This will be on mobile so pardon my format.
TL;DR – Trained my department so well that I techincaly have nothing to do at work. My superiors are ok with me just hanging out and also happy for me to move up or move on.
So i started with this IT company last year as a technician, I was in management in my previous company and it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wanted to be able to just worry about work and go home. A year passes and I’ve been doing so well that I got promoted a few times and I get assigned as one of the leads for a new department.
Whenever I’m spinning up a department/team I always try to emphasize 3 things which are Morale, Effort vs Pay and training.
Just so this whole thing doesn’t turn into a TED talk I’ll give a brief overview of what i do. Try to Identify peoples aptitude and attitude. Give those who want to move up more on their plate (as much as they ask but never outside of their scope of work) and keep those 9-5’ers happy with their workload and always adjusting based on how the team reacts. Over the past few months morale has been great. I try to maintain an open forum and always put an importance on morale and due to this, it actually made pick up each others slack and extra work. A lot of the people that has been interested in moving up has recent been asking for me to delegate more work to them and get them trained up for the next position. Now, i am in no way saying that it was me that made this team like this, all I did was provide an environment where my team can thrive and be happy coming to work. Everyone i work with is amazing in their own right.
So a few months later after my department kicked ass, all the kinks are worked out and we have a proper workflow. I have completely ran out of work. Everyone that needed training is fully trained. All of my work has been picked up by those who wanted to step up (upper management noticed and kicked them back a small raise) but now i basically come in, Hang out and provide support to anyone that needs it which is rare because of how amazing my team is and how well trained they are now. I spend a lot of hours on reddit, TFT, or working on some unnecessary tooling.
Heres the kicker, I started to fear for my job since I was traumatized by my previous employers so I started looking for my next move (even though i love it here, I could always use more money) and my direct supervisor and director caught wind and sat me down for a meeting. I thought to myself that this was it and I was gonna be terminated since they can essentially operate without me. But things went completely the opposite way.
During the meeting they basically said that I made their life so easy and even our corporate overlords have never seen a department spin up this smoothly. Director then showed me an email of the conversations he had with his superiors about how my methods should be deployed company wide and how they cant afford to lose me. He told me there was no need for me to fear losing my job, he even offered a 5 year contract that would provide a guarantee with a severance if i wanted to and that the next management position that opens up will be mine but for now there isnt anything. They then gave me an office and told me that basically I can come in and not do anything at all as long as the department operates smoothly. If i get bored he said he was more then open to delegate his work to me (as a joke lol, he knows I’m not a numbers guy) and that if i ever want to leave he would write me a letter of recommendation to anywhere i want but the company wants me to stay as they build out a specific position/role for me to fill. (Some kind of operations guidance role from what i heard)
So now I have no idea what to do but I’m pretty happy with my situation. Its CRAZY how big of a difference it makes when you have a company and management that actually cares and wants people to be happy.