Am I the only person who thinks that a day out in London from the home counties using South West Trains has become extortionately expensive? It's not so long ago that a one day off-peak travel card from my area could be bought for around £8 and was usable on any train departing after 10am. Now it costs £14 for the same journey, though admittedly it would be a little cheaper after midday. Gone are the discounts that the Network rail card used to provide midweek as the minimum fare has been set at almost the price of the travelcard.
I wouldn't mind but for the fact that if I lived a short distance up the road I could travel anywhere I liked in Greater London for a day with an Oyster card for around £6 - £7, depending on which zone I started from and there are no silly super off- peak restrictions there. It would be tempting to jump in the car and do just that, but sadly the price of parking at the stations a few miles away is just as daft as my train fare.
You would think that government would impose some sanity on the situation to relieve congestion on local roads. If I spend the day in London shopping I am merely filling up an otherwise half empty train carriage. If I travel to somewhere like Bluewater or Lakeside round the M25 I'm adding to an already heavily congested motorway. In fact I didn't want to go shopping this week, but I might have spent a day being a tourist in central London. If I couldn't arrive until after midday at a sensible price there was little point.
I could of course buy a Network card just to use on Saturdays, but I probably wouldn't use it enough to justify its cost. It’s a pity though that South West Trains doesn't take into consideration the fact that a significant proportion of its customers have days off midweek rather than weekends and also that many are holidaying at home this year. This seems to be an opportunity lost to fill all those empty seats.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Sunday 9 August 2009
Beyond Watford and back
I should have known better than to head North up the M1 on a Saturday in August. The world and his wife had clearly set out several hours before me and I was still trundling at 40mph or worse round the M25 at the point in time when I should have been rounding the corner to my final destination.
By Woburn, coffee was beckoning and I pulled in to the service area for a brief interlude. The car park was a sea of caravans, trailer tents and scout mini buses, bikers in leather and families with small kids eating ice creams, dad in shorts, the office already far away.
On the way back I must have encountered all those returning after last week's rain. I detoured through Watford and promptly joined the queue of cars waiting patiently for the football ground to disgorge its endless stream of fans, purposefully striding along, it seemed, in their yellow supporters' T-shirts. Whole families, kids in tow, teenagers, best mates, they were all there. As I passed on through Northwood and Ruislip, an occasional pair were exquisitely dressed with boutique carriers in hand, back from a day out in the West End perhaps. Others, more nondescriptly attired, were struggling home from the weekly shop and there were teenagers let loose for the holidays, more interested in their friends, maybe, than where they were heading.
I wonder how many of the people crawling round London's outskirts would have gone by train if our transport system were more integrated. I remember travelling to Toronto in the 70s and being amazed that interchange stations for city buses were undercover and warm. You could hop on and off buses as many times as you liked before the expiry time of your ticket. Thirty years later, even central London doesn't match that kind of experience, though the Oyster card has improved life for regular travellers. Anyone with more than a light suitcase to carry is still distinctly unwelcome though, as steep steps sometimes form impenetrable barriers with not a lift or escalator in sight. The M25 carries cars, but why wasn't it built with a railway alongside, linking effectively with frequent bus and train services from en-route stations, along spokes leading in and out of the city and to airports?
I actually enjoyed my return journey yesterday. Its slow pace provided a fascinating diversion as I stopped at countless sets of traffic lights, watching the melée of people making their way home after a Saturday out. As a mere onlooker though, I was all too aware that I added to congestion on streets where I didn't need to be.
By Woburn, coffee was beckoning and I pulled in to the service area for a brief interlude. The car park was a sea of caravans, trailer tents and scout mini buses, bikers in leather and families with small kids eating ice creams, dad in shorts, the office already far away.
On the way back I must have encountered all those returning after last week's rain. I detoured through Watford and promptly joined the queue of cars waiting patiently for the football ground to disgorge its endless stream of fans, purposefully striding along, it seemed, in their yellow supporters' T-shirts. Whole families, kids in tow, teenagers, best mates, they were all there. As I passed on through Northwood and Ruislip, an occasional pair were exquisitely dressed with boutique carriers in hand, back from a day out in the West End perhaps. Others, more nondescriptly attired, were struggling home from the weekly shop and there were teenagers let loose for the holidays, more interested in their friends, maybe, than where they were heading.
I wonder how many of the people crawling round London's outskirts would have gone by train if our transport system were more integrated. I remember travelling to Toronto in the 70s and being amazed that interchange stations for city buses were undercover and warm. You could hop on and off buses as many times as you liked before the expiry time of your ticket. Thirty years later, even central London doesn't match that kind of experience, though the Oyster card has improved life for regular travellers. Anyone with more than a light suitcase to carry is still distinctly unwelcome though, as steep steps sometimes form impenetrable barriers with not a lift or escalator in sight. The M25 carries cars, but why wasn't it built with a railway alongside, linking effectively with frequent bus and train services from en-route stations, along spokes leading in and out of the city and to airports?
I actually enjoyed my return journey yesterday. Its slow pace provided a fascinating diversion as I stopped at countless sets of traffic lights, watching the melée of people making their way home after a Saturday out. As a mere onlooker though, I was all too aware that I added to congestion on streets where I didn't need to be.
Thursday 6 August 2009
Call centre blues
I wonder whether automated switchboards and call centres really save companies money. They certainly don't help the consumer.
Take the last couple of week as an example. I've several times had to start again with an automated switchboard, as the option I needed wasn't there and neither was there an option to speak to an adviser. I've spoken to call centre operators in India. They recited the questions on their crib sheets in perfect English. It's sad that they didn't have enough practice in understanding English accents to distinguish between different digits comprising a phone number, let alone our sometimes unfortunately pronounced place names. On the first two occasions, promised confirmations never appeared. I wasn't confident that the resulting promise of action was going to yield the required result so a confirmation seemed essential. When it finally arrived it was in the form of a somewhat ambiguous email, so I started the whole process over again. I now live in hopes that a final conversation with someone actually in the UK was informed enough that I should stop worrying.
I really don't understand the philosophy of outsourcing jobs to other countries in a time of recession, but it might just work if staff there were given enough training. They know how to do their jobs, but without lengthy stays in England they aren't going to understand British colloquialisms, let alone some of our quirkier regional accents. On automated exchanges I have even less patience. This recent experience has cost me upwards of an hour of my time and has resulted in me tying up the call centre operatives of the company I'm dealing with on multiple occasions, when once should have been enough.
My plea to all companies considering outsourcing would be to remember that a basic grasp of speaking English isn't sufficient and will waste your staff's productivity as well as annoying your customers. As for automated exchanges, you need to test these with a much wider range of scenarios and ensure that the poor customer does not have to wade through half a dozen levels only to fail at the final hurdle.
Take the last couple of week as an example. I've several times had to start again with an automated switchboard, as the option I needed wasn't there and neither was there an option to speak to an adviser. I've spoken to call centre operators in India. They recited the questions on their crib sheets in perfect English. It's sad that they didn't have enough practice in understanding English accents to distinguish between different digits comprising a phone number, let alone our sometimes unfortunately pronounced place names. On the first two occasions, promised confirmations never appeared. I wasn't confident that the resulting promise of action was going to yield the required result so a confirmation seemed essential. When it finally arrived it was in the form of a somewhat ambiguous email, so I started the whole process over again. I now live in hopes that a final conversation with someone actually in the UK was informed enough that I should stop worrying.
I really don't understand the philosophy of outsourcing jobs to other countries in a time of recession, but it might just work if staff there were given enough training. They know how to do their jobs, but without lengthy stays in England they aren't going to understand British colloquialisms, let alone some of our quirkier regional accents. On automated exchanges I have even less patience. This recent experience has cost me upwards of an hour of my time and has resulted in me tying up the call centre operatives of the company I'm dealing with on multiple occasions, when once should have been enough.
My plea to all companies considering outsourcing would be to remember that a basic grasp of speaking English isn't sufficient and will waste your staff's productivity as well as annoying your customers. As for automated exchanges, you need to test these with a much wider range of scenarios and ensure that the poor customer does not have to wade through half a dozen levels only to fail at the final hurdle.
Sunday 2 August 2009
A Conversation with Martin Bean
The Open University's vice chancellor designate, Martin Bean, doesn't take up his new appointment until October this year but he's reportedly in the UK in August with a busy familiarisation schedule. No doubt Martin will be intent on finding out more of what happens at Walton Hall, the Open University's Buckinghamshire headquarters. I'm sure he is already well versed in the structure of this very unique university and its diverse workforce. He may well have some misconceptions to overcome at first though. Here's how an interview with Martin might go after one of his visits.
So Martin, how are you finding Walton Hall?
Great thanks. There's a terrific buzz here with all these lofty academics everywhere. One thing's puzzling me though.
What's that Martin?
Well I understand there are some 8000 associate lecturers working for the OU but I can't seem to find out where they are. Do you know where the AL wing is?
Oh that's an easy one to answer, Martin. There isn't one. They all work at home!
That explains it then. Lucky them! Perhaps I'd better arrange some tele-conferencing sessions to talk to some of them then. Do you know what sort of equipment the OU buys for them?
Actually the OU doesn't supply them with any equipment Martin. They have to buy their own.
But surely we insist they spend their ICT allowance on standardised equipment and arrange preferred suppliers, that sort of thing?
Actually Martin, the ICT allowance doesn't cover much more than a few ink cartridges and the odd ream of paper let alone a new PC every few years.
You'll be telling me they have to pay tax on the allowance next!
Well actually Martin, yes they do. It's been amalgamated into the pay-rates.
But these are quite generous aren't they? I understood an AL working full time could earn over £31,000? That's not bad if they can swan off to the golf club whenever they choose.
But they don't actually earn anything like that Martin. For a start, they're only allowed to work on the equivalent of 6 30 point courses even if they don't work anywhere else as well, though of course they may not tutor that many.
So if they work on 6 30 point courses we consider them full time and pay them £31,000?
No Martin, it doesn't quite work like that. For example, we say they can do the job for a typical second level course in about 3 hours a week, which works out at 5.75% of their time annually for each course - that's 34% if they tutored 6 courses.
I'm starting to think I'd like to be an AL here! You mean we pay them over £31,000 and they only work for 34% of their time?
No Martin, those hours don't bear any relation to the hours it would actually take to do the job. We've never calculated that - these were just guesses we put together last time they complained. It made it look as if we'd put some thought into the negotiations.
So how long would it take to do the marking ALs do? I heard assignments were supposed to take about 45 minutes to mark . That can't add up to much. Besides they all have detailed mark schemes don't they, so there's no real thought involved is there?
I don't know where you got that idea from Martin. Assignments can take hours to mark. Each one has to have loads of personalised feedback as well as a mark. You'd have to know the course inside out to do it. It's a really difficult job.
But apart from that, ALs only have to run a few tutorials, and we supply all the materials they need for that don't we?
Well no actually. Most of them write all their own tutorial materials.
But that's their choice surely?
No Martin, they have to write them because we don't supply any for many courses.
But they're paid for that!
Well yes and no Martin. I suppose the 3 hours a week we say they need to work might cover some tutorial preparation, but it doesn't cover the time they need to read the course units.
Why are we employing these people if they need to read the course units? Surely they're supposed to be experts?
They are Martin. They can read the units in a fraction of the time it would take a student, but they still need to read them to find out what a student is supposed to know. They can't help them otherwise.
But we pay them a fee to read the materials thoroughly when we first start a new course don't we?
No Martin. I think we used to, but we don't any more.
Well can't they do all this reading between course presentations? After all we pay them for 52 weeks a year don't we?
We certainly assume they work 52 weeks a year when we calculate their pay fractions. That's a bit embarrassing actually. Everyone else in the university gets 30 to 33 days holiday, 3 university closure days and bank holidays. AL pay assumes no holidays and no compensation for unsociable hours working either.
But they get a generous amount of time off for scholarship don't they? I see we have an excellent fee waiver scheme as well as regional staff development days.
We don't charge them for any of this Martin, but it happens in their own time. That's another embarrassing point. Even our regional academics can have 2 months paid study leave in each 2 years worked. That's half what a central academic would get, but in line with the 10% offered by other universities for such staff. Our ALs get none. We don't even pay them to attend any conferences or meetings we want them to be at.
So you're saying the job can't be done in the time we've stated then. Have you any idea what factor we're understating it by?
I 'd estimate about 2.3 Martin, but it could be higher.
You mean if we upped the 3 hours by 2.3% it'd be about right? Phew, that's not much. I thought you were talking about a much larger figure for a moment!
I was Martin. I meant you'd have to multiply the figure by about 2.3 to get a more realistic workload estimate.
You mean we'd have to pay them over £71,000 p.a.?
No Martin, they'd still only be earning about £27,000 if they taught 6 of those 30 point courses.
You mean they're not even earning that now?
No Martin. They'd get paid about £12,000 for that using the calculations we use right now.
That's scandalous. Why don't they all resign?
I think they would Martin, but in this climate…….
[Note that the conversation above is entirely fictitious]
So Martin, how are you finding Walton Hall?
Great thanks. There's a terrific buzz here with all these lofty academics everywhere. One thing's puzzling me though.
What's that Martin?
Well I understand there are some 8000 associate lecturers working for the OU but I can't seem to find out where they are. Do you know where the AL wing is?
Oh that's an easy one to answer, Martin. There isn't one. They all work at home!
That explains it then. Lucky them! Perhaps I'd better arrange some tele-conferencing sessions to talk to some of them then. Do you know what sort of equipment the OU buys for them?
Actually the OU doesn't supply them with any equipment Martin. They have to buy their own.
But surely we insist they spend their ICT allowance on standardised equipment and arrange preferred suppliers, that sort of thing?
Actually Martin, the ICT allowance doesn't cover much more than a few ink cartridges and the odd ream of paper let alone a new PC every few years.
You'll be telling me they have to pay tax on the allowance next!
Well actually Martin, yes they do. It's been amalgamated into the pay-rates.
But these are quite generous aren't they? I understood an AL working full time could earn over £31,000? That's not bad if they can swan off to the golf club whenever they choose.
But they don't actually earn anything like that Martin. For a start, they're only allowed to work on the equivalent of 6 30 point courses even if they don't work anywhere else as well, though of course they may not tutor that many.
So if they work on 6 30 point courses we consider them full time and pay them £31,000?
No Martin, it doesn't quite work like that. For example, we say they can do the job for a typical second level course in about 3 hours a week, which works out at 5.75% of their time annually for each course - that's 34% if they tutored 6 courses.
I'm starting to think I'd like to be an AL here! You mean we pay them over £31,000 and they only work for 34% of their time?
No Martin, those hours don't bear any relation to the hours it would actually take to do the job. We've never calculated that - these were just guesses we put together last time they complained. It made it look as if we'd put some thought into the negotiations.
So how long would it take to do the marking ALs do? I heard assignments were supposed to take about 45 minutes to mark . That can't add up to much. Besides they all have detailed mark schemes don't they, so there's no real thought involved is there?
I don't know where you got that idea from Martin. Assignments can take hours to mark. Each one has to have loads of personalised feedback as well as a mark. You'd have to know the course inside out to do it. It's a really difficult job.
But apart from that, ALs only have to run a few tutorials, and we supply all the materials they need for that don't we?
Well no actually. Most of them write all their own tutorial materials.
But that's their choice surely?
No Martin, they have to write them because we don't supply any for many courses.
But they're paid for that!
Well yes and no Martin. I suppose the 3 hours a week we say they need to work might cover some tutorial preparation, but it doesn't cover the time they need to read the course units.
Why are we employing these people if they need to read the course units? Surely they're supposed to be experts?
They are Martin. They can read the units in a fraction of the time it would take a student, but they still need to read them to find out what a student is supposed to know. They can't help them otherwise.
But we pay them a fee to read the materials thoroughly when we first start a new course don't we?
No Martin. I think we used to, but we don't any more.
Well can't they do all this reading between course presentations? After all we pay them for 52 weeks a year don't we?
We certainly assume they work 52 weeks a year when we calculate their pay fractions. That's a bit embarrassing actually. Everyone else in the university gets 30 to 33 days holiday, 3 university closure days and bank holidays. AL pay assumes no holidays and no compensation for unsociable hours working either.
But they get a generous amount of time off for scholarship don't they? I see we have an excellent fee waiver scheme as well as regional staff development days.
We don't charge them for any of this Martin, but it happens in their own time. That's another embarrassing point. Even our regional academics can have 2 months paid study leave in each 2 years worked. That's half what a central academic would get, but in line with the 10% offered by other universities for such staff. Our ALs get none. We don't even pay them to attend any conferences or meetings we want them to be at.
So you're saying the job can't be done in the time we've stated then. Have you any idea what factor we're understating it by?
I 'd estimate about 2.3 Martin, but it could be higher.
You mean if we upped the 3 hours by 2.3% it'd be about right? Phew, that's not much. I thought you were talking about a much larger figure for a moment!
I was Martin. I meant you'd have to multiply the figure by about 2.3 to get a more realistic workload estimate.
You mean we'd have to pay them over £71,000 p.a.?
No Martin, they'd still only be earning about £27,000 if they taught 6 of those 30 point courses.
You mean they're not even earning that now?
No Martin. They'd get paid about £12,000 for that using the calculations we use right now.
That's scandalous. Why don't they all resign?
I think they would Martin, but in this climate…….
[Note that the conversation above is entirely fictitious]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
