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.

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?

I think you're confusing people like the OP, a manager, and "employees pocketing vast fortunes" - breaking news, they are not the same people. The OP doesn't earn a vast fortune in profits I'm sure, and they don't think they "own" anyone, the contract of employment their reports seem to have forgotten about states they are paid to do a job of work and taking the piss isn't in that contract.

This thread shows that employees very often do behave like school children! If they didn't sit there with their face to their screen, they would need that behaviour pointed out to them. And since when wasn't it a manager's duty to point out to an employee that having their face in their mobile phone, showing zero engagement in what they're meant to be doing in the workplace , isn't how it should be done round here. I don't micromanage my team in any way shape or form, but a manager has the prerogative to point things out without being demonised. The trouble with mobiles is that they have become a modern day equivalent to sitting there thumbing through a magazine, it just isn't a good look. Checking for an expected text is a different matter.

Totally agree with this!
Huge overlooked demographic.
I employed a temp in this situation, out of work and number of years, lacking confidence but lots of enthusiasm.
She's since been made perm and had two promotions. Very grateful for her job, eager to learn and doesn't have an ego - the dream employee!

No. In some jobs you have to work till the job is done, and you don’t know when that will be. Sometimes it warrants an all nighter but they would be warned about long and unsociable hours during the recruitment process. That doesn’t make them an Elon Musk type. 😆

Why wasn't the employee given a warning after they failed to attend the meeting for the third time but you let in drag on to the 6th? No wonder your staff are walking all over you as they see you as a total pushover.

I've had a week of being on the receiving end of people not caring about their work in one way or another.

No one else seems to care anymore so maybe you should join the club.

I am middle management and always strive to ' look after ' my staff. On the whole their performance is great, but it's exhausting balancing senior demands and staff issues. As a result I'm taking a demotion as the stress is too much for me.

Feel your pain, I've had a week from hell.

the trouble with us good'uns is that we do care, we take a pride in our work and don't have the mindset of meh, someone else can deal with my shit! Longer term people who don't care will have an underwhelming CV with little growth or career progression. They don't care, so why should I.

In most jobs you have to arrange those appointments in your own time, or through taking time off. Or pre arrange it with your line manager. They are also not usually regular events.

The pt session sounds like a non medical, hobby type appointment. This should not happen in work hours. Unless formally agreed with your line manager, surely?

On the one hand, there is flexible work - so people naturally book personal things in "work time" - because they are reallocating time as is permitted. Then, from you, its all "If I then book things in you have to drop everything and be there"

I'm not saying you're wrong on the latter, but think about how the practical application of the former is bound to be in conflict at times.

I learned an awful lot about work when I was at Maccys. We had all kinds of people and I saw and experienced a lot. That was a big part of my "kid to adult" journey and probably helped me when I entered the workplace properly and in life generally

I work flexitime, but if I have a meeting/event in the diary I don't treat that time as available to take off. So if my manager books e.g. 10am Tuesday as the weekly team check-in, I make sure I am working at 10am on Tuesdays. It's not hard to be both flexible and available when I'm needed.

My DD 14 has recently been diagnosed as autistic and has anxiety. It is very real and she has suffered a lot since she was in primary school. She can’t cope with a lot of situations so she is able to remove herself from them. All the advice myself and the school receive is to work around her and enable her to take herself out of stressful situations. But she has no resilience whatsoever and she becomes upset and stressed out by the tiniest things. I do worry she won’t be able to cope with a workplace in later years. She is intelligent and creative but she wouldn’t know how to cope with pressure or deadlines because she isn’t ever pushed to try. It is a really tough one because her mental health is so important and her autism obviously makes life so much harder for her. But, I can’t help thinking that in my generation lots of undiagnosed autistic people and people on the spectrum just had to find ways through and be way out of their comfort zones and probably hate their formative years in order to get to a point where they did have some resilience and could manage a job. I find myself torn constantly between trying to protect her emotional and mental well-being but also thinking, come on, try to manage some things independently, try to join in with an activity that is hard for you. I know this is off topic and a specific case, with different circumstances. But I think it applies more generally too. As someone else said, our generation has been responsible for creating a generation of people who can’t cope. I really don’t know what the solution is though as it can’t be easily reversed now.

You should time code on their projects when managing the team. Because that's what you are continuing to

It does if both employer and employee take a sensible approach. It is entirely possible to work flexibly, but to also accept that there will be super-busy months or weeks when it'll be all hands on deck. Big projects or deadlines in the calendar can be planned for, and a sensible employee wouldn't book their optional hobby stuff for that week.

So much of this resonates!

I see the sense of entitlement in employees across a wide age spectrum so not just those new to the workplace - there can be an expectation from junior staff that they should be able to pick and choose what they do and when they do it. And be highly praised for everything they do too even if just considered a standard day to day part of the job description.

The counter to that are the small number of staff that are engaged and reliable, keen to learn and support the team. They're the ones that will progress - unfortunately the reward for their efforts is usually a mid or senior management role where they then have to deal with exactly what you've described.

Resilience and the capacity to manage workload seems limited among many of junior employees now, leaving managers with the option of letting projects fail (and being deemed a bad manager) or taking on the work themselves/ reallocating it to the engaged people. I see this happen a lot - half the team struggles on while the other half can't see their role in the stress being caused to others and want more praise/accommodations to be made.

No advice Op, just saying I feel your pain.

The thing with flexible working is, is has to work both ways for junior staff. I’ve had a ‘flexible’ working job in the past where I was expected to stay late/start early to meet the demands of the role. Absolutely fine, I understood that. But when I was still expected to be available at all times during ‘core’ hours and take annual leave, rather than use the huge amount of accrued hours I’d built up, to attend the odd personal appointment it started to feel a bit one-way. When I had a slightly longer lunch break booked into my diary in advance but meetings would still get put in that I was expected to attend. When I had to lead events involving a week of overnight stays for ‘personal development’ when really it was just because the manager on twice my salary didn’t want to be away from family all week - but it was fine for me to be. But then I couldn’t get involved in the projects closer to home because everyone wanted to do them.

We aren't talking here about Victorian work practices!

We are talking about people who are being paid a salary in return for performing certain tasks in a timely manner and to acceptable quality - in other words, a standard job contract.

In that contract, which they have the choice to accept or not before starting employment somewhere, it will state certain expectations of the employee in return for which the employer will pay them a certain amount of money plus other contractual benefits e.g. pension (often more than the legally mandated contributions), the legally mandated amount of holiday plus often more, maybe a performance bonus, often paid sick leave etc.

A part of most contracts is that the employee is expected to comply with the job description they will have been given on starting the job and usually at the application stage, and that the employee needs to conform to the corporate standards.

I don't think a 37.5 hour a week reasonably paid office job is work themselves to death in a society and system where they aren't even rewarded for it. And there is a difference between having a genuine mental health problem, and only wanting to work when everything is perfect in their lives but still get paid when they aren't working. Most larger employers these days have occupational health teams, and make free counselling arrangements for staff who are struggling with mental health

Yes it IS appropriate to admonish employees like schoolchildren for checking their phone when it's every 5 minutes and they fail to get done the reasonable amount of work they are being paid to do. I can just see your reaction if you were at a supermarket and 4-5 times the staff doing your checkout stopped to look at their phone, maybe comment on someone's social media post, take a social call, or even watch a video clip they have been sent.

And flexible working works both ways. If you want your employer to let you fit your work in around when it's convenient for you, in return you should be prepared to fit work around some aspects of your life. If you know you always have a team meeting on a Wednesday afternoon, don't arrange personal appointments for that time if it can be avoided. If there's an important project review, don't arrange to have the plumber come that day unless it's an emergency.

There are so many allowances made these days for a decent work/life balance, especially in office work e.g. days arranged around school pickups, shorter weeks or compressed hours, the ability to remote work some or most of the time, facilities time for union work or being on an equalities panel.

I feel for you. You clearly don’t have the resources to do the work assigned to your team. The right move is to raise that with your manager. You can’t fill in with extra hours to hit deadlines and particularly not if you’re not being paid for it. You need to assess how much work your team is actually capable of and what that means for your schedules and discuss it with your manager. You need to say no to work that your team can’t handle. You need to account for all the people management work that you’re doing on the schedule so it’s visible to your manager. Your manager needs to decide if she wants you doing that or doing task-related activities. She can’t have both. It’s your responsibility to make that clear to your manager.

The gradual shift in parenting from “children should be seen and not heard” to “baby-led/child centred”
once upon a time children were raised to do as adults told them, follow the rules, and I’ve heard in the 70s it was quite acceptable for kids to sit in a car for 2 hours whilst their parent went to the pub (I’ve read that on here, but I’m an 80s baby). Nowadays the child has to be at the centre of everything, their voice matters most so we should listen to them and follow their lead. It’s a shift from adults being in charge to the children ruling the roost.
if you think gen z is bad, imagine what Gen A are going to be like when they start entering the work place in 10years time 😬

All of this. It’s the generation where they were all winners at sports day, and everyone got a medal, even if they were useless.

None of them can cope with anything.

Mm, I don't know. If baby boomers and Gen X were such brilliant parents with their stricter style, how come they've managed to raise such supposedly shit millennial and Gen Z generations?

There is hope. Our 1st and 2nd year students coming in to uni and bright and sparky. There does seem to be a shift again.

And a lot of them seem to be tired all the time. Very listless and constantly complaining about it.

Not to go on a bitch fest but walking down the street I often spot generation z with weird looks in their eyes. Like zero empathy for anyone else. Joyless but also very self assured. I could never say this in real life!

Oh yes, 20somethings are the only generation to have that problem!