The costs
The cost that is not money
Fares are the smallest part of it. Four costs that do not convert into a figure, and why leaving them out understates the case.
Claims this part is about, and what each was answered with
The travel time and fares fall entirely on the employee
Interest·Nothing; it was never said out loudChildcare was arranged around the pattern now being changed
Interest·Nothing; it was never said out loudTwo people moved house on the basis of the previous arrangement
Interest·Nothing; it was never said out loudThe journeys of the people setting the rule are the shortest on the team
Interest·Nothing; it was never said out loudThe lease runs to 2031 and the rent review falls next year
Interest→A statement about who paysSaid once, in a finance update
five claims · five interest · none of the answered ones was answered in the wrong kind · four were never answered at all
All five claims about who pays, from the twenty-four.
When costs get discussed at all, they get discussed in money, because money is the thing that converts.
On this record the fares were the smallest component of every individual cost by a wide margin, and converting the rest into money understates it rather than helping.
Four that do not convert
Time. Seven and a half hours a week at the far end of the team. It can be priced at an hourly rate, and the pricing misleads: the time is not fungible. It is specifically the time between seven and nine in the morning and five and seven in the evening, which is the time somebody else's day depends on.
Give. A fixed day is a day with nothing movable in it. The cost is not any particular errand that has to be dropped; it is that three days of the week are now rigid, and a rigid week absorbs a disruption very badly.
Coordination with other people's lives. Childcare, a shared car, a partner's own fixed days. These compound: a change to one person's pattern can require two other people to change theirs, and the second order is invisible from the organisation entirely.
Predictability. The difference between knowing the arrangement for the next year and not. A fixed bad arrangement is cheaper to live with than an uncertain moderate one, and nothing in a money figure captures that.
Why money-only accounting understates
| What gets counted | What it misses |
|---|---|
| Fares and fuel | All of the above |
| Hours priced at salary | That the hours are at particular times |
| Nothing | Second-order effects on other people's arrangements |
The third row is the largest and the one nobody has a method for. On this record, one person's three-day pattern required their partner to change their own working days, which required a change to a childcare booking with a six-week notice period. None of that was visible, and none of it is money.
The temptation to monetise anyway
It is strong, because a money figure travels. An organisation that will not act on "this is difficult" may act on "this is four thousand pounds a year".
The problem is that monetising invites the obvious response, which is to pay it. A travel allowance addresses the fares, which were never the main cost, and settles the matter in the organisation's accounting while leaving the actual burden untouched.
That is not cynicism about allowances; it is a point about what a figure does. Once a cost has been converted into money and the money has been paid, the cost is treated as discharged.
How to state a non-money cost
Describe the constraint, not the feeling, and do not price it:
Three fixed days means I cannot take a delivery, go to an appointment or collect anybody for three days a week, every week. It is not the money.
Three facts and a disclaimer. The last four words matter: without them, the natural response is an offer of money, and refusing one of those is harder than preventing it.
What this part of the argument actually needs
Not compensation. Shape — which days, how much notice, what happens when something changes, how long the arrangement is good for.
Those are all free. They are the things a discussion about costs would produce if the costs were on the table in the terms that people actually bear them, and on this record none of them was discussed, because the costs never were.
Shape, and what it is worth
Of all the things a discussion about costs could produce, the one that matters most to people and costs organisations least is shape.
Four components, and each is free:
- Which days, named rather than counted.
- How much notice before any of it changes.
- How long the arrangement is good for.
- What happens when something in somebody's life changes.
None of those requires money, headcount or a change to the number of days. All four were absent from the arrangement adopted here, and all four would have addressed costs that were never stated.
The predictability point, again
Of the four non-money costs, predictability is the one most underweighted by organisations and most weighted by the people affected.
A person who knows the arrangement for the next two years can build a life around it: a childcare place, a shared car, a partner's own pattern. The same person facing the same number of days with no guarantee cannot, and the second situation is materially worse in ways that no count of days reflects.
That asymmetry is why "this is the arrangement for the next eighteen months" is often worth more to people than a reduction would be, and why it is so rarely offered — it costs nothing and it is not the thing anybody is arguing about.
Also on why this argument does not close