Is there a job which is NOT needed?

[Jux]

I mean, does anyone know of an actual existing post in any firm, company, organisation, where the employers' believe that they don't need to pay someone to do that work, but it's just nice to have someone there and to pay them for the privilege? That they could sack that person, not fill the vacancy adn there would be no effect on anything except their payroll is a bit less?

Prime Minister.
I know some countries have one but we seem to have got by without one for many, many years.

😆😆

Quality Improvement Officer in Education (Scotland) Local Authorities. They worked from home during the pandemic.

No-one in school noticed their absence.

The layers and layers of managers in the NHS. That’s where the money that should be paying nurses and clinicians is going.

I have a friend who works in mental health in the NHS. She says that since Covid, there's been extra money for mental health provision sloshing around and they've spent it on hiring a whole new level of managers.
Now she has an extra step in the reporting process just so that these new managers can be included and have a job to do.

This wouldn't be allowed now ..... but a boss I worked with a long time ago told me that when the large UK based logistics company he worked for was taken over by an Australian firm in the early 80s, the new Australian boss landed and immediately sent everyone home except a few directors. He then proceeded to find out what each department did and bring people back in as and when it was established that their role was critical in getting the operation up running again efficiently. Apparently quite a lot of people never did return! Not sure if this is a true story but I thought it was bloody brilliant.

I used to work for BT and back in the early 90s they did in fact employ people whose specific job was telephone sanitiser - they used to come round everyone's desk about once a month or so.

There are 2 of us that do my job, I think if the people we managed took on more responsibility or did thier job properly then it would only need 1 of us to manage.

And hairdressers?

Hee hee!

Ouch lol

Exactly.

True enough!

When the pandemic hit where I work they made about 200 redundant across all departments so about 20% . Anyway when things picked up they recruited which they needed , trouble was some of the work was streamlined and some of the staff employed to do jobs that were done by someone else more efficiently. So basically we have staff employed to do the same job but are not actually doing it .

Waste of funding paying someone to write minutes and record actions, if an action comes up in a meeting for an attendee then it should be their responsibility to note it and action it, not having the NHS or local authority pay an admin to record it and then remind the attendees to actually ‘action’ their actions, it’s ridiculous!

In both retail and teaching I've known people whose entire role was to create displays. In retail, these were in staff-only areas and in teaching it was only 'shared areas' so teachers still had to do their own classroom displays. Both women worked 3 days a week I think. The school display lady did an amazing job but we would have much preferred an extra TA! It wasn't even that long ago.

Sounds like an expensive and inefficient way to do an audit to me!

No one would die if my well paid corporate role didn't exist.

Agreed. My sister works in admin. She types letters, arranges clinics, answers the phone, etc. She works herself to death and even starts early just to get ahead. She often works through lunch as well (mainly for the sake of the patients). She complains constantly about the managers, however.

Telephone sanitisers

And looked what happened when they went !

But who's to say for sure whether there was clear cause and effect?

Reminds me of the old joke about the man who went up and down the high street every morning without fail liberally spreading 'anti-elephant powder' - and then, if anybody dared to suggest that he was wasting his time, he could provide them with indisputable figures showing that precisely zero elephants had been seen walking along the high street ever since he had started

What if they don’t note down their actions, because they’d rather not have to carry them out; or they misinterpret what was agreed and note down something wrong and then carry that out instead; or they note it down and then somebody in another team who thought the discussion went differently challenges what they did and it’s one person’s word against another's? How is the department going to work out what was actually discussed and agreed, if everyone was so busy noting down their own actions that they can’t accurately remember who was right and who was wrong?

Belgium were technically without one for over a year, and managed. Government fell out over language status of a few communities, which as someone who has often visited Belgium, did not surprise me.

that made me laugh

Yeah, we can do without a lot (all) of those. But it's not quite what I meant.

Take the meeters and greeters. Presumably the relevant shops have taken advice, looked at figures, even asked actual customers - heaven forefend! - and come to the conclusion that having them is more profitable overall than not having them. Just guessing here, of course. So from the employers pov those jobs are necessary and needed.

What are the jobs which aren't perceived as necessary/needed by employers? IME, only those which no longer exist, some of which will have been contracted out so are still necessary and needed but the employers (maybe erroneously) have decided that that is a better use of the company dosh.

So, can you think of any jobs which NO ONE sees as necessary, but which still exist?
Just one?

Meeter and greeter is a good example of a job for someone that has been out of the workplace for a long time.
We need roles like that.

OFSTED