The costs
The five costs
Everything in this argument that is actually a cost, who bears each one, and the one that was mentioned.
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.
The costs under argument, and who actually bears each one
The lease, and the rent review falling next year
said aloudThe only one of the five that was stated in a room, and it was a different room
Travel time and fares, three days a week
never saidChildcare arranged around the pattern being changed
never saidTwo house moves made on the basis of the old arrangement
never saidA contribution was paid towards one of the two
The journeys of the people setting the rule
never saidfive costs in the argument · on average 75 per cent of each falls on the individual · four of them were borne mostly or entirely by the individual · four of the five were never said aloud in the consultation
The five costs named in the claims on this record.
Five of the twenty-four claims are about cost. They are the shortest claims in the record, the cheapest to establish, and between them they determined the outcome.
The five
The lease. Runs to 2031; the rent review falls next year. Borne entirely by the organisation. Said aloud once, in a finance update, to a different group of people.
Travel time and fares. Three days a week, across a team whose journeys run from eighteen minutes to an hour and twenty-five each way. Borne entirely by individuals, and not evenly. Never said.
Childcare. Arrangements built around a pattern now being changed, with notice periods and waiting lists attached that do not move at the speed of a policy. Borne entirely by individuals. Never said.
Two house moves. Two people had relocated on the basis of the previous arrangement, one of them with a contribution from the company. Borne mostly by them. Never said in the consultation.
The journeys of the people setting the rule. The shortest on the team. This is a cost in the sense that it is a distribution — a rule that costs its authors little and others a great deal. Never said.
The shape
| The cost | Falls on | Said? |
|---|---|---|
| The lease and rent review | The organisation, entirely | Once, elsewhere |
| Travel time and fares | Individuals, entirely | No |
| Childcare | Individuals, entirely | No |
| Two house moves | Individuals, mostly | No |
| The authors' own journeys | Individuals, nearly entirely | No |
Read down the last column: one entry, and it is the row whose cost lands nowhere near anybody in the room.
Why that pattern is not a conspiracy
It follows from where costs are recorded.
The lease is a number in an account with somebody answerable for it. It gets discussed because it exists as an object in the organisation's world. The other four exist only in people's own lives, are recorded nowhere, and are visible to nobody except the person paying them.
An organisation discussing its costs will naturally discuss the ones it can see. Nothing further is required to produce this table.
What would have changed if they had been said
Probably not the decision. That is worth being honest about: a three-day requirement with a lease behind it was unlikely to be reversed by a list of individual costs.
What would have changed is the shape of what followed. A cost that has been named can be offset, scheduled around, or traded against something. Four unnamed costs cannot be, which is why the arrangement adopted contained no provision of any kind for any of them.
On this record there was no travel contribution, no notice period calibrated to childcare arrangements, no accommodation for the two people who had moved, and no acknowledgement that the rule cost its authors less than anyone else. Not because any of those were refused — because none was ever requested, because the costs they would have addressed were never on the table.
The costs that are not on the list
Five were claimed. Others existed and were not claimed by anybody, on either side, which is worth noting because the list is a record of what was said rather than of what was true.
Not claimed: the cost of the arrangement to people's partners, who had to adjust their own patterns. The cost to the two people who had to give notice on childcare places. The organisation's cost of the consultation itself — six sessions and eleven weeks of senior time. And the cost of the resignation that followed, which nobody has ever attributed to this.
None of those appears anywhere, because a cost enters a discussion only when somebody names it, and naming any of the four would have required somebody to volunteer something awkward.
What the list is good for
Not completeness. It is a list of the costs that were in play as claims, which is the thing that determines a decision.
The useful exercise for anybody in one of these arguments is to write both lists — the costs that were claimed and the costs that exist — and look at the gap. On this record the second list was roughly twice the length of the first, and everything on it was known to somebody.
The costs on the other side of the ledger
For completeness, because a page about who pays should not count only one direction.
The organisation bears the building, the facilities, and the cost of the discussion itself — six sessions over eleven weeks, with senior time in all of them. It also bears, eventually, the cost of a resignation it has not attributed to any of this.
Those are real and two of the three were never stated either. The lease was mentioned once; the eleven weeks of senior time and the resignation appear nowhere.
So the silence is not one-sided. It is just that the organisation's unstated costs did not fall on anybody who had to absorb them personally.
What a complete list would have enabled
Nothing dramatic. Notice periods, named days, a view on how long the arrangement holds, and some acknowledgement of the two people who had moved.
All four are cheap. All four address costs that were on the list and never said. And all four were absent from the arrangement adopted, not because anybody refused them but because nothing in eleven weeks ever raised the question they answer.