First of all, note that I work in France, where unions are mandatory over a certain company size. I work for a big media group as a tech support, my job can be done 99% remotely. The 1% left is if someone ever gets to our office unprompted, which they are not supposed to do, but do anyway sometimes (force of habit). Also, if shit goes down at night, someone is there to intervene. This is rare, but it happens.
Until September, we had 3 shifts to cover : morning (6am – 1:30pm), afternoon (11:15am – 6:45pm) and night (6:30pm – 2am). Every shift was covered by at least 2 people in case of emergency, or to make time for paid leave, and, since CoViD, to be able to have people remote and in office.
Now, shifts goes as follow :
1 technician at 6:30 to 2pm
2 dispatchers at 8:30 to 4pm
X tech at 9 to 4:30pm
1 tech at 4 to 11:30pm
1 tech at 5 to 12:30pm
X is as much as available. For some reason we do not know, dispatchers cannot be remote (of course). Notice that unless for the 9am shift, there is always a time where the technician is alone. Meaning he cannot go remote, be sick or take holiday. We are a team of 8, meaning there are at best 3 technicians to cover this shift, which is of course the most tedious. Meaning that 1 has to be present, one can go remote, and eventually, one can take holiday.
There are other bothersome things about this organisation, but let's end the rant here. What do you thing about this ? How could it be done better (excluding hiring the people we need, because this is not happening) ?
Tldr : new organisation makes us all unexpandable, meaning we can't be sick, vacant or go remote.