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I'd never tell my boss I didn't have anything to do. Are you crazy? But I had a friend who did just that. Told her boss she didn't have enough work to do. In her case, he gave her more assignments. BUT personally, I just wasn't raised by parents who said, "Sure tell your boss you don't have any work to do." And you know why not? Because they might start to wonder if they even need you. And let you go. Because if there's not enough work for you, what am I paying you for?
What a person might say should depend on where a person works and whether a boss even cares how long it takes you to do something as long as it's done within the hours they give you to do it. Are you accounting for TIME, or WORK.
IF a person has finished 8 hours of work in 6 hours, the person should either look busy for two hours -- and maybe (but just maybe) come up with some bonus make-work, just incase the person is asked what s/he has been doing for two hours -- which s/he likely wouldn't even be asked if their work was accomplished on time, and there was no other reason for her to be on the boss' radar about time. OR the person could HINT that that they have some time (little bit of time) if there's something the boss needs done -- like something that has just come up, or help a colleague with a project. But outright say you don't have enough work to do. Hell no. IF asked, "you don't have anything to do?" Say, I thought I'd just ask before I started some XYZ item.....but again you're not saying you have nothing to do.
I had a friend who started a new job, and she was amazed by the slow pace of the work. She'd come from a place where speed was important. At the new job she was given projects and more than a week to do it. She told me she got it done in two days.....closed her office door and read a book for two days...then turned in the work on the fifth day, and bosses were so impressed that she got such great work done in only a week. That's my kind of job...where I can have nothing to do for half the time I'm there, and the managers are still impressed and think I'm doing some great job. (Of course, her new co-workers were giving her the side-eye. Wondering why and how she's working so quickly. But because of her experience she knew, there's no way these projects should take weeks to do. These tenured workers were just milking it. And the bosses didn't know how to do the work. So they had know idea the projects were not ones that needed so much time. So workers were like -- you give me two weeks to do something...I'll take two weeks. So what, if it COULD have been done in one.)
You sounds like you enjoy hearing that someone got laid off? In any case, what you are saying is not always true. It really depends on the nature of the organization.
If this organization is a supermarket or a fast food restaurant where it might take just a few weeks to train someone, it might make sense to do lay offs as soon the work slows down. But if this is the type of an organization where it can take 6 - 12 months to train someone, then it might be more cost effective for an organization to invest in training their employees when the demand decreases...
You apparently didn't read what I wrote because I said "if the work slowdown is temporary then a business might try something like that in order to retain employees for when business picks up".
I didn't say anything was always or never true. I said "Each business will have to determine how long they can do that."
And you didn't confine it to training that benefits the company but "access to a training class or something to advance themselves". A company might want to retain it's talent and use the time to enhance their skills and knowledge relevant to the job but I doubt many will be interested in paying them to get their realtor license so they can get a different kind of job.
This thread appears to be meandering all over the place and is maybe even moving off topic.
With respect to not having enough work to justify keeping a job - in my experience, good managers know exactly what employees are up to and know how to keep them engaged. Also, not all employees are paid or kept on salary for what they do but rather for what they know. Often times it's less expensive to keep paying someone for their nearly irreplaceable experience because it would cost a fortune or be impossible to replace that individual later.
Full disclosure: I'm in the telecom industry and we're moving ahead as if WFH and distance learning are here to stay. Covid will eventually be a thing of the past but WFH opportunities will continue to grow, I'd wager money on that.
This thread appears to be meandering all over the place and is maybe even moving off topic.
With respect to not having enough work to justify keeping a job - in my experience, good managers know exactly what employees are up to and know how to keep them engaged. Also, not all employees are paid or kept on salary for what they do but rather for what they know. Often times it's less expensive to keep paying someone for their nearly irreplaceable experience because it would cost a fortune or be impossible to replace that individual later.
Full disclosure: I'm in the telecom industry and we're moving ahead as if WFH and distance learning are here to stay. Covid will eventually be a thing of the past but WFH opportunities will continue to grow, I'd wager money on that.
Not all managers are good managers. I'm guessing the irreplaceable employee would know that and not be asking for more work.
This thread appears to be meandering all over the place and is maybe even moving off topic.
With respect to not having enough work to justify keeping a job - in my experience, good managers know exactly what employees are up to and know how to keep them engaged. Also, not all employees are paid or kept on salary for what they do but rather for what they know. Often times it's less expensive to keep paying someone for their nearly irreplaceable experience because it would cost a fortune or be impossible to replace that individual later.
Full disclosure: I'm in the telecom industry and we're moving ahead as if WFH and distance learning are here to stay. Covid will eventually be a thing of the past but WFH opportunities will continue to grow, I'd wager money on that.
Deep in the recesses of certain stubborn organizations are sour faced managers who cannot for an instant believe that workers are as productive at home or other scurrilous locations than in the office. They cannot and will not accept WFH as a serious option. They need to see their workers working in the office under watchful eyes because they believe that real work cannot be done at home. They can only see their workers goofing off at home, despite tight deadlines and the availability of monitoring software. They are like the Titannic, slowly sinking, but these managers would rather go down with the ship rather than acknowledge that WFH is a viable option for their workers.
Deep in the recesses of certain stubborn organizations are sour faced managers who cannot for an instant believe that workers are as productive at home or other scurrilous locations than in the office. They cannot and will not accept WFH as a serious option. They need to see their workers working in the office under watchful eyes because they believe that real work cannot be done at home. They can only see their workers goofing off at home, despite tight deadlines and the availability of monitoring software. They are like the Titannic, slowly sinking, but these managers would rather go down with the ship rather than acknowledge that WFH is a viable option for their workers.
Part of the problem is that, at least where I am, the longer telecommuting goes on, the more communication breaks down.
We used to have morning scrums every day except for Monday. That has trickled down to, maybe, once a week now. They were supposed to happen yesterday and today. Neither happened.
We have projects where different facilities are receiving new machines and going on a new domain - I have no idea where that stands now. No one keeps my team in the loop.
Deep in the recesses of certain stubborn organizations are sour faced managers who cannot for an instant believe that workers are as productive at home or other scurrilous locations than in the office. They cannot and will not accept WFH as a serious option. They need to see their workers working in the office under watchful eyes because they believe that real work cannot be done at home. They can only see their workers goofing off at home, despite tight deadlines and the availability of monitoring software. They are like the Titannic, slowly sinking, but these managers would rather go down with the ship rather than acknowledge that WFH is a viable option for their workers.
I think it's important to understand that there are lots of different types of work. Even at the same company, or even in the same group, there is some work that is conducive to WFH and other work that is not. I have a job in which WFH is much, much harder than working in an office. It's very collaborative, and some of our best ideas come from unscheduled, impromptu drop-bys where someone grabs a marker and gets to work on a whiteboard.
However, the accountants at our company just toil away endlessly in their spreadsheets and would likely be just as effective at home as they would in an office. Same for our software programmers etc. Although even for this group, junior people in the group would likely be better served by being in an office so that they don't have to schedule a call every time they have a question- drop-bys and open workspaces are extremely helpful for this bunch.
Firing someone for letting their team know they have nothing to do seems like poor management to me. You have an employee being honest, telling you they have extra capacity to take on some work. It's callus and shortsighted to punish that honesty by firing them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ferraris
Telling your team you don't have enough work to do is looking for work to do.
Guess it's in your own best interests to just keep it a secret and sit by idle, under-producing.
LOL... I was going to comment with this. If telling people you don't have work is going to get you fired, but there's no way for you to find stuff to do, then people are just going to learn how to hide it. Problem "solved"
Somebody told me a story of how when it snowed at a nearby college, students would take them plastic cafeteria trays, and go sledding down hills with them. The café was running out of them, so they sent out an announcement to please return them. Nobody is going to get in trouble, they just need them back. When students went to return them, campus police was on hand to give out citations. So lesson learned: don't volunteer that you've taken a tray. Also, don't trust them
I've read some real nightmare stories about off shoring, sure it can work out to be beneficial for a company, but it can just as easily become a nightmare. I read one story an offshore contractor tried to sell the companies intelligential property, I believe the authorities caught / stopped the guy, but it could have just as easily ruined the company. Why take the risk?
IIRC, somebody mentioned government jobs and security clearances. Even not for that, pay employees too little, and they care less, and have much less to lose. Companies have confidential documents, industry secrets, and are always concerned about leaks. One solution is to pay employees more. If you're going to do that, may was well just hire US citizens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grizzmeister
Did you mean to write that not everybody is cut out to be a manager? If so then I agree 100% and can attest to that from my own past experience.
Also, not every employer is properly setup to allow employees to work remotely even if there's very little benefit to maintaining an office. Generally speaking, if the managers are more so babysitters than coaches or leaders then WFH doesn't really work. I believe virtual employees tend to be most successful when their roles are clearly defined and their effectiveness can be accurately quantified by their productivity.
I still contend that remote working is going to do nothing but grow even if a vaccine for the coronavirus is nearly here. It just makes sense on so many levels especially when you consider that nations around the world are committed to increased broadband proliferation.
We are behind in the US as far as broadband goes. We are ofc better than 3rd world countries, but given how we're kind of a "tech nation", our innovation has stifled. Back in 2000s, somebody said what we have now was what S. Korea had 5 to 10 years ago. What we had then was what Japan had 10 to 15 years ago. Somebody who spent 6 months in Korea marveled how he could be on top of a mountain, but STILL get wifi! In the US, we do have many remote and rural areas without internet, or can only get dial-up (no joke, I met someone at a party who said that when she moved out of her hometown around 2018, she was able to go from dialup internet to broadband). Even places with broadband are relatively slow.
I had a friend who started a new job, and she was amazed by the slow pace of the work. She'd come from a place where speed was important. At the new job she was given projects and more than a week to do it. She told me she got it done in two days.....closed her office door and read a book for two days...then turned in the work on the fifth day, and bosses were so impressed that she got such great work done in only a week. That's my kind of job...where I can have nothing to do for half the time I'm there, and the managers are still impressed and think I'm doing some great job. (Of course, her new co-workers were giving her the side-eye. Wondering why and how she's working so quickly. But because of her experience she knew, there's no way these projects should take weeks to do. These tenured workers were just milking it. And the bosses didn't know how to do the work. So they had know idea the projects were not ones that needed so much time. So workers were like -- you give me two weeks to do something...I'll take two weeks. So what, if it COULD have been done in one.)
There is some merit to this. People learned to do stuff like write Python scripts to reduce weeks to months of grunt work into mere days. Or days to weeks of work into mere hours. Dilbert strips do capture the "real life corporate aspect" of that they now expect you to be able to do everything in 10% of the time, and that anything less than that, "you're stealing from the company". This is one of those cases where being honest can hurt you.
In that case, yeah, if people are "milking it", then I guess you can threaten to fire them, but will it really motivate them? Can you replace them easily if they were already getting the job done? I used to work as a cashier at a retail store. Some things I learned were don't goof off. If you have customers, then definitely drop what you were doing to take care of them. OTOH, there really isn't any rush. Don't work yourself into a panic attack or where you're making mistakes. That long line of customers won't go away faster if it's peak hours. You're getting paid by the hour so there's no huge incentive to go warp speed either.
Another issue is redundancy and buffer. It may not be such a bad thing to overestimate the amount of time needed to complete tasks. Managers who do this are certainly appreciated. They know that their software team can finish their milestone in 2 months, but they plan for an extra 3 weeks anyways knowing that someone is only going to be in part time since he needs to deal with his kid being sick, and visits to the hospital. Another person needs a couple of days off to celebrate their anniversary. They need to hear back from a vendor, so just in case there are delays there, and last but not least, for other delays. Not accounting for delays, and then making employees do crunch time is just poor planning. It's the equivalent to not leaving early to account for delays in travel, to a place where punctuality is most important.
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