John MacDonald: People are time-wasters in and out of the office

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

I don’t know where Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis get this idea from that you can only do a hard day’s work if you’re physically in the office or on the premises, as opposed to working remotely from home.

Because, from my experience, there is a hell of a lot of time wasted in a lot of workplaces.

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister and the Public Service Minister are giving government workers a rev-up and telling them to get their act together, get out of the tracksuit pants, have a shower, put their work clothes on and ditch this working from home nonsense.

With Nicola Willis saying that working from home is not an entitlement, it is a privilege only to be granted when bosses are satisfied that it isn’t having an impact on productivity and performance.

If there’s just one thing I can agree with the government on, it’s that there can be a lot of confusion at workplaces sometimes as to who is and who isn’t working on-site. Pretty much ever since this working from home thing became a thing during COVID.

You know: “Oh I’m looking for Dave, but he’s not at his desk."

“Oh nah - he’s working from home this week.”

“No one told me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah - his line manager up north approved it after the last lockdown and he’s just been doing it every second week ever since.”

So I agree with the Government that there can be quite a bit of confusion as to where people are sometimes. But, overall, I think it's dreaming if it thinks that waving the big finger and telling people to get back to the office is going to make them any more productive.

Because, generally, it doesn’t matter where we are - we all waste time. Including, when we’re at the office.

I bet there were truckloads of office workers who turned up to work at the usual time today, dumped their bag, maybe put their lunchbox in the fridge in the staffroom, said gidday to a few people, and then walked out the door again to get a coffee.

They would've been back by about 9:30, gone through a few emails - and there would've been dozens of emails because they would've been CC'd into pretty much everything.

Then they would've grabbed a snack bar and mandarin from the lunchbox in the fridge in the staffroom to take to their 10 o’clock meeting.

The 10 o'clock meeting wouldn't have started at 10 because of a few stragglers (there’s always a few stragglers) and the Zoom connection to the crew in Wellington would have frozen. "Can you say a few words Steve, we’re just trying to get a connection."

But they would've sat through it looking busy, nodding their head, when they were actually just writing down lists of what they need to get done around the house at the weekend.

And it would've been the same right through the day. And they’ll go home tonight and tell anyone who will listen how frantic their day has been; how it was all meetings, meetings, meetings and how they’ll do a bit of work for a few hours after dinner just so they’re set up to get stuff done tomorrow.

And they’ll go back in the morning and do the same thing all over again.

More productive? Pfft.

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