JENNI MURRAY: I learned the hard way... you can't do a proper job WFH
Have you had to contact your local council recently? I have. I was desperate to find out what had happened to my application for a new disabled parking permit for my car.
I’d sent in the written application months before my Blue Badge was due to run out but heard nothing. As the expiry date drew closer, I phoned to find out. Eventually the phone was answered. I wasn’t to worry . . . All would be well. It wasn’t.
I called again and again. Each time a different person answered. They had no information. There was no manager or other senior person on hand to deal with my enquiry. It was clear the call handlers were ‘working’ from home.
Three days after the expiry date, I had a phone call to say the badge was on its way. It came, but I had wasted hours of my time, my phone bill had rocketed, as had my anxiety levels.
Then Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves (pictured with Angela Rayner) said: ‘One of the reasons why we lose out on so much tax is that simple questions are not answered because the phone is not answered.’
Trying to track down a parking permit is one thing. Trying to find out how much tax you owe the revenue as the date for paying the summer contribution, July 31, approaches is something else.
Was anybody available to answer your query in the weeks up to the end of July? Of course not.
Half of HMRC’s staff in Whitehall are still working from home. HMRC hung up on 55,922 taxpayers last year after leaving them waiting on the phone for more than 70 minutes. The tax authority will automatically hang up on callers once the wait time has exceeded one hour 10 minutes.
In 2023-24, the number of taxpayers cut off by HMRC for this reason surged by about 700 per cent as the department’s customer service levels continued to deteriorate.
Before the election, the then Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said: ‘One of the reasons why we lose out on so much tax is that simple questions are not answered because the phone is not answered.’
Billions have not been paid. So, what’s she going to do about it?
The Home Office struggles to get staff to come in even two days a week. The previous government told officials to spend the equivalent of three days a week in the office. But Labour has so far refused to lay out a policy on the issue. Instead the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has told staff she supports ‘flexible working’. The Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh, has backed calls to work from home. No doubt civil servants have interpreted their comments as a ‘relaxation’ of the drive to get them back to work.
Flexible working surely does not mean being paid for a full-time job but only appearing at your desk for a couple of days a week?
It is a legal requirement for an employer to hear a case for flexible working and to try to accommodate an employee’s needs, but surely that means negotiating hours worked, too?
A woman might ask to come in later to take her kids to school and leave early to pick them up, but she should only expect to be paid for the actual hours she works. That does not appear to be the case where supposedly full-time workers are being paid a full wage to work from home or, as some councils have allowed, to work from foreign countries with easy access to sunshine and a beach.
Norfolk county council allows staff to apply to work from abroad for up to 90 days, while Bracknell Forest council in Berkshire has one member of its planning department ‘living in Austria permanently’, with an ICT officer working from New Zealand ‘for an extended period’. It’s all a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money.
One of the first things my father drilled into me was his absolute belief in the Protestant work ethic. ‘You have to go to work,’ he insisted, ‘to earn the money that enables you to eat.’ And I was very happy to. In fact, some of the worst weeks of my working life were during the pandemic when the BBC begged me to work from home. We set up a sort of studio in my sitting room. I rehearsed it once and said no, it was impossible.
I had no contact with any of the Woman’s Hour staff responsible for making things work. A producer was necessary to make sure guests were in place at the right time. A studio manager was vital to rectify any of the many technical hitches that would occur and I would need to be able to hear them and have them hear me.
I insisted we needed to be in the building to see each other and speak to each other if we were to make a radio programme fit to be broadcast to the nation.
That’s how we did it.
Every day I would come in at the usual time of 6.45 am. It was like climbing aboard the Mary Celeste. The familiar buzz of people chatting and making plans for the day was gone. I sat alone, wrote a script and prepared interviews, the producer checked all the guests were well prepared and the studio manager had the studio up and running. But that was it. No guests came into the studio. They were all at home and had to be interviewed down the line. I couldn’t see their faces; they couldn’t see mine. It’s impossible to produce a truly great interview without eye contact.
As that day’s programme came to a close we would have a Zoom meeting with the rest of the production staff, a deadly affair that never produced the ideas and cooperation that a real-life meeting together would have generated.
It struck me you have to be in the same room as your colleagues no matter what job you are trying to do. We would spend hours chatting and gossiping which might have seemed like a waste of time, but generally produced marvellous ideas for the programme.
The human contact was vital.
Norfolk county council allows staff to apply to work from abroad for up to 90 days, while Bracknell Forest council in Berkshire has one member of its planning department ‘living in Austria permanently’ (picture posed by model)
If I couldn’t remember the title of a book, a film or an actor who starred in it, I could just ask, and someone would shout out the answer. So much warmer than looking it up on the phone. Young trainees depended on us oldies for help with finding contacts, writing a good script, recording an interview. We were just there, ready to offer advice or assistance. That can’t happen if the younger employee is stuck at home.
Going to work is so important for building relationships, making friends and making fun out of hard work. Working from home means no going out to lunch, no quick drink after work, no joy in human contact.
On the flip side, you can’t help but question the amount of work that actually goes on at home. I have some friends who say they love WFH, but I know for a fact that they’re not really working at their jobs from home. They’re entertaining the children, tidying up the house, doing the washing. It’s work, yes, but it’s not the job they’re paid to do.
All the while they’re doing that, they are not answering the phone to speak to you and cope with your query.
Working from home must stop or our collective work ethic dies. Britons, your country needs you – in the office!
Friendship doesn't last for ever after all
Mel B with Geri Halliwell in 2012 - when the two seemed to be closer friends than the pair are now
Mel B was always the Scary one in the Spice Girls and it seems nothing much has changed.
She sent an unpleasant birthday wish to Ginger Spice wishing her a ‘Happy 75th’ this month and Geri has now decided to pull out of the proposed Spice Girls reunion tour.
Seems they got it wrong when they sang, ‘If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends, make it last for ever, friendship never ends’.
Don't shrink my toilet rolls, Waitrose
Waitrose has reduced the number of sheets in its loo roll from 240 to 190, another victim of shrinkflation
I’ve been trying to summon up the courage to tick off the members of my household for their wasteful use of loo paper. It was running out at an alarming rate. Glad I kept quiet. It turns out the toilet roll is the victim of shrinkflation and Waitrose has reduced the number of sheets from 240 to 190.
So that’s why I’ve been hearing: ‘Haven’t we got any toilet paper?’ at embarrassing moments.
Deodorant for the whole body, not just the armpits, has done well in America and is due to come here. Men say they like it for their nether regions and women before they put on a bra. My solution in the hot weather? Ditch the bra entirely.
I'm giving Des a yellow card
Des Lynam said women should not comment on men's football because they haven't played at that level
Des Lynam, once of Match Of The Day, is behind the times.
Female pundits, he says, should not comment on men’s football because they haven’t played at that level.
What tosh! Perhaps he hasn’t seen England’s Lionesses in full roar and, anyway, you don’t have to have been prime minister to be a political pundit. But Des should realise that in 2024, women can do anything.
How could cheesecake have become the UK’s favourite cake, ahead of our own Victoria sponge, according to a Spar study? American-style cheesecake is so claggy, it sticks to the roof of the mouth, whereas a light Victoria sponge is a delicious joy. Where’s your patriotism, cake eaters?
