Latest / The SME Stream / John MacDonald: People are time-wasters in and out of the office

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John MacDonald: People are time-wasters in and out of the office · The SME Stream

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know where Christoph Luckxen and Nichola Willis get
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: this idea from that you can only do a hard
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: day's work if you're physically in the office or on
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the premises instead of working remotely from home. I don't
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: get it, because from my experience there is a hell
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of a lot of time wasted in workplaces, in offices
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and wherever people need to be to work. Nevertheless, the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Prime Minister and the Public Service Minister, I give them
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: government workers are ever tell them to get their act together,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: get out of the Boddy tracksuit, have a shower, put
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: your work clothes on, and ditch this working from home nonsense,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: because as Nikola Willis said yesterday, working from home it's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: not an entitlement. It's a privilege only to be granted
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: when bosses are satisfied that it's not going to have
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: an impact on productivity and performance. If there's just one thing.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: If there's just one thing I can agree with the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: government on when it comes to this, that there can
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: be a hell of a lot of confusion at workplaces
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes as to who is and who isn't working on site.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Pretty much, ever since this working from home thing became
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a thing during COVID. You know, it's like, ohh, I'm
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: looking for Dave, but he's not at his desk. Oh no,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: he's working from home this week. No one told me,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Y as line manager up North
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: approved it after the last lockdown. He's just been doing
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: it every second week ever since then. So I agree
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: with the government that there can be quite a bit
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: of confusion as to where people are sometimes, But overall
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I think they're dreaming if they think that waving the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: big finger and telling people to get back to the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: office is going to make workers any more productive. It's
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: all just part of this. We're doing things differently than
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the last lock talk that you get every time there's
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: a change in government, and it won't work. It won't
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: make people more productive because generally it doesn't matter where
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: we are. We all waste time, including when we're at
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the office. Let me explain myself. So it's just after nine,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: what it's ten past nine now? I bet there are
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: truckloads of office workers in town right now, and in
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: cerneys and towns right around the country who have turned
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: up at the usual time. If they're not hot desking,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: if they've got their own desk. They would have dumped
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: their bag under the desk. Maybe they've gone into the
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: bag and they've taken out the lunch box and taken
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: it into the fridge and the staff room, said good
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: to a few people, and then walked out the door
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: again to get a coffee, and there'll be a few
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of them together, coffee, coffee, jessah, I love one good
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: day for a walk, great weather, and then they'll mosey
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: back at about nine point thirty. They'll go through a
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: few emails and there'll be dozens of emails. There'll be
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: dozens of them because they would have been c seed
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: into pretty much every thing or blind copied in if
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: we're in a passive aggressive type mode. And then they'll
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: go and think, oh, I better get that snack bar
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and the mandarin in the lunch box in the fridge
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: in the staff room, because I'll take that to the
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: ten o'clock meeting. That'll be good. And then they'll get
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: to the ten o'clock meeting, which won't start at ten,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: never starts at ten, because there'll be a few stragglers.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: There's always a few stragglers. And then the zoom connection
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: to the crew and Wellington will freeze. Can you just
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: say a few words, Steve. We can see you, but
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think we can hear you. There's a problem
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: with a connection. And this will be the first of
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: about eight meetings these people will have back to back,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: most of which they'll get to and they'll wonder why
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the hell they're there. And the only reason they are
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: there at these meetings is that they were in on
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: a meeting a few months back at the start of
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: this project, and the person organizing it just assume they
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: needed to be at every meeting since then. But they
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: won't do anything about it. They won't they won't pull
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: out of the meeting. They'll sit through it looking busy,
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  Speaker 1: nodding their head when they think they should be nodding
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  Speaker 1: their head, when actually all they're doing is just writing
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: down lists of what they need to get done around
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the house at the weekend. And then they'll pile out
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: of the meeting. It's say ten thirty, and the thing,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: look at the watch, make a cup of tea in
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: the tea room now, And it'll be the same right
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: through the day. And then they'll go home tonight and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: they'll tell anyone who will listen, how frantic the day
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: has been, how it was all meetings, meetings, meetings, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: how oh look, come, yeah, I'll do dinner, but I
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: might do a bit of work for a few hours
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: after dinner, just so I'm set up, set up to
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: get stuff done tomorrow. And come tomorrow they'll go back
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and do the same thing all over again. And the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: government wants more of this gerade, more of it because
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: it reckons it's the key to making people more productive.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: It's just nonsense, absolute nonsense. As one public servant was
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: saying on the newsline night, the office can be noisy
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and distracting, and they find that they are way more
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: productive working on their own at home. And tell you what,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I haven't even got to all the mind games and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: all the in house politics and all the personal grievances
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: that reduce productivity even further when people all work together
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: at the same place.