losttheplot
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That may have been the case. Not sure if a solicitor was involved at the early stages. Business was a one person operation, no HR etc so probably clueless about it until it got serious.
Return to office - but I want to remain fully remote
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T McGibney
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Running a business on your own often involves having to make choices about which battle to fight at any given time.
It's little wonder that self-employment as a career option is dying out in terms of popularity.
That's not bias, that just revenue generation and the general public are to blame for that.
losttheplot
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They were working crazy hours. They're out of it now and are just a regular employee. Much happier, WFH also.
I've read through all the posts on this thread not with any great concentration, but I think there are a few missing facts:-
1. Are all your work colleagues in agreement that you should work fully remotely? Yes/No
2. If you are working fully remotely is any member of staff or management carrying any extra work or responsibilities? Yes/No
3. I'm pretty sure that everybody working remotely can work better.
4. There seems to be a bit of grand-standing running through many posts here too. Just my opinion.
5. My local bicycle shop owner is always complaining about Bicycle-to-Work Scheme is faltering dreadfully because too many people in Dept of Education payroll are working from home and not responding to any queries. I know of one lady who after 14 months of applying for Bicycle-to-Work Scheme just went off and bought her own bicycle and had to wait for several more months to get her money back that the Dept of Education already deducted from her pay.
6. Are there other issues/problems from working in the office? Yes/No
1. Are all your work colleagues in agreement that you should work fully remotely? Yes/No
2. If you are working fully remotely is any member of staff or management carrying any extra work or responsibilities? Yes/No
3. I'm pretty sure that everybody working remotely can work better.
4. There seems to be a bit of grand-standing running through many posts here too. Just my opinion.
5. My local bicycle shop owner is always complaining about Bicycle-to-Work Scheme is faltering dreadfully because too many people in Dept of Education payroll are working from home and not responding to any queries. I know of one lady who after 14 months of applying for Bicycle-to-Work Scheme just went off and bought her own bicycle and had to wait for several more months to get her money back that the Dept of Education already deducted from her pay.
6. Are there other issues/problems from working in the office? Yes/No
A bloke in my pub says it's a great success, so much so there are huge delays in processing applications.
Then on the other side we could look at some stats.
:quality(70):focal(574x551:584x561)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/M4YXUUHF6ZGOLNJHF3DWK7RVIM.jpg)
Number of cyclists commuting in Dublin down 28% on pre-pandemic level
Commuting by foot down by 31%, and by car down 13%, in trend partly attributed to remote working
Be interesting to see how this reverts back if Remote Working declines, despite all the metrics showing its been successful.
Its between the employee and their employer ( manager). Their colleagues opinion isnt important.
Its clear to me from the OPs various posts that this is not the case. But this, of course, is in OPs view.
Im not sure I know what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
Remote working is better for employees quality of life.
Renote working benefits environment/society through less polution/traffic. This is a big one.
Remote work has been proven to not have had a negative impact on business performance and results. That should be enough for employers to be ok with it.
What exactly are the negaitives associated with remote working? Business relyingnon office workers make less money. Ok. What else?
As long as its considered on a case by case basis i.e unless an employee is proven to underperform in working remotely then why not let them at it.
No they are clear and direct, i have re read them. However, can you respond to any of my other retorts, in particular this one:
Whats your thinking behind this question, if I may ask.
Its between the employee and their employer ( manager). Their colleagues opinion isnt important.
Whats your thinking behind this question, if I may ask.
That's the aspect that's ignored by the WFH people, they only thing about themselves which is natural obviously. Most office staff do not work in exclusively office environment, they are there to facilitate the wider company which is not working from home and which may have shift workers who are essential for operations and can never be WFH. When everyone was working on site the shift workers saw that they didn't have to travel to work every day like the office staff, therefore that made shift working a bit more attractive. However now they see that they are still driving in to do their anti social hour shifts while the office staff were allowed WFH. This creates disharmony and resentment in an organisation because usually the WFH people are the administrators on the highest salaries yet they are not around when an emergency happens. It also makes it alot more difficult to recruit shift workers, some of these could be skilled engineers and technicians, they prefer to get a cushy WFH role instead. The organisation cannot run without these workers and WFH is so attractive that even paying more money does not work. That's where the Irish taxation system kicks in and also hits aswell with very low band for high tax rate
Annieindublin
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Depends on the company and what they do.
During lockdown the only staff in our place that had to go into the office were the facilities people. They had to flush toilets, empty the fridges and other areas where food was left and send IT equipment out to people WFH. Once we all had our kit, and our office chairs they could have closed the building forever. All our services are offsite/remote now, the building is a white elephant
During lockdown the only staff in our place that had to go into the office were the facilities people. They had to flush toilets, empty the fridges and other areas where food was left and send IT equipment out to people WFH. Once we all had our kit, and our office chairs they could have closed the building forever. All our services are offsite/remote now, the building is a white elephant
And it is these large multinationals that have this wider role producing important products that are part of a global supply chain, this cannot be produced by WFH. These are the companies that are paying over 20 billion per annum into the Irish government tax take. Without that the government structure in Ireland would collapse. Anecdotally there is now an issue with multinationals losing highly skilled workers to the public and semi state sector, the main draw is now WFH which nearly everyone seems to be on there. These are the unintended consequences of this
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I resent people who can play video games and earn huge money doing so, but that's no argument for us all playing video games all day. If people are not happy with the conditions that attach to their chosen career, then they should do something about it and train for one like those they resent for making better choices.
I think the opposite is true. Hardly anyone getting wholesale wfh in public sector.
They didn't make better choices, because nobody working in an office ever foresaw the WFH phenomenon, it was enforced by the covid lockdowns and has only remained since employees prefer it and because of labour shortages. Only in the IT skilled area was WFH seen as feasible before covid.
There is actually a bit of snobbery associated aswell because some people mistakenly believe that they are high skilled employees simply because they work in an office. That's completely false, the multinationals and essential industries could not function without high skilled essential workers being on the job every day. Many of these people are much more valuable to a company than a clerical administrator. It's also more likely that those administrative jobs can be replaced by AI or completely outsourced.
Only at scale, we've had people working remotely for years to varying degrees. Some of them had ISDN lines back in the day, so that's an indicator of time. It existed long before Covid. Covid enforced massive but temporary changes to the work practices of many, and accelerated the shift that was already underway for some roles types to work remotely more often.
There's snobbery, real and perceived in all walks of life, just like many employees grossly overvalue their own importance to their employer, not sure how that's relevant here.
T McGibney
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When I did a business degree in college back in the 80s, we once had a guest lecturer who had previously written a book advocating WFH and who had by then changed his mind on it, deciding it was impracticable. IIRC he was an American academic, then based in the UK.
More recently, Rory Sutherland wrote for many years pre-Covid in The Spectator advocating teleconferencing as a substitute for in-person business meetings. Here's an example from 2018.
My employer required (forced?) 20% WFH prior to Covid, sold as balance, but really they had 20% more employees than office space. Now its 40% WFH, what's the difference?