I was talking to my boss once, he worked in London for a while. He once said that the biggest difference between American workers, and English workers is attitude towards alcohol.
I don't care about this one. Butt-in-seat time is an outdated measurement.
2-6) Pretty easy to deal with this: your workers are behaving irresponsibly by coming in drunk and making mistakes. So you terminate them and get people who can deal with alcohol responsibly (I don't mean you can't have a drink at lunch, just be professional and don't get drunk when you're supposed to be working).
> but the UK has a poor reputation for the quality of middle management in industry.
If you find a place that has good middle management let me know and I'll have a look! :)
Drunk/tipsy employees are a safety hazard in such an environment etc.
Do these directly apply to other industries or settings? Depends :)
I agree. There's a large local aerospace company. What time do the shop-floor workers have to start? 8:42 am.
They enforce it too; fellow workers, bosses, everyone polices that start time.
1) Late return to work
2) Tipsy / drunk workers taking longer to get stuff done
3) tipsy / drunk workers doing stuff worse, thus needed it to be reworked
4) tipsy / drunk workers not inspecting properly leading to increased returns from customers
5) the occasional broken / lost item (with JIT this can be a considerable delay if it's the right item)
6) occasional broken tools
7) sober workers resentful at drunk workers and at bad management not doing anything about it.
etc etc.
Yep, a lot of this is down to management, but the UK has a poor reputation for the quality of middle management in industry.