Line manager

[spikey]

Well seeing as how I started this thread, I have no qualms about asking two supplementary questions ...

 

When did typing pools finally become extinct?

 

And do any workplaces still have works canteens?

 

ETA - I ask because I gave up working for other people in 1978 and I don't get out much

Edited September 27, 2021 by spikey

[Kickstart]

Some places still have canteens, but probably more restricted to larger sites these days. Last place I worked that had a site canteen I left in 2007.

 

As to managers, yes it is a skill. Both the ability to avoid getting bogged down in details (but still be aware of them), people skills and others. A lot of people are very technically skilled but would make lousy managers, and most of these know it and avoid it.

Unfortunately managers actually having the important skills is not always a certainty. Certainly not helped when management is seen as the only way to have more money / prestige.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, spikey said:

When did typing pools finally become extinct?

 

And do any workplaces still have works canteens?

 

 

I'm sure it varied, but the last typing pool type-arrangement that I encountered was c1990, by which time desk-top PCs were common enough that most people did their own typing, if there wasn't a secretary in the team.

 

I do wonder whether places like the NHS, which sends out zillions of appointment letters, still effectively have typing pools, although the job must now involve dropping names and adresses into standard, stored formats.

 

SFAIA, canteens are still a feature of life at TfL, both in HQ offices, and for staff at key nodes like Baker Street, Acton Town etc., and NR HQ at Milton Keynes has (or had pre-Covid; I havent been there since) a pretty good canteen set-up. My other half works at the Open University HQ, and they have a couple of canteens on campus (again, pre-Covid, I'm not sure about now) too.

[Oldddudders]

BR invested heavily in PCs from the mid-80s onwards, sending people on WP etc courses, thus reducing calls on the typing bureau.

 

As a nationalised industry, and thus subject to HM Treasury Rules, the Investment Budget (approx £1billion p.a. by the late '80s) had to be spent within the fiscal year - and monies outstanding simply vaporised, rolling over to the next year not being allowed. So buying substantial quantities of off-the-shelf equipment near year-end was a great way to avoid wasting unspent sums. 

[EddieB]

3 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

So buying substantial quantities of off-the-shelf equipment near year-end was a great way to avoid wasting unspent sums. 

Surely the opposite?  Spend public funding on things not needed for fear of reduced budgets next year - which will then be wasted again, ad infinitum.

 

Typical nationalised industry?

[Reorte]

Work canteen here, although it's obviously been absent throughout a large proportion of the last couple of years, and still isn't back to where it was yet.

[ejstubbs]

15 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

"Line manager" became popular when the term "manager" also became popular for titles without direct reports - like "project manager" and "account manager".

 

aka "matrix management".  IMO it's a useful distinction between the person or persons to whom you are responsible for the work you are doing in the project(s) you are currently working on, the person or persons who is/are ultimately responsible for the relationship with the customer and so on.  Typically your line manager does the "pay and rations" functions including things like your regular formal performance appraisals (including taking feedback from your situational/functional managers), and agreeing your preferred career development path and the associated training plans with you etc etc.  They basically sit between your and HR (thank the lord that someone does).

 

A line manager should therefore be a specialist people manager with an understanding of - but no direct responsibility for - the business as a whole and the projects that are currently in progress.  Another key to the successful functioning of such a structure is that your line manager is a more permanent fixture than your the functional/situational managers  Business being what it is and corporations being what they are, these ideal criteria are not always met all the time (ask how I know...)

[Oldddudders]

26 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Surely the opposite?  Spend public funding on things not needed for fear of reduced budgets next year - which will then be wasted again, ad infinitum.

 

Typical nationalised industry?

When Bob Reid Mk 2 arrived as Chairman, fresh from the oil industry, the perils of not spending the budget, despite best efforts,  were laid out before him. He pointed out that Shell had always had the same problem...... 

 

I didn't say BR wasted money on things not needed - you did. I said that - as per the recent question in the thread - when the big spends didn't fructify to timescale, invariably due to private enterprise not delivering, BR used the bunce to bring in the kit needed to modernise office automation. Where is the waste in that? 

[spamcan61]

35 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Surely the opposite?  Spend public funding on things not needed for fear of reduced budgets next year - which will then be wasted again, ad infinitum.

 

Typical nationalised industry?

I can assure you this happens in the private sector as well; couple of years back I spent 30K  on parts I knew would never be used. It's bonkers but there ya go, no point in raging against the machine.

[black and decker boy]

39 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Surely the opposite?  Spend public funding on things not needed for fear of reduced budgets next year - which will then be wasted again, ad infinitum.

 

Typical nationalised industry?

No, what tends to happen is money unspent in year 1 wasn’t necessarily not needed, just wasn’t spent in that year.

 

what treasury likes to do is not only not allow it to roll over but to reduce year 2 budget by the same, unspent amount. So now you can’t complete works planned from year 1 but also cannot now afford everything you planned in year 2.

 

it’s utter madness but is still the way it works in 2021

[TheQ]

This company has a works canteen, but no way of serving food. There are two surprisingly good real bean coffee  / tea machines, and a crisps / chocolate bar machine. A sandwich / pie van turns up outside every day for 15 minutes from about 10:30. Some people walk down to a cafe, a few hundred yards away and eat in or carry out. Another hundred yards on from that is a Greggs, purely built for the industrial estate.

 

Pre covid, every few months, as a reward for meeting some sort of target, there would be pizza or cream buns or something delivered for everyone.. 

 

Tesco's generally have staff canteens, cheap if not spectacular food, though I was partial to the odd bacon roll....

 

As for management in this company we do have supervisors in some departments, but most are line managers. In my case .

I'm the worker,

The deputy head of Lab who starts on Friday and is young enough to be my grandson will be  a worker but with scientific responsibilities.

 The head of Lab is also a worker measuring stuff but less of, as well as scientific and manpower (me ) responsibilities.

The Head of all labs in the USA, is Scientific and manpower.

Above that is the Director for our division, though I did speak to him online.

Above that is the Director for the company, Never seen him /her.

 

My boss spends at the end of the year to save his budget being cut, but does try to find something useful to spend it on..

.

 

 

 

 

 

[45156]

3 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Essex House, Croydon, opened in 1962 as the Divisional Manager's Office, Central Division, Southern Region. The DM himself, and several of his senior team, all inhabited floor 7 (of 10). The gents' loo on that floor had a Yale lock, to which only they each held a key. On floor 8, where lots of people did really useful train-planning etc things, the gents' loo had no lock, but someone had stuck on he door a BR 'declassified' coach label saying "For the use of second class passengers".

 

The South Eastern DMO, opened at Beckenham in 1968, had no such posh loo. I don't know about the South Western DMO, but can say the same address, 19 Worple Road, Wimbledon, is now the HQ of Lidl UK!

Was, Ian - they moved a couple of months ago to Surbiton

[spikey]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

...  thus reducing calls on the typing bureau.

 

Oh!  An upmarket typing pool, perhaps?

 

I have fond memories of the typing pool at the first place I worked at, for therein was contained not only The Xerox Machine but also the cupboard containing the Magic Markers.  The former was the size of a small bungalow and was driven by/presided over by a girl known throughout the plant as W@nking Wendy, and the latter were the original made-in-USA glass-bodied ones, kept going when they started drying up by the addition of acetone or IPA.

Edited September 27, 2021 by spikey

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, spikey said:

When did typing pools finally become extinct?

 

When writing Cobol programs I had to write the code in block capitals onto forms which went to a "punch room" - the same as a typing pool but the output was on punched cards.  The "punch girls" - and they did only employ women in that role - were good but inevitably made some mistakes.  So we punched up our own corrected cards by hand ourselves in order to avoid a 2-3 day turnround delay.  Most of us would have preferred to punch all the cards ourselves, but management deemed that less efficient so we didn't have access to enough punch machines to do more than a few cards at a time.  The punch room was rapidly wound down and abolished once we all got VDUs on our desks.  That was in the mid 1970s.

 

In my next job a lot of my work involved writing reports for senior management.  We gave hand written drafts to "secretaries"  For all practical purposes they were a pool, but not called that because they didn't want to be called typists, which was seen as less prestigious.  They got word-processors in 1979 and more advantage was taken of the opportunity for reviewers to redraft and make cosmetic changes to the wording.  Nit-picking got very much worse when we all got PCs with word-processing packages and could make the changes ourselves.   Most of the younger staff stopped writing drafts and did their own, but old habits die hard and the older hands did it their own way.  By the mid-late 1980s the number of girls had gradually declined but those remaining did start doing more secretarial tasks such as booking our travel.     The one real relic of a job was that we did still have a Tea Lady, although her official job title was Part-time Filing Clerk, because that was the nearest classification the Personnel Department would accept.

 

 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

1 hour ago, EddieB said:

Surely the opposite?  Spend public funding on things not needed for fear of reduced budgets next year - which will then be wasted again, ad infinitum.

 

Typical nationalised industry?

I work for a private company, and we have exactly the same practice. It always grieves me when I discover some other part of the organisation has spent "surplus" money on things that aren't really needed at a time when I was banging up against my budget limit and having to make difficult decisions about what could be postponed till the following year.

[black and decker boy]

As I worked my way up the ranks on the late 90s, I often was told by my superiors that I needed to get the admin ladies to type my letters & reports. 
 

I protested that I could type faster and more accurately myself than having the admin team decipher my handwriting, send me a draft, me add corrections and send back for retyping. I was never believed but stuck to my guns and have rarely in 26 years needed or used admin / typists except for them to take and produce meeting minutes.

 

I do however continue use that same resource for many other purposes including creative tasks (designing posters, collating evidence & creating reports themselves, being public & community liaison etc - many talents hidden when just typing all day long), document control & software related tasks (incl being trainers).

[Michael Hodgson]

3 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

I do however continue use that same resource for many other purposes including creative tasks (designing posters, collating evidence & creating reports themselves, being public & community liaison etc - many talents hidden when just typing all day long), document control & software related tasks (incl being trainers).

Many of us found excuses to visit the typing pool and admire their "hidden talents".   

That's why they had to employ an old bat of a supervisor to keep visits short and strictly business.

 

[Steamport Southport]

2 hours ago, spikey said:

Well seeing as how I started this thread, I have no qualms about asking two supplementary questions ...

 

When did typing pools finally become extinct?

 

And do any workplaces still have works canteens?

 

ETA - I ask because I gave up working for other people in 1978 and I don't get out much

 

Going back to my experience of office work in Ford, the typing pools and secretaries were on their way out in the mid 1980s. By the time I had left around 1990ish they were virtually extinct. Office work changed that quickly.

 

The reason I left and quite a few others also did was the work was slowly disappearing due to computerisation. We knew they were going to be getting rid of loads of people and we wouldn't be getting a massive redundancy payment like those that had been there for decades. So it was a case of finding something else before we were pushed.

 

Best thing I ever did.

 

 

Jason

[kevinlms]

17 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

English is a magpie language and accumulates words and terminology as people see fit to use them. There is no equivalent to the Académie Française to preserve the language in aspic.

No, their attention has long been diverted to 'Grammar policing'!

Edited September 27, 2021 by kevinlms
Typo

[Oldddudders]

3 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

No, they're attention has long been diverted to 'Grammar policing'!

They may have a point....

[C126]

According to the O.E.D., the first citation found is from 1960:

 

Line manager.

 

[Meaning] 19d. In business or management organization, the chain of command or responsibility; the persons responsible for the administration and organization of a business (as opposed to the staff). Hence line manager, line management.

 

1960   L. C. Nanassy & W. H. Selden 'Business Dictionary', Englewood Cliffs, U.S.A.: Prentice-Hall.  p.27
"Following are the basic types of internal organization of a business: (1) line: The owner gives orders directly to the workers. As the business grows, the owner appoints a few executives, who are responsible to him... (3) line-and-staff: Authority flows from top to bottom, with responsibility falling on staff supervisors and special experts."

1964   J. M. Argyle Psychol. & Social Probl. viii. p.111

"In several British factories it was found that the division between ‘line’ supervisors and ‘staff’ technicians tended to disappear—technologists must have supervisory responsibility."

1967   C. Margerison in G. Wills & R. Yearsley Handbk. Managem. Technol. p.25  

"The accountants considered that they had responsibility for the end-product and sought to control certain actions of line managers. Line managers resented this interference with their authority and started to obstruct the accountants in their ordinary accounting function."

 

Just to add to the collection of people's work practices above, in a Library service, I am supervised on a day-to-day basis by two 'Superintendents' (wonderful old expression), one of whom is my Line Manager who has formal responsibility for my discipline, Annual Review, leave permissions, etc.  However, both Supers are the same grade and give us daily orders, draft rosters, etc.  They are degree-grade posts; mine requires only G.C.S.E.s and is called 'Support Staff'.

 

In a previous library, I had a Supervisor between my Line Manager (whom we shared).  She supervised our work on a daily basis, sat in on Annual Reviews (if I wished), but had no formal responsibility for the team members.  Her grade was a higher Support Staff, but required only 'A' levels as qualifications.

 

Hope this helps.

[EddieB]

29 minutes ago, Jeremy C said:

I work for a private company, and we have exactly the same practice. It always grieves me when I discover some other part of the organisation has spent "surplus" money on things that aren't really needed at a time when I was banging up against my budget limit and having to make difficult decisions about what could be postponed till the following year.

Most companies I've worked for (or clients) are private sector, but commonly impose an inflexible  policy towards budgeting and spending - but at least they're answerable to shareholders (in theory).

 

I was at my happiest when I wasn't assigned a budget limit, accountable but trusted that I would spend wisely and found I was in a better position to negotiate best prices.  Even when it comes to claiming expenses I always try to treat other people's money as I would my own.

 

 

[LBRJ]

I always thought that your line manager was your manager, IE in charge of you, and so on up the tree.

Presumably this is to stop people like the aforementioned "manager fresh from Tie Rack" thinking that they are in charge of you.

[Michael Hodgson]

45 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Even when it comes to claiming expenses I always try to treat other people's money as I would my own.

People have differing views as to what expenses can properly be claimed.

 

I once overheard a French colleague arguing with my British boss who wouldn't authorise his claim for the services of a "lady of the night".  He said "Yes, I get it free when I'm at home, but why should I have to pay for it when I'm away on the firm's business and can't take the wife with me?"   

 

On the other hand, my American colleagues used to bring their wives to London and I don't doubt that at least some of them managed to claim both fares.  No doubt they would still be out of pocket as the wives all went to Oxford Street.

[Nearholmer]

What I’m used to, and having asked my other half the same applies at here workplace, is:

 

- line manager being responsible for recruitment, development, appraisals, pay, rations and discipline, but not day to day direction.

 

- project manager having day-to-day direction of a team of specialists drawn from various disciplines.

 

Now, it may not work exactly like that everywhere, especially in a ‘non project’ environment, but I understand the term ‘line manager’ always to imply tge first few things listed, and sometimes also day to day direction of ‘the job’.

 

I always found that 98% of people ‘got’ the distinction, and could happily work within the resultant matrix, while 1% struggled to get it, and 1% attempted to exploit the situation by playing the two managers off one against the other.