T-shirt inappropriate for work?

Tokmon

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

But that's all part of "work smarter, not harder" that you said you agree with. If i use my work phone every so often in an evening or even while on annual leave and spend a minute or so checking emails and replying, then due to time differences in a worldwide organisation i can reduce lead times of certain processes by several days. So those few minutes outside of working hours can prevent big last minute rushes for urgent projects which makes everything run far smoother. 

TELLIT01

Tokmon said:

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

But that's all part of "work smarter, not harder" that you said you agree with. If i use my work phone every so often in an evening or even while on annual leave and spend a minute or so checking emails and replying, then due to time differences in a worldwide organisation i can reduce lead times of certain processes by several days. So those few minutes outside of working hours can prevent big last minute rushes for urgent projects which makes everything run far smoother. 

Working smarter, not harder to me means having somebody competent in place to cover absence, certainly to cover planned absence.  There should not be any need for a person on leave to be in touch with their employer.  It's different if the person on holiday and checking in owns the company.

Manxman_in_exile

TELLIT01 said:

Tokmon said:

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

But that's all part of "work smarter, not harder" that you said you agree with. If i use my work phone every so often in an evening or even while on annual leave and spend a minute or so checking emails and replying, then due to time differences in a worldwide organisation i can reduce lead times of certain processes by several days. So those few minutes outside of working hours can prevent big last minute rushes for urgent projects which makes everything run far smoother. 

Working smarter, not harder to me means having somebody competent in place to cover absence, certainly to cover planned absence.  There should not be any need for a person on leave to be in touch with their employer.  It's different if the person on holiday and checking in owns the company.

I agree with you.  I started my working career as a trainee chartered accountant back in the 1980s.  If we'd had an audit client where we'd identified that a business critical process might depend on input from somebody on leave, we would have flagged it up as a risk.  Not only because any competent and sensible employer should be able to arrange cover in advance for somebody on planned leave, but because it places far too much reliance on a particular employee (or group of employees) and potentially leaves the business open to malicious action by that employee.

If certain critical tasks need to be done outside normal working hours, then they need to be properly planned for and carried out by staff who ARE NOT on leave.  You want those people doing that work to be focused on their job, not the beach or whatever.

What Tokmon describes sounds more like working cheaper or working without planning rather than working smarter.  [Edit - or working by the seat of your pants was the phrase I was looking for...]

Brie

Manxman_in_exile said:

Brie said:

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

Oh - I see.  So you are "one of those" people...

Hmmm.  Not sure what you are implying. 

I don't feel pressured to work when I'm not supposed  to be.  But I like the majority of my colleagues and if I can help them out when officially I'm not working that's fine.  Mostly it's a case of clicking through the spam and then when I do return to work (in the office or WFH) I can just go directly to the important emails.  That makes the return less stressful.

My manager is aware that I am using a work laptop on weekends/evenings/holidays but is also aware that it's 99% for my own use - doing my online banking and occasionally going onto interesting forums such as this.

TELLIT01

Manxman_in_exile said:

TELLIT01 said:

Working smarter, not harder to me means having somebody competent in place to cover absence, certainly to cover planned absence.  There should not be any need for a person on leave to be in touch with their employer.  It's different if the person on holiday and checking in owns the company.

I agree with you.  I started my working career as a trainee chartered accountant back in the 1980s.  If we'd had an audit client where we'd identified that a business critical process might depend on input from somebody on leave, we would have flagged it up as a risk.  Not only because any competent and sensible employer should be able to arrange cover in advance for somebody on planned leave, but because it places far too much reliance on a particular employee (or group of employees) and potentially leaves the business open to malicious action by that employee.

If certain critical tasks need to be done outside normal working hours, then they need to be properly planned for and carried out by staff who ARE NOT on leave.  You want those people doing that work to be focused on their job, not the beach or whatever.

What Tokmon describes sounds more like working cheaper or working without planning rather than working smarter.  [Edit - or working by the seat of your pants was the phrase I was looking for...]

The lack of doing that is driving my wife nuts.  She's been with the same employer for about 7 years now, and there are time critical tasks each month, some of which only the manager and one of my wife's colleagues know how to do.  Ever since she started she's said that knowledge needs to be spread wider and her manager agrees but does nothing about it.  Situation not helped by one or two of her colleagues who wants to keep knowledge to themselves, and don't want to learn the other tasks.

In the situations where the person with the knowledge is away, the manager does nothing but moan about how much work she has to do!  Entirely within her remit to fix it but it seems she's actually scared to tell these people that they will both teach other colleagues how to do their work and learn to do the other tasks.

Another example of the manager's lack of management is a temp who has been covering maternity leave on a part time basis working Monday to Wednesday.  The person she has been covering is returning to work but somebody else is going on maternity leave.  That person works Wed-Friday but this temp says she will continue to work Monday - Wednesday and the manager has so far failed to tell her it's either the new hours or the door!

Tokmon

TELLIT01 said:

Tokmon said:

TELLIT01 said:

Brie said:

Jillanddy said:

Please do share. I have obviously missed the trick of how to avoid backlogs when working from home (unless I am willing to work silly hours, which I am not). My 37 hours working from home appear to have the same backlogs as the 37 hours that I used to work in the office!

Easy in that because you are WFH when you are on holiday you can still get online and do stuff.  Not right of course but face it - for some of us having a work computer means you can still access the interweb even if you aren't at work and someone else is on the home pc.  The temptation to clear ones emails is sometimes overwhelming.

I have to confess I don't understand, and never have understood, why people check e-mail, use laptops at home etc, outside working hours.  If there is too much work to complete in the allocated hours it is down to management to sort it out.  It's because people do the above that management get away without having to fix the underlying problem.

But that's all part of "work smarter, not harder" that you said you agree with. If i use my work phone every so often in an evening or even while on annual leave and spend a minute or so checking emails and replying, then due to time differences in a worldwide organisation i can reduce lead times of certain processes by several days. So those few minutes outside of working hours can prevent big last minute rushes for urgent projects which makes everything run far smoother. 

Working smarter, not harder to me means having somebody competent in place to cover absence, certainly to cover planned absence.  There should not be any need for a person on leave to be in touch with their employer.  It's different if the person on holiday and checking in owns the company.

There isn't really any need for me to do it. It just expedites some processes that are carried out by people in different time zones.