Processes change, equipment and methods are improved, production gets streamlined, some of the parts are preassembled, the new widget uses less pieces or it’s just different than when the original number was set, workers get better at what they do (search youtube for ‘fast workers’ or ‘god level’), the bar was set low to begin with and any other number of reasons.
Paraphrased
“Here at Chotski’s, we like to encourage you to express yourself. If you feel wearing the bare minimum Flair is okay, well, okay then. Some people choose to wear more, and we encourage that.”
It seems as though the word “minimum” has no meaning in this scenario.
No, he means that there would always be a lowest performer, and he’s right – how is that sustainable? It’s not like in ten years everyone will be making 10,000 widgets per week because you keep replacing the worst performer; there’s a limit.
I think you’ve read the phrase incorrectly…
The workers are just running with the ball; they can’t move the goalposts. Only management can move the goalposts. As Ethilrist noted, if [management] moves the goalposts we have a different situation. To move the goalposts, management would have to update the handbook/policy/quota system to say ### is the new goal. There are probably industry standards (depending upon the industry, of course) defining how much time must be given for the new quota to be met.
Borrowing from the OP, the management could say, “Updated quota is now 165 and anyone failing to produce within 90% of that quota within (standard reasonably expectable period) should start looking for another job and expect to be terminated by (deadline).” Then the company is setting new quotas and policies and every producer must meet it.
But the OP, as written, appears to be targeting Amanda.
A lot of responders have suggested ancillary what-ifs and such. If the company is sticking to an employment-at-will policy, then it doesn’t even need to give Amanda the OP’s warning. If the company is anything like reality – even in a termination-for-cause realm, they’d be firing Amanda not because she’s producing less than her coworkers (but still meeting the ideal) but because, back in the summer of 10 years ago, she didn’t clock out when she left early for the day* and that’s considered an attempted payroll fraud; plus she took that extra half-hour for lunch# and…
—G!
*Never mind the fact that she dropped the soldering iron on her leg and was taken to the emergency room…
#during the rainstorms of 3 years ago
She meets the minimum level, and is at par with their standard level of performance. Time to re-evaluate and see why others are performing better. Maybe they live nearby?
The employee was informed of the expectations for job productivity. The employee, with that info in mind, surpassed the minimum requirements and met the “ideal” level of productivity, as laid out by her employer. If she’s working hard and concentrating on her own productivity, how would she even know about her co-workers marks?
She was told in the OP
nm
I vote “fair”, only because she’s been told that standards have changed and given the opportunity to improve. But I think it would be a bad businness move to fire her over this.
My husband and I use a nanny. When she started, we gave her a document outlining our expectations. It included activities she was responsible for doing with the kid, including feeding, reading, and playing. The document indicated that when weather permitted it, walks around the neighborhood and to the park were allowed. The document did not specify that this was an expectation, though.
When spring started, the nanny regularly took the baby on walks and stuff. But for the last couple of months, my husband and I have noticed she stopped doing this. They stay indoors or hang out on the deck, even when the weather is perfect for a stroll. We’re a bit puzzled by this but we haven’t made it an issue because the baby seems happy enough. Plus, we use it as an excuse to take her for walks ourselves after work.
If we fired her outright for not doing this, without letting her know our expectations, then I think this would be unfair. But if we did bring up this issue with her and she still elected not to change, then it be fair to fire her, IMO.
That said, in our case, if would be unwise to fire her because aside for not taking the kid out, she’s been a really good and reliable employee otherwise. And the baby likes her. For something relatively small, is it worth firing over? It could be she’s stuck with the company for a long time while other employees leave after burning themselves out. I’d look hard and long before letting her go.
But she didn’t get told this information until she was in danger of getting fired. For someone who was meeting the ideal standards for her company, this seems unfairly sudden. Given her job performance, she deserved to be notified of this well before the situation reached critical mass.
It’s possible I interpreted Richard’s quote, but I read it as firing the lowest producer and now having one less employee and new person making the fewest widgets and axing that person.
That would not be sustainable. However, regularly getting rid of the lowest producer and replacing them with a, hopefully, more productive employee is sustainable. It introduces it’s own set of issues, but I’m not sure how it’s not sustainable. However, management would have to understand that at some point, all else being equal, the employees will max out. If the max possible is 160 and they’re getting rid of everyone that makes 148, yes, that could be an issue. But get rid of the ‘ideal’ employees that are making 100 makes sense. The employer might as well just update whatever policy this hypothetical is based on and avoid the problem in the future.
For all we know Amanda was warned, maybe even multiple times. The question is if it’s fair to fire someone that’s making their numbers if everyone elses numbers are above and beyond, not if it’s okay to fire someone without enough warnings.
And with that, any time told something or corrected at work it’s usually some version of ‘uhhh, better got on this or you’re not going to be around much longer’, whether it’s phrased as an official warning or not. We also don’t know if Amanda was actually fired or not just that she received a warning.
The boss doesn’t typically come up to you to tell you that they want you to ramp up production by 20-50%, but if you don’t that’s fine. Even “one more warning and you’ll get a warning” is still warning. Consider it like getting a mod note.
I know the OP was attempting to give out just the ‘important’ facts, but there’s so much information missing that the things we’re guessing at are starting to cause a lot of thread drift/derailment.
Should be a third category for unrealistic scenario.
That Amanda’s co-workers are getting 100 percent uptime to be able to push 150 for weeks at a time. Not really realistic.
That Amanda’s company has not reviewed production requirements enough to adjust the plan vs actual. Plan is 125 and they are getting 150 from 90 percent of the floor assuming ten employees.
Amanda is not in danger of being fired, what the super should have said to motivate her was that the plan/actual was being re-evaluated and that she was going to have bring her production more inline with the other’s.
Amanda may very well be in danger of being fired, but not over production issues.
For a reverse legal analogy, would it be fair to compare it to a country in which the speed limit is 80 mph, but everyone drives 50 mph, except for one driver who goes 70 mph and gets a ticket for “driving 20 mph faster than everyone else,” or is that just too far off?
Too far off. There’s no statute involved here. Give us more details. We’re just guessing about the situation.
Details - (the original story is actually loosely based off of something I’ve seen happen in real life)
Amanda has a vague idea of what her coworkers are doing production-wise; not specific numbers, but she knows that she is the low performer out of the group, even though she is still besting the minimum-required expectations by a decent margin. She thought that 125 widgets a week was just fine since that was what the expectations said.
Amanda’s boss explains that there are official requirements, and then there are “unofficial requirements,” and that the unofficial expectations are more stringent than what’s actually written down on paper.
As to why Amanda is lower-producing, that’s hard to say - maybe she’s just slower, or more painstaking about things, or maybe her coworkers are just hard-driven people. (She only has about 16-18 coworkers so it’s not a big sample size.) 150 widgets is something that can be attained with some difficulty, week in and week out, but manageable in the long term. 100-125 widgets is if someone is “coasting;” just sitting in the assembly room, doing their job right, but not putting more effort than is needed; conserving one’s energy to put it nicely.
How long has she worked there? How long have the others worked there? Were there any rate increases in the past? What else does this company do? How big is the company? Compare Amanda to the other employees in terms besides productivity, is there anything unique about her? How much do they get paid compared to similar jobs? Do the other workers benefit from their higher productivity? How often does the company fire employees? Do the supervisors get evaluated based on the workers productivity? What kind of skills are needed for this job, can a monkey do it or does it take excellent manual dexterity or special knowledge? What is the local employment situation, are a lot of people out of work or is their a shortage of employees for this kind of work? How big is this company, how many employees, how much revenue? Are they highly profitable, just getting by, about to fold?
You’re just not giving a useful picture of the situation.
And what do you consider ‘fair’? Life is unfair, is Amanda getting more than her share of unfairness?
I went yes based on the at-will and her being the lowest producer but I would have felt better if “maybe” was a choice.
I’m not sure why that person wouldn’t get a speeding ticket.
OTOH, if the speed limit is 50, everyone is driving 65 and single person is tooling along at the zoned and posted limit of 50, they may, even though they aren’t exceeding the speed limit, even though they aren’t breaking that law, still get a ticket for impeding traffic.
In other words, just because you’re following one rule doesn’t mean you aren’t breaking a different one.
Sure, Amanda may be following that one rule, but I’ll bet whatever rule book it came out of says more than 1)Make 100 widgets per week.
As I said earlier, no one likes a rules lawyer and the boss will always win. One piece of advice I’ve always given to employees new to the workforce is ‘don’t be ‘that guy/girl’’. Don’t be the person that makes the manager say ‘ugh, Amanda’s working today, it’s always something with her’. Eventually they’ll find a way to get rid of you. If you rules lawyer them, they’ll do it back and TPTB have (typically) been doing it for longer, know all the tricks that employees use and know the rule book backwards and forwards.
Having worked in factories before, people who coast by just doing the minimum while everyone else gets on with the job are arseholes, and it’s always bothered me that nothing gets done about them. In reality, in a factory job, you don’t have 50 people all making the same widget from start to finish, you have a process that requires everyone to get on with the job at the right speed, and someone who doesn’t keep pace with everyone else is making more work for the others.