Extending Commute times...

wymondham

CLAPTON wrote: »

so no experience with employed workers about the reality of home working?

not directly, but I do liaise with companies looking to do it. What sort of issues have you come across?

Lokolo

Baby_Angel wrote: »

Our company is the same as Lokolo's. Our manager's are the same. Our company expects us to be in the office. I have usually no problem with that. However it does not even consider WFH even when there is tube strike or any other emergencies. We are a tech company and we do not have IT issues. In fact almost all of us have access to our "work" from home and most of us do not have to face clients.

When the tube strike was on it took me an additional 35 minutes each way as I was walking across London.

The only time I can WFH is when there's no way I can get in (such as snow shutting roads and trains). Or when its a weekend and we are doing weekend only work.

wymondham

Lokolo wrote: »

When the tube strike was on it took me an additional 35 minutes each way as I was walking across London.

The only time I can WFH is when there's no way I can get in (such as snow shutting roads and trains). Or when its a weekend and we are doing weekend only work.

Do you have facilities to work at home or is this a problem?

michaels

We, currently single central London office, are supposed to be going to much more out of office working (desks down from 85% desk to staff ratio to about 40%) with a laptop for each person (currently there are 8 laptops between 60) and access to commuter hubs - desks with laptop docs spread at various locations around London.

Problem will be that whilst people will manage with 3 days off site and 2 days on site it will only work if the two on site days are the same days as the rest of the team and the internal customers...so Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays 75% of the staff will be trying to use desks for 40%....

chewmylegoff

michaels wrote: »

We, currently single central London office, are supposed to be going to much more out of office working (desks down from 85% desk to staff ratio to about 40%) with a laptop for each person (currently there are 8 laptops between 60) and access to commuter hubs - desks with laptop docs spread at various locations around London.

Problem will be that whilst people will manage with 3 days off site and 2 days on site it will only work if the two on site days are the same days as the rest of the team and the internal customers...so Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays 75% of the staff will be trying to use desks for 40%....

We have similar issues (beyond the usual issues with this model that everyone goes on holiday at the same time of year) as some areas are completely desk based and never work outside the office whereas other areas are out on site perhaps 50-80% of the time.

Of course when they decided how many desks each department needed they just used a one size fits all approach on the basis of whatever some external consultant said worked in other places, so in our dept people often have nowhere to sit but the next floor down is often a ghost town. My dept is behind a Chinese wall so you can't just pop downstairs and sit there either.

Being in the office but not having anywhere to sit or plug your computer in makes you pretty unproductive but only 2 days working from home a month are allowed....

chewmylegoff

wymondham wrote: »

not directly, but I do liaise with companies looking to do it. What sort of issues have you come across?

I think CLAPTON is an acronym for some kind of automatic question generator designed to increase the volume of forum traffic. Sort of like the beta version of spambot v2.0 (or the dematerialisation of the Why Bird from Playdays) - I don't think the answer generation software has been written yet though.

Lokolo

wymondham wrote: »

Do you have facilities to work at home or is this a problem?

Of course. From a technological point, there's no reason why I should even come into work. RDP access from home is all I need really.

Baby_Angel

wymondham wrote: »

This sounds more to do with Management/policy issues rather than anything else.... are your management 'old school' ?

Our company is American, though our direct managers are all English. Not sure if it has anything to do with that. We seem to adopt all manners of modern management, but the "working from home" seems to have eluded our management.

kabayiri

wymondham wrote: »

not directly, but I do liaise with companies looking to do it. What sort of issues have you come across?

Here, the study resembles a work office, with the amount of files both DW and I have !

Hey, but on the bright side, they have a tidy desk policy in the workplace.

(All they have done is dump all the training material storage on the individual!)

kabayiri

wymondham wrote: »

...
anyone tried it??

In general I start work early. On the days when I have WFH, I start work at the same time as I would start the commute.

One downside to this is that sometimes there are few colleagues about at 6.15/6.30, should you need to discuss something.