What is happening at work?

[genevieve]

We have temporary sublet office space that was only guaranteed until January, with a probably extension for 2 more months - just got unofficial word that we can count on all of 2021. This is a huge relief. I'm the only one who goes in there regularly, but having SOME office means that my tiny apartment does not become the de facto office (my boss mentioned buying a copy/scanner for me to use at home and I said NO). It a PITA to go in, but I like working in my tiny office with no one else around.

 

[Kasey]

You aren't talking, like hospitals in ND have done, healthcare professionals work with C-19 if asymptotic?

I certainly hope not. No, I'm talking mandated overtime, like everyone has to do an extra shift a week, or every other week, some such thing as that. Which goes against our nursing contract, but I think our union contract is out the window in times of global pand##mic.

 

[once_upon]

I certainly hope not. No, I'm talking mandated overtime, like everyone has to do an extra shift a week, or every other week, some such thing as that. Which goes against our nursing contract, but I think our union contract is out the window in times of global pand##mic.

Yeah they are doing mandatory overtime here for a month i think. It is not good. But the ND thing really scares me.

 

[Aceon6]

Yeah they are doing mandatory overtime here for a month i think. It is not good. But the ND thing really scares me.

No health system around me (Boston area) is authorizing any nurses or respiratory staff to travel to help out. We’re not at surge levels yet, but it‘s expected soon and no one wants to take a chance on losing any staff. In normal times, our health systems release up to 25% when there’s a critical need.

 

[canbelto]

All NYC schools shut down tomorrow.

 

[once_upon]

No health system around me (Boston area) is authorizing any nurses or respiratory staff to travel to help out. We’re not at surge levels yet, but it‘s expected soon and no one wants to take a chance on losing any staff. In normal times, our health systems release up to 25% when there’s a critical need.

I dont think my husband understands the dire state of healthcare personnel shortage. I tell him there are not even healthcare people.

He says the military staff are going to hard hit areas. I said you can only activate so many, because they are already serving in other areas. Then I said there aren't enough traveling nurses or respiratory therapists, etc. He answered, you might have to pay $200/hrs, but you can find them.

I mean no disrespect to IT people, but he is thinking about this as an IT consultant. Even after all the years we been married, all the years I worked as a nurse, all the years I have said there is a shortage of heathcare providers- its not sinking in. There are no personnel to provide all the needed care.

 

[allezfred]

Turns out working from home benefits businesses even more than it does employees.

From home working to leaving the city: how the pandemic is changing how we live

Europe Letter: *********-19 will see a huge societal shift, but it will have to be carefully managed

tinyurl.com

The experiment has upended assumptions about remote work, which was largely seen as a work-life balance benefit for employees prior to the *********. But it actually benefits businesses. According to the US-based Global Workplace Analytics, each employer can save approximately $11,000 (€9,300) a year for each employee who works from home half the time, while employees save between $2,500 and $4,000.
Remote working has been found to reduce absenteeism, while the hours employees work actually increased during the *********, by some three hours per day in the US and by two hours in UK, France, Canada, and Spain. This is partly due to employees starting earlier, as they do not need to commute, but also may be down to multitasking such as managing childcare.

 

[Aceon6]

I dont think my husband understands the dire state of healthcare personnel shortage. I tell him there are not even healthcare people.

He says the military staff are going to hard hit areas. I said you can only activate so many, because they are already serving in other areas. Then I said there aren't enough traveling nurses or respiratory therapists, etc. He answered, you might have to pay $200/hrs, but you can find them.

I mean no disrespect to IT people, but he is thinking about this as an IT consultant. Even after all the years we been married, all the years I worked as a nurse, all the years I have said there is a shortage of heathcare providers- its not sinking in. There are no personnel to provide all the needed care.

Usually, no one dies when you hire an incompetent database administrator.

He’s probably old enough to remember when Reagan fired air traffic controllers to break a strike. No prob, the Reagan administration said, we can backfill from the military. Until they couldn’t because even the military didn’t have enough certified ones. And the training/certification process took 18 months. And only 40% of the new ones stayed longer than a year.

 

[Louis]

Turns out working from home benefits businesses even more than it does employees.

From home working to leaving the city: how the pandemic is changing how we live

Europe Letter: *********-19 will see a huge societal shift, but it will have to be carefully managed

tinyurl.com

Yeah, a lot of CFOs like it....

I agree with the article, but also think we don't understand the long-term effects: e.g., how to onboard and train new employees, foster company culture and connection, etc. I think what we've proven is that we can take a largely in-person workforce and largely virtualize it. Whether we can sustain it is still an open question for me.

There's also a new study -- that frankly I wouldn't have read if it weren't in the BBC -- that says work from home leads to more prejudice.

Working from home could lead to more prejudice, report warns

Offices and workplace friendships are key to breaking down misconceptions, a study suggests.

www.bbc.co.uk

Widespread working from home could lead to an increase in racism and prejudice, a new report warns.

Workplace friendships are key to breaking down misconceptions, the England and Wales study for the Woolf Institute suggests.
Institute founder Ed Kessler said as more people work from home they risk going "back into isolated silos".
He called on ministers to focus on offices and workplaces as a "vital" area for improving community relations.

A few interesting nuggets:

"Muslims were both the primary target for 'uncomfortable' responses, but also the primary source," the report said.
[...]
As well as being the most common target of negative attitudes by other faith groups, the report indicates Muslims are the group most likely to hold negative attitudes towards people of other religions.

And more evidence that snoopy may have been on to something:

The report says any apparent prejudice toward religion could be due to people feeling it is more acceptable to express negative sentiment towards religion than ethnicity.

Religion remains "a place where individuals are willing to express negative attitudes," the report says.

 

[Kasey]

We are getting pulled out of our unit on a daily basis, almost to the point where our unit is being staffed by one RN most days. Which means we can't turn over patients from beds fast enough. There are frequently 12-13 holds in the ED at any given point in time. We are doing "team nursing", where an experienced specialty nurse is being teamed with another staff nurse from another area of the hospital to do meds and tasks. I was primary nurse in CCU yesterday, with a NICU nurse as secondary. Who was very sweet, but didn't feel comfortable with most of the medications we were giving, especially in "adult doses". I felt like I was doing primary care for 4 ventilated patients on my own. But yeah, Trump, the makeshift parking garage hospital here in Reno is "fake news". Go f*ck yourself.

 

[myhoneyhoney]

I had to merchandise in a Walgreens and the line to the pharmacy stretched to my area. I was surrounded with people coughing, sneezing, and who knows what else. I had to leave, I felt so unsafe.

 

[Prancer]

Turns out working from home benefits businesses even more than it does employees.

Remote working has been found to reduce absenteeism, while the hours employees work actually increased during the *********, by some three hours per day in the US

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 44 hours per week, or 8.8 hours per day. A 2014 national Gallup poll put the average number at 47 hours per week, or 9.4 hours per day, with many saying they work 50 hours per week.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/03/how-the-8-hour-workday-changed-how-americans-work.html

So yeah, I would say it benefits companies more than employees. Who wouldn't want employees who work 12 or more hours a day for no extra pay at less expense to the company?

I do think that "work" might be a loosely used term there, but still--being on call to your job all that time is hardly healthy for the employee. And even if you are taking time off here and there to, say, take care of children or run errands, it still means that your job is a major focus of the day for all your waking hours.

 

[mjb52]

Do the hours I spend browsing FSU at work count?

 

[Prancer]

Do the hours I spend browsing FSU at work count?

I took a class in ethics a few years ago and one of the things we discussed in class was whether or not it was ethical to engage in personal activities during work time. We learned that businesses actually expect workers to spend 30 minutes a day doing personal business on work time and allow for that, but that employees actually spend an average three hours of an eight-hour day not working.

I've never forgotten that, as I have never had a job where I could spend three hours at work doing whatever. Unless you count my present job, where my time is managed pretty much as I see fit.

 

[Louis]

I took a class in ethics a few years ago and one of the things we discussed in class was whether or not it was ethical to engage in personal activities during work time. We learned that businesses actually expect workers to spend 30 minutes a day doing personal business on work time and allow for that, but that employees actually spend an average three hours of an eight-hour day not working.

I've never forgotten that, as I have never had a job where I could spend three hours at work doing whatever. Unless you count my present job, where my time is manage pretty much as I see fit.

First thought: In some European countries, three hours seems like a low estimate to me .

Second thought: Are they counting useless meetings as "not working" time? I'd not be surprised if an independent arbiter judged less than 10% of many salaried employees' time as productive or necessary.

 

[Prancer]

First thought: In some European countries, three hours seems like a low estimate to me .

I think there is some research showing that Europeans are actually more productive on a daily basis than Americans, who are more productive overall because they work a lot more hours and have fewer vacations.

Second thought: Are they counting useless meetings as "not working" time? I'd not be surprised if an independent arbiter judged less than 10% of many salaried employees' time as productive or necessary.

They were looking strictly as things like looking at Facebook or calling your bank, things that aren't at all work-related. If useless meetings were counted as nonworking time, then 10% might be about right for a lot of people.

 

[mjb52]

Back when companies were more intense about monitoring what you did on the internet when you were at work, I have this super vague memory of going to another floor where there was better access to the internet to find out how a skating competition was going? Maybe it was before we even often had the internet on our regular work computers and I was going to the floor where you could check a web browser? This would have been '97-'98 so who knows. Might have been the '98 Olympics? I was working as a semi-permanent temp at the time.

 

[kwanfan1818]

Now people use their phones, rather than the company's internet. And since kids text all the time, many parents pretend that whatever they're doing is a text convo with their kids, at least when they're physically present.

 

[Theatregirl1122]

Now people use their phones, rather than the company's internet. And since kids text all the time, many parents pretend that whatever they're doing is a text convo with their kids, at least when they're physically present.

It would be great if parents stopped expecting their kids to text back all the time, even when they are in class.

 

[Jenny]

Second thought: Are they counting useless meetings as "not working" time? I'd not be surprised if an independent arbiter judged less than 10% of many salaried employees' time as productive or necessary.

Even useful meetings can result in a ton of wasted time. At the company I work for they are very friendly and social, so the start of every meeting is not work related as people catch up. When I did a lot of training sessions, I'd actually schedule (without telling them) 15 minutes of nothing at the start so I wouldn't be behind later.

Then there's the waiting for that last person to show up/dial in. Getting the tech set up, in person or online. Pauses when the tech fails. Again when I did training, I'd ask for an IT guy to be available a full hour in advance so I could sort everything out before anyone showed up - and even there it so often wasn't enough time.

And getting there and back - meetings on other floors, getting sidetracked as you pass someone's desk while everyone else is waiting. And, again in the company I work for, before all this, the habit of flying people all over the world to attend a one-hour meeting. There was a time when I was working in New York but had projects going in Boston and Washington, and I can't tell you the number of full days wasted in taxis and airports and planes and stations and trains, and THEN the socializing and the tech etc etc so in the end, maybe an hour or two of actual productivity (this was a few years back, so not as easy to work in transit for various reasons).

Here at home, if I leave my desk to put in a load of laundry or surf FSU while I enjoy my tea, or I even play an online game while I wait for my turn to report on a conference call, I figure I'm still way ahead of my counterparts who spend most of every day attending meetings.

 

[Kasey]

Yesterday morning we had 215 patients in our hospital (staffing starts to get tight at around 200-210) and 65 were C19 positive, with another 8 who had C19 tests still pending. We had the same number of ventilated patients as the larger hospital across town with over 600 patients in census and over 120 with C19. Our little hospital is getting it's ass whooped, but we're holding on strong!

 

[OlieRow]

Got notification today that I could schedule my vaccine appointment.... all set for December 22nd!!

Obviously it'll be a huge relief to know I have protection while treating patients but I'm also really hoping the data supports the vaccine decreasing the risk of asymptomatic spread as well. I've got a 95yo Nan who is really wanting me to come visit and I want so bad to be able to safely make that happen.

 

[MacMadame]

This is an interesting article about the future of the office. I thought it was interesting because the author seemed to understand what forces were already shaping the office pre-C0vid and so had more insight than some of these pieces seem to:

The Future of Offices When Workers Have a Choice

Some work spaces in central employment districts may become housing, and some housing in residential areas may become work spaces.

www.nytimes.com

 

[kwanfan1818]

In the tech world, when I started to look again in the US in 2014-15, I saw a lot of ads for small tech companies that were already remote except for one office. Sometimes there were 20-30 tech people who worked there, I suppose as core teams, and sometimes it was a small office with a handful of administrative people only. Since then, most of my former co-workers who've left my current company either followed the money to amazon or took remote jobs where they, pre-cv, would have been expected to fly to a main office quarterly, but apart from that, work from home in the timezone where some core teams are located. Now, of course, it's all remote.

 

[myhoneyhoney]

Very annoying:
One of my direct reports keep complaining (every week, multipe calls and texts to my phone) about the company making her go to work. We are merchandisers and are vendors to national drug/chain stores. I wish she would just quit.

 

[judiz]

So we had to close the daycare for two days as we had too many cases, two staff members, one parent and a six month old testing positive All within the same week.

Since we reopened in June, we had five positive known cases in families, four positive children, three positive staff members and six staff members who had to quarantine due to exposure.