I’ve now got a picture in my head of Adam complaining to his boss that Sandra in admin gets to work from home so why can’t he.
The Manchester United Club Thread **Sponsored by Comedy Central**
- Thread starter Robbo
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How else will they make sure everyone's desk has a monitor, keyboard and mouse? Ineos are so forward thinking it makes my head spin
Soldato
I think its a way to weed out the staff who dont' want to work for the club and are probably just working there for a 'payday' (lol) like much of our squad has been over the last few years. If you want to be part of this Club, come into work. Maybe its just for a few month or maybe the whole of next season, but they may say ok you guys can work from home, but need to be in once a week for a,b,c, we see you love the club, however, you guys really must work at the office because of x,y,z.
Seeing everyone in the office doing their job and Ineos walk round and see someone just feeding a goldfish, may ask, whats that person role? And find out its someone who orders the iron on letters for the shirts sold in the shop. That person would be let go as that role is more suited to club shop management or other suitable person working in the shop.
Clearly these are crap examples, but I have seen this before.
When we had a revamp/refit and takeover of sorts at Morrisons (2012ish I think) we had a company in to 'time manage' everything that all the staff did. Timing me how long it took to take a box of fish/meat out of a fridge, how long it took to open any packaging, how long it took to fillet a salmon or cut up a primal of meat into steaks/joints, how long it took to pack said fish/meat. Eveyrthing was timed to the second. I knew I ****** up when I filleted a salmon in 30 seconds. I was told, other morrisons staff in other stores took upto 8 minutes to do the same thing.
I ended up with 2 less staff. but still the work load was the same and ok to manage to be honest. I imagine Ineos are doing something similar.
Seeing everyone in the office doing their job and Ineos walk round and see someone just feeding a goldfish, may ask, whats that person role? And find out its someone who orders the iron on letters for the shirts sold in the shop. That person would be let go as that role is more suited to club shop management or other suitable person working in the shop.
Clearly these are crap examples, but I have seen this before.
When we had a revamp/refit and takeover of sorts at Morrisons (2012ish I think) we had a company in to 'time manage' everything that all the staff did. Timing me how long it took to take a box of fish/meat out of a fridge, how long it took to open any packaging, how long it took to fillet a salmon or cut up a primal of meat into steaks/joints, how long it took to pack said fish/meat. Eveyrthing was timed to the second. I knew I ****** up when I filleted a salmon in 30 seconds. I was told, other morrisons staff in other stores took upto 8 minutes to do the same thing.
I ended up with 2 less staff. but still the work load was the same and ok to manage to be honest. I imagine Ineos are doing something similar.
In your opinion.
Which is incorrect. According to stuff like evidence and research.
Soldato
disclaimer, I am not an office worker, never have been or probably never will be.
How can you be more productive at home than the office. If you have a target to meet that you have from 9-5 to complete, what makes you more productive at home. You would be completing it the same way in the same time in an office yes?
Caporegime
Look at animals like dogs for example. I know this may sound like a weird analogy but hear me out. When you work together as a group you learn faster and quicker because you bounce ideas and solutions off each other. Dogs who are brought up in packs learn to potty train and use skills that would normally take longer being single. Working from home is basically the same.
Soldato
Just generally able to be much more focused. As mentioned above, there's less "chat" going on in the background you're easily sucked into and no people popping up to your desk asking for small things. It's much easier to just zone in on a task.
Hybrid definitely has it's place to enable some collaborative benefits in the office, but i guess it depends on the role more than anything.
What have I just read.
I think he's finally been broken by years of mediocrity
Soldato
ok I can understand the people popping up to you at the desk but being distracted/sucked in to chat/surroundings must be an individual person thing then?
Soldato
Yeah, i think everyone works differently, so some will likely benefit from being in an office and others prefer to focus on their own. It's easy to go and make a drink and spend 20 minutes in the kitchen chatting.
There's also the fact that without X time commuting, people usually stay on longer hours so your working day goes from 8-9 hours. Again it depends on the person. Some will likely slack off (hell i'm sat on OCUK
) but on the whole i believe i'm more productive
Soldato
Looking into this Ineos getting people back to office thing, I would imagine most if not all workers that were WFH would be more productive in the Man Utd offices. They go back to work, Ineos, the new boss walking around checking in on you. You will be working pretty productively to impress. They then check your productivity that you did at home. Oh Mr Droolingimp, on this report it says you completed 4 spreadsheets at home, but today in the office you have done 6. Wow you certainly work better from the office. Another 3 staff completed 6 spreadsheets compared to their 4 at home. thats 4 staff who have done 24 spreadsheets in one day. 16 done at home prior. Thats 8 sheets more. Sir Jim, we can manage with 1 less member of staff.
I bet thats exactly how this whole thing will pan out.
get everyone in and record everything to reduce staff further. My example post a few up, me fillting salmon in 30 seconds compared to other stores taking up to 8 minutes, I shot myself in the foot there. But thats me, I do my job quick, to company standard and efficiently. Thats what they will be looking for.
I bet thats exactly how this whole thing will pan out.
get everyone in and record everything to reduce staff further. My example post a few up, me fillting salmon in 30 seconds compared to other stores taking up to 8 minutes, I shot myself in the foot there. But thats me, I do my job quick, to company standard and efficiently. Thats what they will be looking for.
Caporegime
Maybe it was a bad analogy but studies show toddlers/babies learn quicker from being in a nursery environment compared to being alone at home. This was my point.
A group of workers in an office will do better than a single person at home.
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Soldato
But that's people in a learning environment. Not people who are likely already skilled at a specific job.
Yes there's some benefit for junior staff to be in an office around other people to learn from, but having a blanket ban on WFH is madness and as i said above. Likely would hugely impact future highs at a highly skilled level because you hugely reduce the catchment area and the general trend is moving away from office work.
It's a crap location too. Being office based in Manchester centre, whilst unpleasant at least has the benefits of good access for trains, and the opportunity to do some shopping etc during lunch. Commuting to Old Trafford/Carrington would be a nightmare for lots of people and would again reduce the catchment of potential employees. If you offered me a WFH job or one in an office at a comparable salary i'd be going for the WFH one everytime, and that's coming from a United fan who would otherwise love to work for them.
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Caporegime
No just learning but competitive nature of humans will provide better productivity. When your other colleagues are doing 100% compared to 80% you will notice and pull up your slack or get going. WFH doesn't have that mentality.
Obviously if you are doing a WFH job that is basically ripe for automation and will likely be the first jobs to go then that's cool but I would hazard a guess that working for Manchester United is a constantly evolving workplace that needs heads together to work for the better.
I appreciate WFH does not work for all roles/trades, but for certain functions it's excellent. A few things off the top of my head without trying to derail the thread too much (I'm an IT Architect for reference):
- I'm less distracted by idiots asking me bone questions
- I'm less distracted by inconsiderate/loud/annoying co-workers (loud on the phone, loud meetings etc)
- I'm not looking up whenever 'insert male/female/whatever' hot office co-worker walks past
- I don't have Dave/Sarah/Will asking me for a coffeee/smoke/beer/lunch/whatever every 5 minutes
- I can choose to ignore people when they message me if it affects my workflow
- I don't have project managers sat on my shoulder micro managing my work
- It's way more professional for virtual client meetings as there's much less background noise/distractions
- I don't have to deal with cheap office furniture
- I don't have to deal with crappy office peripherals/monitors etc
- My home internet connection is better
- I don't have to go into central London (frankly this is always a bonus)
- I work with India/AUS/US teams a lot, I can't sit in an office at 11pm as an example, but I can open my laptop and spend 30 minutes to help out our engineering teams whenever a customer has a massive issue, and that issue ends up being fixed by the morning rather than the day after next
- My co-workers are spread all over the country, it wouldn't be possible for us all to get into the same office and do a full working day together
- My home life is better as I can be flexible with working hours, this in turn helps my marriage/being a parent etc
- I end up doing more hours from home, which means I am more productive and I'm generating more revenue for the company I work for
- My retention likelihood is higher, as WFH is a huge tick in the box for me. Which means I am more experienced in the role and I'm much less likely to be tempted by other offers
I know nothing about truck driving as an example, apart from that truck drivers drive trucks from A to B to C, with goods on board (and sometimes not), and that they have to adhere to certain laws with regards to how many hours they can be behind the wheel. You won't find me talking about the truck driving trade and how it could be better, because I don't know any different. Yet people who don't WFH or don't understand it often seem to want to share their opinion as factual evidence. "WFH is less productive, I have spoken".
For a club like Man Utd WFH should however not be an option outside of specific roles. The club is a brand, it's a community, and it's a massive worldwide revenue generating machine. You can't have legal, marketing, social media etc sat at home when the club is one image, it just doesn't work. As I said, it doesn't work for all roles but just because someone doesn't see how it can work doesn't mean that it doesn't.
Man of Honour
I've been working from home since the first lockdown, so over 4 years now since I've been inside an office.
I'm 100% more productive, for all of the reasons @ChrisD. has mentioned. Offices in a software engineering job are just full of distractions, idiots coming up to you for no other reason than you're a few desks away. I can stick music on and not have to wear headphones all day.
There's not a single reason why, in my line of work, we should be expected to go in the office. It's just a waste of office space.
I'm 100% more productive, for all of the reasons @ChrisD. has mentioned. Offices in a software engineering job are just full of distractions, idiots coming up to you for no other reason than you're a few desks away. I can stick music on and not have to wear headphones all day.
There's not a single reason why, in my line of work, we should be expected to go in the office. It's just a waste of office space.
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Caporegime
This is Manchester United though not IT.
IT is about the only place where WFH makes total sense.
IT is about the only place where WFH makes total sense.
Soldato
It may be a brand, but then so are many other huge multi nationals (Amazon/RBS etc) and it works fine. Presumably other football clubs also allow WFH as otherwise this wouldn't be such a big deal. There's no reason that Finance, HR, IT, General Admin couldn't work from home, at least on a Hybrid basis. Then you have the Statistical guys who probably tick off a lot of the same positives as on your list above.
Sure they need to get together to discuss things, but outside of the playing/coaching staff and caterers. There can't be that many roles that are different to any other business. This whole mindset that a business in Sport is different to a business elsewhere is crazy.
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Soldato
being drunk at this time of the morning is not something to be proud of.....unless you're on your holidays?