To think most jobs could be done by fewer people but no one admits it because they’d be out of work?

Management need to be in meetings to
A: steer the direction (stop stupid decisions makings by people who all think they know marketing)
B: have a broad understanding of all the complexities of the organisation to ensure their decisions are as fully informed as possible

For good management, you need to give them thinking/planning time or you’ll keep on going with more of the same, no development and no change. This is an issue in the nhs, managers have no time to think so modernisation is done in silos.

I don't know about 'most', but definitely there's more underemployed office roles than most people think. I've done two jobs where there simply wasn't enough work for a ft post - one i left and one they realised when I was thinking of leaving and made redundant. I offered other stuff I could do but it was a huge business and I couldn't just take on work for other teams because my time could only be charged to my tiny team and that took a lot of admin. I suspect this is a common issue in large businesses- there was totally useful work I could have done had it not been so complicated to arrange.

At the same time there are many people doing 2 or more people's jobs in one role as well.

I work in elderly care. We need more workers, not less.

Having worked in Local Authorities for years I've seen it numerous times where people develop tasks that only they can do thus keeping themselves in roles.

I've witnessed awful managers who when a complaint has been made get side lined into new roles rather than being demoted or managed out.

However the lower grade staff especially are the ones who are stretched. Social work is an exception, not lower grade but you cannot do the job in 37 hours.

I've more recently worked in a team they could have halved and literally laughed each time a colleague said how stretched they were and more staff were needed.

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An old school friend once asked me what I do in my quiet times at work to pass the time - apparently they had lots of dull parts of the day. I was completely perplexed. I’ve always had jobs where we are short staffed and working to tight deadlines so you have to work flat out or you’d have to work loads of overtime. Not doing the work isn’t an option. Previously features editor on a newspaper and now managing a team in the nhs. I know everyone hates nhs managers now but I work bloody hard. We are 2 down in the team and that means we have less output but prioritise carefully, though not always realistically. It’s generally okay so long as no one goes off sick or books holiday. It’s a very fragile position but has become my norm.

I'm in hospital admin. If we had double the staff we would still struggle. It's a nightmare. No one is happy.

It’s the complete opposite for me.
I long for a bit of a rest.

I'm not now, but I have been, and in all roles more junior too. Not saying everywhere is maximally efficient, and 5 people with the same job does sound like overkill.

It sounds like at your place of work the comms isn't great. Nowadays employees can't be expected to just take it on trust that upper management are doing something good. There's a lot more explaining, consulting, shared decision making and power sharing, and transparency demanded. So management should be explaining to you what the 5 people do and why their work is needed!

However I do think, though, that not everything can be shared and sometimes the decisions and work of upper management is necessarily opaque. Like for example deciding on a new strategy that will mean lots of current skills in future aren't needed but new skills are required. Upper mgt should absolutely create a participatory way to explore future planning, together with the whole staff, but some people might just never get that their area of work or specialism isn't where the organisation is going, and it's a bit mean to expect them to do that planning as it might mean them exiting. They might just say no,I don't want this organisation to change, the change doesnt fit with my values and priorities. But they are understandably thinking of their front line day job, not the broader context. So management do this strategy work, and then the team is offered choices and opportunities as a result.

Including the NHS...

I definitely agree.

My current job has zero busy work. It's flat out. However, if staff were properly trained so we're quicker, allowed to do our jobs without checking before doing everything (can't even send an outside email or make a decision on best option of what to do without asking), paid more than peanuts & tbh some long term staff replaced by motivated staff (need the money incentive), we could halve the team. One staff member, whose been there 15 years, can't do basic things & spends half her time on the phone to the manager (who works 100% remote).

My last job had 28 staff members in the team, same job. We needed maybe 10. But, it was a University so they bumbled along. Then offered redundancies & all the good ones left.....

I had a leadership position in a school where my TLR was utterly useless. There were several people already doing the job whilst myself and a colleague would just make some vague movements now and then to look busy. My colleague even got a second job on the side because he had so much extra time. When I left, I did tell them to scrap the TLR to save money in the future.

This is not a problem in clinical nursing.

Sometimes I dream about it though.

Not teaching!!

There’s an element of not really knowing what some of your colleagues do, until they stop doing it. I’d much rather have a full-time team of four, with everyone sometimes having some spare time and kicking their heels around: we’re content, we have a good mindset, we give a lot of goodwill in return. As opposed to booting the team down to two people who work full pelt and then having the additional stress, inconvenience, and associated cost of both of trying to gap-fill when one of those two people is on leave, or off sick, or leaves the company. Particularly when those things happen at short notice, because those two people are overwhelmed and suddenly nope out. I’ve seen the figures run, and it’s rarely more long-term cost-efficient, in an effectively run and profitable company, to run a skeleton staff and backfill when you need to.

I am one of these people and it’s frustrated some colleagues over the years. I used to go on holiday with friends and in a week I’d get through 5/6 books whilst one of our friend would get through 2 at most. She’s clever, focused, a very effective worker and top of her field - just processes information differently.

I’ve had to become better at having more realistic targets for my team because I assumed all people could work at my pace.

One thing I’ve noticed in some slower workers is an over reliance on notes and writing down exact steps of something when being trained, rather than trying to understand what it is one is trying to achieve. I find this leads to getting stuck as the person is expecting the same thing every time they do the task rather than understanding why small things may change from time to time.

I also have a peaks and troughs job. In quiet times I could easily do the work of two of us in my 26 hours a week. However when something then happens it is busy.

There's 5 of us doing the same job as me but assigned to different areas. Most of them are full time I don't have a bloody clue what they're doing all day.

We work from home and I fit in dog walks, exercise and most of my housework in to the working day unless something exciting is going on or I happen to have a lot of meetings one day. Then one day a week in the office, sometimes I save my admin for that day so it looks like I am busy. I'm keeping my mouth shut and holding on as long as I can

A friend of mine is currently in a job just like this.

She started a new role and although she likes the work, after the very first day she said that no-one seemed to stretch themselves and having a cup of tea & chat was deemed more important than actually working.*
Several months into the role she says that boredom is her biggest problem as if she tries to do more work, she is jumped on by her colleagues and told she is making them look bad!

There are rumors of cost cutting ahead (factory gossip) but she is not worried either way.
If she has to go (last in) she will find something else but if she stays (and they get rid of dead wood) she will be able to work faster.

*She has likened it to that wonderful old film "I'm All Right Jack".
Said that if she had not witnessed it with her own eyes she would not have believed that somewhere like that still existed in this day & age!

That's never been my experience. But even if that's the case, I'm not sure I understand the issue. If your estimated 30% of people lost their jobs, wouldn't be a huge strain on resources? As it is, they're working and paying taxes, which benefits everyone.

I do a full time job in part time hours and term time only, and I'm still not busy.
Predecessor did the same role full time, all year round...fuck knows what he did all day.

I'm public sector and in my job we have more work now than we did five years ago but with 1.5 people to do it rather than the 2.5 we had previously. It took me two months to catch up last summer after having a fortnight off on leave. Summer is not too bad and I was kind of caught up, but now I have Covid so it will be full steam ahead till my hols in a months time.

@LegoMaxifigure I’m guessing you’re in upper management.
I understand the roles needed but when you have 5 people filling that role and then the 10 people underneath them with similar job titles and a stupid amount of pay it’s difficult to see how the work is distributed.

In one of the schools that I worked in. It used to be 1 head teacher, 4 assistant heads.
A new headteacher came in
now its 1 headteacher
I deputy head teacher
6 assistant head teachers
2 Teachers that are assistant head teachers in all but name.
All with reduced teaching time, whilst at the same time they have chased out teachers and not replaced them, reduced hours in subjects so that teachers have to teach outside of their subject areas to make up their teaching hours.

Its a mess.

Private sector here. I used to have a team of 14 now it’s 8. We get by but there’s loads of stuff we used to do which we now don’t. I basically feel we do the bare minimum to get by and I have to remind the team that it was a business decision to cut heads and I’m not expected to work evenings and take in the burden… and I remind my team the same. Every opportunity I get I tell management everything I’d like to do but we don’t have time for. Everytime a client complains that we took too long to fix something or even took too long to respond to a mail or find a root cause I say it’s because the team are stretched and juggling and 99 times out of 100 we can choose to drop the least worst thing but sometimes we don’t get to choose.

it’s a risk for seniors to manage.

No. I'm the only marketer in the company and I have work backed up so we're looking for an apprentice now