To think most jobs could be done by fewer people but no one admits it because they’d be out of work?

[PlainMintOwl]

So much of work feels like busywork. Whole roles exist to shuffle paper, attend pointless meetings or justify someone’s salary. AIBU to think most companies could cut staff by 30% and still function?

Check out the book bullshit jobs

I've had 1 job like this, I was taking on double the work anyone else was and that was still a breeze. It was a children's centre, we did some amazing work there and it was sad when the funding was cut but I did think there was a lot of money wasted there and if they were managed better maybe they could have kept going.
My other jobs have been waitress, childcare and social work which were the complete opposite to the children's centre, we were/are understaffed and run off our feet with high turn over of staff. Social work involves a lot of extra unpaid hours.

Upside to these roles is you do not have to worry about time off or being off ill. Someone can always cover.

Prefer itbto being understaffed

I’ve done a number of so-called full time jobs in 4 days a week.

Yes, I agree. I work in a team of 5 and in meetings we always tell the manager how busy we are and make it sound like a challenging role. In reality, I could do a lot more and we would be fine with only 3 in the team. I do hardly anything on my wfh days 2 times a week.

The wider department has grown the last few years and I’m sure it’s because people are less productive. We used to be asked our goals every day and then would have to explain what happened if we didn’t achieve it. Now they’ve moved to a more gentler management style and people aren’t questioned like this any more. So they are doing less. And yet, people are apparently more stressed than ever 🤷‍♀️

Mostly upper management roles. The higher the ladder the less they seem to do. Those at the bottom are scrambling to fit everything in. Don’t get me started on “consultants” £500 a day and wtf do they actually do?

I am an NHS clinician and have never, in 35 years working, had a job that could be done in the hours allocated. I currently have a 34 hour contract over 4 days and regular work an extra 4-6 hours to feel like I am even doing a half decent job.

I'm sure that's the case for some jobs, yes. My work is very much peaks and troughs. During peaks it isn't unusual to work 4-5 hours extra per day and a bit at the weekend, so its very much encouraged to take advantage of the troughs to enjoy a slower pace and work on things which aren't time pressured. If you only saw the troughs you'd assume the job could be done with a third less people.

I had this at a job for the local authority. I was contracted 3 days per week. I finished everything in a morning and then wasn’t allowed to ask for more work or to help other people.

I said at exit that she shouldn’t replace me and think about how to better distribute the team workload but meh - no one cared. Absolutely shit and I left as fast as I could.

Just the opposite, my job has way too many requirements and cannot be anywhere near done in the hours I'm paid for.

Tbh I think a sizeable minority of jobs in any discipline at any level in any company are like this.

everyone thinks it’s everyone else’s
job that’s like this and not theirs but that’s not possible 🤣🤣

I would kill for a job like this again, I used to complain about being bored 🫣.

Upper management are responsible for overall direction. If they were making products, dealing face to face with customers, delivering services, handling payroll, writing pitches for work, writing computer code, hiring and directly line managing huge numbers of individuals ... then there would be nobody to make broader decisions about the direction of things. There would be nobody developing or changing the organisation. There would.be nobody looking at how different parts of it work together best. There would be nobody dealing with lawsuits or regulators or working out what is the best policy to have around operational growth or deciding whether the current business or general work needs to change to another direction to keep the organisation suglccessful.

In any given hour, the organisation might need someone to ship a product or deliver a policy paper to government. Fred the office junior needs to have a great 121 about his ambitions for his career to motivate him. At the same time the organisation also might need someone to consider whether an acquisition or merger with a competitor in Germany would provide long term stability for the organisation. They're really different kinds of work and all are needed

You only don't think upper management does anything when you don't see what it is they do.

Principle of redundancy - creating multiple single points of failure means that all it takes is a sudden illness, accident or somebody to leave (sometimes because the stress of people being the only person who can do particular functions and therefore be unable to have support/help) and everything collapses.

In other cases whilst somebody might not look too busy at a given point, this might be a brief lull before the workload massively increases due to natural/legal/practical fluctuations in hours.

You need a backup - working people at full capacity or over because you're too cheap to recognise that additional personnel are an essential part of stress management & reduction (ie, business stress management, not just for an individual, the business' actual likelihood of functioning) is an inefficient and fundamentally risky prospect for a business.

Without this, you get the personnel equivalent of deciding that you don't need to go and buy more nappies today as you're on the last one in the pack and it's 9.35pm - all it takes is something completely outside your control and you're literally in the shit at 3.30am.

Teacher who would LOVE one of these jobs thanks.

Definitely where I work. We are now only running 3 lines but still have 4 team leaders. Each one is only responsible for around 10 members of staff. They also stand around talking most of the day not actually doing much. At my old job we were responsible for 60. We also have our manager, so for around 35 staff we have 4 team leaders and a manager. Theres a smaller department than ours that has a manager and 2 team leaders. Company didnt give us pay rise this year due to money but happily keeps all these people in management jobs.

Ive been in bullshit jobs where I had to slow down so as not to put my colleagues to shame, That was when I learned about how to sell on Ebay. As long as you were sitting at a computer and typing away people assumed you were busy.

Yes definitely at my work. My team has just taken on a new member for work that could easily be absorbed by the rest of the team. A lot of the team bang on about how busy they are but it’s exaggerated. I told my manager we didn’t need another person. I think he just likes having a big team.

I've never worked in an environment like that. In most jobs I've had, I've ended up doing lots of overtime.

If you came round my team in august, sure you'd maybe think "aye, could do this work with half these staff".

Then busy season would come. You'd be short staffed. You couldn't hire replacements in time because you need knowledge of the company, its systems and processes to manage the busy period. Not to mention, the industry standard is 3 month notice period, which means a 4 month lead time to replace someone who resigns. Contractors are significantly more expensive and can't easily slot in just for busy period.

This is why in financial jobs for example, the bonuses are only ever paid just after the busy company year end. It stops people resigning right before busy season. You'd be a bit fucked if they did.

My department could easily cut 30%. So much nothing going on in each job role, although those that have been there a long time would disagree. We are actually going through a restructure now - although I might lose my job I do think it’s needed

Years ago I worked for local Council. I sometimes felt guilty talking to hard working people as part of my job sorting benefits , etc . I could believe the amount of money I was paid to do fuck all really . And overtime pay was common!

Absolutely some jobs, including my own, could be done in fewer hours. I’m paid for 40 hours a week but could do it in 16 easily.

All true.
However, there are companies with a huge bloat in management. In my workplace we have a Director of Marketing AND a Head of Marketing.
We have a Director of Services AND a Lead Services etc etc.

I can tell you they spend a lot more time in meetings than anything else.

Also I've come to realise, a small proportion of the workforce are just... fast. They are quick readers, process information fast, learn fast. Those people look at teams and go "but this job could be done in half the time".

But for many, many of their workforce, they don't/can't operate at that pace, not for long.

I had this epiphany when a big report came in that we had to react to quickly. Several of us needed to read the report, which was about 80 pages in all.

Some of my colleagues needed 3 times as long to read it as I did. They are all extremely intelligent, degree educated, industry qualified people. Most i would say are more knowledgeable than me at our specialist area. I'm just a faster reader. But it means when i estimate how long my team might need to complete a task, I tend to underestimate.