The working world has become ridiculous

[Rothschild]

Recently a manager at my company attended an online meeting in tears because of a minor issue regarding her child's school. She excused herself from the meeting and took a mental health day.

I can barely get hold of anyone at 3pm in my (large) organisation because everyone is doing school pick up. I don't believe they're getting much work done once they've picked up because they become hard to contact, don't respond to messages and won't attend meetings, despite it being their normal working hours.

It's ridiculous. When our children were small we paid for wrap around childcare or for someone to collect. We were available to work between 3 and 4pm and afterwards.

I'm not talking about anyone who has negotiated flexibility or finishes at 3pm, I'm talking about others who are, frankly, taking the piss.

And if I had taken a mental health day every time I'd had some difficulty in my life I'd have hardly worked.

Really! What evidence do you have to support this assertion? Too many people have learnt how to work the system. Yes, I do have evidence of this happening, including people supposedly off sick with MH issues but simultaneously doing other jobs.

I love Laura because she sets healthy working boundaries, she’s not taking the piss like 90% of the UK workforce these days.

My DH often does this but he has just swapped his lunch break….

Has it not occurred that perhaps the problem is people aren't earning enough to get the childcare they need, aren't earning enough for one parent to be a SAHP or work part time to cover childcare?

That we used to live in a world where 1 persons wage could support a small family and now 2 peoples full time wages often cannot?

Raising children is a big job that takes a lot of time and money.

Employers could - pay people a wage that lets them afford to actually work... or rejig the working day that fits with childcare (perhaps via jobshares, condensed hours, etc)..

Because the alternative is that people stop having children, particularly, intelligent people, skilled people, people with a work ethic... stop having children.

I hope I don't have to explain why thats generally a bad idea for any population.

my manager wfh with a 1 year old. no nursery... no childminder... it's insane but we all pretend its cool because we don't want to get busted that we are getting our nails done or having a bath at 2pm!

Especially considering how quickly someone can be replaced. All things considered, you're a number. If you get overworked, miss special moments and then die, the company will replace you. You're only valuable to make money for the company which you then get a slice of when your payslip appears. This is one reason why I mentally checked out. I do the job, but going above and beyond can't guarantee your job when you can get hit by a bus tomorrow. Go in, do your hours, go home, get paid. Rinse and repeat.

I work for a big bank, we all WFH 100% of the time of we are not based in branch. We can go into the office if we want. In my area we don't deal with customers so we can work what hours we want as long as the work gets done. We don't have to be online at a certain time or stay until a certain time if we have other plans. As long as over a month we work our hours, our work is done it's all good. A d it works, no one moans if it's busy and they need to work late or log in early as it's easy to take that time back when it's quieter. We don't have to ask permission for appointments we just put any out of office time in our calendar. We don't even have to get annual leave approved as long as we tell our managers and people we are working with. It's brilliant and everyone works hard.

I’m with you OP. I work in the civil service and the flexibility is fantastic but some people are stretching the boundaries of flexibility and it impacts on other people’s workloads and ability to complete tasks.

In my immediate team, colleagues are supposedly working compressed hours so they work their full 37/38 hours over a a nine day fortnight, with every other Monday or Friday as a non-working day). Usually these are the same colleagues who are disappearing offline doing the day to do various school runs.

Likewise my manager never shows face in the office and we had to hold an in person meeting to welcome some new starters - she still wasn’t in the office by 11:30 and claimed she was ‘working on the train’ but also hadn’t set up her work phone to dial into calls and couldn’t get internet. The meeting was based at her home office location and other colleagues from Birmingham and London had managed to travel up for a 9am start.

We recently had a situation where so many people had a non working day on a particular day, that when coupled with annual leave, there was not a single person able to provide cover on something urgent. People taking flexible leave, last minute for hair and nail appointments. All of which is fine but why does it always co-incide with the busy periods and never properly put into people’s calendars so you’re trying to chase them like a blue arsed fly only for them to not even be working.

The UK does have a real productivity problem.
Since 2008, we have had very little productivity growth.

The UK does have very high sickness levels.
We also have low productivity across the public sector.

I often wish I had a job like this!
I think being flexible is fine, but come on if you are contracted to work until say 5pm then leaving to pick up children at 3pm and then looking after them is not working is it?
If you are working then you should be contactable. Sometimes I don’t see/reply to messages but I am full time in the office and actually working, my boss knows this.
All the people who do this, I hope you think it’s fine for NHS staff and those who work for the emergency services to do the same. Yet I can guarantee a lot of those who slack off, will be the same ones moaning when schools shut for inset days, or businesses have staff training.

I’m so glad the tide has turned away from everyone terrified of their employer. Wages are in the toilet and everyone’s productivity is reflecting this.

Of course but also a problem if productivity is routinely low.

I’ve been moaning about the impending rises to car tax through pay per mile coming in and this is another scenario where trying to get employees back into the office is being deincentivised by the government. Train fares are astronomical and driving is following close behind. Workers will be even less able to afford to travel and productivity will continue to decrease when there’s washing to do and children to care for.

@MNLurker1345 lack of investment feeds into that.

Can I ask those of you who are managers, do you have any kind of education or training in leadership? Because I've been living in another country where most managers (at least in the public sector) have diplomas. The stuff that I read on here about ineffective managers boggles my mind. Having said that most of the complaints from managers on here would result in employees being fired. So that also boggles my mind.

Probably because inset days and staff training don't fit around other professions, so people scurry around to get childcare and then run the gauntlet of getting dunked on by management.

It seems like things have never recovered post covid. I’ve always worked from home and most of my team does too. We have core hours when we are expected to be immediately available and have to attend meetings even if they are late in the day. My kids are teenagers so are able to get the bus home, but when they were young we always had wrap around care. None of this not attending meetings after 3pm nonsense. Thankfully it’s rare to find shirkers in my industry. There just isn’t the time and they would be found out very quickly.

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast AI is going to take some jobs regardless of productivity because it’s cheaper.

Investment in infrastructure or lack of impacts productivity.

IM(long)E mostly in the [public sector, x12

Not all of it of course, and some commercial organisations can be just as bad, but there's a mulish "can't do and you can't make me" attitude I've rarely seen equalled elsewhere

And yes problems existed before covid too, but if you pay people to do nothing for the thick end of two years this is the kind of expectation that tends to build up

The HR bore side of MN is unparalleled

If managers aren’t pulling their weight, coming into the office, available at school pick up times etc are people really shocked that people under them are following the same culture?!

Mine is like this too. I swear 50% of people are doing no work at all.

Sounds like a massive over generalisation.

😆😆

So how is the business still profitable?

So, I work in the NHS and there are very clear, nationally agreed sickness performance management rules. There are also a lot of clinician managers who have never actually received any management training (of which I am one, though I have at least made an effort to read the national contract and to follow our trust HR policies), an absence of OH input, and a completely disengaged HR.

It is bad management, and it is absolutely fixable if you bring in a new and more motivated manager (have seen this in our admin team - new GM and service manager came in and sacked pretty much half the outpatient and admissions teams, who had been woefully underperforming under the previous management team).