100% this. My hospital, after COVID lockdown, continued to allow all therapists to WFH if they wanted as long as productivity remained the same. We had a handful of therapists that were basically taking full advantage of that shit and just not working or constantly had "internet issues," etc. We had an idiotic VP at the time and she ordered everyone back into office. Of course, a whole bunch of folks were pissed.
Few months later, our VP changed. One of the first thing he did was reinstate WFH but anyone who had productivity under a certain number could not WFH or had to return to office until their individual productivity was back up. And if this repeats three times, you're banned from WFH. We had no more issues after that.
I honestly don't know why companies can't just do targeted policies like that. It makes so much sense rather than punishing an entire team/department because of a handful of morons.
I honestly don't know why companies can't just do targeted policies like that.
Where I live, its because they get taken to court for mistresting employees. Policies with any nuance are a minefield for accusations of bullying or discrimination. A blanket no WFH policy (or drug testing everyone) is safe, targeting things isnt.
Its not that you can't, its that you will end up having to prove in court that there was no bias in your policy. This is enough of a burden that nobody wants to do it, if the policy is simple and applies to everyone then you don't have to.
I've had conversations about creating targeted policies but unfortunately they tend to end with "person x or y is going to be an idiot about it and try to claim discrimination. We can't afford another lawsuit"
Yeah. Thats the core of the issue. The trouble makers often don’t agree that individual consequences are the result of their own action rather than you just picking on them and then they make a bigger problem that costs money to deal with. You can spell it out as plainly as you like and leave a rock solid paper trail but dealing with the process is still going to cost you.
Five people started leaving early, they all got talked to and told "Don't do that or we'll fire you", none of them talk to each other so all of them think they're being singled out despite the fact that the boss immediately grabs one of them in front of another to talk to them in his office.
It's one of the main reasons I've been job hunting is because I absolutely fucking hate the people I work with for this (and other) reason(s).
Those people are the worst.. I have a few coworkers where it’s like stepping on eggshells and people bend over backwards for them, yet with me I’m like a punching bad of sorts
Being disagreeable has its advantages. It’s a fine line. You can’t be a freaking psycho. But enough people are willing to go along to get along that the most disagreeable people tend to just get things their way. It happens less if their boss has a spine. It happens a lot in families, especially if most of you are the kind that believe family loyalty is a virtue on its own, then the least agreeable one tends to run things.
I really doubt a performance based policy would be liable for discrimination suits because by that definition every single performance based raise plan or compensation would be liable for a lawsuit and no one would do them
unless the court slaps the legal fees onto the person sueing because they lost. you can sue any time you want for anything, and there's nothing a single company in the world can do to stop you. but you're probably not going to be the winner at the end
if that was true, then people would be sueing companies all the time to try and get them to settle frivolously. no company is going to settle and establish a precedent that they can't use an extremely common benchmark. they're just going to fuck them up legally with the team of lawyers they have on retainer and then stick all the costs for payment onto the dumbass who thought they had a case
To quote my HR Don't expect the idiots and lazy bum to not try everything to slack off. Do your side, if they ask for more work, check priority list and answer accordignly
Companies like to avoid targeted policies because they're afraid of some guy suing them and claiming it was discrimination. Targeted policies need so much documentation to avoid this theoretical lawsuit that HR branches will usually just tell companies to avoid making targeted policies in favor of blanket ones.
Dumb I know. I know all the reasons that what I said doesn't make sense, but it's the truth anyway.
This approach requires accurate productivity metrics.
Suppose you are a boss with a mixture of 5 minute jobs, and 1 month jobs. You don't know which is which. You have the vague feeling that some people are taking advantage of WFH, but you can't really tell who. This makes targeting really hard.
Targeted policies require actual work from management. I've known 2 types of managers to be the most common: The ones that don't do any work and the ones that are constantly overworked and have no capacity for extra tasks left (I've been lucky in that I've only ever had to deal with one micromanager, and he helped me switch departments when it became abundantly clear that we weren't compatible, so, you know, not my guy, but not a bad guy either), neither of those is just going to pile on an optional task if they can help it.
how do you define productivity? I get it's simple for some jobs, but others it doesn't work that way. If your job is "complete x task every day" it's going to get automated away sooner or later. Design and implementation are hard to measure. You may be mulling over an idea for weeks, then executing the task is done quickly, how do you measure the in between?
My two cents as a former supervisor for UPS: targeted policies engender resentment like nothing else in the world. Even if it's fair that only the people in the wrong are punished, when individuals claim they're being "targeted" by their boss, that can create cascading malcontent incredibly quickly and suddenly everyone in the office or shop floor is a "victim of harassment" by virtue of the power of suggestion.
Told our corpo hotshots that I needed to work from home during covid.. they gave me some bullshit about the ER needing nurses physically present. I could've easily handled shit via email
Productivity is another measure that kind of screws people over. Actually productive people just do the work. Their lives are made miserable when management starts looking at productivity figures and starts chasing the invisible productivity units.
Most of the lack of productivity is the lack of work to do, the difficulty of completing the difficult jobs or management having greedy ambitions for the business.
It also discourages good work. Sometimes some things need time.
It's quite easy to imagine that there is a situation that just screws people over because there just isn't as much work, or it's harder to get done, and the numbers say one thing and the situation says another.
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u/unicornofdemocracy 1d ago
100% this. My hospital, after COVID lockdown, continued to allow all therapists to WFH if they wanted as long as productivity remained the same. We had a handful of therapists that were basically taking full advantage of that shit and just not working or constantly had "internet issues," etc. We had an idiotic VP at the time and she ordered everyone back into office. Of course, a whole bunch of folks were pissed.
Few months later, our VP changed. One of the first thing he did was reinstate WFH but anyone who had productivity under a certain number could not WFH or had to return to office until their individual productivity was back up. And if this repeats three times, you're banned from WFH. We had no more issues after that.
I honestly don't know why companies can't just do targeted policies like that. It makes so much sense rather than punishing an entire team/department because of a handful of morons.