Slashdot Mirror
Mobile Workers Work Longer Hours
Qedward writes "Last month it was reported on slashdot that a third of workers at a British telecoms company were 'more productive' working from home during a telecommuting experiment to prepare for the London 2012 Olympics. A more recent study reveals almost two-thirds of mobile employees say they are working 50+ and 60+ hour weeks, with most also working weekends. It also has security implications, with most mobile workers saying they will do anything to get an internet connection, including hijacking unsecure networks. The problem of needing a connection has also led to an increase in workers waking up through the night due to stress."
"The problem of needing a connection has also led to an increase in workers waking up through the night due to stress."
Seriously?
What in the world is this shit? How can someone even attempt to work from home without a solid Internet connection and with no secure method of connecting to the company network? And waking up in the middle of the night because you need a connection to the fucking internet? Man, what a mess we're living in. And I thought I was messed up.
Just get a fucking solid Internet connection. Surely one could afford it, I mean come on...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
It's also a feature that you're on call 24/7, right?
a third of workers [...] were 'more productive'
two-thirds of mobile employees say they are working 50+ and 60+ hour weeks
Which means a third is working more hours while not doing a damn thing more.
Either that or a lot of people are lying about how much they work.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yeah, and I have Bigfoot doing all the server backups. You expect them to say they are doing less work? Or even the same amount of work? No confirmation from their companies on whether the company saw an increase in productivity?
Now before everyone gets flippy, I have known some people who did the mobile thing and were more productive, mostly because they didn't have people interrupting them every 5 minutes, and actually liked working more (as in hours) that way because it was more enjoyable. I also have known people that did their work in 3 hours and played games the rest of the day (also maybe because they could do 8 hours in 3 because of less distractions.
Main point- employees are never going to say anything bad about work out of the office.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
But having commuted for five hours a day in the past, and worked from home on other occasions, I would much rather work nine hours at home than work for eight in the office with even one hour of commuting.
Fuel, tires, collisions, stress, bus fair, everything associated with commuting sucks. I would much rather talk on the phone and fill out my work logs in my underwear than that.
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Worked from home for the past 10 years...
I have no doubt they say they work longer... but it's more likely they just feel like they are working longer.
With no separation between work and home, it can feel like you are always working, even when you're not. And that is what keeps them up at night.. the stress from never being able to wind-down.
I am the opposite. I would rather work with people then without them.
I know I would be less productive and hating it while I would be doing it. I like to have my home and my work completely separated.
As the people are most likely volunteers, it would seem logical that people who volunteer, wanted to do it. Those will then be more likely to be indeed more productive.
So perhaps it is not so much about telecommuters being more productive, but people who are in an environment they like to work in are more productive. (DUH!)
Let them force people who do not want it to work at home and see if the same happens.
I have absolutely no problem with the commuting part of it. I even see it as relaxing. Most of the time I listen to books and I often take detours that takes me even longer to get home. Once I am home, I like being there and do non-work related stuff.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
When I work from home, I dont even THINK of starting until start time and I am offline the second 5pm hits. Phones go to voicemail, sucks to be you with yout 5:01 TPS report as I will not even know about it until 7:59 the nest morning.
If you let your employer abuse you, they expect you to take it. Stand up and realize you are doing your office a favor by working there, not the other way around.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's also a feature that you're on call 24/7, right?
There's no reason you have to answer work calls outside of your scheduled work hours. If they want you on call 24/7 then ask for compensation.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Data security classically was: you keep your data in a mainframe, and give people only terminals.
Then it was: You give people PCs, but put gum in the USB slots.
These days that's hard to do because motherboards want keyboards and mice to be USB.
Not to mention laptops. And in some companies (like Nokia US), it's all laptops all the time. And mobile (i.e., no) offices.
In such a scenario, how do you protect against an employee who wants to cp the entire database (design, products, customers, whatever)? Or other documents?
Maybe this should be an Ask Slashdot.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Yeah, that's about it. Just turn off the power of your gadgets and ignore everything outside business hours. Only way to remain sane.
What? People more productive?
Why? They are only: - away from noisy cubes. - away from hallway meetings. - saving time from a commute. - saving aggravation from a commute. - a few feet from their private bathrooms and break-rooms. (Not several hundred feet down a long, busy hall.)
BellSouth (now AT&T) also discovered a productivity boost among employees allowed to telecommute during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
The first two items are total productivity killers for me. I can't count the number of times I've had to put on headphones in an attempt to filter out co-workers' talking. Now if I could just get people to use complete, understandable sentences when they IM me, I'd get even more work done.
When I do have the occasion to work a full day from home (rare, but it happens) I end up working a 10hr day, and find myself missing that reading time.
... wait, what?
Mobile workers work longer hours than workers in other cities in Alabama.
I wish we had a good train system around here. I used to take the bus downtown, but to say the least there was too much over-crowding, bouncing, jerking around and too many traffic fumes to properly enjoy reading. I did some of that, but it was easier some trips that others.
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What the hell are firms doing even making it possible to connect to their systems on unsecured servers? I've worked from home for years (well, 3 days at home, 2 in the office) and the only way I can connect is via my work laptop which has an encrypted hard drive and connects via VPN and an RSA keyfob thingy. Trying to connect any other way means you'll just get rejected by the servers and rightly so.
As for hours, yes, I work longer hours at home but I can work them when I want (more or less, meetings permitting) so can be around for the school run, making dinner for the family in the evening etc.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Get used to it people. It's a green initiative.
No necessarily. If you don't work at home, you also don't have to keep your home warm (or cool) enough to be comfortable during the day. The office, on the other hand, will be kept at a reasonable temperature whether you're there or not.
My wife's work is about 30 miles away, but she works from home most days. We calculated that, on the coldest winter days, the carbon cost of driving to work was about the same as the extra heating that would be needed if she stayed at home. If you have a shorter commute, or have a greener method of transport than driving a car, it's quite likely that it's greener to work in the office than to work at home.
Perhaps some numbers would be helpful here.
We have a small semi-detached house with cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, and double glazing. We still need over 10kW to heat in the cold months. If we're out of the house for 10 hours, we save roughly 100 kW hours (*). How far will your car go on that amount of energy?
(*) Of course, it's not that simple because we have to use extra heat to bring the house back to normal temperature when we get home. A more accurate analysis would compare the temperature-time graphs for the two scenarios and use Newton's law of cooling. Nevertheless, the above figures are roughly correct.
How much energy does it actually take to heat your house... because it's not 10kW/h.
"Kw/h" is not a unit of either energy or power. However, I can confirm that 10kW is approximately the power needed to keep my house comfortable in the winter. I know this because I know the ratings of the radiators in the house at 60 celcius, and I also know that they need to be kept at close to 60 celcius more or less constantly.
Note that kW is a unit of power, kWh is a unit of energy
Your figures weaken the support for your argument (that staying at home is greener than driving to work) significantly: they suggest it's greener to drive to work as long as it's less than 90 miles away from your home.
I disagree with your calculation, but the point remains broadly the same. Here's an alternative calculation. According to Wikipedia, 1 US gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33 kWh, so 100kWh is equivalent to 3 gallons US. At 45 mpg US you can go 135 miles, not 180.
You can look at this the other way round. Driving 60 miles at 45mpg US is equivalent to 44kWh of energy usage. For it to be worth staying at home for 10 hours, you would have be able to keep your home warm with less than 4.4 kW. That's roughly the power output of two old-fashioned electric bar heaters. Do you get freezing temperatures where you live?
It's difficult to be more precise because the figures depend on lots of things - how cold is the place you live, how efficient is your car, how you define "equivalence" between gasoline and other energy forms - but you've illustrated the following point very well: most people wrongly assume that the energy required to heat their home is negligible relative to the cost of driving anywhere.
OK, suppose they put in the same amount of effort as in the office. Now consider the following:
1) They do not have to commute. That saves hours of time each week, a two hour daily commute amounts to 10 hours a week. They are in fact recapturing some of those extra hours.
2) Less commuting means less stress and probably better productivity.
3) They save money on bus fares and other commuting expenses. A de facto pay raise.
4) In some places I have worked parents had to take an hour or so to pick up kids, drop them off at home or day care then rush back to work. The creates less need for rushing around and/or paying for day care. That is an instant increase in quality of life.
Those are a few of the immediate benefits I see. My conclusion is that even if they work a few more hours, they benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+