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?

My husband's manager was put on furlough last time but my DH wasn't, my Dh is now has his job. If I was your manager I would be very worried.

You know you can write an email and then choose a time for it to be sent? As in write it at 3pm, but put a delayed send for it to go out at 10pm.

Get rid of work emails on your phone.

Most people don’t see their managers anymore and can still work fine. I have not seen my manager since March!
Also don’t contact your manager outside your working hours, not your issue that he works in a different timezone now.

This happened in a friend’s workplace. The team managers were furloughed, nobody else was. They needed people to do the actual work but saved the cost of the middle management type level.

Then they realised that maybe they don’t really need team leaders and have put them all at risk of redundancy and more than halved the number of team leader positions so they have to fight for the posts.

If I was your line manager I’d be worried about job security.

If you need an answer on Thursday, email the owner. He'll soon rethink the arrangement if all the extra work comes to him.

Sorry, seen he’s negotiated it. Well personally I think he’s a fool. He might think he’s indispensable, currently the boss might think he’s indispensable.....but if it works ok with him being part time why would they bring him back full time?

Have these issues been raised with anyone? If you are all working round the issues to ensure the business survives it might be the manager thinks it is working, there might be an option if raised to change his furlough hours so he is available for a short time every day, meaning less of a long delay on responses? Has that been suggested?

Sounds to me like they're thinking of getting rid of him

He's the one in a bad position, not you. You've still got a job. I'd personally keep my head down and crack on.

Are you feeling a bit resentful or hard done by because you think he's catching a free ride, having a subsidised mini holiday at his own discretion at home? Because it doesnt sound like work is the actual problem - you and your colleagues are adapting and sorting things out on your own (awesome on your part) and stuff is getting done - and as others have pointed out, its all shining a light on how disposable he is really in the scheme of things, so his situation is probably getting a bit tenuous. Are you angry not at the work, but at the idea that he is abusing the government furlough system (or your employer is) while the rest of you all have to pick up the slack and slog on? If so then say it, it doesnt help to try screen it behind something else.

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

So don't bother emailing him. You all sound perfectly capable of dealing with things in his absence. Just get on with the job.

I don't get why you're all so apparently dependant on this man, although you've demonstrated you don't really need him at all.

I would just get on with it. Do not read or respond to emails outside of your working hours (if he won't do it, why should you?). And then everytime something comes up where you needed feedback from him but it wasn't available during working hours, then I would make a point of highlighting this with further up the line management. Say, "I've put together this presentation. Please let me know if there is anything you would like me to change, since I was not able to run it by first xxx due to his working pattern." Or "I've booked this meeting for whatever date, which I hope suits everyone, as xxx was unavailable for me to confirm it with him, etc." Don't wait around, just plow forward with keeping your own deadlines and making decisions and if he isn't available to provide feedback, he isn't.

That said, sounds like there are some poor management decisions going on there, as with COVID, I have students all over the world now (who haven't come back to uni) and even I am expected to work so to accommodate the time differences. So it's ridiculous that he has purposely moved to another time zone, but is allowed to work to local hours. Surely, working 5 days a week, half days, to mesh with the team's working hours would be the sensible solution? I do actually think it's more possible than you realise that he is being furloughed out of a job.

For non urgent contact - send it via email whenever the hell you like. Not reading it outside of his contracted hours is his responsibility, not yours.

For urgent contact, first ask yourself - is it actually urgent or am i just frustrated about the situation? If genuinely urgent, email company owner and say, “I need XYZ from John, but he won’t pick up until 15:00 tomorrow and without this info I can’t do ABC which is needed by 16:00 today. Can you please either support me with XYZ or make exceptional contact with John?” Copy your manager.

For something that you need to discuss with your manager but his hours mean they’re not working hours for you... check you’re not being a jobsworth first. If it’s not often, easy to do - and your company treats you well in return, just do it. I frequently do 07:00 or 19:00 calls for other time zones - but if I want an hour off at 14:00 to go to school sports day, that’s fine. If it’s happening frequently, and you don’t get the benefit in return, push it up to your line manager. Switch it to email. Ask him to call you between . Don’t even refer to his current hours - he’s the boss, let him worry about the solution to that.