Doing additional work at home

swain90 · 10 Jun 2016 at 07:42

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?

dsb · 10 Jun 2016 at 07:55

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.

Caged · 10 Jun 2016 at 07:56

There will always be work to do, so this idea that working all hours of the day will help chip away at the total is laughable. I would never consider an 8 hour day and then an extra 3 at home each night plus weekends regularly to be acceptable - that's an extra member of staff sort of hours.

swain90 · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:06

dsb said:
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.

Ocean Breeze · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:10

Some people are just stupid. You should work your hours and any work that isn't done, is up to the company to manage.

Casdawer · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:12

As soon as my 8 hour shift is done, I wash my hands of work.

I could spend all day & night working but it won't help clear down my work load as it's a constant stream of work.

She needs to stop doing it and get some down time otherwise she'll run herself into the ground.

peterwalkley · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:12

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.

Throrik · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:17

peterwalkley said:
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.

This, my current place is happy for me to take days whenever at short notice if required, but I am also the first to offer to come in on a weekend or to finish late.

swain90 · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:17

peterwalkley said:
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.

chroniclard · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:19

Software developer - I do extra now and again if its necessary, when I have a deadline, when there is a tricky problem I want to fix, if I need to do an hour when clients are generally offline. But its not regular, every single day of the week extra.

Just par for the course in some professions, though it does sound like this lady has too much work for one person.

Work to live.

wordy · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:21

Thing is, in short order this extra work will become expected of her & down the line she she stops doing it she will be thought of badly.

dirtychinchilla · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:29

I think this is unacceptable.

Ocean Breeze · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:35

Woman is crazy. She is creating all her own problems. Company must loving it, thinking what a mug..

Ayahuasca · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:37

It depends on whether she's doing all she can while at work to get it done.

The amount of time wasting you see in some offices is a joke, I've often questioned what people actually do if they can waste hours everyday.

danielanthony · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:37

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.

geuben · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:41

I work for a small software startup focused around a football app, given that football often happens outside ofnworking hours I regularly do work outside my contracred hours. Im ok with this, my company will let me take as many holidays as I want during the year. Plus I also want them to succeed (I.e. I care more, much more than when I worked for BigCorp)

Diddums · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:48

This is the result of poor management. A decent manager would've spotted this problem and dealt with it. Your mother should absolutely not be working at home, but she should be productive.

That said however, my experience is that people generally only work extra or from home if they don't feel they're meeting what's expected of them. An employee who is working to the best of their ability will usually also have the confidence to tell their manager that they need support or workload redistribution.

Tell your mom to work harder and if she's already working to the best if her ability, to speak to her manager.

It actually irritates me to hear that someone's working from home and not getting paid for it. Someone's to blame for this, get to the bottom of it and sort it out.

Christ if I found out that one of my guys was doing this id go nuts. There are so many negative implications from this kind of thing.

Marky · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:51

For a job that's only paying £24K, you shouldn't be expected to do work after the standard work hours!

swain90 · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:56

danielanthony said:
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.

Diagro · 10 Jun 2016 at 08:58

Well, it depends on the job.

say for example; teaching.
Its required that you spend your own time working after school... and you dont get paid for it. Then again its not a normal job.