Nugget 4: Late night management emails are not an attack.

Explanation:

For once this one is not aimed at managers, it is aimed at the Techs and Frontline associates, I used to hate receiving management emails late at night or at the end of a Friday or the weekend or something like that. It put me under stress, it was uncomfortable and I thought they were watching me and wanting me to work the hours they were, But it turns out this is not always the case, If you’re stuck in bloody meetings all day or constantly on chat being chased for deliverables email takes a second place, and the only time you can sit down and deal with it (Other than the Odd Crisis Email) is when  everybody else has stopped working and therefore stopped chasing you, The reason that management do emails late at night and at the weekends is because that’s the only time they can try and clear their inbox, it’s not a personal thing, they just know that they won’t have a chance to send it during the week.

Weird.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Nugget 3: Office working is far more productive than remote working when dealing with human interaction, but its a mistake to assume it can be maintained at that level forever.

Explanation:

Even before the pandemic, there was a debate over office working vs. remote working and the thing is that both of them are productive in their own way, but after 5+ years of hard remote working and learning to deal with it on a large team scale I think I’ve reached an epiphany.

Day to day working is more efficient from home, you can actually get on with working, you  are actually more productive in completing tasks (providing you actually spend the hours working that you would in an office) as there are far less distractions, Plus there is the absence of Lost time from travelling, but that doesn’t mean that home working is always more productive. For example workshops or large meetings particularly those that involve forms of conflict are far far more productive in person, as sales people have known forever.

But one thing that seems to have been forgotten, particularly by older generations of senior managers is that this kind of productivity cannot be sustained day after day after day, so in my opinion the new hybrid working model is the best, I personally go in for one day a week on a Monday to kickstart me into the work mentality.

But also I have seen the one week workshop where everyone comes together to solve a major goal, get tons done and deliver massively finish with a senior manager saying that we should work like this all the time and this is why being in an office is better,

NO! it’s not, everybody is mentally shattered, such work should be consider a sprint, and while its attractive to think such a pace can be kept up, it cant and should be used now as a usefully times tool to resolve issues or reconnect humans with each other

Sorry if this nugget got turned into more of a rant but it’s something I feel quite strongly about at the moment.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.