Burner account… I am the manager of a small customer service team. I try to be one of the “good managers,” encouraging breaks, approving time off, getting down in the weeds when I’m needed with the rest of the team, etc.
Part of my job involves budgeting out when we need to hire more folks. Because we take inbound inquiries from multiple channels, my rule with my bosses has always been to budget that one person can do between 20 and 30 inquiries a day. Any more, and you risk burnout, moving too quickly and causing errors, etc. We’ve had just enough staff that the rule has us running at about peak capacity, and I’m close to being allowed to hire more folks to help us cover.
Unfortunately we had someone quit late last week. It honestly wasn’t a good fit, and hope she succeeds wherever she is off to next. The rough part comes because we were already close to our “work budget” and being a person down, we are definitely over that budget.
One of my other employees, we will call her “Jane,” takes the extra work as a challenge. She always tries to overload herself and upper management thinks she is the model employee. With our staff shortage, she is completing 50 to 60 tickets a day, far outpacing her peers, and making management question my budget. Now they want to delay hiring to replace the person we just lost, saying that the rest of the staff should just catch up with Jane’s production.
I know what she is doing isn’t sustainable, and she is quickly moving towards burnout. Aside from that, she is actively hurting the other employees, because upper management sees her output as what should be standard, not the exception. I’ve tried to appeal to the rational side of her, to convince her to take a break, but I’m also partially convinced she did play a role in the other employee leaving, since she was newer and mocking her for not keeping up.
Any advice at all is welcome, I’ll try to answer as I can.
Edit: as to why ask here? I’ve full bought into the concept that we aren’t built to work our whole lives just to make someone else money. We participate in the system, but I am in a position to help at least some folks out toward that goal. We pay a living wage for the area (not many places do) and really have no trouble filling positions when they open up. Im worried one person can “poison the well” and undo a lot of the work I’ve set up here, since it took a LOT of heavy lifting to get to this point.