Workers have other options than simply accepting management shenanigans or leaving.
And every single time it starts, even with vaccination plus antigen test policies in place and enforced, a wave of infections sweeps through taking out team members for the week at least. This shakes up even some of the managers who themselves opt out and informally let it be known to their teams it is okay to WFH so the team can have a shot at hitting deadlines.
And that is an angle I don't see covered much in these discussions. Pre-pandemic teams were already running fairly lean, but the environment now is more extreme with many open positions going unfilled for months and years at a time. Regardless of the reasons why they go unfilled, the ground truth is one bad flu or COVID will disrupt many a finely-tuned project plan now, whereas a decade ago there was enough people with enough willingness to temporarily pull more hours above and beyond their normal hours compensated with comp time that someone(s) could cover enough to soften the blow to the project.
Now "above and beyond" is normal in many of my clients. You can tell by how many managers and people are still chatting online after hours and even weekends. There are no more hours to sneak from somewhere, and people are pushing back on the chronic use of these hours, setting boundaries because sneaking these hours is not worth comp time when it becomes a regular feature of everyday work, and with more employees increasingly becoming aware of the poor odds of winning enough with equity to make up for those hours.
We've JIT optimized our workforce alongside our supply chains. Why is it surprising it is brittle to exogenous shocks?
