Hello.
It’s been a while since koffdrop.com was updated in any way. I typically write posts when Im at the office between bouts of work and boredom. I’ve touched on my workload in older posts. Well, recently the workload has become totally ridiculous – and not in a good way. To summarise, the system I cater for used to be covered by four people. It’s now covered by me alone. The reason for this is that staff keep leaving our team of eight due to the poor salary. The result is a constant cycle of training new staff and watching them leave. The thing is, we’ve been shedding staff for the last six months and are now down to three members (myself and two others) and ‘company policy’ has been quoted as reasons for my employer not getting their act together to solve the situation.
Things had got to a point where I’ve been losing sleep and unable to relax in my free time – affecting me and those around me. Recently, a director saw fit to add to my already impossible workload on the basis that their “isn’t a processing capacity issue”. It’s nice to know that I, apparently, am not a factor in overseeing this £7 million a year system for my employer.
Things got so bad that I have had to consider what immediate action I can take to benefit myself – it is painfully apparent that my employer doesn’t see any need for urgent action and I have absolutely no confidence in them supporting me in my work. Part of this action has been to see my GP who immediately signed me off work for a starting period of two weeks and insisted that I do all I can not to think about work. It’s helping to some degree, but I still have grave concerns about my work environment which I fear won’t go away just because I’m not there.
I’ve worked in some pretty interesting environments. I’ve had numerous instances of the need to do all-nighters and all-weekenders. Hell, I’ve even had times when I come to work on a Saturday and not leave the office until Friday. In the context of that particular job, I can accept that. Years ago I worked for a family-run businesses which, frankly, I would never ever recommend unless you’re part of that family. I’d seen many rules broken in those days. But my current employer, without question, is the worse of any I’ve found myself with. For a company that likes to quote “we’re not a blame culture” it’s telling that a good 80% of my work goes under the heading of “covering my ass”. I’ve not worked anywhere else where I’ve seen my team mates moved to tears by the insensitivity and unprofessionalism of other staff. I’ve never worked so hard for such an underpaid role and I’ve never seen management as shoddy or disinterested with the needs of the actual workers as this one. My employer proudly proclaims it is Business of the Year for the second year in a row. It is one of the largest employers in my city. It has offices worldwide.
Whilst I have not signed any contract of non-disclosure it is not my policy to burn any bridges. However, my employer seems to have a serious lack of understand of the needs of some of it’s employers and a tendency to rebuff many queries with “it’s company policy”. For example, I have unused holiday and the end of the financial year approaches. I have no interest in using this holiday as, with my current workload, it will be counter productive as my absence will create significantly more work for me on my return (after all, there is nobody else to look after my work when I am not there – my colleagues all have impossible workloads). So I am unwilling to take holiday due to the environment I find myself in as a result of the (in)action of my employer to provide support for me. My employer, adding fuel to the fire, likes to remind me that if I don’t take this holiday it is “company policy” not to carry it over to the next financial year nor is it “company policy” to reimburse me for it financially. The result? A lose/lose situation for me whilst the company ignores the exceptional circumstances it has put me in and quotes the “company policy” line. There are countless other instances like this that have taken moral to all new depths and I look forward to getting the chance to speak to my employers directly about each one during my exit interview when I eventually find another job.
I feel a battle with my employer is looming. Although my work is professional and my methods thorough and dutifully keeping within all the company’s many, many policies I am confident that the company will try to claim some moral high ground or accuse me of misconduct. I can only wonder what might happen if I was forced to play some of the aces up my sleeve.
Normal games-ranting service will be resumed shortly.
Oooh. Hope you’re enjoying the time off. I registered with a GP this morning and was told I have asthma and high blood pressure. Marvellous.
Very curious to hear what your ‘aces’ are, and when they’re gonna get played…
Sorry im confused, you say you have an issue about
“The main reason for this has been down to time. I typically write posts when Im at the office between bouts of work and boredom. Well, recently the workload has become totally ridiculous – and not in a good way. To summarise, the system I cater for used to be covered by four people. Its now covered by me alone. The reason for this is that staff keep leaving our team of eight due to the poor salary. The result is a constant cycle of training new staff and watching them leave. The thing is, weve been shedding staff for the last six months and are now down to three members (myself and two others) and company policy has been quoted as reasons for my employer not getting their act together to solve the situation.”
you at work…so whats your issue your paid to go to work no blog on the net! you should be happy you have some free time at all to post, most of us have to wait until we are at home to even touch the net!!
it sounds like things are tough with staff leaving but surely you should be pulling together with your other mates to keep things going? are your bosses resolving the issue with new employees??
“Ive never worked so hard for such an underpaid role”
works hard mate, all businesses these days make you work your nuts off, given where i work in the finance industry i know the company your talking about, i deal with them, they seem proffessional to me!!
“I have unused holiday and the end of the financial year approaches. I have no interest in using this holiday as, with my current workload, it will be counter productive as my absence will create significantly more work for me on my return (after all, there is nobody else to look after my work when I am not there – my colleagues all have impossible workloads). So I am unwilling to take holiday due to the environment I find myself in as a result of the (in)action of my employer to provide support for me. My employer, adding fuel to the fire, likes to remind me that if I dont take this holiday it is company policy??? not to carry it over to the next financial year nor is it company policy??? to reimburse me for it financially. The result?”
again mate what is your issue, this is standard in any company! you have a year to take your hols, use them or lose them is standard policy !! and when ever anyone goes on holiday they return to more work when thy get back…its the way of business, work backs up!!
“I feel a battle with my employer is looming. Although my work is professional and my methods thorough and dutifully keeping within all the companys many, many policies I am confident that the company will try to claim some moral high ground or accuse me of misconduct. I can only wonder what might happen if I was forced to play some of the aces up my sleeve.”
Now i like the look of this place and will prob post here but not if you act the way you are sounding, this sounds like you are on the verge of screwing over the guys you work with!?? is that what type of guy you are??
Monkfish, thank you for your comments and, whilst I (understandably) disagree with your mentality I’m interested in what you have to say.
The basics are this:
Do you feel it’s right for a company to expect one person to do the workload that four people were doing?
Do you feel I am making a mountain of a molehill if, after seeing my GP, it is recommended I take a break from my work due to stress?
Do you believe that in exceptional circumstances where staff are working exceptionally hard that the employer should burden them with MORE work rather than making efforts to solve the resourcing crisis?
Come to think of it – Monkfish, what is your issue? Surely YOU are paid to work and not read blog site or post comments in your working day? Should you really be judging me on such behaviour?
“Now i like the look of this place and will prob post here but not if you act the way you are sounding,”
I’m not sure whether I should be particularly concerned if such a judgemental and hypocritical person as yourself threatens not to read or comment on this site. Do as you will, the choice is yours.
“this sounds like you are on the verge of screwing over the guys you work with!?? is that what type of guy you are?”
I like my team members very much. However, this is an issue regarding me and my employer. I am not in the habit of adopting problems that are not mine. When the resource problem with the company has become my problem then that is when I must take action for myself. If the company had listened to it’s staff instead of looking at the bottom line (which, incidentally, is only looking unaffected because the remaining staff are so damn good at their job) then there would not be need for this sort of behaviour.
As for your comments about what you think my employer is and what you think of them as a professional company – your comments seem astoundingly short sighted. Firstly, you cannot be certain who my employer is. Secondly their outward appearance my be professional – but as any employee of a large firm will tell you – what goes on on the inside will alarm many.
After re-reading your comments I cannot believe you understand my position or the environment I am coming from. You are welcome to comment but not to troll.
“Do you feel its right for a company to expect one person to do the workload that four people were doing?”
In exceptional circumstances then yes! you get paid to turn up and work, you do the max work you can in those hours , if the work is not completed then as long as your boss in informed and you know you have done your utmost them you are fine!!
“Do you feel I am making a mountain of a molehill if, after seeing my GP, it is recommended I take a break from my work due to stress?”
Please GP’s will sign anyone off for stress at the drop of a hat!!, i cannot comment on your individual stress level, but too many people use stress as an excuse!!
“Do you believe that in exceptional circumstances where staff are working exceptionally hard that the employer should burden them with MORE work rather than making efforts to solve the resourcing crisis?”
It depends, if the company feels that the work is profitable to the business then yes they will ask for more, if it is a resource issue as you state then you flag it and caveat that if they want this more doing then something else must slip! of they need to give you more help!!
“Come to think of it – Monkfish, what is your issue? Surely YOU are paid to work and not read blog site or post comments in your working day? Should you really be judging me on such behaviour?”
Im on a day off today and surfing around when i came accross this place!!, the top post struck a cord and so here i am!! I have net acess at work and sites like this are blocked, but i would only use them at lunch as the rest of the time im doing my job!
Now i like the look of this place and will prob post here but not if you act the way you are sounding,???
Im not sure whether I should be particularly concerned if such a judgemental and hypocritical person as yourself threatens not to read or comment on this site. Do as you will, the choice is yours.
How am i judgemental, i have not judged you i have responded to your comments with valid responses, im not a hypocrite as im on holiday! you i preume are recuperating at home by blogging!
this sounds like you are on the verge of screwing over the guys you work with!?? is that what type of guy you are????
” (which, incidentally, is only looking unaffected because the remaining staff are so damn good at their job) ”
so these guys suffer because you are off?
“As for your comments about what you think my employer is and what you think of them as a professional company – your comments seem astoundingly short sighted. Firstly, you cannot be certain who my employer is. Secondly their outward appearance my be professional – but as any employee of a large firm will tell you – what goes on on the inside will alarm many.”
I can be certain, you said they were business of the year, that is widely publised in my working place, so know excatly what company you mean!!
as for what goes on my cause alrm. well the same can be said for any industry, we dont know the half of what may go on in companies we dont work for, the food industry puts all sorts of crap in our food, the finance industry does allsorts with our data and money, the health care industry abuses us and out info etc…
“After re-reading your comments I cannot believe you understand my position or the environment I am coming from. You are welcome to comment but not to troll. ”
I can understand it, but i think that you seem to have an unrealistic idea of the working world , what is expected of you for your wages. I underdstand we each have a breaking point but some of yours seems to be that you cannot run this site and work at the same time…well this site does not employ you!!
now i dont want any of this to come accross antagonistic, im just trying to state what i understand of the working world in relation to your origional post!!
and i would also be interested in your aces.. as per Pedros comment!!
“I can understand it, but i think that you seem to have an unrealistic idea of the working world , what is expected of you for your wages. I underdstand we each have a breaking point but some of yours seems to be that you cannot run this site and work at the same time well this site does not employ you!!”
Then you have totally the wrong end of the stick. I am not choosing to do koffdrop.com OR work. My greivance is not about whether work permits me to play in worktime.
As I had already mentioned, I have worked in roles where I have worked without leaving the office for up to a week. I’ve worked some pretty long hours and in situations that would make EA Spouse blush (in fact the industry-wide furor over the demands made on that EA worker by EA spouse seemed totally over-the-top to me).
My tolerance and acceptance of high and demanding workloads is pretty damn high.
The situation has been created by apathy on my employer’s part. A sheer unwillingness to listen to it’s staff or to react to a *human* crisis has forced my personal workload to 500%. This is a situation of my employer’s making – not of chance or uncontrollable circumstance but of ignorance and apathy. My employer is more than capable of limiting incoming workload when computer resources are unavailable but ignores the issue when it comes to humans.
I have been DISCRIMINATED against by my employer in respect of how they treat my holiday allowance compared to other staff. I have been BULLIED into undertaking an unrealistic workload as a result of the handling of a situation BY the company.
Why should I pay for the mistakes of unprofessionalism of my employer? Why should I accept it? As someone who has managed teams for years and years in other areas of my career I *know* that this is a travesty of mis-management and I absolutely refuse to suffer for the peace of mind of my employer who has *repeatedly* made a bad situation increasingly worse.
My employer is capable of getting new programmers flown in within 48 hours when it suits them but chooses to take over six months to make inroads into resolving our resource crisis on the basis of “company policy”.
Note that the capitalised words are terms mentioned on my work’s intranet with regards to grievances in the workplace.
Many of my issue are not merely about the unreasonable demands made of me by my employer due to bad management and apathy but also of blatant double-standards in how it acts and treats it’s staffing.
I have a very professional outlook – if I didn’t then you can rest assured that the £7 million system that I now oversee single-handedly would have fallen apart many months ago and many financial corporations would have been asking questions about service levels. This hasn’t happened. As the only client-facing individual in the role (and that’s around 80 corporate clients at last count) I take full credit for the unaffected appearance this system.
I understand the basics of my contract (you do work, we give you money). However, I have standards of living as well and there is a point at which I refuse to pay for the sins of my employer.
Perhaps you are more willing to be taken advantage of. Perhaps you are on a much more comfy salary and haven’t been de-motivated by direct actions of your employer. Perhaps you ARE my employer.
I would very much like you to endure the same 18 months that I have (particularly the last 6) and come back to me with your corporate defense.
Koff
I too work in a high pressure environment, the company expect way more than advertised, and do not remunirate in kind.
but i assure you this is not confined to a few businesses this is the way with all public limited companies, the bottom line and the share holders is who they want to please, not the employees!
Im sure if you feel you have been bullied and discriminated against then you will have a case when you leave.
But remeber you mentioned you work with others, are you prepared to drop them in it? are you prepared for them to pick up your work load, and how if you work in a team are you abble to state:
“This hasnt happened. As the only client-facing individual in the role (and thats around 80 corporate clients at last count) I take full credit for the unaffected appearance this system.
”
surely you work with a team who aid you in doing this work, are you assuming more credit than you deserve? are you aware of all that others do. Having worked in many industries and many positions i have noticed that we as employees can be very insular in our thinking and thus not appreciate all that other do to aid us and also all that our own managers do do improve our working lot in life!
have you told these people your issues and given them the opportunity to rebut? have they put any fixes in place? are they trying to address your needs?
remeber up to board level in big companies we all answer to some one and all have red tape to step through.
maybe its your misunderstanding of big companies and how they opperate?
I dont think my employers are taking advantage when they ask me to work hard, i may feel pushed and stressed but they pay me for it…not loads, but i signed my contract and accepted the wage for the work!
My company has been pushing for a buy out recently and we have gone through a staff trimming and relocation exercise so think i can relate to some of the pressures you feel.
all the advise i can give is as stated already talk to you bosses and try and resolve, dont burn your bridges, and dont screw the people you work with!!
“But remeber you mentioned you work with others, are you prepared to drop them in it? are you prepared for them to pick up your work load, and how if you work in a team are you abble to state:
This hasnt happened. As the only client-facing individual in the role (and thats around 80 corporate clients at last count) I take full credit for the unaffected appearance this system.
???”
Because, my inquisitive friend, my team delivers many systems. A number of these systems are fire-and-forget. Once delivered the client has control. I look after one system, my colleagues look after others. My system isn’t a fire-and-forget type. It requires my constant supervision and works on a 3-5 day turnaround.
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“but i assure you this is not confined to a few businesses this is the way with all public limited companies, the bottom line and the share holders is who they want to please, not the employees!”
That may be how it *is* but that doesn’t make it right. I’ve worked enough years to understand the mentality of most employers. I also know when totally unreasonable demands are being made of me.
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“have you told these people your issues and given them the opportunity to rebut? have they put any fixes in place? are they trying to address your needs?”
Over the last 12 months I have explained issues to my line manager (and also to my old, waste-of-space, line manager – I have been in management myself. I know how this situation should be handled). I have done this in writing. I have forecast increasing workloads and explained the outcome of inaction or worsening events.
I have made every effort to inform those around me of the situation as I see it and as it affects me, my team and our workload. By way of response I have received the “company policy” line more times that I care to recount and have seen no effective results (other than those that worsen the situation) in 12 months.
I believe I have been both professional and more than patient in this matter whilst I have watched my employer make sympathetic noises and then, almost instantly, worsen the situation.
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“I dont think my employers are taking advantage when they ask me to work hard, i may feel pushed and stressed but they pay me for it not loads, but i signed my contract and accepted the wage for the work!”
If I was being expected to do the work I was employed for then I wouldn’t have a grievance. This, however, is not the case. I am will to accept that employers will give more work than might have been expected. I personally believe that if you are doing 100% of your job description then you are merely doing your job. If you do 150% of your job description then that extra effort should be recognised.
When that level reaches 500% and, to all intents and purpose the company goes and kicks sand in your face whilst ignoring that effort then I defy anyone to behave with good grace towards that company.
I realise I am making life harder for the remaining team member (1) who, by logic, might now be expected to work at 800% capacity. Such an expectation is totally ridiculous and if my employer were to expect that or if others would regard 800% workload as reasonable then I would have to wonder just what is regarded as unreasonable.
Unfortunately, workload has affected my life outside of work. My sleep pattern, my energy levels, strain on my relationship with my wife.
I work to live, I don’t live to work. My life and those closest to me take precedence over anything else. I have been forced to take action and, I am happy to say, my team understands the situation I am in and sympathises with me. This is an indicator of just how GOOD the people in my team are and how tolerant they can be. Unfortunately, it is my employer that has taken me to this course of action and it is with them that the responsibility lies – even if you are not willing to accept this, I can assure you that my colleagues do.
That’s utterly apppaling.
Are you in a trade union? If so, why not contact them about your working conditions?
That’s what they’re there for, after all. Anything that improves your conditions is for the better. Don’t take it sitting down.
I don’t currently belong to a Trade Union, no. It is under consideration.
However, you typically cannot use your membership for action until a couple of months have passed. I sincerely hope that, by that time, action will not be needed.
sorry i do have to post another thing, you state that your working at 500% ..thats impossible!
you can only work to 100% , you have 7 – 8 hours in a working day, how hard you work in that day may vary, if you have been able to pick up the work of 2 or 3 others then previously you were never working at 100%, your employers were not expecting you to work to this level on a permenant basis, the fact that they are probably recruiting means they dont intend to make you do this for remainder of your career!
therefore all they are asking is forbearance while they recruit and extra effort during that time:
Are they offereing any incentives for the harder work? if not that may be an item to discuss with them…but you are in no way ever going to be working at 500% and the people still in the team are not working at 800% they are just trying to fit as much into the same amount of time they had previously, and if they escalate this then they cannot get in trouble for non completion of work.
I have managed people in the past and had to do time analysis and resource managment so know what im talking about.
Monkfish, I can only assume you ARE my employer as your insistance on taking the corporate line over the humane one is becoming distateful on one I am finding insulting.
I have been doing the work of four people for 6 months. We have been shedding staff for 12. The client base has increased by 25% in that period also. YOU do that math.
12 months may not be permanent but it’s long enough to find such a workload as unreasonable for no extra reward, recognition or support.
My employer claims to be recruiting for staff – I very much suggest you apply as you appear to have no end of excuses ready for allowing an employer to steamroll over the rights and needs of their staff let alone treat them with respect or recognition. You appear to be precisely relentlessly forgiving corporate yes-man they would enjoy taking advantage of.
This discussion is over.