Company Internet Policy

Alright here goes....

So I work for a multi Billion dollar company and since I am on-call for work this company was paying for my internet because I will sometimes have to login from home when I am paged out for production issues.... These call can come in at anytime EI: 2:00 am on a monday morning or Saturday nights. 95% of the time I am able to fix the issue login in from home and not have to drive into the office (30 min drive).

Now this company wants to take that away and are telling us to start to use the company on-call phone as a hot spot and use that as the internet connection or simply use our own.....


So I am currently not please and confused because I believe that this would only end up costing them more in the long run because

A: In my eyes they are simply being petty.... witch means in turn we will be petty to.... used to be I get a 5 minute call I would not bother charging them but now well my laptop took 15 minutes to boot so 30 minutes no problem.....

B: Not everyone has great cell service witch means slower Internet connection witch in turn would take longer to fix issues, witch in turn I would technically get paid more OT and the customers would have to wait longer to get their issues resolved...

C: Its leaving a lot of support people with bad Morale.... especially when we have Non Travelling VPs that are driving 80000 dollars cooperate cars.... If we are looking at saving money why not take that away first I am sure 1 car could cover the support teams on-call.....

D: we use a rotation phone for our on-call so that means if I have to do maintenance on our servers on a saturday night (Maintenance window for most prod server in the company) that means I can't use a company phone for hot spot since I don't have one..... witch means id have to drive into the office... so 1H OT there and 1H OT back ( 30 min for driving and extra 30 min for mileage on my car...) so right there that is 2 hours and that extra 2 hours would be enough to cover my internet cost.....

So with all my example's my question would be how do they believe this will save them money?

Anyways clearly I am unable to look at this as objectively as I wish since I am being directly affected by this but wanted to get other peoples opinion on the matter.....

 

1. companies do not look at employees on an individual level. it sucks.
2. make sure you get paid for the extra hours since they take the internet.
3. if their decision affects the customers in a bad way, its not on you, its on them.
4. no comment. its per company basis.

 

I'll try to be the devil's advocate.

Spoiler

A- I think Bell offers unlimited Mobile internet, so the difference in price might be worth it alone. They're also probably assuming you'll keep on doing the same number of hours (i.e. they don't expect you to not be counting those calls).

B: That's fair, but if that is the case, they should consider a case by case basis for people who don't have good reception.

C: Nothing to say to that, you're right. But sometimes it's customary to give a bonus for high positions (especially if the person is good at their job), but I agree with you on this one, this is dumb.

D: my previous answers assumed you all had individual phones.

Ce sont des économies de bouts de chandelle.

 

Hahahah nope don't worry I am here to stay you cant get rid of me that easy lol

I think the back lash of them doing this will make them re-think their position but who knows its going to be a few interesting months coming up....

I am wondering if anyone else who is on-call for work on this site has their Internet paid for id be interested to know...

 

When I worked for a call center (my very first job) they were attempting to roll out a Work@Home type program, so they would provide a line directly to their server as a means to keep the line secure. I'm not sure if this is in a similar fashion that your employer had or not, but everything that was required from the job was provided by the company, including the phone equipment. Of course this meant that termination of employment required you to return the equipment.

Some of the companies that require a work phone, usually provide that phone for you. Some would let you pick out the phone you wanted, but you would have to pay for the device. My father worked for his sister and all of them used smartphones, so his work phone's plan was pretty much taken care of. All he had to do was pay for the phone he wanted use. Although not quite the same, plans like that do exist for businesses.