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Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

reuters.com

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Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#381

Post by Suppafly »

takinola wrote: post #312
dools wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early on in my career when I was first put into the position of hiring both employees and contractors, a guy I was working with said "We can ask him for a better price and promise to give him a better deal on the next one", and I said "but we won't have any more work after this one" and he said "yeah I know but we can just tell him that to get a better price". It was one of the first times I realised that people are…

Context matters. When I walk into a high-end store and see a shirt on sale for $X, I assume that I need to pay $X to get the shirt. If I see a shirt at a flea-market priced at $Y, I assume I can get the shirt for some percentage off by just bargaining. The sellers are also aware of this context and, presumably, set their prices accordingly. The same thing regularly happens in business. For most services, people under…

>They are not (necessarily) jerks, they are just reacting to the context they are operating in.

That's a good point and honestly is often caused by the seller in the first place. A lot of tools used by businesses are intentionally not priced or priced on a floating scale so that the sales team has an opportunity to introduce fake discounts to make the sale, but ultimately this signals to the buyer that negotiation is part of the transaction. Almost all enterprise software and hardware sales work like that. Often the buyer would rather have a set price upfront than how to deal with the haggling process but it's the sellers that are creating this problem.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#382

Post by Suppafly »

skizm wrote: post #243
red_admiral wrote: post #140

I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with "deal with this next week". So, many companies have systems that hold back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working day unless specially authorised and costed. Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a…

Is everything hourly there? Would this work with salaried employees that don't log hours? Or maybe everyone does? A running joke in my first company out of school was "can't wait to see that overtime check!" whenever we saw someone working after 5. The implication is no one ever gets overtime as a salaried employee.

>The implication is no one ever gets overtime as a salaried employee.

The flipside is that no one ever gets paid less as a salaried employee either, but most employees are too afraid of getting fired to remember that part. Any day that you work any portion, you get paid for the full day.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#383

Post by Suppafly »

Linux-Fan wrote: post #358
mylies43 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh I mean it would depend on how your doing it really, Im thinking its the difference between "hey sorry to interrupt, I have a question do you have a minute?" vs "hey {question}"

What became of "don't ask to ask" ( https://dontasktoask.com/ )? Although it may take some getting used to, I find it convincing that one shouldn't need to ask about whether it'd be OK to ask for short questions because the question for permissing is interrupting just as much as the actual question except that with the former it may be impossible to estimate how complex it is whereas it may be much easier to decide i…

that's similar to the no hello movement. if you're going to ask a question over chat, just ask it, we don't need the pretend conversation around it, and by saying hello you've already interrupted me.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#384

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mapt wrote: post #276
ghaff wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the time, private equity (like MBAs etc.) is a convenient bogeyman for why crappy underperforming companies are crappy and underperforming. But private equity often gets involved because they are crappy and underperforming (or are just in a line of business that doesn't have good prospects any longer).

A small fraction of the time, private equity is brought in to make an ailing, breakeven business profitable. Much more often, it's to bite off limbs until it dies, feasting on cashflow and assets. And then the third portion of the time, the business is generating reliable, modest long-term returns, a "blue-chip" company. Private equity doubles down on future growth that is not projected, gets the company into debt to…

> Much more often, it's to bite off limbs until it dies, feasting on cashflow and assets

This can be a legitimate strategy. I know someone who made millions buying yellow pages companies and managing them for de-growth.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#385

Post by Flop7331 »

CalRobert wrote: post #373
Flop7331 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what paper is for. Not email.

Are you really suggesting people use snail mail simply for async?

LMAO! No... How did you even get that?

> Sometimes I get a random thought on a Saturday

I'm suggesting when you have that random thought, you write it the fuck down -- even if you have to add a reminder to call or email someone at an appropriate time. I'm kind of shocked that this is some new development to people.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#386

Post by rammer »

amelius wrote: post #236
red_admiral wrote: post #140

I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with "deal with this next week". So, many companies have systems that hold back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working day unless specially authorised and costed. Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a…

But employers will strike back with a law: if you read HN during work hours, your rate will be halved.

Yeah it is ridiculous to see all of the "employees" complain so heavily about one important work email that comes over the weekend, when the business patiently puts up with hundreds of personal phone calls, time spent scrolling on the phone, hacker News / Reddit posts and much more.

There needs to be a little bit more of a give and take. If employees are not expected to receive a single phone call or email outside of working hours. Would it be acceptable if the same restrictions were placed on personal calls and emails during working hours?

How many of the same people would be screaming murder, if their bosses came to them and complained about them taking personal email during work time.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#387

Post by rufus_foreman »

yawaramin wrote: post #96
rufus_foreman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and second that I negotiate from a position of strength. If my employer wants me to work off hours, I mean maybe I will, if I don't have anything going on, and I'll take some time the next day where I won't work as compensation for doing that, I won't ask permission. If I do have something going on, I'll sa…

> What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and second that I negotiate from a position of strength. In other words, you are at the tender mercies of your employer, and you rely on them to uphold the implicit contract that they will not cross those unspoken boundaries. I'm glad this strategy works for you, but you are literally placing your livelih…

>> In other words, you are at the tender mercies of your employer

There are no tender mercies involved.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" -- Adam Smith

Mr. Smith is talking about the sell side rather than the buy side in that passage, but the same principle applies.

Obviously employers would prefer not to employ employees if there are more profitable alternatives. If my employer decides not to employ me any longer (which is expected, my team was 50 people this time last year, it is 10 people now), neither the roof over my head nor the food on my table is at risk. My life, financially, will go on exactly as it does now.

You can get the same type of thing, but you have to give something up in order to get it. Most people won't and that's their choice and that's fine.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#388

Post by seoulmetro »

Prcmaker wrote: post #7

With getting no overtime, no time off in lieu, and managers perpetually confusing a 'problem' with an 'emergency', I'm glad to see this happen. If it will actually make a difference though, I'm yet to be convinced.

Australia doesn't have a problem with people doing work outside work hours... not even close. That's why this was so easy to pass.

That's not to say that there will never be exceptions against the laws.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#389

Post by fred_is_fred »

glitcher wrote: post #379
CalRobert wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did this shift happen? People shouldn’t check email when they don’t want to read it.

Often others don't behave in the same way we would or even the way we would expect. My suggestion is in the spirit of trying to offer a little help to your fellow teammates with a few extra clicks, in what seems like a very low effort compromise. I suppose it depends on your team dynamics, size, structure, etc. I work with a small, tight knit team and if I already knew someone was going to act a little neurotic with…

Large corporate setting for sure and yes I ended up doing scheduled emails specifically for this person. But im not sure the original cause of why they couldn’t stop checking. I couldn’t control everyone’s emails in the whole group either.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#390

Post by defrost »

rammer wrote: post #386
amelius wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But employers will strike back with a law: if you read HN during work hours, your rate will be halved.

Yeah it is ridiculous to see all of the "employees" complain so heavily about one important work email that comes over the weekend, when the business patiently puts up with hundreds of personal phone calls, time spent scrolling on the phone, hacker News / Reddit posts and much more. There needs to be a little bit more of a give and take. If employees are not expected to receive a single phone call or email outside of…

Effectively pointless apples to oranges whataboutism.

If employees at work are not completing tasks then by all means carpet them, warn them and fire them.

During working hours.

You don't get to follow them home physically or digitally and take them to task outside of contract and labour laws.

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