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.

Well at least the laser printer will warm up more quickly if there's a fire 😁

Exactly the same here. Only place I've worked where they had it as a safety feature (who's on site) you had to pass through a security and a single person turnstile to get on and off the site. Pharma as well. Same with many buildings on the site. Microsoft was the same. Lots of doors, lots of swiping. They would have a good idea where everyone was at any time.

Anywhere else I've been its just for timekeeping/Flexi/Security.

It's that what you think happens?

Have you never been in a fire drill in large building?

There's a slot for a plastic 'prong' type key underneath nearly all types of break glass units that allows them to be set off without breaking the glass.

If you and others have complained to management about the doors not opening properly in the event of a fire and have gotten nowhere, you can make an anonymous complaint to the HSA or to your local fire service. The fire service especially would be very interested in things like that.

They'd also be interested to know that people don't know where the fire exits are. Fire training is mandatory and that would include knowing where the exits/fire assembly point is.

Not the type of break glass units to set off an alarm, there was a glass cylinder in the locking mechanism so when you pressed on the exit door handle, it crushed the cylinder, the door opened and couldn't be closed again unless the cylinder was replaced with a new one.

This was the 1990s and the doors were old then so it was quite possible that spares were unobtainable. Daft design. This was the workplace where nobody knew about the fire exits because the drills involved everyone going out the main door. (The assembly point used to be on a traffic island just a few metres away from massive plate glass windows too, in a building which regularly got bomb threats in the 1990s. Duh. They eventually moved it a couple of hundred metres away) Also there was war after one drill when the entire HR section refused to budge!

The issue in my current job is not that the motorised doors won't open (they're fire doors and supposed to remain closed to slow the spread of smoke, unless they're being used) it's that they don't unlock when the alarm sounds. Imagine e.g. a visitor trying to find the exit button with the lights out and the place filling up with smoke.

Yep, that's probably the story alright. That shows that managers can't manage their staff and have to tell lies and blame health and safety and insurance for putting in those rules.

Seems to have gone off topic quite a bit, from work breaks.