Work Breaks

I suppose it depends on what kind of industry you work in? If its the type were staff could be needed in an emergency situation, say healthcare or if you are in an office based role then it could be someone on a power trip.

We can do what we want at lunch time but have to put out of office message up and be available on our work mobile.

Honestly, I think the days of taking a lunch break are gone.

I agree with you but the sad reality is that more and more employees are being forced either actively or passively to forego proper breaks.

Our US colleagues have recently been "asked" to ensure their work mobiles are contactable at all times and to bring their laptops with them on vacation.

You need to check out the laws dude. The days of taking a lunch break are far from gone. You must have one sh1t employer.

Different employment laws in the US. Try discipline an employee here in Ireland for not being contactable while on a break or for not bringing their laptop on vacation and the company would soon be slapped down.

I don't even have to be contactable while in work.

I've never worked in a job where I wasn't permitted to leave the building during a break nor where there were different rules for clocking in or out depending on whether you took your break inside or outside the building.

Just in case I'm misunderstanding you, are you saying you've to clock out if you leave the building for 15 minutes on a tea break but you don't have to clock out if you take 15 minutes for a cup of coffee in the staff canteen?

I can't see that being enforcable, especially if you are civil service.

Does your IT department have proper provisions in place for working outside of a designated working environment? Do they actually want you to be using your work laptop in a cafe in Tenerife where anyone can intercept the wifi traffic or even overhear your phone conversation, or look over your shoulder and read what's on your screen?

Is there a location where you can leave your device on holidays that keeps them secure (whats to stop someone sticking a hardware keylogger on your device when it's out of your physical posession....)

Loads of companies say 'you can't work from home because of security concerns' but then insist that their employees take their laptop and phone home so they can do unpaid overtime at weekends and evenings

Those people can **** off

It's not enforced and doesn't happen. Now in certain cases where someone is taking the piss it might be used as a deterrent. But it's impossible to manage under performance and messing in the civil service so I just tend to look the other way. HR don't care either and don't want to be involved.

It's yet another anomaly in the civil service I suppose. Different depts doing different things. I'd never heard of that before at all.

I work in health and safety in the public sector. This is just my two cents. I'm not representing the views of my employer here.

I can't see why you'd have to stop staff leaving the building on breaks for health and safety reasons. It's certainly not better for health and safety if you can leave if you clock but can't leave if you don't clock. How would clocking out help keep you safer than those who don't clock out? Another thing to remember is that lots of staff in the public sector don't have to clock in or out. How do those regulations keep them safe?

The insurance thing is also a red herring. The State Claims Agency would indemnify everyone at work, i.e. doing work activities or activities necessary for your work ( e.g. work related travel). It wouldn't cover you if you got injured while you went to a coffee shop down the road for a coffee during your break. I don't see why the State would be concerned if you get injured in such scenarios. From an insurance perspective, they don't care if you have a crash while you are commuting to work so why should they care from an insurance perspective if you have an accident while 'off site' on a tea break. That's on your back.

The only time I could see a possible health and safety issue would be if someone had to wear certain clothes as part of their job and these clothes had to stay sterile. Leaving the site might potentially increase the risk of someone bringing back contaminated clothing when returning from outside of the work premises. Not at all relevant for most public service administration jobs. It would only affect a fraction of a percent of public service workers.

Another potential reason for clocking could be to identify who is in the building in the event of an emergency evacuation such as if there was a fire. Then a roll call could be carried out to identify if anybody was left in the burning building. That said, I think this is also a crap reason because roll calls are normally not done as part of a fire drill and if they are done, they can't be remotely accurate due to some people not clocking, going off-site to meetings etc.

And if it's an electrical fire and the power goes out, there's no way to get a printout of who's in the building, leaving aside that I've never seen one that's been accurate. Or if the fire is near where the printer is, what do you do, beat back the flames while you wait for a printout? That's why I think it's a bullsh1t excuse.