On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:42:29 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) ...snip

That's only possible if the employer can reasonably employ a person on
that basis. If your employer needed a person who could be relied upon
to get through a fixed amount of work per week, and/or who was needed
on-site during working hours, it would not have been something your
employer would have been *able* to agree to.

I am almost entirely an office based Engineer. I design things, write
specifications, check other peoples documentation, etc. At least 90% of
it could be done at home. Take the kids to school, return home, work,
have lunch, work, pick up kids - once kids are in bed work a bit
longer.

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously. Distractions abound, and
the temptation to indulge in other things whilst out of sight of
anyone else is great - and while they may promise themselves that they
will make up the time they just took off to watch a TV program or do a
bit of wallpapering or pop down the shops - it never seems to happen.

And I'm afraid that your type of work is a type that it is difficult
to monitor just how much time you really *did* spend on it, because
one specification may take you 5 hours to write, whilst another might
take you 8 hours even though they are of similar size.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee. The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

--
Cynic