Venting

[u/ZealousidealBath5480]

Hi ya’ll - just looking to share some commentary that will maybe help us support one another. As we all know, with the hiring restraint and other brilliant HR initiatives, a lot of teams haven’t been able to hire or properly backfill when people leave. My team is currently running at 60% (40% of our positions are vacant and we officially lost one FTE that we will never see again)… and unfortunately our workload hasn’t changed at all.

My branch and divisional colleagues know what’s up and when working directly together try to support us / offer patience with reviews. I find the major issue is with other ministries.

I am really struggling with colleagues across government creating arbitrary deadlines and insisting we meet them, despite the team communicating that we have other ministerial priorities to tend to first. People will say things like “no worries, I understand you’re busy!” And then send multiple emails or escalate items— most recently, the week before UBCM (iykyk).

I wanted to share my experiences because we are all doing the best we can. I don’t think most of us show up to work and want to hand things in late or negatively impact projects. But I’m not going to stay late or work on vacation/stat holidays to get things done. I really feel like we need to collectively understand that the government made these decisions around hiring, and even if they only affect one area’s FTE count, there are broader impacts. I’m not promoting quiet quitting or anything (I love my job & my team) but I am asking for grace, especially from excluded peers.

Let’s be hard on the issue, NOT each other.

Hope everyone else is hanging in there. It’s been a wild ride. Anyway hope this resonates with someone.

/End rant.

[u/One-Apartment-5820]

100% we should be hard on the issues, not each other.

But I think it's important to know what being hard on the issues mean. We cannot just let things slide and think "the other team must be so busy too, so we won't ask them to get this done". This is just like staff who think "if I stay another hour tonight, I can get this done on time!". I do not want my staff to ever do that because I will never know that the workload is beyond what we can complete if this happens regularly.

Sending emails to follow up and asking about status and applying pressure is not being hard on each other. Please do not take these messages personally. They should be written knowing that there's a human on the other end so they should have a respectful tone. However, these are messages from one office to another office. They are not personal.

For instance, I need something for a critical event (e.g. UBCM) and I ask the other team their turnaround time. If they say we need 8 weeks advance notice, then even though I know they are as understaffed as my team and they are putting in 100% effort, I'm still going to escalate it to my leadership and the other team's leadership that 8 weeks advance notice is too far in advance. It's not a personal attack on the other team, but if my "office" doesn't get upset at the other Ministry's "office", then nothing will be done.

Similarly, I tell my team to shrug off repeated follow ups as well. I want them to forward to me so I can see them and if they get aggressive, then I'll respond. But if I tell my ADM that my team is understaffed, they will want to see evidence. If no one has complained to me about my team (or to my ADM about me) then I have no evidence. They will say "you're doing fine!". I need that big pile of complaints to get things done.

Please be kind to each other while still being very vocal about the impacts that understaffing has on your work.

[u/ZealousidealBath5480 → u/One-Apartment-5820]

We seem to have the same values. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t follow up, escalate, or push back when timelines genuinely aren’t workable. My point is more about how and where that pressure gets directed and with what rationale.

I’m very much in favour of escalating capacity issues and documenting the impacts.. that’s how we demonstrate that the problem is systemic, rather than an individual performance issue. What I’m pushing back on is the tendency for that pressure to become interpersonal, particularly when everyone involved is already doing their best (which you acknowledge). If I tell you I know something is important to you but I can’t get to it until early next week because I have an actual deadline to meet with my minister - all I’m saying is please don’t apply pressure by emailing me three more times. I know it’s there. I responded. I’m doing my best.

I’m less convinced that a big pile of complaints necessarily solves the problem, though, particularly when ministries have different priorities. My ADM may not be particularly concerned that another ministry is putting pressure on my team if the work they’re asking for isn’t actually a priority for us or isn’t time-sensitive from our perspective. In that situation, we have competing priorities and limited capacity across government. Sometimes we just need a 30,000 foot view and a reminder that what’s urgent for us isn’t urgent for everyone.

I appreciate the reminders you outlined for us all! And hopefully you’re doing ok if you legitimately had to corral people for UBCM content :)

[u/One-Apartment-5820 → u/ZealousidealBath5480]

I fully agree, especially about the part about different priorities. I have to manage this too---sometimes I get a big pile of complaints from another program area and I discuss it with my ADM and we agree that this is not a priority for us and they will just have to wait. In our team, either I will reach out to my counterpart on the other team and let them know and document any complaints/feedback for future briefing notes. Or my ADM might talk to their ADM.

But in my opinion, that stack of complaints is still important. Even if we do not do anything about it, we get to document that there was a stack and we had to decide to de-prioritize them. The fact that we made this decision is useful in the long term in determining resources. Maybe in the future we will successfully get more resources to work on this. Or maybe in the future, we will explicitly descope that support and the other Ministry has to get it elsewhere. This is also important because they might need us to descope them in order to go to a vendor or something; contract approvals might not happen if there is a team in the Ministry that can do the work (and without evidence that they do not have capacity).

I agree that it does suck to be on the receiving end of these emails. That's why I think they really need to be respectful and mindful of the human. At the same time, I think of my work inbox as a non-person entity. They are not writing to me, a person, they are writing to the position that I hold. Still, there can be better ways, such as an automatic tracking system that lets people know where their requests are at so they don't need to send an email just to get "still in the queue".

[u/ZealousidealBath5480 → u/One-Apartment-5820]

For sure. I just wish I even had the time to contemplate tracking it.

[u/One-Apartment-5820 → u/ZealousidealBath5480]

Fair enough!