British Work Ethic Condemned

Cleaver

kabayiri wrote: »

I've no objection to people working longer hours.

But, just suppose we made people work an extra 10 hours a week. Do you think it would turn UK industry around?

There is absolutely no proof that would have the desired impact.

Let's be honest, we have all seen the 'long hours martyr' at work. They take pride on boasting of their hours spent in work; they are the ones sending you an email timestamped at 10.50pm the previous evening. They don't usually strike me as any more effective an employee, they just like everyone to think they are.

I hope I was clear in my posts that I wouldn't just do hours for the sake of it. I've had quiet weeks at work where I can start at 10am and be done by 4pm with not a lot of stress in between. Unless you're in a very narrow role most people will have troughs and peaks associated with jobs. I've done 90 hour weeks before, which was pretty horrible but just had to be done. Peaks and troughs.

But I'm not a 'long hour martyr'. But I really like my job, take a pride in it and, most importantly, feel that my employer treats me well in terms of salary, developing me and giving me opportunities. So I'm willing to go the extra mile for them.

mbga9pgf

guys, guys, its not about the hours. For example, when I am doing office, I get into work at 6 AM on a monday to clear my inbox from the previous week and any weekend mail (which I can also check on the weekend, and often do). Will typically work through till 5-6PM on a monday, then work pretty much 9-5 through to thursday.

late stack then commute back home on thursday, work from home friday, then typically use the evenings whilst the missus is watchin X craptor or the like to type up meeting minutes on the work laptop, organise meetings, send out meeting requests etc, all done in spare time at home that quite frankly would otherwise be wasted. This leaves plenty of time for "on the road" type stuff I am also involved in through the week and travel to/around europe when I am not doing my primary job.

Why? I love my job, my work has a direct impact on our operations and I find it highly rewarding. How many can say that? If people werent so damned unionist, and set out to make their work a better place by the time they left the office, the UK would be so much more productive. Rather than that, we muddle along instead.

FATBALLZ

kabayiri wrote: »

Let's be honest, we have all seen the 'long hours martyr' at work. They take pride on boasting of their hours spent in work; they are the ones sending you an email timestamped at 10.50pm the previous evening. They don't usually strike me as any more effective an employee, they just like everyone to think they are.

Definitely, there are more sorts of workers than the clockwatching lazy workers and the 90 hour super-employees as seems to be being implied.

There are people who do in their 7.5 hours twice as much as others in their 7.5 hours, and people who work 12 hours a day without really doing much apart from making sure they are seen and making sure people know who they are. And there are all sorts of other varieties.

Some jobs hours do matter when there is little scope to get better results (eg call centre). But many, particularly (non call centre) office jobs, have wide variability in results regardless of hours worked.

Cleaver

mbga9pgf's post raises some interesting questions about what actually constitutes as 'work', meaning that for a lot of people the boundries and relationship with the workplace has changed (especially for 'office' workers).

For example, I left Uni in 2002 and got a job. Even though this was 9 years ago the vast majority of people, and even the most senior of people, had a work PC and that was it. Maybe a mobile phone. Blackberry's were rare, very few had e-mail on phones (did anyone in fact?), very few had access to work e-mail from home, very few had a work laptop, social media didn't exist etc. etc.

Things have now very much changed. Even our junior staff have a work laptop and Blackberry, so the balance between work and home has become a lot more blurred. I have my work blackberry on 24/7 but this isn't because I'm someone who lives for work, it's because it's dead easy to just reply to e-mails and messages there and then if they do come through at odd times. If I'm on a day off I don't mind replying to the odd e-mail either, as it makes everyone's life easier. At the weekend I might read articles online that relate to my work, and I wouldn't read them if I didn't work in my job. Is this classed as work or not? If I spend 15 minutes on a Sunday on our work's Facebook page answering questions is this classed as work or not? Basically, work isn't just being at your desk, in the office, between two set times anymore.

vivatifosi

I agree Cleaver. There's also two sides to this coin. Until about 1997 nobody had the net at work, so people didn't spend work time online, whether checking the weather, or the news, visiting MSE, or Facebook, or anything else. It's all very well to say "I'll never work extra hours if they don't pay me", but only if hand on heart, people can say they aren't wasting their paid time doing something that they really aren't paid to do.

Cleaver

vivatifosi wrote: »

I agree Cleaver. There's also two sides to this coin. Until about 1997 nobody had the net at work, so people didn't spend work time online, whether checking the weather, or the news, visiting MSE, or Facebook, or anything else. It's all very well to say "I'll never work extra hours if they don't pay me", but only if hand on heart, people can say they aren't wasting their paid time doing something that they really aren't paid to do.

I was chatting to a guy the other week who works for an NHS hospital in the South. They have banned access to any website that doesn't have 'nhs' in the website address. In this day and age, where probably most of the staff have access to the web, personal e-mail twitter, facebook and everything else through their phone it just seems so backwards. If an employee wants to spend five minutes taking a break and surfing the web is this any different to spending five minutes taking a break and having a chat in the kitchen with a colleague?

I know what you mean Viva, but if you're someone who wants to spend two hours a day wasting time at work then you'll do it. In 1993 it was probably doing crosswords, in 2011 it might be surfing the web.

kabayiri

You're right Cleaver. I didn't intend to categorise you in any way. It's never black & white, and there are always variations.

I've been the same, in that I have worked long hours in jobs where I didn't mind. I've also worked for companies that frankly took the mickey.
I've also worked at places where I was directly compared to Indian contractors who were bussed in and out on 10.5 hour days, the implication being why didn't I stay as long as they did. That's a race to the bottom as far as I'm concerned.

julieq

It's an idiotic analysis. Productivity is not about hours worked, end of. In fact the more productive European countries work shorter hours than us. Long hours simply build up fatigue and create the conditions for burn out and poor decision making. As a manager, if I'm given the choice between someone who meets their commitments within the working week and someone who works long hours and tries to do too much, I'll take the former. I'd far rather have someone onboard who has a well balanced life quite frankly.

I have to say that although I'm not keen on stereotypes, my experience dealing with Indian companies has been that they take ages to do anything at all, and that their business leaders tend to be autocratic and have a fairly high regard for their abilities that's not always backed by results. It's fairly easy to grow a business in a developing economy, and you can quickly fool yourself that you're better than you are.

What marks great entrepreneurs is their drive and singlemindedness. That's not at issue: there will always be people like that. Entrepreneurs are not managers though, and to instill a vision and common purpose through an organisation, you need to engage people. Frankly you don't do that by using up their free time. Could we work more effectively in the UK? Very probably, but that is about the removal of ego and wasted time more than working more time in my experience.

julieq

You do also have to pull out for derision the proud statement that "managers now schedule meetings for 5pm".

There are some good reasons for scheduling meetings late in the working day, for example:

1) meeting has to take place to a deadline and no free slots
2) time zone alignment
3) wrap up meeting after a day of work

Poor reasons include:

1) bullying staff into staying late
2) impressing your boss

It's not the optimum time to get results to put it mildly. In particular at the end of the day you have a high chance that you will be dealing with at least some staff who are fatigued, hungry and grumpy and this is likely to deflect attention from the objective - also the very act of working late can increase people's sense of self importance which introduces ego into the discussion. Also if you are assigning follow-on work, you're giving people an evening to forget what they committed to, which means you have to spend additional time and effort reminding them. They'll probably resent what you just did to them too.

The most productive time for a meeting is early rather than late, unquestionably. The magic time if you can swing it is 7.30 to 8.30 or so when phones aren't ringing and energy levels are high. Chuck in some Danishes and decent coffee and it's an ideal way to kick off a productive day, though should be the exception rather than the rule.

Business productivity is a very simple beast ultimately. People work best when they have some degree of control over their workload and working environment, when they are given respect and guidance, and when they have a clear view of how what they are being asked to do contributes to specific and measurable goals, and how those goals build to a strategic outcome. There is nothing quite so dispiriting as being at a coal face being asked to do apparently dumb stuff and having more dumb stuff chucked at you daily.

birkee

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

He is totally correct.

Go to work in Asia for 6 years, as I did, and you understand this completely. Now we are fully a global economy, this explains why the wealth has shifted enormously eastwards - and will continue to do so. It's as inevitable as night follows day.

We sit back as a 'nation of shopkeepers' - as Napolean accurately observed - watching Asian nations create wealth, improve their balance of payments, and get rich at our expense. I call it a 'sandwich shop economy' in which our Governments tend to applaud the opening of a new sandwich shop in the High Street as another indicator of 'wealth'. They do not understand that such an economy simply spoons around our declining wealth and adds not a single penny to the wealth of this nation.

Export or die.

An oft misunderstood phrase.
In fact it was a remark showing his respect for us, as most selling in those days was done from the street.

But yes, we can't, (as someone smarter than I put it), keep selling each other hamburgers and insurance.
It seems that many of the posts on this forum, are about people getting into difficulties with people doing (or not doing) their jobs right, in fact incompetance seems to be the norm.
A lot of the work force these days seems to be the type of people, who are what I call "Salary Drawers", who don't give a damn about the job they are paid for.
If you look at the posts from people who are unemployed and on benefits, it seems that what they want is a salary, not a job.

Yes, the work ethic in this country has collapsed over the last 50 years.

AND! Apologies in advance, to all those people that DO still have a work ethic, and DO still care about doing a good job, and DO believe they should support their own families. There are still SOME left, but the numbers would be interesting if it were possible to compile figures.

Yes, even with the above, there are some days we (some of us) hate getting up for work, but we do it because we feel that it is right to do so.