilst expecting her staff to be in the office - which seems a tad hypocritical.

[Misanthrope]

ClaphamGT3 said:

2) socially and economically, wfh compromises the benefits of agglomeration. Small, isolated communities are poor for a reason and, equally, London is the largest net contributor of any region in the UK for a reason - it is the only city in the UK that has absolutely nailed agglomeration

From where I'm standing London has taken 'agglomeration' quite a bit too far. Ever more people crammed into smaller and smaller spaces like a human version of a battery chicken farm. Now the 'agglomerators' want everyone to go back to a daily grind commuting on stty public transport in conditions which wouldn't be permitted for the transport of animals, and paying through the nose for the privilege. Of course for the 'agglomerators' it's all good. They're sitting pretty in their country estates or Holland Park mansions while ever more worker bees are crammed into the hive making money for them.

[kingston12]

Misanthrope said:

From where I'm standing London has taken 'agglomeration' quite a bit too far. Ever more people crammed into smaller and smaller spaces like a human version of a battery chicken farm. Now the 'agglomerators' want everyone to go back to a daily grind commuting on stty public transport in conditions which wouldn't be permitted for the transport of animals, and paying through the nose for the privilege. Of course for the 'agglomerators' it's all good. They're sitting pretty in their country estates or Holland Park mansions while ever more worker bees are crammed into the hive making money for them.

Indeed, and it's only going to get worse. South Western Railway have decided that they aren't going to bring back all of the train services that were cut last year due to Covid. Given how desperately overcrowded they were to start with, that rather flies in the face of the 'get back to the office' rants from people like Oilver Dowden and the Rail Delivery Group.

The problem is that the economy is the wrong shape and now people have had a chance to step back and look at it they are starting to question it. London is the best example, but I'm sure a lot of other cities are the same.

I've loved working in London for many years, but I don't really see much of a point in dragging myself there 4-5 days a week to sit on conference calls with people who are in other offices or working from home themselves. I'd definitely want to go in occasionally, but more to catch up with colleagues and friends socially or for a work event rather than just day-to-day tasks and meetings.

[simonw67]

ATG said:

No, it is not about the business, it's about making very trivial changes to the way you do things to accommodate on-screen communication in order to gain all the benefits associated with more flexible working. The idea that it is hard to collaborate, hard to build relationships, hard to develop juniors, etc., etc. is bunkum. There are loads of firms that are managing to do this stuff very effectively, .

I completely disagree. There is nothing quite like f2f interaction for getting things done, getting to know people better or working with people you have no control over. If you can make it work great from home constantly looking at a screen, wonderful. Many appreciate the hybrid.

[Electro1980]

ATG said:

Electro1980 said:

Because location does matter. There are two ways of employing people overseas, outsourcing and direct employment. Both have been tried in significant levels in finance, IT and customer service functions and have been around for a long time. They don’t work, except in very specific circumstances. It’s not cheaper, it’s not easy. There are very specific circumstances where it does work, and 90% of those are quickly going to be taken over by automation.

I think you're wrong about direct employment. There are certainly some functions where location does matter, but in finance and IT generally location is not an issue at all. What won't work is "direct employment that actually looks more like out-sourcing" ... e.g. try to get the grunt work executed in a cheap overseas location and don't pay proper attention to recruitment and man management as you would in what you think of as your core locations. But if you recruit and manage people in Mumbai or Buenos Aires in the same way that you would in Glasgow or Houston, then you'll get perfectly good outcomes.

It might work in very limited circumstances, as I said, but in general it’s a nightmare. Just setting up overseas payroll is a pain. You have to be ready to meet all of the employment and payroll laws in those countries. One country isn’t too bad, but that’s not recruiting globally and gives huge additional burden in terms of the management of the employees in that country. But as you increase the number of countries it gets exponentially more difficult to not only set up but keep all of those up to date.

[ATG]

Electro1980 said:

ATG said:

Electro1980 said:

Because location does matter. There are two ways of employing people overseas, outsourcing and direct employment. Both have been tried in significant levels in finance, IT and customer service functions and have been around for a long time. They don’t work, except in very specific circumstances. It’s not cheaper, it’s not easy. There are very specific circumstances where it does work, and 90% of those are quickly going to be taken over by automation.

I think you're wrong about direct employment. There are certainly some functions where location does matter, but in finance and IT generally location is not an issue at all. What won't work is "direct employment that actually looks more like out-sourcing" ... e.g. try to get the grunt work executed in a cheap overseas location and don't pay proper attention to recruitment and man management as you would in what you think of as your core locations. But if you recruit and manage people in Mumbai or Buenos Aires in the same way that you would in Glasgow or Houston, then you'll get perfectly good outcomes.

It might work in very limited circumstances, as I said, but in general it’s a nightmare. Just setting up overseas payroll is a pain. You have to be ready to meet all of the employment and payroll laws in those countries. One country isn’t too bad, but that’s not recruiting globally and gives huge additional burden in terms of the management of the employees in that country. But as you increase the number of countries it gets exponentially more difficult to not only set up but keep all of those up to date.

10 million UK workers work for large, private sector employers (500+ staff). That gives a lot of firms the scale required to do admin. Loads of firms (and a a heck of a lot smaller than 500+ in my experience) will open a sales office overseas to chase revenue growth. The admin burden is not a show stopper then. Cost-centre stuff is less sexy and the returns are less headline-grabbing and take longer to accrue, but those aren't good reasons not to increase productivity. And loads of firms already recognise this and are already doing it. UK firms employ millions of workers overseas, and non-UK businesses employ a million+ workers in the UK.