Lazy colleagues - how can this be resolved....

[Chillibeansoup]

....without causing upset in the team?

Without giving too much info, we are a team of 6 working to answer public enquiries by email and also phone.

Half the team work very hard, phones always on, heads down all day - other half of the team chat, make tea, procrastinate, allow calls to ring out on their phones so calls pass to the next person - basically doing the absolute minimum possible. A few are PT so the FT workers also find themselves picking up unfinished work from the PT workers.

The manager of the team is almost always working away and rather than properly manage would rather deflect away from being the ‘nasty manager’ and drop the people complaining in it causing bad feeling in the team.

So, should the hard workers shut up? Should a fuss be created. Or just slack like the rest of them?.

Does your performance get monitored at all?

I'm surprised no perf monitoring, too.

There are targets but as we are so ridiculously busy we’ve been told not to worry about meeting them! I’ve only been in this job 6 months, I’ve never known anything like it.

This is a clear case of when the cat’s away the mice will play .
Have you ever been able to speak to the hard working team members about this ?
If there are targets that aren’t being met the reason is that the others are slacking - and indirectly this adversely affects hard workers .
You might need to go one grade above your immediate manager . When appraisals come round that’s an ideal opportunity to raise this - when are they done ?

If the manager isn’t going to do anything then maybe you all need to be equally slack and leave work undone. When it’s picked up on maybe they start looking at who does what.

Yes, us people that get the work done are all feeling aggrieved but we know if we complain all it will do is cause upset in the team and we do all get on, the others are nice, just lazy. It’s definitely a case of when the mice are away. I hate working like this - if I’m in work i work! We’ve all said we should slack off a bit but it’s impossible really, the calls just keep coming.

Get together with the hard working members of the team and arrange a meeting with the senior management and go above Manager's head? Explain you have tried to raise it before with your Manager and why it's been ineffective. Ask for proper performance monitoring as half the team are doing double the work.

How do your other colleagues feel about the workload?
When you see the call being ignored and passed on do you call the person out?
If you are busy don't take the call that isn't meant for you.
I'd also be looking for a new job if other staff have been there a while, as obviously this has been allowed to become the norm due to poor management.