Taking the P*ss?
I'm in all day in on-sofa mode: hideous cold, if I was a bloke it'd be flu. Negative Covid test, but other covid type viruses are available.
Text from a colleague on Friday afternoon to forewarn me that any routine working from home is now not allowed. Not allowed in my area anyway I've been working Mondays from home routinely. I'd be interested in feedback from around the place.
So much for "Smarter working" ...a positive from the Covid era (not over, please note we've got outbreaks in offices). Leaders were keen on "Smarter Working" for while. This, it turns out, was driven by Estates who reckoned that with scrupulous clear desks and hot desking, they'd get 100% of the workforce housed in 60% of the office space. That project has, it seems, been abandoned. They're pressing on with installing narrow mean desks with no drawers, think call centre, but home working now not a right so they're just going to ram us into our call centre desks, abandoning Smarter Working along with any recognition of the genuinely heroic work we did to keep the show on the road through a catastrophic pandemic.
Jim, should we make a call for stories about what we accomplished? I'm proud of mine. The narrative is being set that poor performance is all the fault of Covid. Not Grayling, reorganisation, poor training and Civil Service strangulation of Probation.
The recruitment of droves of PSOs and PQips is doubtless a factor in the Estates abandonment, its now pack 'em high and pay them cheap.
Anyway, the cessation of home working is now the rule in my office. The JRM effect. The workers can't be trusted. Of course, some staff were taking the p*ss. Those staff will take the p*ss regardless of the arrangements. Same in any workplace. If only we had empowered middle management and a functioning HR department. On the other hand, the values-driven loyal have used the flexibility to encompass the work and their other demands effectively. We are after all, an increasingly young and female workforce juggling poor wages and the plate-spinning required to keep the family and work demands met.
The working from home deal has also played into the hands of employers. Given a punitive sickness absence policy, the standard conversation when a sick employee phones in sick, is "Can you work from home?"
Well, I'll be phoning in tomorrow. I'm sick, and apparently not allowed to work from home (which was the plan).
And in the mood to just sign off, and take the p*ss.
Pearly Gates
It's a form of action individually but the moral police on here might condemn you. I don't get the rest you need. Don't turn homes into stand by offices and I agree helping the employers in COVID was a major error.
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