The "Working from Home" line

[tvguy]

. No longer having any allowance of sick-time for family care is a big deal. We've been dealing with it on the branch level by just clandestinely allowing staff to "do what they need to do" but it does put management at a certain level of jeopardy if corporate ever catches on.

I think family care sick time laws vary from state to state. I'm in California and sick leave can be used for a broad number of issues. (see below) As a matter of fact, the last 2 companies I worked for going back 15 years forbid the use of the wording "Calling in sick" because of HIPPA concerns. We can only say "John Doe will be out today". It is the employees responsibility to mark their time sheet when they return with how they want the absence handled. And time sheets are confidential documents these days.

• Reasons for taking sick leave. California’s sick leave law allows employees to take sick leave for their own health condition or the health condition of a family member, including preventative treatment. “Family member” is defined broadly and includes a spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, parent-in-law, grandparent, grandchild, and sibling. Employees may also take sick leave if they are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

ABOVE FROM: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-passes-paid-sick-leave-law.html

 

[ronandannette]

I think family care sick time laws vary from state to state. I'm in California and sick leave can be used for a broad number of issues. (see below) As a matter of fact, the last 2 companies I worked for going back 15 years forbid the use of the wording "Calling in sick" because of HIPPA concerns. We can only say "John Doe will be out today". It is the employees responsibility to mark their time sheet when they return with how they want the absence handled. And time sheets are confidential documents these days.

• Reasons for taking sick leave. California’s sick leave law allows employees to take sick leave for their own health condition or the health condition of a family member, including preventative treatment. “Family member” is defined broadly and includes a spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, parent-in-law, grandparent, grandchild, and sibling. Employees may also take sick leave if they are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

ABOVE FROM: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-passes-paid-sick-leave-law.html

Canada has a federal provision for non-paid leave during which an employee can collect Employment Insurance, but that only works for more long term care-giving situations. There is no provincial labour standard in Alberta for paid short term sick leave let alone time to care for sick family. Employers set their own policies. (NOTE: This may vary widely province-to-province; I'm only referring to Alberta here. There is a standard for "Family Responsibility Leave" but it only requires employees to be allowed up to 5 days per year unpaid.)

 

[Hrhpd]

A few managers from time to time work from home. It would never work for the rest of us. Corporate IT forbids many of the pieces of equipment we need to work to be connected to the Internet for security reasons. So we have to be at work....to work.

That is interesting. My husband needs a security clearance to do his work, so working with sensitive info. He still works from home.

Your corporate IT sounds like they don't want to spend the money on security or they don't know how.

 

[kdonnel]

That is interesting. My husband needs a security clearance to do his work, so working with sensitive info. He still works from home.

Your corporate IT sounds like they don't want to spend the money on security or they don't know how.

I worked awhile for a credit card processor. The mainframe I needed to access to do my job was not accessible from outside our physical office locations. When on call on the weekend I had to drive past the closest company location to my home to go to my actual work location to solve issues as the security was configured in such a way that certain things could only be done from certain work stations.

It is not necessarily a matter of not spending money on security, but actually implementing proper security practices for the industry that prevents working from home.

 

[tvguy]

That is interesting. My husband needs a security clearance to do his work, so working with sensitive info. He still works from home.

Your corporate IT sounds like they don't want to spend the money on security or they don't know how.

That could be. My son works in IT and just went from a job at an Independent IT firm to a state IT department. He is assigned to a team that has until the end of next year to develop a way to automatically redact confidential information (specifically, Social Security numbers) from view when someone is logging in remotely. They are working with a vendor, but if this fails, they will no longer allow workers to work from home. Apparently thefts of laptops have allowed unauthorized access to confidential files that also include medical information.

 

[kirstenb1]

My husband works from home. He's an electrical engineer who does automation for manufacturing. The main office is in New Jersey. He is on the phone with clients, or bidding work, or on a job site at all hours of the day and night. I don't even know how many hours a week he works.

 

[tcufrog]

A friend of mine works sometimes from home. She's found that when she works from home the total amount of time she devotes to work is about 2-3 hours less. She doesn't have to pack her work lunch, commute, or get dressed in a suit. She is on average able to get 8 hours of work done in about 6-7 hours because she doesn't encounter the distractions from coworkers or the requests for "input" during unproductive ad hoc meetings. She usually takes short breaks when working at home to tend to laundry or make doctor's appointments, etc. but she is overall much more efficient. She says that the problem is that fact that she works with a lot of people who are really into gossip and office politics whereas she'd rather just get her work done. Even when she puts on headphones or closes her office door they won't leave her alone. She doesn't mind being interrupted or attending meetings for legitimate work reasons, but she doesn't care if "Ralph" from accounting is cheating on his wife with "Susie" from marketing.

She finds that she also saves money because she spends less on gas, tolls, and car maintenance and she doesn't have to get her suits dry cleaned as often. She's not pressured to go out to lunch by colleagues so she spends less on lunches.

 

[Colleen27]

I work primarily from home. Because consolidations within my paper's parent company mean our office space is an hour's drive from the communities I cover (one of which I live in), it is just more efficient this way. My position is also entirely output based - to a large extent, it doesn't matter where I'm working from or even when I'm working as long as I'm meeting deadlines and producing the expected amount of content. And although I'm technically hourly, the position works more like salary - there's no overtime for evening meetings or weekend events, so we're trusted to adjust our daytime hours to compensate for the after-hours obligations.

I have worked from the back seat of my van, where I have an outlet to charge my laptop. I've worked from airports and libraries and coffee shops and even the sun porch of an AirBnB rental. Some of those things were during "regular" work hours, some were on evenings/weekends or scheduled days off when something came up that couldn't wait until the next workday. As long as the work gets done, no one questions where or how I choose to do it. That is the single biggest reason I've stayed in this position despite earning less than I could make elsewhere.

 

[Hrhpd]

I worked awhile for a credit card processor. The mainframe I needed to access to do my job was not accessible from outside our physical office locations. When on call on the weekend I had to drive past the closest company location to my home to go to my actual work location to solve issues as the security was configured in such a way that certain things could only be done from certain work stations.

It is not necessarily a matter of not spending money on security, but actually implementing proper security practices for the industry that prevents working from home.

yup. DH's company provides it security for cc companies along with more sensitive companies.

 

[LYSE]

That is interesting. My husband needs a security clearance to do his work, so working with sensitive info. He still works from home.

Your corporate IT sounds like they don't want to spend the money on security or they don't know how.

I had a secret clearance for years, anything on a normal computer was unclassified...still encrypted hard drive (in case of theft) and locked down computers with VPN to work from home as you should do but anything actually classified as confidential or secret had to be handled by approved methods which in our case was using the military's special secret classified computer network called SIPRNet

And as far as working from home..I've been doing it full time for 5 years now...pproductivity is about the same I feel.

 

[Christine]

That is interesting. My husband needs a security clearance to do his work, so working with sensitive info. He still works from home.

Your corporate IT sounds like they don't want to spend the money on security or they don't know how.

Is everything your husband touches classified. I need a security clearance for my job also; however, I rarely work on classified information. If I do have to handle it, it has to be handled on special computers and those are not allowed to be used in a home office setting. Even in the office, you have to be in a special room to work on classified material. I have to believe that your husband, while having a clearance, is not working on classified info at home. That's a huge no-no.

 

[AP1209]

My wife works from home every Wednesday and she is off every other Friday. She's also on call a lot and usually does some work on her laptop on the weekends. The days of working M-F 8-5 is dying a necessary death.

 

[amberpi]

A friend of mine works sometimes from home. She's found that when she works from home the total amount of time she devotes to work is about 2-3 hours less. She doesn't have to pack her work lunch, commute, or get dressed in a suit. She is on average able to get 8 hours of work done in about 6-7 hours because she doesn't encounter the distractions from coworkers or the requests for "input" during unproductive ad hoc meetings. She usually takes short breaks when working at home to tend to laundry or make doctor's appointments, etc. but she is overall much more efficient. She says that the problem is that fact that she works with a lot of people who are really into gossip and office politics whereas she'd rather just get her work done. Even when she puts on headphones or closes her office door they won't leave her alone. She doesn't mind being interrupted or attending meetings for legitimate work reasons, but she doesn't care if "Ralph" from accounting is cheating on his wife with "Susie" from marketing.

She finds that she also saves money because she spends less on gas, tolls, and car maintenance and she doesn't have to get her suits dry cleaned as often. She's not pressured to go out to lunch by colleagues so she spends less on lunches.

This was pretty my experience. I got far more done at home than I did in the office, with my door closed. In fact, I've had a couple of jobs where the company was looking for the right person, I was going to have to travel anyway, so they let me work from home when the "office" was states away. They'd just fly me when I was needed in internal meetings, otherwise, I was with clients/regulatory folks, etc. as needed at their locations.

 

[dish rag]

So I found out today at the office that there are certain people, not in my department, that work from home every Friday. I also heard that a few of them pretty much treat as if they have a 4 day work week. I was talking to one of the persons and they told me that "work from home" means two things

1) be available to field phone calls and emails
2) get your work done and don't miss deadlines

Some of them even use it as a long weekend and work from the passenger seat on a Friday while they travel to their vacation destination.

I'm actually not upset about this more than I am jealous. Anyone else have the same office policy or do you think this is just abuse?

I prefer to just be concerned with myself and what I do, not others. Besides, you agreed to work under your current terms.

 

[tcufrog]

My wife works from home every Wednesday and she is off every other Friday. She's also on call a lot and usually does some work on her laptop on the weekends. The days of working M-F 8-5 is dying a necessary death.

It depends on your job. My dh co-owns a engineering business where they manufacture, distribute, test, and repair tools for oil and gas wells. He can take phone calls out of the office and do some design work at home, but most of the time he has to be at the office for meetings or to manage staff.

Honestly, I prefer to have him at work during the week. It’s harder to get things done when he’s home.