To think it's out of order that my manager is furloughed when the team are not?

[SmashingTurnips]

I don't know much about the furlough scheme and I'm not in the UK but AFAIK it works the same where I am as it does in the UK.

I found out today that my line manager is furloughed 50%.
So he is working half his normal hours but being paid 85% of his normal wage. He has also gone to his home country and is working from home from his parents' house in another country and in another time zone.

Meanwhile the team that he manages are working pretty well normally. Most of us are doing our normal hours with some of us doing about half from home and some are doing all their hours in the office.

We have been asked not to contact our manager outside of his scheduled hours. Which means that due to a combination of him working part time plus being in a different time zone, I have already used my own time outside of my working hours to contact him / reply to an email (most of what I do is customer facing so I can't make phone calls / write emails for most of my working day. I have to fit them in where I can).

I think it's really odd and out of order. AIBU?

I guess the issue with not being allowed to contact him in his furloughed hours is that if he talks to you in that time the company should pay him not the government.

If they have made the decision to furlough him, there should surely be some time arranged where you can talk to him in your working time.
If I were you, I wouldn’t use any of my own time to contact him. If that leads to a problem for the company, you will be able to highlight the issue with their organisation of their workforce at the moment.

His salary is higher than individual team members, so it makes sense to furlough him as a more expensive cost to the company.

Middle management are also the first to be made redundant if the company can no longer afford to pay them or they're shown to not be needed. By taking him mostly out of the equation, if the team are still able to produce their usual results he is likely to be on his way out if the company can no longer afford him.

So don't be envious of his position, I wouldn't want to be in it.

He should be working the same hours as the office. Even if that means a late or early start.

I'm not envious of his position. I think it is a piss take though.

We are a really small company.
There are 2 teams. One is managed by my line manager and the other by the company owner. My manager wouldn't be made redundant unless the company closed down. His team cannot work without him.

His team obviously can work without him. He's only working part time at the moment, and he's not always available when you think you need him.

Agree with pp, do not contact him in your own time. Oy contact him either by email out of hours or directly when your hours overlap.

We can work without him because we are compensating for him not being here. We are doing tasks we don't normally do and / or waiting longer for information and decisions and then having to do things last minute / juggle timings so that customers aren't impacted.
I think it's cheeky.

Only contact and reply to him within your own working hours, if he can’t be flexible I don’t see why you should have to work extra time.

Yeah I guess I'll do that. It's annoying though because it means I can't get on with things when I have a window to do them and then I have to squeeze them in once I've heard back / got a decision.

I feel it for colleagues who are doing extra to pick up slack. Plus I think it's taking advantage of the government to reduce wages / have some time off whilst we haven't reduced our actual productivity.

due to a combination of him working part time plus being in a different time zone, I have already used my own time outside of my working hours to contact him / reply to an email

Go to the owner and ask how this is to be managed in view of you needing to stick to your scheduled hours but also not to impact too much on clients.

Push it back on the owner. It's their responsibility.

The different time zone and being abroad seems to me the thing that is wrong here, as it could be that he cannot return to the UK given quarantine restrictions.

@SmashingTurnips

We can work without him because we are compensating for him not being here. We are doing tasks we don't normally do and / or waiting longer for information and decisions and then having to do things last minute / juggle timings so that customers aren't impacted. I think it's cheeky.

But you can work without him.

If I were him I'd be worried about job security.

Do not contact him in your own time.

I worked from another country whilst on flexi-furlough - it was fine, I just adjusted to office hours slightly (so there was some overlap with my hours and theirs).

Oh well it seems most posters don't think it's odd or bad / weird management.

I'm surprised but interested and will take it on board.

It's definitely a weird atmosphere at work when we are there doing our jobs and there is no-one in our manager's office. It's very noticeable as all the walls are glass so we are very aware that he is not there.

I assume your manager had no choice in the matter and this was done because their salary is probably higher so putting them on furlough saves the company money. I really don't see why this is such an issue for you though...

He gets less money and his job is less secure. I'm not really sure what your problem is. You have to do a bit more and juggle, granted, but given how things are atm i'd say just be thankful you have a job with full hours.

Quite the opposite. He negociated it with our boss. I think that's why we are all a bit 🤔

Everyone else is working full time. I guess I'm old fashioned and think managers should roll up their sleeves and get work done and lead by example. I also think they should manage their team.

I think it's an issue for me because we are a small business and we all do extra bits here and there in the spirit of teamwork and acceptance that you can't work to rule in a small organisation. We do it willingly and cheerfully but that atmosphere now feels a bit spoilt by the person who should be leading us pissing off. We are all working harder than usual and trying to keep the company going and save our jobs and it's not been good for morale to find ourselves having to self-manage on top of all the other stuff that's going on.

I agree with others - don't use your own time to contact him, and if you don't have the information in time to do tasks in your normal hours then they don't get done. If you stop compensating for him and the business suffers, they will unfurlough him (or sack him). If you keep compensating nothing will change.

He’s probably being managed out of his job. You don’t choose to be furloughed, it’s done to you.

He's absolutely not being managed out of his job. He negociated being furloughed and my boss agreed because he's scared to lose him. He's very skilled at something my boss is not good at and he needs him. He runs a complicated schedule of everyone on his team's work which is in hourly slots and changes from day to day. The business cannot be run without someone in this job.

Anyway, never mind. It's probably something I should just stick to having the odd eyebrow raise with my colleagues about. It probably doesn't translate to people if you don't know the company.

Thanks for the replies though I will try to work through this with good grace. I will try not to work outside my hours as much as possible so I don't feel annoyed.

He runs a complicated schedule of everyone on his team's work which is in hourly slots and changes from day to day. The business cannot be run without someone in this job.

You seem very defensive off this manager. What does his "managing" entail, if you're all capable of self-managing in his absence?

Do you really need a schedule of hourly slots that changes from day to day? Who is managing that now? Has there been a drop in performance without his overseeing eye?

It really does sound as if he could be either dismissed and not replaced, or replaced by a supervisor/team lead.

But definitely don't reply to him in your own time. He should be working on the same time zone as you if his virtual presence is so crucial to the running of the business.

Why not earn how to do what he does and then he won't hold company to ransom cos of this special skill.

You might not know all of the facts , it could be that his parents need some support from him
If they are elderly etc - I’d just focus on your situation and no one else’s

You aren't allowed to email him outside his scheduled hours even??

I can email him. But he's working Mondays, Tuesdays and a half day on Wednesdays. So if something comes up on Thursday and I email him about it, I won't get a reply until Monday.
By which time whatever I emailed about will probably have been sorted out by someone else or by me. Or it will now be very urgent in a way it didn't need to be and someone in the team will have to juggle their time and get a bit stressed.
Plus the time zone thing can mean that I might get a reply at 8pm on Monday for example about something I need for Tuesday. Chances are I'm not going to ignore the email, I will at least read it because I'll see on my phone that it is there and I will make my life harder by not looking at it.