Flexi work more important than ever, but SA bosses want their teams in the office - survey

[Luke7777]

As a social media manager, I can do my work from absolutely anywhere.. my other roles not so much.. but easily solved with VPN access.. Have often raised this possibility with management, but the answer is the predictable "If I let you do it, then I will have to let everyone work from home as well".. Trust is a luxury.

I also faced those arguments (from above as well). Firstly, in order to work from home, you need to have your 'office' at home. Which means the ability to print, scan, whatever might be needed in addition to your normal work. If you have a power outage... you either have backup power or you get your butt back to the office.. easy. You will always be reachable and you will deliver on time. If you screw up on any of these or can't provide any of these, you're working from the office. Face to face meetings is unavoidable, so handle those. I still prefer having everyone in the office at the same time once or twice a week... just easier to schedule meetings on those days when needed. Personally I'm in the office Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. My staff normally the same.

 

[Neuk_]

The work that I do, despite sitting right next to my boss in our Group IMS office, is pretty much all remotely as servers are off site as are all of the divisional employee's I work with. My boss is luckily very flexible so I am able to work from home at times but there is still an element of having to be in the office from management.

 

[Thor]

More than developers... many people don't actually need to be in an office...

But as has been said SA Businesses are dinosaurs in this regard.... and expect their slaves to be in the office from 8 to 5... regardless of if its productive for them or not. I get more done in 4 hours at home than I can generally manage inside an office because of the constant interruptions...

This.

I work from home some days in the week and generally in those days I tend to get done everything I'm suppose to do in a week simply because of no distractions (director or indirect) vs working at the office (open plan).

 

[d0b33]

Which is why I resigned to be an independent contractor full-time.

 

[MrGray]

Everybody's different, I guess, but I ended up hating working at home. At first it was fun not having to commute and being more flexible, etc, but after a few months the novelty wore off and my home felt like an office that I could never, ever get away from. I also missed the structure and the immediacy of getting things done by just walking 3 metres and speaking to someone instead of endless back and forth texts/emails/phone tag.

 

[KingBel]

I also faced those arguments (from above as well). Firstly, in order to work from home, you need to have your 'office' at home. Which means the ability to print, scan, whatever might be needed in addition to your normal work. If you have a power outage... you either have backup power or you get your butt back to the office.. easy. You will always be reachable and you will deliver on time. If you screw up on any of these or can't provide any of these, you're working from the office. Face to face meetings is unavoidable, so handle those. I still prefer having everyone in the office at the same time once or twice a week... just easier to schedule meetings on those days when needed. Personally I'm in the office Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. My staff normally the same.

I actually don't mind that bit of compromise.. be at the office at least 2 days a week so that face to face meetings can be scheduled on those days. I actually think I would miss the office environment if I stayed at home all the time. And as garp mentioned it is sometimes necessary to actually go see someone at their desk in order to get something done instead of emailing back and forth. That said, I live fairly close to the office so if there is ever an emergency or last minute meeting request, I can be there in 10 minutes.

 

[Alton Turner Blackwood]

I also faced those arguments (from above as well). Firstly, in order to work from home, you need to have your 'office' at home. Which means the ability to print, scan, whatever might be needed in addition to your normal work. If you have a power outage... you either have backup power or you get your butt back to the office.. easy. You will always be reachable and you will deliver on time. If you screw up on any of these or can't provide any of these, you're working from the office. Face to face meetings is unavoidable, so handle those. I still prefer having everyone in the office at the same time once or twice a week... just easier to schedule meetings on those days when needed. Personally I'm in the office Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. My staff normally the same.

Why would you need to print at home?

 

[surface]

Why would you need to print at home?

I was wondering about that. I haven't printed anything work related at work or home for at least 5 years. Only seen PM's and scrum masters print at work. Or some developers who have to get signed time sheets.

 

[Alton Turner Blackwood]

I was wondering about that. I haven't printed anything work related at work or home for at least 5 years. Only seen PM's and scrum masters print at work. Or some developers who have to get signed time sheets.

Yup, the only thing I print is my timesheet, but they're busy with a system for us to submit out times online, so once that goes live I won't have a need to print anything.

 

[surface]

Yup, the only thing I print is my timesheet, but they're busy with a system for us to submit out times online, so once that goes live I won't have a need to print anything.

yeah - we got online capture system 5+ years ago. But before that, we didn't print either as email confirmation from client was sufficient.

 

[Smokey888]

Why would you need to print at home?

Entertainment, Travel and Millage Claims need to be printed and signed

 

[ponder]

Why would you need to print at home?

Some environments need hard copies dotted & signed out your yazoo for legal compliance.

 

[Luke7777]

I was wondering about that. I haven't printed anything work related at work or home for at least 5 years. Only seen PM's and scrum masters print at work. Or some developers who have to get signed time sheets.

Timesheets normally get done on Modays when everyone is in the office, for those that are required to do so. Some of our clients which we support remotely requires signed access request forms specifying details of request etc. , so it gets printed, filled in, scanned back , emailed to supervisor, printed, countersigned, scanned back and emailed back to the originator, who will submit to the client. Doesn't happen that often, and can probably be done by someone in the office, but the rule is if your working from home is negatively impacting on someone else's time, then work from the office Every now and then specs need to be signed off (no digital signatures yet) , so applicable page(s) get printed , signed and passed on. There are better ways of doing this, but not there yet . Bottomline is if you can't do everything you do in the office at home, then office it is.

 

[RVQ]

I'm currently in the UK and have multiple clients that also have this need for people to be physically present. They more than happy to pay for a days worth of travel just for you to be onsite for half a day to do work on a Cloud Platform accessible anywhere in the world...

I however work for a delivery based company, so as long as timelines are met, time sheets are filled in, meetings are attended and clients are happy the boss doesn't care where I am and what hours I work

 

[Smokey888]

so as long as timelines are met, time sheets are filled in, meetings are attended and clients are happy the boss doesn't care where I am and what hours I work


I am the same with my staff, and my boss are the same with me

 

[krycor]

Where there is a lot of domain/bespoke knowledge required (where googling for info doesn't help you) you will need an environment where juniors interact with seniors otherwise the learning curve will be extreme and your juniors will be non-existent or underperform.

Thats the reality in a lot of industries however, most companies I've seen have a 2 day work from home policy provided historic show u can handle it and coverage in the office i.e. junior to senior ratio is maintained. This does mean that skills transfer is more limited.. but by ensuring juniors have a senior in office to leach from, the load of training is shared.

 

[grok]

The problem is managers nowadays cannot manage, fullstop.

We are either all the same, but then why do we earn different rates, or we are all different, but then why treat us all the same like cattle?

In every single instance where managers don't like me working from home, the manager is not worth the salary they're paying him.

In contrast, as a techie I'm expected to keep up to date on new technologies in my own time.
While damagement (my new fav word) cannot even adjust their dinosaur thinking by an inch.
How fair is that?

 

[Mila]

It works when you can fire people for not working and not delivering.

 

[ArtyLoop]

According to the research findings, SA businesses have preferred employees working from offices, mainly due to a "lack of trust" between management and their employees.

Its more than that... its the bums-on-seats mentality... and also a bit of god complex

 

[Mila]

How fair is that?

Life isn’t fair.