Doing additional work at home

[swain90]

Hi All,

I'm just trying to gauge peoples thoughts on doing additional work at home after your working day.

My opinion is, is that by doing additional work regularly at home you're falsifying what the team/company really needs, e.g. more staff.

To give an example, my partners mum looks into ethical issues which come from either customers or staff where there seems to be a constant stream of work/issues. She earns ~£24k and most weekends and evenings she'll log on and continue doing reports and emails because of the current work load. We usually tell her off and say she shouldn't be doing it on a weekend, but she usually comes back with, if she doesn't do it now she'll have too much to do next week.

Now to me, if you're having to do this additional work, this shows that the team is understaffed and also seems a little pointless as there's always going to be "1 more case" so to speak.

However, I'm sure there's plenty of jobs out there which require doing the extra bit at home. I've done the odd bit at home when I know it's going to be a 5 minute job but I don't think I'd ever do an extra 3hr+ a week at home.

I suppose my question is, what factors need to be in place for GD to do so many additional hours, what sort of salary/conditions would you need before doing the extra work?

 

[swain90]

Or is she just slow at doing her job, too many coffee breaks, talks too much or just can't handle the work load? Of course she could just be over worked. And if yes needs to be addressed.

Far from it. I think it's just volume of work.

~200+ emails a day.

 

[swain90]

A degree of give and take. Are they ok with her when she needs to do personal stuff e.g. work from home for a day because a plumber is coming to fix central heating. If not, then its working hours only.

If it is constant, then yes, they need more people.

She has it in her contract that she works from home 1 day a week.

 

[swain90]

If you're earning £24k then it's a 9-5 job.

If you're earning £90k then a certain amount of additional hours will be expected.

For me, I'd say £65k is the point where a company can legitimately own your ass.

These are the sort of salaries I had in my head before I'd start doing several hours after work.

 

[swain90]

IMO I think teaching and becoming a nurse/Dr are more of a lifestyle rather than just having a job. It's something you must really want to do.

 

[swain90]

lot of my mates did not even end up going to uni and resat at sixth form and are now in dead end jobs which is a bit sad.

I would say school has some part to play in how people end up in their current work situation. However from my own personal experience I'd say it comes down to personality and if you have that drive to find something you really want to get into.

I didn't do well at school, I had to do an additional year at college to get something half decent as a qualification. I worked ~360 days straight with 4 different jobs at one point because I needed/wanted the experience.

This isn't a dig at your friends for being in a "dead end job", I feel if people really want to do something that they enjoy, it's not always as difficult as people make out if you're willing to put in the effort.

 

[swain90]

Of course, when you're a consultant or head teacher on £100k+, its for the love of the profession right?

The vast majority of teachers that really enjoy their job and enjoy helping children rarely become head because the teaching part disappears.

How much teaching does a Head Teacher actually do?