blogcutter

So much has changed about labour relations since the pandemic forced employers and employees alike to adopt work-from-home as the default arrangement for office workers. Some love the arrangement, some hate it, many more are on the fence or would favour some sort of hybrid arrangement. It would be overwhelming to tackle all the issues at once so in this blog post, I'll restrict myself to the matter of vacation leave.

For starters: If you were an office worker in pre-Covid days, what time did you get to go home on Christmas Eve? How about New Year's Eve?

For most of my working life in the federal public service, our office buildings started emptying out just before noon. Some people brought their children in on those days, so it would have been difficult to work a full day if the children were young. But as this was not entirely official or government-wide policy, there was considerable variation.

I spent most of my career in government libraries. The Library was a common area, at least to employees (its openness to outside visitors varied by Department). So every year, there had to be at least one employee who would stay at least until 2:30 (sometimes later). I think that was mainly to protect our image and forestall the inevitable wisecracks about lazy overpaid fat-cat civil servants, although I can't be absolutely sure.

Quite often, people actually volunteered to be the ones to stay later. It was usually pretty quiet in the afternoon, an ideal time to finish up some of those little tasks and projects we couldn't get to throughout the month of December, because we'd been expected to at least put in an appearance at all kinds of Divisional, Branch and Department-wide social events. Even throughout the morning of December 24, clients would sometimes drop into the library just to read the paper and escape their own office parties!

We also very often had part-timers or contract workers who were paid strictly by the hour and could ill afford the loss of 4 hours' pay. Chatting with the student who was checking in or shelving books or sticking new labels on them was a welcome respite from a week or so of partying, not all of it particularly enjoyable.

As for term and permanent employees, many of us avoided taking December 24 as "annual" leave, the main reason being that we would be debited 8 hours of leave even though most people would be allowed to go home around lunchtime. December 31 was a little different because even though we often got off early, it was nice to get at least a full week's break from the office between Christmas and New Year's, yet only have to use up 3 days' worth of annual leave.

Covid-19 has definitely changed both office culture and labour-management relations.

Happy New Year, everyone.

There's a lot of talk about resolutions at this time of year. As I mentioned last year around this time, I don't really do resolutions. But I don't think planning is necessarily a bad thing. So instead of talking resolutions, I'd probably talk about goals.

Should goals be "SMART"? If I remember my managementspeak, that stands for "Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound". I don't really like those criteria either. So I'm going to outline my idea for STUPID goals instead.

S is for "Shadowy". Often you might set a goal and then realize part-way to working towards it that it's not quite what you wanted after all. If you're "SMART" you remain hell-bent on attaining that no-longer-so-desirable goal. If you're "STUPID", you recognize that there has to be some flexibility and fluidity built into your goal-setting exercise. For one thing, you don't necessarily know at the outset what additional options and opportunities may crop up along the way.

T is for "Tense-appropriate". Sometimes it makes sense to live in the moment and appreciate things as they come. But I also seem to get more interested in history as I get older - both my own personal history and the history of the world, the universe, the ecosystem and so on. And that's necessary for looking to the future as well. You don't know if you're genetically susceptible to a particular condition or illness if you don't know anything about your ancestry. Some people, of course, may not WANT to know. I do - up to a point.

U is for "Unexpected". What's the point of resolving or even just planning to do something if it's something you automatically would have done anyway? Well, maybe it's something you can cross off your list and feel you've accomplished something, but that's about the only rationale I can think of. Instead, why not plan on doing something it hadn't occurred to you to do until you sat down and started thinking about what you want out of the rest of your life?

P is for "Personal". I'm sure we all tend to hear the voice of our mother or teacher or other authority figure whispering in our ear that we OUGHT to make our bed as soon as we get up or go to confession every Sunday but is that what's important to US? If it matters to the person doing the planning, then it matters.

I is for "Idealistic". The idea of setting goals is to try and make something BETTER. Better for you and/or better for those you care about, even if you've never met them and perhaps aren't even likely to.

D is for "Down-to-earth." Even if you're being idealistic, there's no point in saying that, for example, you're going to put an end to global warming and wage heavy peace in the Middle East because one person alone cannot possibly do that. Why set yourself up for failure? Unless, of course, you're STUPID.