Working from Home, tax and Multinationals

Good for you
I have a Daughter who work from home for over 15 years when she moved to another European Country to live
Still working for the same Irish based Company from home
On the other hand when I look at your post above I think I am listening to how employees who thought the were just that bit better doing there job in a big Engineering Company and did not see any threat to there jobs when there employer moved employees based in another engineering company to gain experience in Ireland they were shocked when the company closed most of there Irish operation and no longer required there services,
 
Fortune said:
Are you suggesting managers should work without remuneration?
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No, I assume he was talking bonuses, which was ironic considering the earlier post where a manager shouldn't be in a job if they required their staff to be present.
 






You cannot Manage what is going on in every shed and home office of the people you manage I am sure there is at least one employee who is almost as smart as the people who manage them,

Is there any danger highly regarded employees may be interested In feathering there own nest may use home working to keep a little of the home work back or share it with someone who should not have sight of the workings of the company projects,
Any idea why working from home is not unique in your Industry,
Just asking,
 
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Leo said:
Any business where all the management are completely out of their depth, or which has an inability to identify and deal with individual managers who are out of their depth will likely fail
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Can take a long time for it to show up, The people who started the rot and out of there depth will squander lots of company time and money,
Ineffective leadership poor planning poor communications takes a long time to show up, The people who worked under good management before the rot set in will keep the show on the road for a long time,you are correct it will fail unless new eyes take over before it goes under,
New eyes will spot people struggling to understand they are out of there depths and can only see failings in others when they should be looking out for there own failings,
In the past i worked with a USA employer who bought distressed business, one of the last business he bought about 10 years ago was a small American business which had an Irish operation, when it closed there was lots of paperwork lying about which made interesting reading,
If you knew what to look out for you would find in most cases the rot started years ago when the companies hires a key employee the thought he/she was the best thing since the sliced pan in the Irish operation if you went back at least 20 years you would see it was an Irish manager who started the rot which brought down the whole company,
 
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bkenn14 said:
You cannot Manage what is going on in every shed and home office of the people you manage I am sure there is at least one employee who is almost as smart as the people who manage them,
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You don't need to, if you understand what they are working on and are setting appropriate targets you just measure progress against those targets. It's not complicated.

bkenn14 said:
Any idea why working from home is not unique in your Industry,
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Because it works. It's as simple as that, if companies found that output or results suffered, they simply wouldn't allow it. Our company has doubled the number of people employed here without adding the millions to the annual budget that would otherwise be required to provide space for them all. Secondly, IT is a very competitive area and has been for a number of years, you can forget about attracting the best talent unless you offer flexibility.

Employee surveys here and in other similar companies all highlight how important flexibility is, with most respondents saying they value it more than a significant pay rise.
 
bkenn14 said:
Ineffective leadership poor planning poor communications takes a long time to show up,
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Only if those hiring them and measuring their performance are out of their depth too. If you understand what they're working on you'll know they're not delivering within weeks or months depending on the nature if the work.
 
Leo said:
Employee surveys here and in other similar companies all highlight how important flexibility is, with most respondents saying they value it more than a significant pay rise.
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Yep, and there are sound economic reasons too. We live in a high cost economy where income tax rates are very high at moderate incomes. The ability to avoid child minding costs of €800 a month is the same as getting a €20,000 a year pay rise.
 
Reactions: Leo
Quite a dated view as this assumes that the only way to manage people is to be looking over their shoulder. In reality for IT companies these days, whether someone is sitting at a desk in an office, at a desk at home or a balcony in the South of France, the same controls, tools and technical oversight all exist. Indeed those controls exist in any role with a semi-decent IT infrastructure.

I used to be an "old school" site manager, if your start time was 9am, them you needed to be in the office, ready for work at 9am. If you were late due to traffic, so be it, I was realistic enough to know that stuff happens but if you were late every day, then you needed to leave home earlier. Enforced WFH changed all of that, suddenly you had to accept that maybe someone needed 15 mins to get the kids logged on for virtual school and to get them lunch, we were all in the same boat. What that led to was a far more flexible approach and an approach that became very focussed on outcomes, not on time clocked. As a result, it became very apparent, quite quickly who was not actually producing much. It actually became quite clinical and as a result, we exited at least 10% of our heads globally with no real negative impact for the business. Probably a failing of ours on how we managed things in the past if I was being honest.

In addition, staff turnover is almost non-existent, I've had people turn down rises elsewhere of €5k-€10k where they would not get the same flexibility around things like the school run and would spend the increased salary on child minders and the stress of trying to get home to them to collect the kids. I've one person who starts work around 6.30am, takes a break for an hour to do the school runs etc, then works until mid afternoon when the kids are out and then she logs off for the day. If we're stuck in the late afternoon for something, she'll log in and give me the flexibilty back that we gave her. We're all happy as she does what I need her to do.

WFH is not a panacea, I totally get why it doesn't work for some companies and some industries and it's an absolute pain in the... for new recruits and for grads. But I would never, ever ever, work full time in an office again
 
Good high performers will deliver whether they're working in an office or the moon because they've integrity, take pride in their work and are committed simple as.

However unfortunately there is also a cohort less committed and with less integrity believe it or not. It's great if you can manage these people out but often you can't and there is an entire forum dedicated to people with multiple jobs working half time or less in each and getting full-time pay on the sly: https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/

It's a movement called over-employment where people have two or even three full-time remote jobs which they can cover 9-5 Monday to Friday, or less by making up fake meetings for job #2 when they have work to do for job #1 etc. This is becoming more and more commonplace now. So while good people absolutely can work from home no bother there's still a serious cohort that are probably doing a couple of jobs at the bare minimum and getting two salaries and probably still fitting in around a golf on a Wednesday too. These people weren't very productive in the office either mind!
 
Leo said:
you don't need to, if you understand what they are working on and are setting appropriate targets you just measure progress against those targets. It's not complicated.
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I have no doubt you do a fantastic job managing, and you understand what people are working on and are setting appropriate targets you just measure progress against those the only thing we don't agree on You say it is not complicated,

I say it is very very Complicated ,

I have a lot of friends who work in IT going back to the late 1980 the company I worked in replaced a old IBM system with AS/400 system
The long and the short we hired IT Contractors to custom-make Build software specially to suite our company, Rather than buy of the shelf systems

The long and the short is local IT contractors had the use of our AS400 to build software for other Companies from time to time,

Not unusual For them to use our IP Address to wind up there friends on IT forums who also worked in IT who would be cracking on in a self-important, grandiose or arrogant manner who talked high and mighty they reckoned some were all Pants and no trousers,

Now all ye Who work in IT don't go getting all high and mighty on me because I am replying to a poster who makes it known they work in IT,

My life experience has taught me what I post above and below applies to all Groups that manufacture goods or share a business focus or service,

When it comes to IT think RTE writes down 3.6 million on a part failed IT project there are of course a lot bigger failings in It but we wont go there Small beer but I will go easy on my friends in IT,

Banking Failing before the crash Where do we start only to say all of the people looking in could not spot the failings before the Crash,
Everyone thought they Banking Industry understood what they were working on and setting appropriate targets and just measure progress against the targets not complicated But what a mess the left behind


Just look at the Building Industry look at the many apartments and duplexes built with fire safety structural safety and water getting into property 2.5 billion euro of taxpayers money gone to repair not to mention the stress involved,

The industry I worked in Manufacturing, Think Boeing 737 max 10 Now They should understand what the were working on and setting appropriate targets not complicated you say well think again,

If some Multinational Companies feel it serves there best interest for Irish Employees return to the office/workplace and they refuse or are dragging there feet ,
Not the best people to put in charge of the companies future,
All I said in my first post Irish employees in companies who see there best interest served by spending more time in the office May loose there anchor ,
people are mixing this up with other kinds of working from home,

The Heading of the post I replied to Stated ,

Working From Home Tax and Multinationale,

Please don't mix my post with other types of working from home,
 
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None of these were done working from home
 
Fortune said:
None of these were done working from home
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You are 100% correct
Read the top of post 53 again I was responding/replying to Another poster statement,
I will make it easier I will Quote what was posted,
If you understand what they are working on and are setting appropriate targets you just measure progress against those targets
( it is not complicated)
I was well aware some would not comperehend the point I was making which is a parent company 6000 miles away may be looking at a bigger picture,
Local Irish Management may not be considering the bigger picture and focusing on what works best for them,
Corporate head office key executives may see things a little different,
They know well it takes years for a bad decisions time to work there way trough a company and how hard they are to reverse,

Just for the record back around 1999 I had a daughter who was very ill I was working from home for over a year or should I say Hospital waiting room
I have a very good understanding of the benefits of working from home can make,
 
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That is often the case whether people are working on site in the overseas facility or working from home.
I've worked with large companies for years and I've often had a better idea of what was going on in head office than the local plant manager. That's because I made it my job to do so.
 
bkenn14 said:
The long and the short we hired IT Contractors to custom-make Build software specially to suite our company, Rather than buy of the shelf systems
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Hiring contractors to build something you don't understand and managing your own staff to perform the work of your company are two very separate things. Your, or RTE's experience with hiring contractors whether they worked on-site or off has nothing to do with the topic.

The failings you describe are failings of procurement or vendor management, nothing to do with whether working remotely. For example, it really shouldn't have come as a surprise to RTE that HR and Finance staff would need to contribute towards requirements gathering, validation and other aspects of the project, but they repeatedly failed to make them available.

I've worked as a contractor, most of the contracting specialists are adept at extracting additional money from clients, but it is invariably down to the client providing inadequate requirements at the outset and doing a really poor job of change management after the fact.
 
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