To be utterly fed up of what UK workplace culture has become?

[ExpectationManagementCharm]

I'm a middle manager in a large UK firm. I am not a new manager; and I'm not young, late 30s. I am generally perceived to be at the "laid back"/supportive end of the management spectrum (but I'll fight tooth and nail for one of my team if I think they're being asked unreasonable stuff/being treated unfairly).
However, I'm tearing my hair out at being at the "crunch point" of upper level expectations to get on and deliver stuff vs. how my more junior employees expect to work these days. I'm so exhausted and getting no support from anyone. I can no longer see if it's just my workplace or the norm.

Example1: Junior staff expecting to not dial into team meetings beacuse of trivial reasons - some of which are downright unprofessional (i have my weekly run with a PT booked then- but this is within normal work office hours e.g. 2pm on a Thursday). While my HR policy states that I need to be "flexible" for personal reasons, which means I then need to follow up separately with that person each time. Result - less work for employee, HR is happy, senior management say no problem, more work for me.

Example 2: Junior staff (especially our newly graduated colleagues) expecting to be able to get out of (reasonable) work deadlines by using the word "anxiety" all the time. "I couldn't deliver a client item/I was feeling anxious" (meaning I had to pull an all nighter to get it finished to meet our deadline). I try and escalate to HR - but I need to be "understanding". Result - employee's piss poor performance slides, HR are happy, senior management say no problem (because client delivery didn't suffer), I get to work an all nighter to cover the gap.

These are multiple examples, across lots of team members over the last ~ 5 years, but it's definitely got worse over the last year or so. The concept of "my word is my oath"/reliablility seems to have completely gone out of the window.

Yet my employer's HR team just turn it back on me as a team manager to manage, leading to more work, which means I just have another thing to do.

I'm currently pursuing performance improvement plans with 2 of my team at the moment, whose hiring i was not involved in, and i'm going mad trying to fit in what HR expect (to follow the process) alongside juggling my own actual workload. I'm not just a people manager, yet HR seem to think i have free time to spend doing delicate, intensive people management activity, despite my already crushing workload.

Does anyone else recongnise this or is it time to look for a new employer?

FWIW, i love my team (in general) but the recent piss taking has really taken its toll - I feel like no one at work has my back at all.

A lot of managers find performance management difficult, at all levels of seniority. It's really tough, especially when you do it properly! I've had to do plenty of unpleasant performance/attendance/behaviour management, it sucks.

It doesn't sound like HR is helpful though - they should be giving you the process to follow, and supporting you to do it if you're struggling. Unfortunately, though, it will always be time consuming, because everything needs to be fully documented in case of grievance or tribunal.

lots to digest - i am still reading! but thank you all.
to clarify, I had to pull the all nighter beacuse the event wouldn't have gone ahead without vital documentation being sorted(it;s outing, but think akin to a winter festival event not going ahead because public liability insurance/risk assessments not being anywhere near finished before the submission date -that kind of operational stuff which NEEDS to be done and looks bad on me if it's not done properly). despite having a staff member to actually handle this stuff, and me having my own 38hr work week on top (there is no time on my timesheets for people management. zero. zilch. everything is timesheet coded to projects of my own.)

i would not have expected one of my staff to do an all nighter for standard (non exceptional) work.

i posted this thread in response to the HR pushback on managing an employee who failed to turn up to a planned meeting on time for the 6th time in a row (not the same meeting, but the same employee), despite raising no issues with timing and it being in work hours - you know what the HR rep told me? she verbally told me (would not write it down) "we need to tread lightly as this is a mum, with some health issues". Er. I'm a mum too? And these "health issues" are not a long term health condition which has been medically assessed - they are a self diagnosis of long covid.

i told the HR rep i will be issuing a refer to occupational health and can they guide me through the proper updated process. told me to look on the intranet and fuck off basically.

thanks HR -got my back there.

and now it's back to me to deal with ms. flakey and chase her on some critical customer work that has a hard deadline next week.

i don't care what the HR reps on here are saying, i'm not getting any support from my employer at all - i feel at breaking point myself, and no one is protecting MY mental health or ability to sleep at night!!

Eh? How is any of this the company's fault. Nothing wrong with the culture. You need to do your job properly and manage your team. Excuses of not attending teams? Chat, warn them, if again disciplinary. Anxiety? Sit down talk about it. Tell them your expectations. Refer to HR for occupational health?

Look o hear what you are saying as I have similar challenges, but six meetings? She should have been given a verbal warning after the second, a verbal with an email after the third and start performance managing at the fourth. The jogger should have been told to rearrange his jog.

Its incredibly time consuming to performance manage. I’ve just done it and would estimate it’s minimum 5 hours a week I didn’t have. However after two months of it the person resigned and I’ve just hired a great replacement. Now I have time to start performance managing the next problem.

I also agree on the pathetic excuses and entitlement. It’s not all of them but it’s enough that it makes me hesitant to hire anyone under the age of 30. I don’t have time to do their job as well as mine.

This maybe way out, but I often wonder if this lack of expectation is due to the controls over how old teens need to be to work. With the ‘rules’ are we missing the key times to you'd kids into a work ethic.

I worked from 13, I did as I was told, I followed the rules, I respected those older than me. I've had employees at 16+ for Saturday jobs...late, hungover, sullen, on their phones all of the time,absent at the drop of a hat and they don't care. Challenge them and they leave.

( to not be a agist, I also work with experienced professionals who also don't want to meet their roles and responsibilities either).

You do need to put people on action plans, refer to occupational health and also use the policies to manage people out.

Anxious person gets some leeway but if it’s regularly a problem then ask for an oh assessment and ask if they’re medically incapable of doing their job. If they are, it’s capabilities and out.

constant meeting skiver = action plan.

bad behaviour = disciplinary.

im a very very supportive manager. I’m firmly of the view that if my staff feel supported at work, they will work hard for me but if they don’t then it’s process time

but six meetings? She should have been given a verbal warning after the second, a verbal with an email after the third and start performance managing at the fourth

6 weeks in a row for a status update, yes. all late (a couple by 10mins, enough time to eat into a 30min meeting), two not attended, last week 15mins late, this week no show. I've verbally warned after the 2nd, a third "buck up your ideas, here is what i expect" email trail, 4th i contacted HR for advice on how to manage due to employee citing health issues, and i only got the HR specialist i'm supposed to check with 2 weeks later (today).

so 6 weeks running, and i basiaclly got told to go look on the intranet for the occ health refer form/process (which i'd already done, i was wanting to find out if i could speed it up as an ETA on occu health refers is 5 weeks on the SLA section of the intranet advice). so WEEKs and WEEKs of further faffing.

by which time, my customer deadlines will have come and gone. and no doubt her work will be awful and likely late, which i'll need to step in for. again.

I think you are doing the right thing, push the PH and performance management process through even without HR backing you. Either the situation improves or you'll leave anyway, so take charge. I feel for you though because not having HR's support leaves you feeling exposed. Can you get advice or support from a senior manager from another area? Dress it up as mentoring?

That's insane. Other people who actually turn up to work will be expecting action on this because it isn't fair to them.

I might not go as far as bringing back underage working but there's some sense to this.

On mn at least you have loads of posters who think dc should never have even a part time job as long as they are in education as thar should be their sole focus (as though 18 year olds spend every spare hour revising!) so you get 21 year old graduates who've never experienced the working environment a) being thrust into it full time and b) in a comparatively high pressure environment

Work is completely different to education and of course its a shock to the system. Its stressful, tiring, you have to get up early, be polite to people all the time, and they expect you to turn up every day! At least if you start off doing shelf stacking or a newspaper round or waitressing aged 16 it's only a few hours a week and its fairly low stakes -people don't expect as much out of the Saturday boy/girl whose still at school as they do out of the full time graduate in their twenties.

They also lack comparison - yes lots of jobs are hard in completely different ways but the more experience you have the more you balance the positives against the negatives -yes my current job as more responsibility but its physically easier than when I worked in a shop. Yes i have strict deadlines now but there's fewer people shouting at me than when I worked in customer services, etc. Whereas if all you've got to compare it with is rocking up to a few uni lectures when you can be bothered then pretty much any job is going to compare negatively!

The principles of making a ‘reasonable adjustment’ are from employment equality legislation & apply to people with disability &/or long term health conditions (i.e. more than 12 months). There are a couple of notable additions within the Act about cancer.

This principle is to support people with disability/LTHC staying in work, & performing to a consistent standard, seems to have morphed into a hall pass for not squaring up for what needs to be done to get job down.

Lawks help us all if someone in the peak prime of life cannot get on with relatively simple tasks in a consistent timely way to a schedule & to an acceptable standard. As a line manager, I would not have this continue beyond a defined period of time or in light of a major life stress, after that a referral to OH is required to determine if this a medical problem or a matter of attitude/unreasonable expectations of how much an individual needs to graft to keep pace.

It does niggle me that healthy robust people are offered or claim ‘adjustment’ when disability rights have been fought so hard for to get basic equality legislation & people with disability/chronic health conditions still have to fight their ground for basic adjustments & provisions.

Yes, before anyone leaps on, many a healthy looking person may have ‘hidden’ disability or long term MH problems, but we are speaking of ad hoc claims not relating to disability or long term health conditions where a legal requirement to assess, implement & maintain reasonable adjustments is required.

On some level this is a very simple thing. You need to performance manage, so set very clear work plans and targets and expectations and then if people are failing this start a performance management process with HR support and if they can't step up to the plate then you will start proceedings and they will need to be managed out the door. iIf any of them then identify difficulties (anxiety for example) you need to refer them to occupational health and make reasonable adjustments. If you make all the reasonable adjustments and they still can't perform to the standards of the role they still need to be performance managed out the door. the complexity comes from why this isn't possible. So maybe you don't feel that you can do this because the organisation and HR function doesn't support it? In which case- leave and move to an organisation that does support management process. Or maybe for some reason (about your own personal management style) you don't feel able to do this- in which case seek some coaching support. Or maybe you've identified that this is not a thing that you want to do at all in which case leave and find a roll in which you don't have to manage people.....

Totally sympathise with this.
It drives me mad too . I try and be flexible around employees with school pick ups etc but it is innately unfair on those who are full-time employees having to back fill and work around this.

The thing that is unfair about it all from a manager’s perspective is that you are given a full time role and then expected to people manage on top. The role structure is all wrong. I inherited a couple of very low performing 20 something year olds. One was completely incapable but it took three months of weekly meetings and micro management and informal warnings and formal counseling for him to resign (before he was terminated). The other low performer has no resilience whatsoever. Calls in sick when the going gets tough. Has big weekends by her own omission and then tries to use it as an excuse for her poor performance. So now I’m starting performance manager again but I’m exhausted and stressed myself. I’m really annoyed at their previous manager who completely turned a blind eye.

I would not have expected one of my staff to do an all nighter for standard (non exceptional) work.
All nighters are for Elon Musk and his ilk, not anyone else.

Why say you offer 100% flexible working hours and then get angry with someone for not being able to make a meeting? Makes no sense and is inconsistent. What were you doing in that meeting that was so important that the employee's entire job hinged on it? What if they were on holiday?

Why do employers think they own people because they pay them a few peanuts while pocketing vast profits? Why do employers and those who carry out employers' bidding think its appropriate to admonish employees like schoolchildren for checking their phone?

Why is so much lip service being paid about "taking mental health/other health issues seriously", but when they come up, managers react with suspicion? Why is the status of vitally important work not checked until the day before a hard deadline, and then the employee who is struggling with mental health wholly blamed?

Why are young expected to work themselves to death in a society and system where they aren't even rewarded for it?

Why is OP making a thread about how awful 20 year olds are when the clear actual problem is that she has been handed an unworkable workload with ridiculous hours required and offered no support with it? How is that her direct reports' fault?

Gen Z know what they're doing. Boomers have been taken for mugs their entire lives and are now upset when they can't do the same to others.

This is therapeutic. I have to work with one of these. He's probably on the border between a millenial and gen z. He can't be bothered to work. His lack of attention to detail is causing me to look bad as he fails to correct mistakes despite lots of requests. He also has no long term memory so forgets what I asked him or told him 2 emails ago. He also failed to attend last 2 meetings properly. One because he hurt his foot on a piece of wood in his garage, the other because the electrician was coming to his house. I'm not going to be nice anymore.

The second girl has openly said she want my job. She genuinely believes she deserves it and asks when I'm going to step aside.

I'm fucking sick of these people.

I'm not a manager, but I found that young people who have been to university often feel that they now know everything. They start a job where they have to be trained to do that specific job but just won't listen, apparently I knew nothing despite doing the job, and guess what, I went to university too! I don't know if that is very common but it was so frustrating trying to get them to just do the bloody job. Constant discussions about how their way was best! The problem was that there were legal repercussions if they didn't get it right, and it was only when that happened that they changed. Please keep a trail of what is going on,to protect yourself.

Yep recognise it all. As does senior management in my organisation. At the moment we are starting to go back to the contracts and just trying to enforce that people have to do what their contract says and if they want something different they have to apply for a change in their contact. And yes it is the 20 somethings. Not all of them - have some great 20 somethings, but the ones who behave in this way are all in that age group. I have lectured my own twenty somethings not to be twats at their places of work because it does seem to be a generational attitude. I reckon that is why my youngest gets such glowing reports at his work - because he turns up, does his job, goes & keeps any whinging about it to home. I rave about any of my team who do the same!

In my company you get paid hourly. Sometimes saying ‘okay that’s fine, go home’ (meaning they don’t get paid) works to remind them they are not indispensable but not always.

It is always the same people though. So now whenever I have something important they need to do I have a backup plan. Often, but not always, that backup plan is me - but I make sure I have time to be the back up, so will assign myself work that can be dropped for that day. I still end up having to work extra hours but not stupid amounts & if I am starting to get exhausted myself due to a run of it I tell senior management. If it isn’t me who is backup I talk to the person who is in advance so they know they may have to step in. To protect those people - I don’t want reliable employees leaving! - I tell them to be sure to tell me if picking up other people’s work is getting too much & I will reallocate/do it myself/go to senior management to look for someone from the organisation to do it - I also check in again before they pick up. I am also clear with senior management that I have no idea whether X will turn up to do Y and explain my back up in advance. I also notify them if I think someone in the team is picking up too much and look at how we can give them a break. I really do try to protect the rest of the team because the twatting around can really impact on & destabilise the rest of the team. If they are protected they also have more capacity to pick up some of the last minute dropped work rather than me having to do it all.

I also try not to assign important tasks to the people who I know may bail at the last minute.

I use HR to find out what I am allowed to do (eg sending people home means they don’t get paid for that time - how much of that I can I do?). I use them to find out how much I can drop the unreliable ones (ie how much work do I have to give them?). I also use HR before performance management meetings to check what I can/can’t enforce or ask them to attend to note take/offer advice. Luckily I have very supportive senior management I can offload to, who will help me find solutions & who will step in themselves if necessary.

After the week I have had, that felt good 😂

I managed a whole team of women worldwide, from Japan to California. It was also flexible hours as long as the tasks were done by the deadlines, they could manage their time how they pleased. However, as their manager they had to make themselves available for just 30 mins a week for the team briefing. I'm sure you can understand that it was a logistical nightmare but I found a time and day that everyone could make. The person who has a PT ask her what time would be better, and explain that now that you have rearranged the meeting you expect her to attending with the rest of the team as you don't have the resources to chase her down each time.

As for the all nighter, I hope you explained that you have children who rely on you and because of this you will not be able to be there for them. To be honest, it sounds like a catastrophic breakdown and I would be micro-managing their arse as I wouldn't want to have to deal with another all nighter. I also hope they don't get a bonus for fulfilling that contract.
Do you perform monthly personal reviews? As it would certainly be something I'd be discussing with them and how next time I expect them to manage it. A monthly review would also be a good time to ask the flaky mum what times for the weekly meetings would be best and your expectations and also to see how she is feeling. I found these reviews helped stopped me pulling my hair out with certain situations and it also allowed my team to discuss with me any problems they had. I also found out that certain individuals were able to take on more accounts than I was expecting which obviously lead to more money their way. Good luck, be firm and persistent but be fair.

We take on apprentices into administration roles fresh from school and college. They are working toward GCSE A level qualification. They generally work hard are reliable with a few exceptions. They often need time to learn how to work in an adult workplace but didn't we all. Its the university graduates who often come in at the second tier of administration jobs that are a nightmare.....can't get up for work on time, dressing like they are going out clubbing when smart casual is perfectly fine, mobile phones constantly going, vape breaks every five minutes, laying any reason why they can't do the work onto anxiety. Come in Amy, kid out of care, no GCSEs joins the general reception, keeps her head down, offers to minute some meetings. Four years of hard work and she is Business Support Manager and worth her weight in gold.
I think a sense of entitlement has something to do with it and thinking a job is beneath you is not the way forward.
Obviously there are exceptions to the rule of course.

My team and I have had to do literally all the heavy lifting for the past 4 weeks to organise a forthcoming event. The person whose job it was (not my direct report) just didn't show up at one of the briefing sessions (sorry? There is a choice?) and then their manager had to step in and do what they were meant to do, plus that manager showed up at the briefing session this week and said "sorry [useless person] probably won't be at this session as they're expecting their new kitchen units to be delivered". In working hours. Unbelievable! But all the while it's tolerated, that shoddy behaviour won't ever stop.

maybe I come from another era where sloppy attendance and putting upon other colleagues would have caused me deep shame and make me feel like a failure, but it's now a disease, people just don't seem to give a shit anymore and it gets left to the person's manager to pick up the slack. Performance management takes months to kick in, and the person just carries on regardless. Pay increases are zero so they think why should I bother, I'll keep my job anyway and they'll never sack me, so meh.

thankfully my team are all doing a good job, but then they know I won't put up with that, they know the clear boundaries and want good reviews so see the value in leaning in and not letting their team mates down.

OP don't make a rod for your back by allowing shoddy behaviour to go on for longer than a few incidents max. Nip it in the bud, show them it is totally unacceptable on your team.

I think that flexible working doesn't work with client based projects and deadlines.

I agree, and employers should also consider older applicants. Ageism is rife in employment. I found myself applying for jobs in my mid 50s, after decades of conscientious toil for 3 different employers. I thought, wrongly, that I'd be viewed as an excellent prospect for potential employers - great track record, experience, maturity, no child care issues. I couldn't get an interview! I took up voluntary work, and I'm now employed at the place I volunteered (presumably because they knew me and I wasn't an anonymous 'old' person applying for the job).

Part of my role is supervising the volunteers. Younger volunteers tend to be doing it for their CV - volunteering is expected nowadays - and some, not all, simply ignore instructions if its something they don't want to do. It's bizarre, they don't say they won't do something, you just discover later that it hasn't been done. Also our reception should be manned at all times - no problem with older volunteers, younger ones tend to wander off leaving reception unmanned. It's a very self focussed attitude - not a quality that works well in the work place.

I think a sense of entitlement has something to do with it and thinking a job is beneath you is not the way forward.

But these new graduates must have grown up seeing their parents work hard,and not be there for sports day etc.