This guest post is by John Davidson who comments as John D. He is a semi-retired chemical engineer who has spent most of his life in the construction and mining industries. His debut guest post at LP was on the CPRS.
A recent Climate Progress post reported that “closing Utah state offices on Fridays has resulted in a 13 percent reduction in energy use as well as collectively saving employees between $5 million and $6 million annually in commuting costs.” (A 5×8 hr week was replaced by a 4×10 hr week) In addition, “employee surveys have shown that most state workers like the new schedule — absenteeism and overtime are down and customer complaints have steadily dropped. Even wait times at the Department of Motor Vehicles have decreased…”
The post goes on to mention Californian studies that have indicated potential health and traffic congestion benefits from making similar changes. More details for the Utah case and additional benefits can be found here. Note that the aim in Utah was to save heating etc. costs by actually shutting down the offices for an extra day/week.
So perhaps it is worth asking how changes in technology and the way we work might help the environment, quality of life and job security? By and large we are still using work patterns that were developed when observing the Sabbath was considered important and the telegraph was leading edge technology. Does it really still make sense for most people to work day shift, Monday to Friday and to do their work in workplaces that are more than a few kilometres from home?
Technology changes in the last 10 years have changed what is practical. Not so long ago I needed to work at my personal workplace with filing cabinets, reference books etc to work efficiently. Now all that information that used to be on paper will fit on a memory stick or be accessible via the internet. There is no longer a need to have a dedicated workplace to work efficiently. Modern technology is also allowing many other jobs that had to be done at a particular place to now be done anywhere with reasonable internet connections. For example, my understanding is that Hamersley now controls its crushing plants from Perth instead from control rooms at the crushers. Technology also means that many people should be able to reduce commute emissions by spending more time working at home or closer to home.
We have also reached a point where most people have no particular reason not to take time off during the week instead of weekends. For me the only time when being off at weekends was important was the 40% of my working life when our children were at school.
One possibility worth considering is a wider adoption of 7 day work rosters similar to those used by the mining industry. For example, many of the Thiess sites I worked with used a 4 day on 4 day off roster that averaged 42 hrs/week for 12 hr days. The roster was popular and turnover low. Seven day rosters can involve more than 2 crews, different roster arrangements etc. if required.
From an emissions point of view the big attraction of the above roster is that assets are used more efficiently. For example, it would allow office space requirements to be halved if individuals work more hours per day to maintain the same weekly hours. Halving office space requirements halves the emissions generated when an office is not being used. It would also allow most of the emissions associated with office buildings to be avoided for many years. Construction resources could be diverted to building more important things such as hospitals, clean power generation and the conversion of unused office space to accommodation etc. Widespread use of 7 day rosters would also reduce traffic congestion during peak hours as well as reducing weekend crowding at some recreation facilities.
It is worth discussing what changes to work arrangements may make sense in terms of society, the environment and the economy and the key reasons for this choice. It is also worth discussing what working arrangements we would choose as individuals if we had the choice.
Good questions. Many of the prevailing work and energy practices we see defended in these debates (by status quo advocates) turn out to be hopelessly inefficient on inspection. Both ecologically and economically.
The 4 day week is a powerful device. I ran my small factory in ChCh NZ on a 4day 9hour week. of course I didn’t get to do that, mine is a 7day week for life, but the 4 day week worked well for a student who needed 1 full day at tech but no other employer would give him that day so he was facing having to discontinue his studies. For my other 2 employees if they need extra income they had more flexibility with casual work. The 4 day week, or even 3.5 day week offers more flexibility for 24/7 businesses.
The city centre dental practice I go to work late four nights a week and have every Friday off. They avoid the worst of the evening rush hour and I guess it gives city workers a chance to get their teeth drilled after work.
The staff member I spoke to liked the arrangement.
I like it, but I’m already working 10-hour days.
I’m always keen to explore new ways of doing things, and John D is right that there’s a great deal of inertia with work practices. However, I do wonder how feasible the shorter-week/longer-days model could be. It would depend on the nature of the work. In my last workplace for example, efficiency would have been maximised if I had put everyone on to 4-hour shifts, due to work flows. Of course I didn’t do that, as everyone would have quit (obviously there is such a thing as too short a work day).
There was also a fatigue factor – even though performance might only drop slightly as hours/workload increased, our contractual targets were on the order of 97% completion/accuracy, so even minor falls in effectiveness were important.
I’m not objecting to the idea, far from it. I’m looking forward to a future where technology and business/political will allows far more flexibility, more working from home, etc. I’m just curious as to how widespread it could really be.
As usual, I’m reminded of a passage from a science fiction book. I’m pretty sure in Asimov’s Caves of Steel, 3,000 years in the future, moves to rationalise work hours (a proposal for three 8-hour shifts around the clock) had repeatedly failed despite everyone living in underground cities where night and day had little meaning.
Excellent points. Many current working arrangements are quite unsuited to the changes that have occurred in work over recent years.
Some of the most serious drags on change are institutional and cultural. I have students in five countries, some of which don’t observe Christmas, so there is literally never a week when I don’t have students actively working somewhere. Most of my Australian students work full-time and study off-campus so they are much more likely to want to contact me at night or weekends. Consequently I so SOME work pretty much seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year. Needless to say virtually all of it is done from home.
My work patterns – which have evolved to suit the preferences of the students and the commercial needs of the university – bear no relationship whatsoever to the enterprise bargaining agreement and the numerous policies and practices in force, all of which are predicated on staff working a nice neat 38 hour week Monday to Friday in a university office. They still envisage 4 weeks annual leave and so on – things that simply make no sense any more to many staff.
I’m not complaining about my situation; in fact I rather like it. Overall I prefer it to having to work 9 to 5 in an office. IT means doing an hour or two’s work every day when I’m technically on holidays is no big deal. Lots of others think the same way. The challenge is to get trade unions and senior managements and government regulators to understand change and catch up to it instead of being stuck in an outdated mindset.
“The challenge is to get trade unions and senior managements and government regulators to understand change and catch up to it instead of being stuck in an outdated mindset.”
Remember that next time someone complains about the erosion of work/life balance, increasing casualisation, or individual agreements
I can and do enjoy a long day if I’m doing something physical – fieldwork, renovations, whatever – but I think I’d struggle if it was all in the office. That said, the longer weekend would be more than adequate compensation!
Greg @ 4 – Four 12.5 hour days?
I have pretty flexible management so already do something pretty similar – its a big advantage that can be taken when the employer and employee are willing to measure performance based on what you get done rather than the time you spend working.
It works really well for people like me who take a little while to get the brain working but can go for long periods of time (I’m much more productive at the end of the day than the start). But others find it harder so I’d be a bit hesitant about making people do it. And you only get the really big office energy saving changes if everyone can does it.
I think 7 day rosters could work, but many people would need similar flexibility from the schools their children attend as well.
Nothing new in this really. I recall doing research on flextime and 4 day weeks in the early 70′s. Has there been significant changes in day to day work arrangements in the real world since then? Seems to me there has been change at the margins for full time work but a lot more part time and casual work arrangements.
Inertia, ha! There is the problem of middle management wanting to have someone to control so they have a job and don’t tell the owner of a comapny that it would actually be beneficial to have, say, writers for a magazine working from home.
There is a lot of paranoid and destructive stupidity of people in some workplaces wanting to hang on to their jobs rather than adapting. the really stupid thing is when, say, a writer works in an office but all work is sent electronically anyway!!! A magazine may need to have meetings once a week and then check the proofs of magazines for each issue. Working 5 days a week in the office is a tremendous waste of resources.
Good post John D,
It is interesting to see how stuck in the mud some places are – my girlfriend has asked (unsuccessfully) to work longer hours/day for a 4 day week at several of her previous jobs. In all instances the attitude was “we can’t do that otherwise everyone will do it and nothing will get done”. Which is quite bizarre given they had to hold off on delivaries due to Sydneys crap rush hour (at both ends of the working week!). In both cases they had a “staff hours are fixed” attitude – almost comes back to my point about controlling people in the other workplace thread.
As a service engineer I am actually required to be quite flexible (and am rewarded by being able to tack on holidays when I’m travelling) and it does seem quite silly that a business which is trying to be productive would actually continue to ensure that its workforce is tired/stressed at the start of the regular working day/week, simply because they “have to” be open from 9am.
We have a large part of our population straining the transport system twice per day simply to sit down and read emails or pick up parts (which will be used later that day!) or because anyone who doesn’t do such a thing is not a “team player”. Compare Tullamarine or Mascot at 8am then come back at 10am and you’ll see one example
As you state John the mining industry is already trying to optimise remote operations (because of directly visible costs) whereas much of the rest of business seems actively against the idea (my pet hypothesis – the costs are not directly visible!).
I wonder how much the NBN (whenever/if it is rolled out) will lead to some changes in this regard?
Office work can be more effective face-to-face however this shouldn’t require a 5 day 9-5 schedule (can anyone have an efficient meeting?!).
Well yes rossco, there have been enormous changes courtesy of IT, which doesn’t just make the old ways of doing things quicker but opens up totally new ways of working that were literally impossible in the 1970s or indeed in the 1990s.
Example: a doctor can now do an operation on a patient on the other side of the world from his home. A teacher can teach a class – more effectively than in a conventional classroom – while both s/he and the students are at home. There are numerous other examples and there will be countless more in the near future, most of which nobody has thought of yet.
I already have everything I need to work on a 350 GB Western Digital device that fits comfortably in my pocket – not only the files but the applications. I can plug it into just about any computer anywhere and be up and working within minutes. Soon, mobile technology and cloud computing will mean people don’t even need to be tethered to a work station while they do a lot of their tasks. They will quite literally be able to do them anywhere. Once workers and work are de-linked from a physical workplace, we will be in totally uncharted territory.
Arrangements like flexitime are just tinkering at the edges. Workers will increasingly be treated like subcontractors instead of employees. It’s the logical outcome of the ‘empowerment’ we hear so much about, except that it will happen by random evolution and not according to some grand social engineering movement.
My dad worked a 9-day fortnight on flexitime back in the 80s, so that’s not really a new innovation. It worked brilliantly for our family though. I now work a Tuesday-Saturday week, with Sunday and Monday off, and I love having a weekday off, as it makes medical appointments etc. so much easier.
As noted above, schools, and perhaps also spousal timetables, would also need to be in synch, but the idea’s good in theory.
On a more basic level, public transport overcrowding suggests (as do many in the field) that staggered arrival and departure, as well as greater use of work-from-home, would make everyone’s life a lot easier.
“The post goes on to mention Californian studies that have indicated potential health and traffic congestion benefits from making similar changes.”
And then presumably there is the cost of higher fuel consumption, and cost to the environment from higher emissions in stop-start traffic?
If you look at the figures for vehicle fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions, there is a huge difference between “urban” and “extra-urban” (i.e. highway or country driving).
For example, to pluck 2 well-engineered medium-sized cars at random, using figures from The Red Book (online):
- 2006 BMW 323i, urban 12.9 L/100km, extra-urban 6.7 L/100km
- 2006 Audi A4, urban 11.2 L/100km, extra-urban 6.3 L/100km
That is a MASSIVE difference – the urban is almost double extra-urban. This is presumably due to the effects of start-stop acceleration on fuel consumption. What would the impact be, if traffic was more freely flowing?
The difference is presumably also reflected in equivalent figures for the CO2 emissions, even though most references only quote the average figure.
Perhaps Rudd might get more bang for his CPRS buck if he addressed this issue you have raised, rather than relying on the flawed ETS to reduce emissions?
No-one’s mentioned infrastructure. At the top of the tree work-from-home is a great deal, I’m sure, but those of us on lower pay would end up like the Spitalfields silk weavers, paying for our own office furniture, phones, printers if needed, coffee, heating / cooling, software, and the list goes on and on…
And forgive me being such a nasty, suspicious person, but I wonder what in the way of superannuation, sick pay and other entitlements we’d also lose in the process.
I also worry about time creep. ATM hubby spends from 8amish to 6pmish at the office 5 days a week. Occassionally he goes in on weekends to get stuff done too. Even if he worked longer days it wouldn’t be long before he was back on the office on his ‘day off’ working then as well.
Gotta be careful…sounds like the slow creep to chaos in the workplace resulting in a game that sees Corporate profits team scoring 10, Worker’s Security team scoring Nil.
Letting technological advances and temporary “convenience” do for the worker what the extremes of the industrial revolution did for the women in shonky factories and kids in mines.
Just because some workers decide to pursue income far and wide doesn’t mean the bulk of others should have to accomodate all their needs. Without specified, substantial holidays workers will only become physically, mentally, sexually exhausted droids racing up the ladder of wealth accumulation in order to BUY their way to holiday time & to see lovers & family.
Furthermore, it will cause instability in some of the domestic tourism market. And a lack of visitors who can afford (timewise) to stay anywhere for a lengthy period. Too many will be inclined to stay home if their longer holidays are broken up into small parcels. We’d probably see the growth of more payTV, & even Sin City ventures & massive amusement parks & fast food establishments in order to cater to the time-driven citizenry who will oft be too exhausted to take hikes or go to the botanical gardens and such. And parents will lose track of their kids. Think America. We know who oft benefits there. They’re in the Fortune 500.
And think of the pressures on many workers in Japan. And students.
I’ve seen plenty of oil workers w/ their rostered holidays spend time buggered, drinking, gambling, rooting…not sure I’d want to see that kind of approach to flexibility applied to the public service & such. You wanna lose touch w/ yer loved ones then plenty of time spent at work in long stretches can be quite alienating from family and leave people dumping their emotional baggage & needs on work mates rather than talking it out w/ family. Leads to more family breakup, screwing around…out of desperation.
The major problem for this country is dealing w/ personal debt…& the need for many to act like droids in paying it off.
N’
Brings to mind the old ‘joke’ about Microsoft, workers getting to choose whichever 23 hours in the day they want to work…
Armagny @ 15 – my wife and I organised to have out of sync work schedules which is great for us because it means we don’t need to use childcare.
Elise @ 16 – I think there could be quite big gains to be had even if we just managed to blur the start/end times of work for white collar workers rather than have everyone have nominally the same start time. Those early birds can turn up at 7am, and those who like to work late can start at 11 or 12.
Helen @ 17 – I work from home nearly all the time and its true that there are extra costs – a good chair, desk, extra phone & phone line, higher electricity & internet bills, use of a spare room to work in etc. But there are upsides too – much of it is tax deductible, there can be significant savings in transport costs and I think I save in food costs. For example we’d probably have 2 cars instead of one if we didn’t work from home. And in a world of time poor lifestyles I have a 30 second commute
I think there’s lots of merit in looking at this, lots of good reasons given by others.
One issue I’m curious about is what effect something like working 4 x 10 hour days would have on productivity? Anybody got thoughts?
Helen @17 and Nasking @19, reminds me of the effects of companies in Norway installing home computers for everyone, back in 1998 or so. Seemed like a good idea at the time (spanking new home computer, with fast internet link), but there are downsides.
People can’t help themselves but log-in at home, to see if they have got any new mail. The end result of reading it (when they should be e.g. reading a bedtime book with the kids, paying the bills, or watching the sunset with someone significant), is that they feel obliged to reply. A few hours later…and it is time for bed, or worse…past midnight. Oops, there went another evening.
And the end result of that behaviour, is that various people in the organisation then put impossible deadlines on having things finished, which implicitly assume that people will finish things off at home. It is a quiet way of unofficially extending the working hours of employees, without telling them it is compulsory (which would cause an almighty stink), and without impacting the corporate bottom line for salaries or overtime pay.
As Nasking says, people do need some time out, for many reasons. Aside from the HR aspect on individual wellbeing, companies would NOT be likely to benefit from chronically tired employees with family breakdowns due to 24/7 online.
Luckily, many Aussie companies seem to be worried about internet security, so online 24/7 has not taken off so strongly here. Given the fuzzy line between the home and the home office, this technological advance seems to be a mixed blessing?
Lots of good comments about both advantages and disadvantages. A few points:
1. There are three issues here. Quality of life, reduction of commuter travel and better use of assets including office space, roads and recreational assets. more creative rosters can help all three if done properly and adopted to individual and business needs. However, as Mindy @18 and others point out there are risks of changes being made to suit one side with no regard to the other. In my experience it works better for employees if they are paid by the hour. Otherwise flexibility can just add to to hours creep.
2. Mine and oil rig rosters are restrained by the need for 24/7 cover and long travel distances when taking time off. There is a lot more flexibilty for workers working close to home. Shorter cycles are practical (ex: 2 on 2 off) and there is often no real need for everyone to work the same roster. From a business point of view overlap is desirable to give adequate communication between work crews. If I had a choice, I would choose 4 on, 3 off, 3 on, 4 off with extra days working from home if I wanted more hours or shorter days. This roster will give either one day off each weekend or two days off every second weekend.
3. Helen @16: My preference is not to work at home because I don’t find it a good working environment and like the social contact at work. However, office gear is becoming less of an issue now that almost all of the work is done on my employers laptop. I would prefer to do the “work at home” in a nearby office set up to deal with casual workers like myself.
JohnD @24
Your last point made me wonder about the possible benefits of local ‘office spaces’ perhaps connected to a municipal library or similar, which could provide a small income for local government, while allowing some workers to ‘work from home’ at a nearby office some of the time. It would probably be pretty easy to have a system that would inform your workplace (a swipe card) when you came into work, thus alleviating some of that middle-management paranoia about work-from-homers not doing nuffin’. It would also allow for a kind-of office community that wasn’t so competitive, or anxiety driven, as it would be a bunch of people from different workplaces creating a looser social environment, and one that might easily result in better community locally, as everyone lives nearby.
Hmmm! Many possibilities…
It’s not only hours – there are plenty of other shibboleths that need questioning.
For example, in one office I worked in there was no company childcare – however, people just brought their kids into work with them if their normal childcare arrangements fell through. No discenable effect on the daily work…but it did mean that overall productivity went up since parents did not have to make a decision to stay at home…or come to work and worry all day about the child at homealone.
Not applicable everywhere, but I suspect it is applicable in enough places to significantly decrease childcare costs for many parents.
Incidentally, the workers agreed between themselves on how to work it, and the local manager officially ignored the fact that occasionally mobs of ankle-biters would be playing chasey in the office during staff meetings. No-one dared to tell corporate headquarters about it of course. The main factors for success were; distance from corporate headquarters and the ability of the workforce to self organise…or more to the point the manager providing the parameters of self organisation and then letting the staff go for it. Most people can self organise far better than most managements realise.
Yaz@25: Offices at the library and similar sound good. What I had in mind was converting the odd house into office space so that people could easily walk or bike to work. A 4 bedroom house might convert into at least 10 offices while retaining kitchen facilities.
Modern tech gets rid of the big advantages of everyone going to the big office in the CBD. Bringing the office to the workers is a lot more attractive and would save me at least an hour/day of stuffing around/generating avoidable greenhouse gases.
Of course the cultural significance of the workplace can’t be ignored, with its issues of perceived status and power. I visited a surgeon a few weeks ago whose office was bigger than most executives’. Since he doesn’t actually do much in it – he has another room where he examines patients – the office serves little practical purpose.
It will take a few generations I suspect before we can shake off the legacy of the mindset that having a big office in a flash building is a requirement for being a Serious Person.
Attempts at solving traffic congestion in cities would seem a good thing,country workers, however cannot be assisted like that.I read in the SMH I think, some corporations using buses to pick up their own workers.I think this needs encouraging,if bus driver availability is good,because the whole workforce going to work together must drive up team spirit and solve individual problems.There are still the kids and parents,shopping etc.Increasing the likelihood of useful paying jobs for students may then be in the bus and train and truck driving in city bound areas,and, outside of the city domains the regular interstate drivers,after a good nights kip.Single,parenting workers may have different needs,but coalescing means a wider horizon.I also think it is necessary to think seasonally,after all the outcomes of that would seem more dramatic in city bound areas.Other work for students,could include manning the watering of suburban and city areas in the hotter months by sea water or maybe, filtered sea water after hours or before dawn.The roads and drainage systems being cleaned out for the rainy events by water pressure.
As an independent consultant working from home, my greatest frustration about how the world of work is organised is the inability of employers and organisations to get their head around and use the real potential of technology.
A large percentage of white colar work in particular can be done remotely (eg from home) – in the process saving the employer in on-costs such as space and electricty, saving the worker travel and time costs and saving the environmental costs of that travel.
We just have to get past that “if I can’t see them, how do i know they’re working” mentality
Ken Lovell @28 and Chris Chappel @30, I reckon you are up against it, based on these two statements:
“It will take a few generations I suspect before we can shake off the legacy of the mindset that having a big office in a flash building is a requirement for being a Serious Person.”
“We just have to get past that “if I can’t see them, how do i know they’re working” mentality”.
You are talking about changing the mindset of management and especially executives. In my limited experience, those people are predominantly (with a few notable exceptions, which prove the rule) into STATUS and CONTROL/POWER.
I am afraid that rules out them ever getting tired of having big offices in flash buildings, much less getting tired of playing chief of their fiefdom with their employees (including measuring input because they aren’t sure how to measure output).
If this ever changes as you suggest, to benefit the rest of society, I may even consider believing in the tooth fairy!
I agree Elise which is why I mentioned the ‘few generations’. But maybe the time will come when the really serious and important people are the ones with the most impressive home offices, who satisfy their need to exercise power via high definition mobile audio-visual devices. I mean it’s already pretty impressive to hear someone barking out orders on their mobiles while they stroll the golf course or whatever … how much nicer if his playing partners can also see a hologram of the hapless minion?
It’s not the buildings that matter but their cultural implications and like all artefacts, these alter over time (just as a tan used to be regarded with horror as a hallmark of the manual labourer). But it does take time. Rational ‘the technology lets us do it better so let’s start NOW’ personalities have my sympathy but they fail to understand that the technology is sometimes the least important factor in change.
There has been an enormous surge in the use of technology in the last 10 years which has made it practical to work just about anywhere where my batphone works or has line access to the internet. If necessary, I could operate a washery control room from anywhere in the world if my comutor has the right softwhare. At the same time working arrangements in my industry have become a lot more flexible. Managers have learnt to accept arrangements that involve longer holidays, shorter weeks, time working at home etc. Part of this is due to technology gains and part of this is due to people wanting more family friendly arrangements etc.
My experience in recent years suggests that more and more of us will have more choice about our working arrangements as time goes on. I am talking about years, not generations.
Has anyone any comments about the effect of changes in working arrangements on business efficiency and profits?
John D, perhaps you are referring to the highly educated proportion of the workforce like yourself and your colleagues?
Obviously, consultants and technical specialists in many fields are highly mobile and measured more by results, rather than hours clocked in the office. They have much higher levels of flexibility.
However, there are still many people who do not have that luxury, and are unlikely to have it in the near future. Think of the plant operators in the refineries (oil, alumina, etc), manufacturing plants, processing plants, mines and concentrators, etc. Think of the ore truck drivers in the Pilbara. Think of the retail workers, Coles checkout, storemen and delivery drivers. Think of the tourism industry workers.
I’m sorry John D, but I think you are imagining the world to be populated by highly-skilled, specialised workers such as your good self.
Elise @34: I have spent most of my working life at minesites so I do have some idea of the lack of individual flexibility that affects concentrator operators etc. If the nature of your work requires 10 people of a particular skill on each shift flexibility is limited. However, shift swaps have been a feature of most of the mines I have worked over the last 35 years. (Used to allow someone to take a particular day off.) In addition, the variety of shift rosters has grown significantly over time. To some extent these changes reflect the desires of workers. For example, the continuous, 8 hr shift roster (5.25 days/week ave.) has often been replaced with 12 hr shift rosters such as 4 on, 4 off (3.5 days/week ave.)that give longer breaks and make it easier for the family to live in places like Mackay instead of mining towns. There is more scope for individual flexibility for people such as maintenance workers who dont have to have a specific number at work on most days.
As a manager my main roster related concerns were that I had the necessary number of people at work for each production shift and something close to a full maintenance crew on shutdowns. I would not have been particularly concerned if production and maintenance workers had come up with some arrangement that took more account of individual needs.
Main point: what works for smart, self-aware people often fails for other people.
I’ve worked in IT for 20 years as well as random manual-ish jobs. With programming as with most creative jobs the problem is that creative thinking is very demanding and most people can only do it well for a few hours a day. Working from home has meant that I have peace and quiet to work at peak productivity more often, but the flip side is that it’s also intensely interactive at times (much of the value comes from explaining ideas to others and getting their reactions). So a balance is good.
The other side is that I’ve seen more disasters from long days programming than I’ve seen successes. So I fear the 4×10 idea would not help. It’s bad enough having “heros” doing long days sometimes without letting them commit to it as a lifestyle. I’ve seen the same thing in any job that requires thought. Stamping out widgets or answering the phone can be done without too much thought even after 10 or 12 hours on the job, but dealing with constantly chaging situations or even just being polite to customers is much harder.
Also, while a lot of programming work can be fairly menial and thus done in long days or other low-thought times, the tendency these days is to outsource that work. So instead of a local doing it for ten hours a day, two Filipinos do it for 8 hours a day each at half the cost.
In manual jobs I’ve had (and used) pretty extreme flexibility. One place I communicated with my boss via nots for weeks at a time. I’d work during the cool part of the day, he’d crawl in around lunchtime and do whatever it is managers do. Currently I’m aiming to make the bike shop work split shifts for my own convenience and incidentally to save them laying out ten grand or so on another mechanic’s station. I’m happy to start work at 5am and finish at 2pm, we’re looking for someone to work the 12pm-8pm shift. There’s a side benefit – not being interrupted by customers makes us more productive, the flip side being that if there is a problem we can’t ring the customer and ask what to do at 5am. Well, we can, but…
John D @35, fair enough, but my point still stands that those mining workers can’t chose to work from a home office, as you seemed to imply earlier. They can flex their time, perhaps, with an understanding manager. However, they cannot just use a “batphone” and a PC from wherever they chose to be at the time.
There is another point though, regarding FIFO as you implied “easier for the family to live in places like Mackay instead of mining towns”. It seems to me that FIFO is the progeny of cheap oil, and a society that prefers to live in cities rather than outback or mining towns.
The cheap oil situation will not last much longer.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/cclt20090516.png
So what will be the impact on the mining industry in a few years time? Any guesses?
What if oil is rationed, due to global shortages in 5-10 years time? How long would it take to get a Gas-to-Diesel plant designed and built for the mining fleets in the Pilbara, 5 – 10 years? If so, then they should be starting on it immediately, shouldn’t they? What are the mining companies thinking about this strategic issue?
Elise @37: Our family lived in remote mining towns for about 20 years. After that I did short stints of FIFO. My family really enjoyed their time in mining towns but there were many others who would probably have been much better off on FIFO. Think single men with female deprived social life, partners who couldn’t pursue their careers and those who really needed the support network they had before they went to the mining town. In addition, some small mines are simply too small to support schools and other facilities.
The impact of FIFO on carbon footprint is a bit harder to comment on and would depend on roster, distance of mine from accomodation etc. At least some of the bus in bus out mines I have worked in out from Mackay would have a smaller commute footprint than the average urban worker. I cannot make general comments about mining and reducing fuel consumption but the companies I have worked for were certainly into it. In addition, some of the advances will reduce the need for workers to be on site. For example, Rio now has its crusher controllers working in Perth and is putting a lot of effort into automating its trucking fleet. (Don’t have details.)
Moz @36: You are right that the number of hours a person can effectively work vary from the nature of the work as well as the person. Changes in working arrangements need to take account of this. One of the interesting things i have noticed from my own work is that I can work effectively much longer hours on manager work than I can on detailed design calculations. A problem when macho managers can’t understand why you can’t work the hours they do.
John D @38, actually I don’t need to be told about the pros and cons of living in mining towns. I grew up in them, as my father worked in the mining industry, and then worked in the industry myself for some years. Know all about lack of school facilities too – inadequate facilities when they were available, and many years of correspondence, which isn’t brilliant for developing social skills. Non-bookworms do very badly with that sort of education, because it is largely DIY.
John D, if you really want to know the impact on families of living in small communities, ask the women, not the men. They are generally too busy at work (and mining is still very much a man’s world) to really notice the effect on the families, even including their own wives.
I have also some 6 months direct experience with weekly commuting in the oil industry, and watched the effects of FIFO on the lives of colleagues over many years. Some advantages, but plenty of disadvantages. Bad for relationships.
I would say that neither life in a remote small township, nor a life of commuting, is a long-term option for most people.
I wasn’t so much concerned with footprint, John D, but with the rising cost. CSIRO has a report which suggests that fuel prices could go as high as $8/litre due to an oil crunch and the slow adoption of low consumption alternatives.
Some mines might not stand the increase in operating cost for their mining fleet, rail costs, FIFO etc. I wonder what numbers they are using in their sensitivity modelling – $2/litre might not cut the mustard, in terms of risk management?
I understand that Rio is looking at remote operation of their crushing plants, rail and possibly even the ore trucks. The last one seems a bit of a stretch – driverless trucks hairing around the site???
Of course, some operations are simpler and less manpower-intensive than others. Can you really see the entire Mount Isa operations (underground mining, concentrators and smelters) being run on remote from Brisbane, for example?
I believe Rio have considered changing fuel to CNG, but I don’t know what they concluded. Probably on the backburner after the oil price dived. Their electric power is from gas turbines, not coal-fired. They have installed thermally-efficient heat-pump water heaters in the latest camps, and worked at minimising the heat load on the dongas (to reduce aircon load), which is rather progressive of them!
At the moment, our mining companies are MAJOR users of diesel, and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. It is an essential component of their operations. Why don’t they band together and lobby the government for Gas-to-Diesel? Don’t they see the crunch coming?
Elise @39; I think I have a resonable feel for the effect of living at Alyangula and Newman on both men and women. Some people thrive and grow, others are diminished by living in mining towns. Personality, community size and culture, environment and luck can all be important. General observation was that living in mining towns tended to strengthen strong marriages, weaken weak marriages. We both thrived and liked mining town living.
Less certain about the effects of FIFO since I met few of the wives. I think once again that personality, roster details and the circumstances of the person who stayed at home are important. Previous rosters may affect the attitude. Moving from a family unfriendly roster to a more friendly roster can have a big affect on feelings. My wife doesn’t like me working FIFO and prefers less time away and shorter times away. Some marriages may actually work better when the husband is away for more time. Gives the wife more independance and the brief visits may be something like another honeymoon. Some of the men in this situation appear to be a lot more comfortable with the company of men compared with wives. Some construction marriages break up if the husband gets a city job. One of my construction fiends commented that he and his wife conciously change the way they work when he changes to and from city and site work.
Agree with your general comments about the price of fuel.
John D, “Gives the wife more independance and the brief visits may be something like another honeymoon.”
Trust me, if they are regularly away for long periods, it becomes more like shaking hands with a stranger. And eventually other interests intervene, and the relationship withers. There are psychological studies on this.
FIFO is very hard on women with small children, especially if they are holding down a job as well, while hubby shows up periodically for his “well-earned rest”. Twelve hour shifts are certainly hard yakka, and after a few weeks most people are exhausted and looking forward to a rest. Nonetheless, resentment and anger eventually erode the base of the relationship.
I’ve watched it happen often over the years, and heard the woman’s side at length over coffees. The men no doubt feel they are taking the best job opportunity and providing for their family as best they can, so they would resent being resented. It is bad news all round.
Regarding the personalities and whether the relationship is strengthened, I would say that you may be viewing it with the goggles of the previous generation, when women stayed at home.
Shell International had a very patronising attitude to “Shell wives”, that they should be happy to “go on assignment”, and the women were inflexible and uncooperative if they didn’t thrive. The men who were stupid enough to buy into that line soon found their well-qualified and under-valued wives with packed bags and asking for a divorce. “But we are making heaps of money, honey, why aren’t you happy?”
These days, unless the woman has a meaningful role, IN HER EYES, then she will not be best pleased with getting dragged to some remote corner. I believe that it is imperative for a company to deal with the family as a unit, and ensure that there is a possibility of meaningful work for the other partner.
That does NOT mean, as Shell managers degradingly suggested on numerous occasions to the wives of colleagues, that highly skilled professionals and managers should “have a baby”, “have another baby”, “take a secretarial position”, or “do some voluntary work for the poor”. The women concerned were enraged, justifiably, and their hapless husbands were left with an invidious choice.
You would see the point immediately, if the tables are turned and the woman has a brilliant posting at the expense of the husbands successful career. In my experience, most male managers are keen to know how the man will take the news, especially if there is no equivalent job available for him, but they are not so concerned vice versa.
To state the bleeding obvious, you cannot buy love, happiness and fulfillment with expat money, or remote location money. It should be obvious that this is now a major issue for relocating families, but with a mindset of “it depends on their personality”, the outcome is often an inevitable lose-lose-lose (employee, partner and company).
Elise: At one stage I tried to convince the mining industry to support sociological research. The particular sociologist had done a study on the effect of husband’s absence on wives. One of the interesting things she found was that things were worst when the husband spent about 25% of the time away. Part of the reason may have been that 25% was the level that separated those that could live with separation and those that couldn’t. Perhaps more important was that this was the level at which people started to change the way the marriage worked. When husbands are at home most of the time domestic authority and decision making are shared. When husbands are away most of the time the wife has most of the domestic authority and makes most of the decisions. When the husband is at home he behaves more like a visitor. At 25% confusion about roles and authority may be at its worst.
Some long term construction marriages break up when the husband gets a city job because couples struggle to adjust to changing roles and responibities. I would be interested in any studies you have seen that focus on the success factors of marriages that work in mining towns and FIFO.
Agree that companies are crazy to move families around without considering the effect on partners and children. Unsettled relationships and break-ups don’t help the business or aid future recruiting. However, find it a bit hard to believe that personality hasn’t got a lot to do with it.