My seven-year-old son recently saw a pick-up truck sitting on the side of the road and asked what happened. From my view, it had clearly blown a tire, so I said, “His tire blew up while he was driving.”
Perhaps I should have used more tact in my response, because my son immediately freaked out and yelled, “Are OUR tires going to blow up?”
I calmed him down and explained that our tires are unlikely to do that while we’re driving because I schedule regular maintenance for my car and upgrade our tires after a certain amount of wear and tear.
It got me thinking. That’s exactly why so many people are breaking down right now. We’re stopped scheduling maintenance and upgrades for our team members. In the middle of a workforce crisis, there’s no time for upkeep. But we all know how that ends!
How did we get here?
It’s clear that workloads for all are completely unmanageable at this point. Part of this is because of the unexpected explosion in employee turnover that has overburdened the remaining staff. But this issue was becoming a major problem for businesses long before the pandemic and workforce crisis took hold.
Let’s take a look back in history for some insights.
Years ago, a hospitality company expected housekeeping staff to clean 12-14 rooms per shift. But then, they found their faster room attendants could do 15-16 per shift. Knowing what was possible, they encouraged everyone to be like the high achievers and set 15-16 as the new expectation for all. This trend of shifting everyone toward the top end of the productivity spectrum continued not just with the housekeeping team, but across the organization, as each year, their workers were asked to “do more with less.”
Today, they’re short-staffed and need every housekeeper – even brand new hires who would typically have a learning curve to reach full productivity – to clean more than 16 rooms per shift. And when they can’t, the leaders get frustrated, and the staff quit. (Keep in mind, we put them in this crazy situation.)
Does this story sound familiar? Have any of the workload expectations for your team members slowly gotten out of control, inch by inch, over the years, and now it’s unfathomable what change could be made at this point?
But how in the world are we supposed to get these workloads back in check?
Missing maintenance schedules
Look at the following list of needs for any team member over time. Would you disagree that these are each valuable time spent? Wouldn’t future success be more difficult if these were cut?
- Proper onboarding
- Continued job skills training
- Continued soft skills training
- Cross-training
- Mentoring
- Team building
- Networking to increase industry knowledge
- Vacation time
- Sick time
- Planning and strategic time for management
It’s clear that time is needed for these, and yet, most organizations have pushed their people into workload expectations that shove each of these valuable maintenance and upgrade efforts to the back burner (where they ultimately never happen).
We all know what happens to your car when you continue to put off getting an oil change or new tires. Catastrophe!
Strategies for job pruning (and adding staff if you must)
If we’re realistic about the lack of sustainability of current workloads, then it is time to begin pruning unattainable expectations off team members’ and managers’ plates so we can let our people blossom moving forward, instead of watching them continue to wilt.
It will take incredible focus and investment to right the ship, but there are ways to get there. Consider the following strategies:
- Discontinue less valuable tasks altogether
- Reprioritize more important responsibilities
- Create realistic job descriptions for current and new hires
- Add additional staff where team members are consistently working beyond 40 hours per week
Organizations have somehow normalized staff consistently working more than 40 hours per week, but that additional capacity should be reserved for true (and temporary) busy seasons or when true (and temporary) crises occur where all hands are needed on deck during only that short period of time.
Sure, there are employees who check their phones too much and who drive you nuts, but put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If a staff member is told they’re expected to clean 16 rooms in one shift, which is clearly unattainable, then why should they care how many rooms they clean at all?
They know that no matter what they accomplish that day they are going to miss the (unreasonable) mark and be told they should be doing more. At some point, they stop caring whether they clean 8 or 14 rooms because it’s never good enough, so why not check their phones.
They start the day frustrated as they believe they cannot win the impossible game.
Workforce thought leader Cara Silletto, MBA, CSP, works with organizations of all sizes to reduce unnecessary employee turnover by bridging generational gaps and making managers more effective in their roles. She is the author of the book, Staying Power: Why Your Employees Leave & How to Keep Them Longer.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
