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How have you skived whilst working from home

Personally I can't wait to get back into the office; not that I expect to be doing a full week there, as the successful operation of the business over the last year has accelerated the company's plan to divest themselves of office space by 5 -10 years (at a guess), so I envisage working from home at least 2-3 days a week and (say it with disdain) "Hot Desking" when I'm in London. It's a bit sh1t, but from a business point of view It's unarguably the way to go.

I foresee the usual massive corporate enthusiasm for the new shiny process being translated into discouraging anyone coming into town at all, followed by a backlash several months later when reality bites and the realisation that some things do need hands on presence leading to a requirement for everyone to be in for 4 days a week or so, and then finally settling down into a workable arrangement dependent on specific work requirements.

Our general manager doesn't trust anyone to do anything without him looking over their shoulder.
His stock answer to anything I say on H&S is "I will have to check with legal" as he can't accept that I may actually know something.
Any document will have to be edited after he's seen it - it's like cleaning the block before going on leave.
Documents have been sent back , recently it was the font colour, left for 3 hours without any editing whatsoever, sent back "edited" and then are accepted (grudgingly)

We will be back in the office other than days on customer sites.
Online training is no doubt going to continue. he wants us to travel in to work to sit in a busy and noisy office so we can continue with online training which we can all do from home...
 
That would be most SO3's across all three services out of a job.....

When I was presenting this to some very senior people, they couldn’t quite believe that there are people brazen enough to do that.

Quite naively they just assumed everyone in the world loved coming to work and digging out.

I’m a firm believer in starting your career on the factory floor. It’s only in that environment that you get to see all the tricks in the book and the lengths people will go to to get out of work.

In my last team we had an old engineer who’d come through the apprentice route as opposed to the grad route.

He was likeable enough and he permanently had a pot of tea on the go. Most days he was first in the office which gave him a veneer of hard work and efficiency.

However it quickly became apparent that he did absolutely **** all. He’d sit at his desk and potter about with paperwork or massive ring binder files, but never actually deliver anything. Whenever there was a big job on, he’d just take leave or pull a sicky

No one ever questioned this. Because he always made the brews he was pretty crucial to the team. No one wanted to **** him off because it meant they’d have to make their own tea.

One day I unplugged his keyboard just to see if he’d notice.

He went for over a week without logging into his PC and realising.

We were basically paying a bloke 50 grand a year to make tea 4 times a day and read books.
 
Our general manager doesn't trust anyone to do anything without him looking over their shoulder.
His stock answer to anything I say on H&S is "I will have to check with legal" as he can't accept that I may actually know something.
Any document will have to be edited after he's seen it - it's like cleaning the block before going on leave.
Documents have been sent back , recently it was the font colour, left for 3 hours without any editing whatsoever, sent back "edited" and then are accepted (grudgingly)

We will be back in the office other than days on customer sites.
Online training is no doubt going to continue. he wants us to travel in to work to sit in a busy and noisy office so we can continue with online training which we can all do from home...
That was the mindset amongst the engineering hierarchy in my company; the last year has proven that the majority of staff can be trusted to work from home at least as conscientiously as when in the office. Of course some work just can't be done at home, but the IT solutions are pretty amazing, and it has certainly surprised me how much has been achieved over the lockdown.
 
Fortunately our team is small enough that anyone not pulling their weight doesn't last long.

We had one who was allowed to work from home but used to disappear off to a local church hall where there was minimal phone signal (evidently he was on some church committee and could make use of the place). His comment was that his kids made it difficult to work from home, but he was effectively "off grid" for several days a week.

That would not have mattered if he had actually delivered decent quality of work on time, but he didn't. He got rumbled by both myself and the MD in fairly short order and after a series of verbal & official warnings walked before he got pushed.

We have a few who are home based and pull a good shift with no issues.
 
Slight thread drift but I have a good mate who spent his career as a civvy technician at an RAF base.

The bulk of his work was running the SAT Range or DCCT or whatever it’s called now.

Pretty much all he had to do was run the machine when people were using it (which was very rarely) and fix the occasional defect.

There were other aspects to his job like cleaning the place that he’d just sacked off completely. He’d somehow created an air of mystery around the whole thing and his boss seemed to think he was the busiest man on base.

The reality was he’d bought a flat a few minutes away, which meant he could go home and sleep, but be within arms reach just in case his boss phoned him to see where he was.

Within 5 minutes of a call he could be back at the range carrying a bag of tools or something.

“Sorry boss, just had to head to the other side of the base to borrow a soldering iron.”

He styled it out for over 30 years.
 
Slight thread drift but I have a good mate who spent his career as a civvy technician at an RAF base.

The bulk of his work was running the SAT Range or DCCT or whatever it’s called now.

Pretty much all he had to do was run the machine when people were using it (which was very rarely) and fix the occasional defect.

There were other aspects to his job like cleaning the place that he’d just sacked off completely. He’d somehow created an air of mystery around the whole thing and his boss seemed to think he was the busiest man on base.

The reality was he’d bought a flat a few minutes away, which meant he could go home and sleep, but be within arms reach just in case his boss phoned him to see where he was.

Within 5 minutes of a call he could be back at the range carrying a bag of tools or something.

“Sorry boss, just had to head to the other side of the base to borrow a soldering iron.”

He styled it out for over 30 years.
A role model for us all I think you'll find.
 
That was the mindset amongst the engineering hierarchy in my company; the last year has proven that the majority of staff can be trusted to work from home at least as conscientiously as when in the office. Of course some work just can't be done at home, but the IT solutions are pretty amazing, and it has certainly surprised me how much has been achieved over the lockdown.

We deal with a lot of engineering/maintenance people, in all kinds of industries. Obviously many of their staff can't work from home. Taking the beef people for example , apparently it's just not practical to take a cow home and turn it into pieces of beef. Nor can they maintain the factory that way. However so much of the admin for them can be. We've managed to get a lot of new custom from people who need/want to manage things off site (or centrally for multiple sites)
 
We deal with a lot of engineering/maintenance people, in all kinds of industries. Obviously many of their staff can't work from home. Taking the beef people for example , apparently it's just not practical to take a cow home and turn it into pieces of beef. Nor can they maintain the factory that way. However so much of the admin for them can be. We've managed to get a lot of new custom from people who need/want to manage things off site (or centrally for multiple sites)
Perhaps you could manage some factories in India, or even provide online help for Indian IT users.

Karma would then hopefully be a complete and utter bitch.
 
Perhaps you could manage some factories in India, or even provide online help for Indian IT users.

Karma would then hopefully be a complete and utter bitch.

I did some online training for an Indian user of one of our systems (UK company with factories throughout the world) Actually a nice chap, with excellent English. He'd booked three full days and only needed a half day on day one and a couple of hours on day two.
Great skive leaving the teams session open while I snoozed
 
Mostly it's fine: have worked from home for years and the last round of hot desking in 2019 drove many others to it as well.

New joiners prove a challenge, need to really to make a strong effort with them.

However younger ones don't seem troubled: they have spent most of their lives doing online gaming chat so it's just an extension of that!
 
today I answered about 20 emails from my week off. Ignored everything in the group email inbox as nobody has touched them while I've been away. attended the H&S teams meeting and even got things agreed without the general manager using his usual 'I'll have to check with legal'

oh and I've spent most of the day listening to spotify and cocking about on arrse.

I don't think I can manage another cup of tea right now...

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