We're perpetually short-handed at work. Well, it feels like we are now. Now, as in this moment on this day at this hour. I'm staring at an interesting next 24 hours, possibly interesting 48 hours, maybe even 72 hours. It's hard to say when the interest will die down. And by interest, I mean borderline panic. In some ways, this is a better problem than having too many people and then having to make heartbreaking layoffs. (That is still probably the worst work experience I've ever had to go through so far.)
We are hiring and it's a good thing. But there's a long lead time on getting someone to what I'll call field usable. No, that's not strictly accurate. It's a short time until someone is field usable, but a long time until they are standalone field usable. There's no real short-term fix. We're implementing just about every short-term stop-gap measure that we can. I'm not going to be specific, but we're getting our work covered. The longer-term fix is simply going to take time.
While we work through this morass we find ourselves in, I am realizing a great deal about how business works, especially this particular business. I'm figuring out which rules, policies, procedures, standards are truly sacred and which ones are not. The good rank and file front-line manager in me is supposed to pitch the message that all the rules and whatchamabobs are important. Some are very important and truly are the sacred cows of the company. Others tend to wilt under the pressure of the sacred cow of all industry: money. This is not some anti-capitalist screed (duh), but a simple realization. Now, the system in which we operate is changing. And money cannot triumph all, or at least not directly. So, while some people I know and have known within the organization appear to have gotten away with murder in the past, the same tricks may not hold up in the future. A good start to a very interesting line of thought.
1 comment:
Many great companies value their employees tremendously. They take time to give their employees the proper training to gain experiences on the job. They give them all the necessary tools to work with along with reasonable and competitive pay in order for a return of great performance. They also gain the loyalty from these employees.
Very seldom a company would transfer a supervisor/manager to a new position without prior experience of firing or hiring people. Before they assume this kind of assignments, they would have been an assistant and learn from their bosses how to fire/hire people and how to evaluate their subordinates.
Didn’t you just have an unpleasant task of manpower reduction recently? What give!
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