What would you do?

[workissues2023]

NC obviously for this
You work as a team and an individual and we are given tasks to do
The team tasks are done by maybe 2 members of the team, and the others do a lot less
So maybe 800 tasks compared to 20/30/40
You don't get paid extra, it's a salary

Management can't do anything about it, and if the team tasks aren't done by the usual people, they never get done
What would you do if you were one of the people constantly completing the tasks?

do all the tasks take the same amount of time? is everyone meant to do the same number of tasks? is there a system that tracks the tasks and who does them?

i'd say you do the tasks that you can in the hours you have and leave the rest. when things start being incomplete, management will have to do something.

Management absolutely can do something about it, if there’s a need and a want to.

They should be creating a system for work to be divided fairly, and once that’s in place there should be no need for anyone to do extra, unless they want.

If that’s not the case then either a) work is actually fair, there’s just something behind the scenes making that not obvious, or b) you have shit managers. If it’s the latter I’d look elsewhere.

Varies but could be 30 seconds - 4 mins max
Am trying to be deliberately vague, you could make money on them but also if you don't do the task and take it when someone else has done it, you could make money that way

Think ringing someone to take out a mobile phone contract, if they take it out, we get money
If they ring back and take it out with anyone, they make the money that the original person would have got but the call was started by the person doing the task

Yes tracked and easy to see who has done what and we should be doing similar amounts

They have flagged it several times that a few people are doing all the work and reminded everyone that the work needs doing
That's as far as it has gone

How do the tasks get allocated?

As a giant list basically that we should work our way through as a team. Pick any of them, add your name and complete the task

Your management need to put the people not pulling their weight on a disciplinary pathway that will lead to them being dismissed if they don’t improve.

They presumably don’t do this because they know you are doing the work and they CBA.

Are your managers fairly low on the company food chain? In which case I’d go and see HR and give them all the background.

If this doesn’t work then you either put up with it, stop doing any work yourself, or leave

So far I have stopped doing any work above what would be my fair share, so the work just sits there
It's been allocated out before and that was the same result

To add there are 20 of us, and 2-3 doing their fair share
Been here for 8 years

Management can't do anything about it

Management needs to do their job and manage the situation.
Are the 2-3 who do the 'team' work ever all on holiday at the same time? What happens then?

Not usually. It would just sit there and not get done

I'd be looking for another job, a company with ineffective management and a lot of slackers sounds like it will fail at some point.

Not usually. It would just sit there and not get done

What's the effect of this work not being done?

Definitely won't fail, it's a huge company (it's not but think EE/BT for the size of it)
There is other work but that is reactive and this is the proactive part we should be doing

Hmmm. Eventually I imagine management might get angry and we obviously don't get paid for the tasks
But then if I do the task and someone else (who hasn't done any) picks it up, they make the money anyway so lose lose. They are technically supposed to give the task back to me but you might guess that doesn't happen either

Why don't the 2-3 people doing all the tasks that don't make the money just pick off the tasks the do make the money?

Until you do the task you don't know if the customer will accept it
If they accept it, you get the money. Imagine it's a list of phone numbers and that's it, you have to ring them/email them to see if they want to take out a new contract

If say you leave a voicemail, they ring back and accept the contract, whoever took the call ringing back gets the money

Has it been like this for 8 years? Assume it has some redeeming features for you to stick around?

I guess if it's one of the big telecoms companies planning to cut thousands of jobs, perhaps the people slacking will be prioritised for redundancy.

If it's a long term situation, I don't see what you can do to change things except leave or stop caring.

I've had to use telecoms to make it clear without being the actual industry but if it went bust people would be "WTAF" and it would be front page news everywhere
It would be the equivalent of Tesco closing

Staff turnover is high because of the nature of the job so not 8 years of this but I would say the last year or so
I'm refusing to do any work above my fair share (hence being able to type on here) so the work is just sitting there

I think management are avoiding as they would have to performance manage 80% of the team

If you pick the "team" job off the list, doesn't it automatically show against your name and lock against someone else picking it up, showing you have responsibility from the time you click on it? Then you as the "owner" update whether the client has accepted or not? Sorry if this is a sim question... 🌹

No, because the customer might call back and say "someone called me about taking out a phone contact" and either the staff member who called them isn't available, or the customer can't remember the name. So anyone has to be able to do it

Eventually I imagine management might get angry

About a situation they must know is unfair and which they are not managing effectively?

A solution might be that both the proactive and reactive parts of the work should be registered and rewarded, in proportion to how much effort each part typically is. Is that feasible and would it maybe help in your actual situation?

So 2-3 people are making the calls but the rest of the team just wait for incoming ones?

I'd probably stop leaving voice mails.

Yes and no
We do other incoming work too which is the priority so that's customers ringing with no prompting to take out a new contract
When we are not doing incoming calls we are meant to do this other work

It is rewarded for both
The proactive stuff is rewarded better depending on what the contract is that the customer takes out but you could technically do the proactive stuff all day and not earn anything on it because people don't pick up their phone/don't want a new contract etc

I think I'll just have to do what I've been doing which is my share and no more and see if management eventually do anything. They're well aware I do way more than anyone else and that I'm now refusing to

Numbers wise we have currently 8000 to do between 20
I've done 1700