sleepy5136 said:
I?m not sure about your company, but there were a ton of layoffs during COVID. I would think it?s not old people that got impacted but rather a mix. So if like you said they were slacking, they would have been impacted by the layoffs. So that already contradicts one of your points. And you literally contradicted yourself towards the end of your statement by saying it?s the individual despite starting off your response as the issue is more so for ?younger? workers.
Also, what?s your definition of slacking off? I sure hope it?s not because I?m not immediately responding to slack messages. Because I got work to do and the last thing I want to see is a micromanager calling me to distract my progress. I?m sorry, but I would be VERY shocked if people do not get back to you or never reply to your emails. That is not common for any age group. It could well be that expectations were not set and that is on management. I?ve worked with both old and young folks. What you?re saying is complete ludicrous and quite frankly you sound like an annoying micromanager that needs some training. People have their reasonings for not being online or not respond. It?s generally because they are wired in or they mute notifications because they need to WORK.
Great leaders trust their employees and not second guess them unless events occurred that impacted their deliveries. Not being able to ?watch? your employees tells me a lot on how you operate at work. It?s quite scary actually and is one of the contributors of the great resignation that?s happening as we speak.
Where did I contradict myself? Everyone is an individual, and a higher % of younger individuals are "out to lunch" way more than the % of older folks. I'm not micromanaging. I'm not managing anyone at all; not my job. We have core hours where everyone is expected to be at work, wherever that may be (a very clear expectation). MS Teams shows everyone's status. If someone's job involves being at their computer all day and they're "away" for hours at a time frequently, don't answer their phone or respond to IMs or emails, then yeah, they're not working (i.e., slacking). That is the behavior of some individuals as relayed to me by their leads, who I'm friends with, and for the most part, they're fairly young. The leads are truly frustrated. My personal observations are that I have found it consistently harder to get a hold of some people more than others, and yes, most have under 5 years experience. Aside from wfh, the younger people on my on-site team just put in the bare minimum hours. In at 9, gone by 5. At least an hour lunch. Always stopping work and calling in a tech to do things for them. There's just no sense of urgency. The rest of us just bang it out and we stay late if the job requires it. And don't even get me started on which age group tends to spend a lot more time staring at their phones when they're "working" on site.
We have not had a layoff in a long time, certainly not during COVID. Lots of work. I put in >70 hours this week. Work needs to get done, so some of us step up and put in the hours.