British Work Ethic Condemned

Spartacus_Mills

dianadors wrote: »

I got my work ethic from my Dad. He was always early for work so ready to start on time. He never had a day off sick - he was a miner and came home from a shift once having been hit in the face by machinery and needing 20 stitches. He'd been and had the stitches, then gone back to finish the shift. If ever I feel too ill to go to work, I daren't ring in sick as I am still scared my dad might find out!

As laudable as you may think that is if you worked for me and came in ill I would send you home and consider disciplinary action.

If I had someone operating a machine who knew they were ill when they came in then I would consider that a health and safety issue.

kabayiri

misskool wrote: »

It's just another stereotypical tarring. Anywhere you go in the world, there will be hardworking people and lazy people. I'm from Asia and there are clock watchers there too.

You need to find a good balance. I'm lucky to work in a place where I can be flexible about my working hours but it does mean that I work when I need to.

Absolutely right.

It does seem worrying that Mr Tata can bend Mr Cameron's ear on the basis of problems with his own workforce. Perhaps he should look at a wider sample of the UK workforce.

I have worked in Germany and other places in Europe as well as UK. They have an interesting concept; it's called working smarter. I have been in meetings there where they don't spend the first half hour discussing 'how their weekend went', as an example of lost time.

chewmylegoff

I don't agree with the comments, at least they don't reflect any of the work places I have ever worked in.

Mind you I've never worked as a virtual slave in India, so perhaps I don't have the right perspective.

kabayiri

Where I think he may have a point is in a professional workforce showing flexibility in their working hours. It doesn't always make sense to have every working day the same length. Pesky things like deadlines and meetings across timezones get in the way.

There is nothing wrong with showing give and take on both sides when it comes to working hour flexibility.

diable

abaxas wrote: »

I'm old fashioned too.

You should just be able to sack anyone you like, whenever you like.

i am a contractor and you sign your life away and opt out of the working time directive, last contract I was on I got three days notice as the project was wound down. Now sat around waiting for confirmation on start date for the next contract then sign the paperwork and hopefully it will last 7 hour day £200/£250 per day.

abaxas

diable wrote: »

i am a contractor and you sign your life away and opt out of the working time directive, last contract I was on I got three days notice as the project was wound down. Now sat around waiting for confirmation on start date for the next contract then sign the paperwork and hopefully it will last 7 hour day £200/£250 per day.

Welcome to the contracting club!

I love the system, you get paid for the work you do and have total freedom in life.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

The people we promote are the ones that consistently deliver the best results.

Those people tend also to be the ones that eat, sleep, live and breathe their work 24/7.

At my level there are a dozen of us. We all have a number of managers working directly for us. They each have a number of managers working for them, and each of those managers has junior managers working for them, with hourly staff underneath that. Above me there are only a handful of directors, and then the CEO.

The only way to get promoted is to beat the results of all your peers at every level on the way up. And there's usually many of your colleagues and you for every one job above. It's corporate Darwinism in action.... The ultimate pyramid scheme.

Promotion, to a point, you can achieve through being smarter or more experienced than your colleagues. But after the first few management grades, the wheat has been sorted from the chaff, and anyone at that level is pretty much going to be as smart and as experienced as you are.

Once you get to that point, the only way to get promoted further is to work harder, be more committed, more driven and more able to do whatever it takes to deliver results.

A lot of people, particularly those with families, stay in the middle. They work hard when they're young, get to the level below me, or one below that, where they're making decent money, and then cruise along on 50 hour weeks relying on their experience to deliver acceptable results and expecting a better work life balance most of the time bar emergencies or the odd project deadline.

Nothing wrong with that, but they're probably not going to be the ones that get promoted any further. And if they turned into proper "37.5 hour clock-watchers", they'd probably struggle to deliver the results needed to keep the job and likely find themselves on a performance management plan pretty quick.

Generali

THE_GHUOL_HUNTER wrote: »

So you expect to be paid more and promoted for doing a job you were by-and-large employed and paid to do in the first place.

Talk about a sense of entitlement.

Nice one Bruno. Good post.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Generali wrote: »

Nice one Bruno. Good post.

Whatatit....

Cleaver

diable wrote: »

I am old fashioned, I don't expect to get paid for doing nothing and I don't give my time for free.

What do you mean by 'give you time for free'?

I get paid what I think is a generous salary by my employers, they treat me well and I have a very good relationship with my Manager who expects a lot but is very fair and someone for whom I have a lot of respect for.

Because of the above I will happily stay in the office late and I would say that I probably work a whole day at the weekend every three weeks or so. I don't ever get any extra pay for this. But I do this mainly because I like my job, I like my boss and I like the organisation I work for because they treat me well, both in terms of salary and opportunities etc.

My personal opinion is that if you clock in at 9, do your work, and clock off at 5 every single day without doing much extra then that's fine, but don't really expect to ever get much further at your organisation. Because they'll be someone else who goes the extra mile and that'll be noticed. Please don't take this to mean that someone who sits in the office for two hours longer will get promoted ahead of you, as that isn't what I'm saying. It's more that people who muck in when the going gets tough and stuff needs to be done will be noticed ahead of those who do the minimum to a satisfactory level and then go home.