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Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#131

Post by Dyac »

geden wrote: post #55
quickthrower2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At will employment is the problem. You should be able to switch off at a certain time and ignore work comms. But I think in US you’d be scared of being fired. In other countries like UK this has never been a concern, and WFH doesn’t change that.

Yeah tell that to my teaching assistant wife who works at a Lincolnshire village primary school and is now 'always on' to the whims of the go getting headmistress 24/7. She feels she can't practically ignore out of hours requests and she doesn't want to challenge the practice for fear of rocking the boat.

As a counterpoint, I'm not in teaching but many of my colleagues workdays are heavily disrupted by childcare, so they compensate by working odd hours, sending emails or slack messages at 5am or 1-2am etc.

It's not that they expect everyone else to be working these odd hours at all, just that it's the only time they themselves can catch up on work.

One colleague who is a manager even has a note to this effect in his email footer, explaining he doesn't expect others to action or respond to messages outside of normal working hours.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#132

Post by nicoburns »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
endymi0n wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there‘s truth to that, it doesn‘t bring home my own issue with WFH: It might be okay to much better for individual contributors, but it‘s harsh for me as a manager. Zoom (fatigue) meetings all day, staring at the screen instead of real people and any form of "managing by walking around" and watercooler chats are gone. This might not make a difference if my job was a corporate mess and sucked before already, but…

> I mean, nobody opens a Zoom call to just chit-chat about mundane stuff. Well, some do but I‘m sick of taking any additional video call beyond the 4h I’m enduring every day. Some indeed do, but for some reason it requires more effort than meeting physically did. I never did that, but I had co-workers who did it regularly even pre-pandemic. What more people do, though, is chit-chat about mundane stuff on IMs . Depend…

> What more people do, though, is chit-chat about mundane stuff on IMs. Depending on the company, your subordinates may already have their own #random / #offtopic channel. Of course, as a manager, you need to stay away from it and pretend you don't know it exists :).

Why is that? At all the companies I have worked at the managers would join in with these kind of things same as everyone else (not all of them, but then not of all the ICs were interested either).

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#133

Post by pdimitar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95
sn_master wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.

It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're always with your family. On the other hand, you're always with your family . Fact of life is, many relationships have trouble finding balance between "me time" and "us time". Going to work is, for many, a way to catch a break from their home - with perfect plausible deniability, since it's socially approved and demanded externally. Some people don't need it. I had a co-w…

Optimizing your lifelong estate purchase for a style of life that won't always be there seems crazy to me. Why?! Because you get to buy a cheaper estate -- is that the main reason? But you will not always work 9-5. You actually get to retire one day. Also there are the occasional long vacations when everybody is at home. Etc.

The elephant in the room: if you can't tolerate your partner in the same flat/house for longer periods of time then IMO you shouldn't marry them so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I get it that alone time is extremely important. I practice it as well -- my wife too. But what you describe just seems... more like a good roommates' arrangement / contract, and not an actual relationship?

Please understand that none of this is meant to offend or generalize. But what you describe is just legitimately baffling for me.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#134

Post by pdimitar »

sn_master wrote: post #6
Hendrikto wrote: post #3

I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.

People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.

If I were you I'd take that as a sign that you shouldn't double down on work to give you a social life. If I were you I'd take this as a hint to put strict boundaries between work and personal life and try and have more of the latter.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

nicoburns wrote: post #132
TeMPOraL wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, nobody opens a Zoom call to just chit-chat about mundane stuff. Well, some do but I‘m sick of taking any additional video call beyond the 4h I’m enduring every day. Some indeed do, but for some reason it requires more effort than meeting physically did. I never did that, but I had co-workers who did it regularly even pre-pandemic. What more people do, though, is chit-chat about mundane stuff on IMs . Depend…

> What more people do, though, is chit-chat about mundane stuff on IMs. Depending on the company, your subordinates may already have their own #random / #offtopic channel. Of course, as a manager, you need to stay away from it and pretend you don't know it exists :). Why is that? At all the companies I have worked at the managers would join in with these kind of things same as everyone else (not all of them, but then…

You're asking that as a manager or employee? If the former, I suspect there were channels you didn't know about. If the latter, I don't know - but maybe they were channels you didn't know about :).

But the reason is, these chats are for conversations you won't feel comfortable having with your boss around. Cat pictures, stupid jokes, random topics. Even if people felt comfortable with such topics around their manager, they might still be worried that the volume of communications will be seen by the manager as evidence that people are slacking off.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#136

Post by RHSeeger »

pdimitar wrote: post #133
TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're always with your family. On the other hand, you're always with your family . Fact of life is, many relationships have trouble finding balance between "me time" and "us time". Going to work is, for many, a way to catch a break from their home - with perfect plausible deniability, since it's socially approved and demanded externally. Some people don't need it. I had a co-w…

Optimizing your lifelong estate purchase for a style of life that won't always be there seems crazy to me. Why?! Because you get to buy a cheaper estate -- is that the main reason? But you will not always work 9-5. You actually get to retire one day. Also there are the occasional long vacations when everybody is at home. Etc. The elephant in the room: if you can't tolerate your partner in the same flat/house for long…

> Why?!

Because it costs a lot of money to buy a house with enough room for 2 separate offices. Paying for that if you have no reason to believe you'll ever need it would be well into the stupid range for most people.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#137

Post by londons_explore »

I bet they'll walk back this advice when employees start moving outside the UK and start living across the world, and suddenly Nationwide has the laws and bureaucracies of hundreds of countries to deal with...

"Hi HR, you need to pay be the 8 years maternity pay you owe me because I live in Svalbard and the local laws require all employers pay that".

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#138

Post by epage »

Jonnax wrote: post #30

This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.

What are good small towns to work remote from?

I consider "good to work remote from" to mean

- High speed internet

- Somewhat reasonable way to get to airport for office time (e.g. Michigan Flyer has bus service from East Landsing to the Detroit airport.

Personal bonuses

- Mountains, trees, and winter

- Low cost of living

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#139

Post by dx034 »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #111
dx034 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard probation period is six months in the UK. I haven't encountered two years yet, is that even legal? And it's called probation period for a reason, it's a time for both sides to figure out if the arrangement works out and be able to quit with no or little notice otherwise. After that, 3 months notice periods are completely normal so it's good to not get locked into that from day one.

I'm not talking about contractual probation periods. There's a universal two year threshold after which you get extra protections, and before which you can be fired for any reason that's not specifically discriminatory on race, gender, etc + some other very narrow cases. Pretty similar to what 'at will' means in the US. We just have a short statutory notice period. https://www.stephens-scown.co.uk/employment/employme…

From the link you posted:

> Even though an employee has fewer employment rights in the first two years of their employment, an employer would be foolish to assume they have carte blanche to dismiss at will.

So while it's true that there's less protection for workers, there is no at will employment in the UK. Probation period probably comes closest to it but is much shorter.

Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

#140

Post by 411111111111111 »

londons_explore wrote: post #137

I bet they'll walk back this advice when employees start moving outside the UK and start living across the world, and suddenly Nationwide has the laws and bureaucracies of hundreds of countries to deal with... "Hi HR, you need to pay be the 8 years maternity pay you owe me because I live in Svalbard and the local laws require all employers pay that".

That would be an issue, but thankfully isn't necessarily the case.

you're usually bound by the locality where the contract is signed, so you dont suddenly gain rights just by moving abroad until the employer actually creates a new contract. for that to happen, the employer would have to create a legal entity in that legal region.

do note however, that some nations dont allow you to work while on their soil, unless you specifically get a visa permitting it.

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