Working from home: anyone else burdened by tons of useless meetings and by useless bosses becoming even worse?

[SoCloseToLosingIt]

My manager has always been a bit of a control freak micromanager, but the lockdown has really brought out the worst in him.

He keeps scheduling countless video meetings with gazillions of people, most of which are totally useless.
(There are other infuriating behaviours but they are so specific I wouldn't want to be identified).

Basically I spend from 1/3 to 1/2 of my time in useless meetings.

Then, asking around, I learnt that pretty much the same is happening to almost all of my friends. Is this your experience, too?

My interpretation is that insecure middle managers do this because:

• they don't trust their team
• they are afraid their underlings would otherwise spend too much time on Netflix
• they must give themselves, us and their bosses the false impression that they are so busy and important
• this gives them the delusion they are more in control than they really are, of the underlings and of the situation in general; this is particularly true if they realise they have little to no decision-making power, so capricious decisions on stupid stuff like that is the only way they can exert some authority

What is your experience? If you work from home, have you noticed certain aspects of the job and the boss worsening big time with the lockdown?

Yeah we are having more management meetings than usual and as a result more tinkering is going on, lots of poor decisions and unnecessary changes. I love to see people and keep in touch, but largely the meetings are worse than useless.

Yep, my boss is becoming unbearable. When the lockdown first started she wanted us all to sit on a team video call, with cameras on, all day, every day. Presumably so she could check whether we were at our laptops and looking busy. Thankfully some members of staff who have been there much longer than I have told her they weren't doing it and the idea went away (I suspect one of my colleagues may have gone over her head).

We have a team Skype group chat where we basically have to tell her everything we are doing before we do it, even standard weekly tasks. We have timesheets that we submit daily too, plus a daily morning meeting where she asks what we have on that day, so not sure why she also needs this blow by blow account of everyone's day as it happens

One of my friends has to have daily video call meetings at 10am, "to see what everyone is working on that day". Too controlling if you ask me. II know someone else whose managed scheduled everyone's lunch time, so that "someone would alway be available to answer any (unlikely) calls that came in"

Oh my god @Meredithgrey1 that is awful! I’m shocked. I’m sure these managers are failing to see that by behaving like this people are going to leave the first chance they get.

I’m finding the opposite, in the office my day was usually back to back meetings, meetings to talk about meetings etc. People would be late as previous meetings overran. We still have regular team meetings but they are more structured and productive and on time. There’s an atmosphere of trust rather than suspicion and though we do check in regularly on direct reports and with managers the emphasis is on ensuring well-being.

No, nothing like that. No extra meetings at all. Once a month short team meeting and one with my manager - about 20 minutes each, done via Skype phone call. Nothing else. We are all very busy.

DH has this most days. The scheduling of his calls has been getting later and later into the night, last Thursday he was back-to-back from 1-5pm then 6-8pm.

He starts working from home at 9am every day but the 'meetings for meetings sake' are getting him down, he doesn't see the relevance for many of them.

His team, which is project focused, have been seconded to help another division whose work is more relevant during lockdown. It's not exciting work but the boss of this area is a good leader and engages the team.
DH's actual boss is a micromanager, they held a videoconference last week, no agenda, just them walking around, headset on and rambling away about...nothing.
Total waste of time.

I find our "usual" meeting last much longer on time, perhaps because people can't all talk at once! But on the whole I'm being left well alone, which is a but disconcerting actually, I'd quite like someone to be interested in what I'm up to. I do wonder how long it would take for someone to notice I'd stopped getting out of bed for example.

For my own staff, I'm trying to keep I'm touch, to make sure they're OK but I'm not checking up on how they're spending their days.

Yep totally agree.
Pointless waste of time. It would be great to turn tables and micromanage the manager, ask her to justify her time and true contribution/value add to team.

We are having a lot of meetings but in fairness we have had to implement some huge changes so it's been understandable, to an extent. I'm hoping that now things are bedding in a bit the meetings will lessen and I can actually get some work done!

My work have been quite good at protecting our wellbeing and have said that no meetings should take place after 1pm...but it's not really happening like that! I have said I'm not attending anything non-urgent on a Friday though

I don't feel as if we're being micromanaged but I did definitely think WFH would mean fewer meetings not more - how wrong I was! I think it will take some time for most workplaces to settle into the 'new normal'.

That's so disapointing.

My work is busier than ever. My manager trusts us all to get on with it and we have one weekly Teams meeting.

Those who lived by presenteeism before are still emailing out of hours for nothing (other than to show how dedicated they are, and copying everyone in), but my boss isn't the sort to be blinded by that sort of behaviour.

What I'm finding difficult is the colleagues who still need to be "seen". The reply all emails about what a wonderful idea someone else had, the "things to make you smile", the charity links etc.

Oh god yes, the 'keenies' are emailing random rubbish at insane times of the night... and the lazy arses have disappeared off the radar completely

Right, I have a meeting in 10 mins so better go and put some lipstick on so i don't frighten the horses

I have the opposite problem. I'm NHS management but working from home as I'm heavily pregnant and work in covid-y environment (or at least work closely with the medics and nurses in those areas). Normally it's mental back to back sometimes pointless meetings.
As I'm the only one at home, the rest of the team are "too busy" to keep me updated and consequently I don't find things out, or work on something that I later find is debunked or pointless or the parameters change. It's very frustrating and disheartening

We have additional “check ins”, updates and contact calls. I think for some they help reduce isolation and help people feel a little more in control. We make them optional, as for others they are an irritation but for leaders, they are an additional task at a really busy time.

Irritating but important for some, so we do them regardless. Some staff are needier than others.

We seem to have struck a good balance, daily check in with immediate team which is usually only 15-20 mins, weekly meeting with wider team for 45 mins (does include cheesy challenge though, dress a fruit for example 🙄) and monthly our division director gives an update on what's going on.

There a lot of changes across the company so I appreciate the director's update the most, the rest are a bit for the sake of it but it's nice seeing faces other than DH & DD

My boss has disappeared. Sounds good, yes? 3xcept I need answers to things. Then when I finally do catch her she doesn't want to answer and flicks it all to another person. Infuriating!

I am having 2 x 30 mins 'meetings a day'. That's a total 5hrs last week I could have been getting on with my actual job.

No. My bosses have been supportive and wonderful. My whole team is supporting each other remotely. The last few weeks have made us realise how much we like each other and we can’t wait to meet up, whenever or wherever that may be

Same issue as SunnyStroll. Everytime there's a team email there's a race to Reply to All to prove that one is online working and to get some sort of validation. My inbox is getting clogged with pointless bullshit that I still have to check before deleting.

I have the opposite. My employers have scheduled daily optional meetings twice a day and are not otherwise communicating with us. The constant reminders popping up on outlook were irritating but I otherwise just ignored them, since they're optional I assumed they did not have any important information to offer. I think I've been to two optional meetings in total since this started.

However, I didn't get a rota this week and it tooke ages to track one down only to learn the reason I didn't get one is that the cancelled training events are now u cancelled and taking place virtually, a detail that was disclosed to us during the optional meetings. There is pre-reading to do for the train g do I spent most of last night buried in a weeks worth of reading and pre-tests to catch up for this mornings training.

I'll be attending at least one meeting a week from now on and pointing out that optional meetings named "team catch up" or "team social" possibly arent the best forum to pass on vital information about training etc unless they're followed by emails to the entire team.

About night and weekend emails: I kind of have the opposite problem. With two us juggling working from home and childcare, nights and weekends are often the only times we can catch up on work.

BUT if I send an email at midnight, childless colleagues, or those with an army of stay-at-home wives girlfriends concubines etc looking after their offspring, do not understand and think I am just showing off!

I'll admit that sometimes I resorted to setting a delayed send, eg I prepare the email at midnight but I set it so it's sent at 9am

@SoCloseToLosingIt someone in my team is doing this, she is doing half of her hours during the day & the rest at night/weekends. Only a couple of people in our team know but I hope the rest don't think she's being a dick, it's just her way of managing everything.

No. My boss is not a control freak. We are sensible and aware enough to realise that our jobs are at risk if we don't pull our weight. We just don't have time to have loads of pointless meetings. The less mature and trustworthy staff members who could possibly take the piss have been furloughed anyway.

No. My bosses have been supportive and wonderful. My whole team is supporting each other remotely. The last few weeks have made us realise how much we like each other and we can’t wait to meet up, whenever or wherever that may be

That sums up my work team as well Nishky. The people I work with are very much team players.

I'm definitely seeing a difference between those managers who are used to having people work flexibly (let them get on with it) and those who aren't (attempt to micromanage).

As a manager I'm finding it difficult - work want us to check in (purely duty of care) with everyone every day. But we're all juggling childcare etc so I spend half my day trying to talk to my team. I'm trying to move to a WhatsApp chat - so people just have to check in and say hi so I know they're not ill in bed.

For the out of hours - I have a note in my email signature which says I'm working normal hours at odd times at the moment, I may send emails out of hours but I don't expect responses out of hours.