I would imagine that this kind of transitory employee experience will be more common. Fewer people are content to be in the same admin-like position for their whole life, so higher turnover should be expected and planned for. I wonder if businesses like this law firm would be better with 2 part-time employees rather than a single full-time employee. Having two employees would mean they could continue to maintain the business and be able to have consistency as the employees come and go. No business should be so dependent on a single, low-level employee that they would be in major trouble if they left suddenly or something happened to them and they couldn’t come in anymore. I’m pretty sure that anyone they hire today is not going to work there until they retire like your sister did.
Perhaps such a business shouldn’t consider a position that would leave them “in major trouble” low-level.
These kinds of jobs are certainly important and necessary for the business’ success, but if a replacement can be trained in a couple of weeks, the actual skill required is relatively low. Many jobs are like this. Like if a shipping company has a single person who loads/unloads the trucks, the loss of that employee can shut down the company and cause high losses. I don’t think the solution is to pay that dock worker lots of money so that they never leave. Sure that would be great, but it’s not a good use of the business’ capital. It would be better to have multiple dock workers so that the loss of one is not catastrophic.
Like in the law firm, it would probably be better to have a few part-timers making $30k rather than a single person making $100k+. No matter how good the single person is, something can always happen that causes them to leave. Having multiple employees in that spot allows the firm to continue operating as they filter through people to find ones that are good and stick around.
A big part of this is that there’s a mindset that no employees should ever, under any circumstances, make more money than the manager in charge of them. So a lot of people keep going for promotions, because that’s the only way to ever get a raise.
But, I often think, a good lieutenant is often worth more than a bad general. I’m at a position that I’m particularly well-suited for, and get top marks in all my evaluations. But I’m also at the top of my pay grade, so I only get raises when the union negotiates a new contract. I could go for a promotion, but the next step up is a job I know I would hate, and also just be bad at.
A big part of this is that a lot of businesses have bought into the notion of “lean” operations. Having “extra” employees is considered to be a bad thing, Because Reasons, and so if they can eliminate one position, they do that.
That this leads directly to the problems being discussed never seems to get noticed.
It’s the same with the “just in time” philosophy. It costs money to have a warehouse to hold parts that might not be used for a week or two, so plan to have stuff show up just in time to be used that day. Except the day there’s a snow storm/tornado/blockade/illness/whatever, the delivery doesn’t show up, and your factory shuts down for lack of parts.
And part of what’s pissing people off is that we see a whole lot of stupid stuff going on that is also “not a good use of the business’ capital”, and yet, management never seems to worry about those things.
I’ve got one friend who works as an engineer, traveling to various customer sites all over the world, to install and repair large industrial equipment. This usually involves some sort of big-ass furnace. These are multi-million dollar systems, and the client are paying to fly this guy in to do work.
And yet, they routinely ignore basic requirements to have the systems ready for him to work on when he gets there. These big-assed furnaces take days to cool enough for him to work on them, and yet, a lot of the time, he gets there to find them still going full blast, and so his one week job turns into a week and half to two weeks, because he’s sitting there for three days waiting for the things to cool off.
Not a great use of time for an engineer so specialized that he travels the whole damn planet to do this job.
And a great example of how much bad management costs a company.
Amend that to no business should be that dependent on ANY level employee.\
Also:
Well, a sole proprietorship or a very small business with just one owner a few part time employees might not have a choice, but honestly, making anyone an essential cog is just asking for trouble.
Great. So you’d have two employees that don’t qualify for benefits, paid time off, 401(k)/retirement, etc. (because that’s usually how the rules work - you have to be full time for bennies). Sure, that will work out for both workers and society in the long run. 
The cost of an employee, even a part time employee, is greater than the actual wage they are drawing. That is why so many companies try to get individual employees to work as many hours as possible, because it’s cheaper than hiring more people even if you’re handing out time-and-a-half for overtime. That’s how the system is currently set up.
Not to mention, as I pointed out, all those part-timers won’t have things like health coverage which are part of what people work for.
That’s a choice of the employer. They could give benefits to part-timers. Maybe they should do so for key positions.
“But can’t you just get into this hot suit? Jeeze.” Nothing’s impossible to the guy who doesn’t have to do it.
Maybe we shouldn’t tie things like health coverage to whether or not a person has a job, or a certain type of job. That might solve a whole bunch of problems.
Yep. And businesses would benefit as well, because they could get out of health insurance entirely.
My son is having to turn over all of the employees in a problem store. Needless to say he’s not having success.
When I was involved with our factories, it was understood that you never tried to run your factories close to 100%, since if a machine went down or had to be taken down for maintenance everything got screwed up. That lesson has not been learned by non-manufacturing employers. A lot of the problems here seem to be depending on a single machine/person and not expecting it to go down.
We did JIT, but a long time back we also had second sources for critical components, just in case. But you can negotiate a better contract if you buy all from one source. And nothing will ever happen to that source, right?
Or even better, cross train full timers on some of the key tasks, so they can cover for each other. That also has the side benefit of spreading around institutional knowledge.
Probably makes too much sense for a thread like this, and I’m sure there are lots of ways to screw ip the implementation.
Best timed typo ever!
Just because something is necessary doesn’t mean it’s important. I suppose the reverse is true as well. I’m sure there are a lot of law partners who are treated as very important who do fuck-all besides golf all day.
But all companies have hierarchies based on what is important to the running of that business. The admin who answers the phone and enters the timesheets is never going to be as important as the partner who brings in several millions of dollars a year in client revenue.
Bumping because the latest (July 2022) jobs report has non-farm payrolls exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
Not that other metrics necessarily show a return to normal, and we’re still short based on what we’d expect from population growth.
Until the admin quits because of the toxic management and the partner tries to do it. Or one of their clueless relatives.