Reply to: Britain's highly educated, motivated workforce

[Sysman]

If you can work from home then the work can be outsourced abroad.

Not necessarily. Certainly not if you are working with stuff that is not allowed to go out of the country, Managing a bunch of installation electricians and hardware engineers over the phone doesn't really work either,

This is the type of backward mentality that keeps productivity still low in modern offices. Perhaps if you mean 100% at home that might be true but what's wrong with 40-60-80% of your time working from home? Do many people really need 100% of their time to be in the office? <snip>

Having tried it, I don't actually want to work 100% from home, as I feel that regular face to face contact is important. But when it comes to liaising with your counterparts in both the US and Australia, home can be the best place to do it. You really can post a problem late at night, go to bed and find the answer waiting for you when you wake up. This works both ways, as I can be solving problems for the US & Oz lot when they are in bed.

It's a more flexible way of working and at the moment we need to look for any competitive advantage we can find. I'm not saying it's a cure-all for everyone, but for certain cases, the idea shouldn't be written off without thinking.

[Francko]

If you can work from home then the work can be outsourced abroad.

This is the type of backward mentality that keeps productivity still low in modern offices. Perhaps if you mean 100% at home that might be true but what's wrong with 40-60-80% of your time working from home? Do many people really need 100% of their time to be in the office? Would you increase your business if you were 100% of your time in the clients' office? There is a certain number of tasks which can be easily and indeed more productively done at home. There are though many no-life people whose highest form of social life is company meetings.

Besides there are plenty of communication tools nowadays which make remote work much easier.

Any job in principle can be outsourced. Do you think yours cannot be? I'd be happy to go to work for Madras Recruitment Consultancy which only take 3% rate cut.

[Sysman]

It must be in there somewhere

I assure you it wasn't (except for the time when you aren't charging the client of course).

[DodgyAgent]

Where did I mention working from home?

It must be in there somewhere

[Sysman]

If you can work from home then the work can be outsourced abroad.

Where did I mention working from home?

[Cheshire Cat]

Shame the paymasters don't see it that way.
They just want bums on seats, and they want everyone in the office at the same time to "facilitate" troubleshooting of problems.

[DodgyAgent]

A refreshing thing in Switzerland is that it is acceptable to work only 40/60/80% - i.e. 2/3/4 days a week, even in IT, and many take advantage of this. From the employee's or contractor's point of view, you can use the time off for training, further education or working on a Plan B, and from the employer's point of view, there's a cost saving.

To look at the IT angle, does a company really need a full time DBA and a full time sysadmin for a well bedded-in system? Instead of trying to find a jack-of-all-trades to work full time, why not employ a top-notch specialist in each, but part time?

I actually did something similar in the late 1980s in the UK. Rather than offering me a rate cut, my client wanted me there just 2 days a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the option to call me on a Friday to work over the weekend or on a Monday if one of their clients needed support. This suited me fine as I wanted to get on with other stuff, and my client could promise their clients that any problems would be addressed no later than the next working day.



This is also a problem with the structure of dole offices. They were set up in the days when full employment was thought to be achievable and indeed when I was looking for holiday work as a student (1970s), if you really wanted a job you could find one. The only long term unemployed were those who even in my teens I could tell were pretty unemployable.

To conclude, UK management could do far worse than reassess its control freakery about having full time employees or contractors commuting 5 days a week to sit at their desks full time.

Hands up all those here who have been forced to do 5 days at 9 to 5 away from home a week, when given a bit more flexibility they could do the same hours in 4 days and save on hotel bills and at least one end of the Monday/Friday rush hour stress?

I rest my case.

If you can work from home then the work can be outsourced abroad.

[Sysman]

Or to look at it a different way: maybe everybody could work, but a bit less. I don't know how we could do that; not communism, of that I am sure (I've seen it). But the current division into those who have no spare time, and those who have nothing else, is poisoning us.

A refreshing thing in Switzerland is that it is acceptable to work only 40/60/80% - i.e. 2/3/4 days a week, even in IT, and many take advantage of this. From the employee's or contractor's point of view, you can use the time off for training, further education or working on a Plan B, and from the employer's point of view, there's a cost saving.

To look at the IT angle, does a company really need a full time DBA and a full time sysadmin for a well bedded-in system? Instead of trying to find a jack-of-all-trades to work full time, why not employ a top-notch specialist in each, but part time?

I actually did something similar in the late 1980s in the UK. Rather than offering me a rate cut, my client wanted me there just 2 days a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the option to call me on a Friday to work over the weekend or on a Monday if one of their clients needed support. This suited me fine as I wanted to get on with other stuff, and my client could promise their clients that any problems would be addressed no later than the next working day.

[QUOTE=expat;739933Full-time work for everybody is a 20th century preoccupation, and no politician AFAIK has successfully given up the idea as a requirement for everybody, and an imposition on the government as a policy. Labour, the most dedicated to offering this doubtful benefit to all, is most in thrall to the idea, since that is the way that they get to control us all (I call IR35 in support of this). But too often the Tories don't know any better what to do about it, given that people do need money in our current society.

Before the 20th century most people did not have a "job" as we know it. After the 20th century this may be true roo, although in a different way. It is time that we started to think of what way.[/QUOTE]

This is also a problem with the structure of dole offices. They were set up in the days when full employment was thought to be achievable and indeed when I was looking for holiday work as a student (1970s), if you really wanted a job you could find one. The only long term unemployed were those who even in my teens I could tell were pretty unemployable.

To conclude, UK management could do far worse than reassess its control freakery about having full time employees or contractors commuting 5 days a week to sit at their desks full time.

Hands up all those here who have been forced to do 5 days at 9 to 5 away from home a week, when given a bit more flexibility they could do the same hours in 4 days and save on hotel bills and at least one end of the Monday/Friday rush hour stress?

I rest my case.

[Bagpuss]

The sad thing about that article is they are not stuggling for ideas as to why they can't work. If they applied the same thinking in reverse they would have a job. Unfortunately watching TV won't help them. Being bombarded with examples of instant work free fame and money hardly inspire anyone to work on a production line.

They need to be shown that there is a life outside of benefits (which in fairness they aren't fiddling, £47 a week is the basic you can claim). I also blame the benefit trap... Low wages should not be taxed!

[Doggy Styles]

Have these people had initiative and determination bred out of them, what Tebbit described as "getting on your bike"?

Not everyone is good at coming up with ideas, but everyone that does can drag a few of the others with him.

[expat]

I was at a meal where he did a speech, he basically admitted that they only had one server when it started and it was constantly near crashing for the first few months.

Basically he busked it and it paid off.

Constantly crashing. On the Spamhaus list for allowing spamming, therefore blocked for incoming email by other ISPs.

Basically he sold a load of turd and got rich off it. The esteemed Sir Alan would be proud of him. Personally I am not entirely lost in my admiration.

[minestrone]

Top bloke.

I was at a meal where he did a speech, he basically admitted that they only had one server when it started and it was constantly near crashing for the first few months.

Basically he busked it and it paid off.

[ratewhore]

You can see that he is wearing a Lonsdale shirt which is synonymous with the right wing in Germany

I think that is more to do with the fact they are under a tenner at Sports World!!

Plus of course, our esteemed ex-leader TB was pictured in a lonsdale t-shirt a few years back. He wasn't right wing last time I looked...

[DimPrawn]

Here are some who did it differently, their exact opposites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7828516.stm

Top bloke.

[darmstadt]

'British people should get the jobs before people from overseas'


Hey, that's racist !!!!

WHS

He says: "I've worked at a few places but I got laid off from [the last one] because there are immigrants that have come into our country and are working for cheaper, so that caused us to be all laid off because we're on more of a wage.

You can see that he is wearing a Lonsdale shirt which is synonymous with the right wing in Germany