Railway Office Workers

[Sherlock49]

Just wondering what the general approach has been for anyone working in an office for a TOC? We were sent home initially at the lockdown point but have now been recalled and told that we cannot work from home as they cannot find any laptops to buy. This is back office admin work, not frontline service delivery. No exceptions being made for anyone vulnerable unless they've received a shielding letter.

Anyone in a similar position? I'm curious how other employers are dealing with this as everyone I know who is office based outside of transport is now working from home. Apologies if this isn't relevant or is the wrong forum

 

[LowLevel]

Just wondering what the general approach has been for anyone working in an office for a TOC? We were sent home initially at the lockdown point but have now been recalled and told that we cannot work from home as they cannot find any laptops to buy. This is back office admin work, not frontline service delivery. No exceptions being made for anyone vulnerable unless they've received a shielding letter.

Anyone in a similar position? I'm curious how other employers are dealing with this as everyone I know who is office based outside of transport is now working from home. Apologies if this isn't relevant or is the wrong forum

Anyone who doesn't have to work in the office at our place is at home. Head office is shut. Only business critical staff are in, control, operational managers etc along with frontline staff. People like guards managers are taking it in turns to man their office or work from home.

 

[3rd rail land]

Just wondering what the general approach has been for anyone working in an office for a TOC? We were sent home initially at the lockdown point but have now been recalled and told that we cannot work from home as they cannot find any laptops to buy. This is back office admin work, not frontline service delivery. No exceptions being made for anyone vulnerable unless they've received a shielding letter.

Anyone in a similar position? I'm curious how other employers are dealing with this as everyone I know who is office based outside of transport is now working from home. Apologies if this isn't relevant or is the wrong forum

I don't work for a TOC but I do work in IT and have designed, procured, built and deployed countless laptops in my career. I refuse to believe a TOC can not find any laptops to procure. Perhaps they can't find any that meet the spec they re looking for within the budget they have been set but laptops are very easy to come by these days, sometimes with a lead time of 1-2 days.

Back office admin work can be done from anywhere with an internet connection and there really is no need to have someone in an office 5 days a week. I am sure people would appreciate to work from home at least occasionally.

 

[pdeaves]

My TOC has everyone except certain key functions working from home. I hate it - sending an email is no substitute to popping by someone's desk. I look forward to returning (though obviously I have to 'make do' until the conditions are right).

 

[hooverboy]

Just wondering what the general approach has been for anyone working in an office for a TOC? We were sent home initially at the lockdown point but have now been recalled and told that we cannot work from home as they cannot find any laptops to buy. This is back office admin work, not frontline service delivery. No exceptions being made for anyone vulnerable unless they've received a shielding letter.

Anyone in a similar position? I'm curious how other employers are dealing with this as everyone I know who is office based outside of transport is now working from home. Apologies if this isn't relevant or is the wrong forum

What kind of quantities of laptop do you mean?


As third rail land says, "alright,but not cutting edge" laptops are readily available from many vendors, if you can't afford new,then somewhere that deals in ex-business recycling would net you something like a 3 year old core i5 or i7 for a decent price,and with an SSD still gives a very respectable performance.
you could probably bag a couple of dozen with windows 10 live and have them on hand in 48hours.
The bottleneck would be setting up and testing the additional office,VPN,security,admin and local intranet suites. That's probably 3 hours or so setup per IT engineer per laptop.

 

[jkkne]

My TOC has everyone except certain key functions working from home. I hate it - sending an email is no substitute to popping by someone's desk. I look forward to returning (though obviously I have to 'make do' until the conditions are right).

I thought that initially but Microsoft Teams is a decent bit of collaborative kit - if not reminiscent of MSN messenger

 

[pdeaves]

I thought that initially but Microsoft Teams is a decent bit of collaborative kit - if not reminiscent of MSN messenger

We have Teams meetings too but there's still something about 'being there' that is lost at home. I'm a bit hard of hearing and all this reliance on technology is very hard work.

Additionally, you don't get 'infused' what other departments are doing, what the issues are, etc. Knowing that sort of thing is important to my task.

 

[3rd rail land]

What kind of quantities of laptop do you mean?


As third rail land says, "alright,but not cutting edge" laptops are readily available from many vendors, if you can't afford new,then somewhere that deals in ex-business recycling would net you something like a 3 year old core i5 or i7 for a decent price,and with an SSD still gives a very respectable performance.
you could probably bag a couple of dozen with windows 10 live and have them on hand in 48hours.
The bottleneck would be setting up and testing the additional office,VPN,security,admin and local intranet suites. That's probably 3 hours or so setup per IT engineer per laptop.

If you can get the same make and model as existing laptops then an image should already be available and will have already been fully tested.
There are of course potential bottlenecks which include, but are not limited to, things like patches/updates taking a long time to install, remote access servers not having capacity to handle the required number of people working remotely and software licensing.

If a new make and/or model of laptop has to be procured then you have to build a new image or at least adapt an existing one and do appropriate testing all of which takes time.

All of these issues can be overcome if the IT department put in the required effort to do so.

 

[chris11256]

*puts my in charge of IT hat on*

I can sympathise slightly with the TOC. We've had to order a small number of laptops and lead times have gone from next working day to 2-3 months, so getting hold of equipment/devices is more difficult but not at all impossible.

 

[hooverboy]

If you can get the same make and model as existing laptops then an image should already be available and will have already been fully tested.
There are of course potential bottlenecks which include, but are not limited to, things like patches/updates taking a long time to install, remote access servers not having capacity to handle the required number of people working remotely and software licensing.

If a new make and/or model of laptop has to be procured then you have to build a new image or at least adapt an existing one and do appropriate testing all of which takes time.

All of these issues can be overcome if the IT department put in the required effort to do so.

This is where a second hand model, of the type previously used by the company, should be available and should help out without breaking the bank.

There will have been a rollover period from going from old laptop model X to new laptop model Y,where most of the companies IT suites ran on both similtaneously.
Granted things like operating systems have changed now,so back compatibility of legacy programmes between win 7 and win 10 would need looking at,perhaps the same for MS office, but I know plenty of companies that are continuing with office 2013 and 2016 as they don't like the office 365 annual subscription.
MS Office back compatibility is a pain in the backside if you are a number cruncher and have loads of macro enabled spreadsheets too
MS teams is useful but skype for business is still very capable for remote conferencing and instant message, and there are alternatives like cisco webex