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Following a reorganization a couple years ago, our work has become wildly unpredictable. We didn't reorganize very efficiently. Some days the work is heavy you're begging for relief and others you sit around doing nothing. If we had a decent distribution of work we'd probably be slightly understaffed but the way things stand we are extremely understaffed some weeks and over staffed others.
Management for some reason only "sees" the days with nothing and refuses to staff up or to use a more efficient work structure. We're alienating customers along the way. Yet management refuses to adjust their "brilliant" org structure to fit reality.
If we have downtime for any length of period, our job is in danger.
Your situation could be the result of a couple of things.
1) When you're busy, everybody is busy, but when you're slow, preferred people get handed work and others (less trusted or skilled employees) get less work. This is the typical scenario and the trick is not to be at the bottom of the totem pole.
2) Your company has periods where literally nobody (in that division/taskforce) has things to do. In this case, the management is bad or the division just happens to be slow. In this situation, you either a) deal with downtime or b) fire the person responsible for business development for that division.
Now if it's the situation where EVERYBODY is either swamped or everybody is slow, then that is really bad management, but that is rare.
Keep in mind that retail works that all the time. Either you get a lot of customers, or you get none. The periods of downtime are evened out by the periods of uptime. Also keep in mind that working for a public agency, employees could have downtime of close to 50-70% overall and have it be normal.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Most employers cannot predict the workload, even in retail there is going to be a holiday rush but no one knows how that could be affected by online sales and weather. A good manager will staff for the average workload, use overtime or temporary help when needed for peaks, and have lower priority work to be done during slower times. There will also be cross training so that if one person is swamped others can help. The distribution of work must always be monitored and adjusted as things change. It's not practical to staff for the peak times and have even more people with nothing to do when it's slow.
Sorry it's kind of hard to describe. Think of a workflow A-B-C-D. After the reorganization they created a couple of new organizations to do steps X-Y-Z which were inserted between A and B. And an organization to check each step. Same total number of people but now spread across multiple organizations with of course new managers and staff positions. We get the process at A but instead of going to B, we now wait on the other organizations to do their added step and checks. So when we finally get it back at step B, several days have been lost and it's a mad rush of OT to get to D.
Lather, rinse, repeat. It's that lost time waiting on X-Y-Z and the shift of staff from production to reviewing and checking that's killing productivity.
It sounds suspect...I’d be putting feelers out for a new job. We have wild swings but they are predictable with new implementations and upgrades. Without the swings still have 40 hours or more of work to do but in the swings can work upwards of 80. For example I’m working the next 19 days straight, approx 12 hours a day.
There's plenty of work, not like the customer need has tapered off. It's actually grown. What's literally happened is the other, non value added steps and organizations that have been pushed into the process.
Step A
Review 1 -- Resolve Issues from Review 1
Review 2 -- Resolve Issues from Review 2
Resolve Conflicts between Review 1 and 2
Step B
Review 3 -- Resolve Issues from Review 3
Step C
Step D
What makes this so stupid is each of those reviews is the same people looking at the same stuff, but with a different organization chairing the review. Basically creating work for organizations and senior managers that didn't exist prior to the reorg. Just becomes a P'ing contest between senior managers. I wrote the OP on Friday where I had literally nothing to do. Wednesday and Thursday had been a mad rush, OT to get the product out. Friday, nothing, Monday will be nothing, and yet I know around Tuesday, the same managers who will have sat on it for Friday and Monday will be screaming for why isn't it done.
Amazing to me just how hard it is to describe the dysfunction going on. Just doesn't sound real. What's sad is, not too many years ago, we were a place engineers and scientists were begging to work at. Now we have to beg them to come. Kind of unreal given how hard it is to build a world class organization, that just a couple cycles of poor management can throw away a quality that took decades to build.
Your advice on most work related matters is remarkably consistent.
You conveniently left out 2-3 posts where I gave a full explanation.
I am telling you once they pull these games it's already over and you are on a countdown clock until they kick you out of the organization. This organization has already showed it fully understands how to inappropriately allocate labor and they are going to look very inefficient in several fiscal quarters. One guy above so far removed from the day-to-day is not even going to ask he is going to see the lull and start suggesting cuts, even if it means they have to turn around and staff up a year from now.
Based on your other posts if I am not mistaken you should know all the tell tale signs and better than this.
Today's job climate is hopping from one sinking boat to the next every 1-2 years. They are not going to keep on someone that has 3 months of down time and then underperforms for 3 months because their dumb Manager (or Manager's manager) could not properly allocate the workload. The top guy doesn't care this is illogical all he cares is you weren't doing something for 3 months and when he finally gave you something to do you messed it up. In their dysfunctional eyes you should have never been hired to begin with.
They are setting OP up to be sabotaged and he needs to get out now while his momentum is good. This is not '95. An inter-departmental move is not going to work out because every department is in competition with each other nowadays. They rather lay off talent and re-hire a new set of poor schleps that have no clue what is going on than properly allocate resources, train and re-train.
Is this adequate for you????
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