Workers of Plymouth – Go Home! (And Telecommute)
Aargh! This would be filed under rants if I had such a category, however whinges will have to do!
Yesterday afternoon saw me having to drive across Plymouth. A drive of about 3 miles at about 4pm. I had a meeting to attend at 5pm. Plenty of time I thought. How wrong could I be! The traffic was crawling or stationary for most of the journey. Why? I’ve no idea, but it didn’t get any better in all the time I was stuck in traffic. I’d have been better off leaving my car where it was and walking. I eventually got to the meeting at about 5:30. Half an hour late.
Why all the traffic? I’m told “sometimes it’s like that”.
And people put up with it!
If there was ever a time to look into telecommuting/working from home, now must be it. Why wait in traffic when you can have an extra 2-3 hours a day at home! We have the technology – Internet, VPN and VoIP. It’s all possible these days.
So stop whinging about the traffic and the commute, get with the 21st century and lobby your bosses to allow you to work from home. Get them to get a decent Internet connection and VPN server and also get them to get a good VoIP capable PBX. And I know a man who’ll be more than happy to sell you one too.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Whinges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on 10th October, 2008 at 10:09 am Peter Morgan wrote:
It seems so obvious to some of us, but the growth of car numbers (to the level where roads are choked) will surely make some staff consider teleworking, while the threat of penalties for businesses that provide parking spaces (and congestion charges getting staff to ask for salary increases) may take some time to kick in.
Incidentally, one of my clients gives training courses on Distance Management, since some firms worry that teleworking means the staff become less efficient (/skive /etc) when they are no longer ‘in the office’ for fixed hours each day.
On the ‘decent internet connection’ I’d love to plug a new website I’m planning about faster BB, but it’s only just been registered and I need to put a lot of work into it – in essence, I worry that Fibre to the Cabinet is likely to go only into the cities, whilst rural areas with lower population densities will be forever left behind.
A BSG report suggests widely varying costs, but perhaps Wales, with only about 50% of homes having PCs, would be a ‘new market’ and higher demand in the form of pre-registrations might ‘tip the balance’ and perhaps EU/Welsh Assembly help could make a difference too! Wish me luck – else I may have to move to Mold to get a 24 Mbps link from Be, rather than using “3″ mobile for my connection
Hope business is good for you…. signing off now…. Peter.
PS I cut out plenty (eg on public transport) to keep this more closely ‘on topic’