'Try to pile on more work to increase your bonus? Not gonna happen...': Manager tries to put the work of 12 people onto a 7 person team to get a bigger bonus, supervisor won't let that happen

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Aug 31, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

There's this trend that happens in every industry, across every workplace, where managers think they've come up with a clever and original new idea to increase profits. See, there are really only two ways to do this: Increase revenue or decrease expenses. However, increasing revenue is hard and takes effort and new ideas, so instead, they start looking at the bottom line. The first place they're going to look at at this point is staffing. Employees and labor are huge expenses, and management is always under the impression that workers are slacking and stealing time anyway, so cutting numbers here makes sense to them. Why employ more staff when you can just pay less to do the same amount of work anyway? Heck, while we're at it, let's see if we can get them to do more work, too. 

Management will collect their bonuses for a job well done in "increasing profits," and they might even stick around for a while after and look for more opportunities for short-term cost-cutting. By the time the truth materializes in the form of burnout and high turnover of staff, kickstarting an exodus of key staff and the institutional knowledge they take with them, those same managers will be long gone and on to the next company to do exactly the same thing, abandoning the old ship as unpatched holes that were long ignored for far too long at the sake of cutting costs causes it to sink behind them.

This supervisor and team leader weren't about to take this type of strategy lying down when their manager tried to push the workload from what had once been a team of 12 onto a team of seven. Their refusal to comply led to management not seeing the coveted bonuses they had been craving.

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  • 01
    "Try to pile on more work to increase your bonus? Not gonna happen..."
    via Jo Szczepanska
  • 02
    Try to pile on more work to increase your bonus? Not gonna happen... M I oversee a team of a dozen folks when its fully staffed. We had a fellow move out of state for school, a lady retire to care for her grandkids when her daughter got sick, then 3 people promote up within the organization all within 4 weeks time, so almost 1/2 the team suddenly became unavailable.
    via mikemojc
  • 03
    While I'm involved in the recruiting/on- boarding process, management up to 3 levels above me tends to be a bottle. neck. Each time someone let me know they were moving on, I informed management, and gave them a running total; "We're at 84% staffing", "We're at 66% staffing...." etc. Ads were placed, 1st round interviews conducted (by me and a team lead), 2nd interviews recommended to the next level of management, and that's where
    via mikemojc
  • 04
    the process suddenly stopped. For a week, then 2, then 3. It commonly takes 2-3 weeks after hire to bring a new person up to speed to start being. productive, and perhaps 8 weeks for a new person to reach 90-95% of median productivity goals. The existing team was ready to 'pull together' and 'work harder!' to keep up with the work, but I took each one aside and coached them that the heavy workload they were under was NOT their problem to solve; YES, customers were complaining, YES, other groups
    via mikemojc
  • 05
    getting frustrated that our team wasn't getting things done in a timely fashion. I encouraged them to work efficiently, and well, but to NOT put in extra unpaid time or contribute their own resources to projects. And, if anyone was insistent in their complaints regarding the teams productivity, send them to me and I would explain the situation.
    via mikemojc
  • 06
    Middle and upper manglement across the organization started vocalizing about how little work was getting done. When I played the Uno Reverse card that "Hey, all we need is adequate, well trained staff and we'll be able to keep up, and Managers 1, 2, & probably Exec 1 ALL have potential interviewees on their desk for almost a month, now...", I started getting the Stink-Eye from those folks.
    via mikemojc
  • 07
    I found out later that one or a couple of those folks that I report to (and were also the next rungs in the hiring ladder) had proposed the idea that this team could run just as well a little leaner, so they arranged to find out. Oppsie- Daisy!! Metrics indicated that organizational goals weren't met because of their decision, but I was able to provide the stats that proved that the teams Individual goals WERE met, and that in many respects per person efficiencies were improved! My Team Members
    via mikemojc
  • 08
    TL;DR - Middle manglement tries to dump the workload of 12 on 7, loses bonus' when we don't break ourselves to meet their unreasonable demand.
    via mikemojc
  • 09
    Legitimate_Drive_... Signs of a good manager. Not letting your team kill themselves so upper management can get more money. I have seen so many times where they will just leave the team short staffed until everyone broke themselves trying to keep up.
    via mikemojc
  • 10
    Tracy MinOB . 3y ago Well done! Congrats on backing up and looking out for your team! 2 years ago I was part of a team of 6. Then 2 were let go. Then another left for a new job. Then the pandemic and 1 was laid off. Then another hit her breaking point and left. By May I was the only one left.
    via mikemojc
  • 11
    I tried but didn't run myself into the ground. Had a meltdown on my boss and got a substantial raise. Let a lot of things go as I prioritized my tasks. We're back up to 5 now and the auditors are asking questions about why stuff wasn't done in the latter part of 2019 and early of 2020. Oops!
    via mikemojc
  • 12
    I bluntly told the auditors that we had a drastic staff decrease and I was not able to do the work of 6 people. They understood completely but middle management is now scrambling to do all the missed work... and I got another raise because absolutely nothing in my job description was pinged by the auditors.
    via mikemojc
  • 13
    torchbearer1648 3y ago Trying to run leaner sounds like they're basically taking advantage of your team and see if they can pull it off with your team worked into the ground. What a bunch of a- holes! >:( Good for you for protecting your team. I'm stuck in a similar situation at work
    via mikemojc
  • 14
    right now, where my coworkers and I are pressured to complete unreasonable amount of work. We're currently understaffed, so heavy workloads are affecting our mental health.
    via mikemojc
  • 15
    raptorbluez I worked for a Fortune 500 company as part of a technical team. We had 14 people when I joined the team and everyone was kept busy with what was an incredibly detail oriented job. Then the company fired (laid off) 2 people, we waited and everyone worked harder. Then they lost another 2 to other companies/departments and laid off more. After a year of this we were down to 5 people doing the work that was once done by 14.
    via mikemojc
  • 16
    OverlordRazor Honestly good on you for sticking to your guns and not only making your employees work longer hours to pick up the slack, like many other bosses would, but actively saying no. You're absolutely right, if the workload cannot be handled by the current staff during the allotted work hours, then
    via mikemojc
  • 17
    more staff is needed. Not saying that trimming the fat, so to speak, is a bad idea at all times since sometimes it does make sense. But cutting your department in half and still expecting the same output is absurd.
    via mikemojc
  • 18
    JTBoom1 As I read this, I was thinking that I'd seen this recently. It was posted as a comment to another story. That said, I enjoyed rereading it and the way you were able to stick it to management and take care of your team. Great job!
    via mikemojc
  • 19
    Alittlesoftinside I was involved with an organization that was notorious for how long their hiring process was. We'd post an ad in March, start interviews in July, and extend offers around November. By the time we got around to interviews, over half our candidates were no longer interested.
    via mikemojc
  • 20
    By the time we were ready to hire, our top choices were not available. We basically had to settle for the folks who couldn't get a job for the better part of the previous year. In other words, we were shooting ourselves in the foot and always hired the candidates that were least qualified/least desirable.
    via mikemojc
  • 21
    I tried to point out that if we could streamline our hiring process and make faster decisions, we'd end up hiring better people. No one wanted to hear it. They were drinking their own koolaid. Nope. They felt that our place was prestigious! [Narrator: It wasn't.] They said that the best candidates will wait for us
    via mikemojc
  • 22
    because they want to work here so bad. [Narrator: They didn't.] We were overworked and underpaid and always. ALWAYS hiring. I am no longer working for "the prestige."
    via mikemojc
  • 23
    Tetragonos So last place of employment our supervisor quits and they offered me his job. I asked for a pay raise and said well I would love to do it if you paid me for my work. They went around to their second third fourth choices all the way around and everybody gave them the same story I did extra work means extra pay. Then they offered the position to the least qualified guy and he took it for no extra pay.
    via mikemojc
  • 24
    He eventually ended up doing 20+ extra hours a week and when that made him grumpy I told him in a large jovial tone "Yeah but that's why you took the position for the extra pay!" just to watch the blood vessel on his head twitch.
    via mikemojc
  • 25
    mnelaway It's my experience that the only group of people that aren't missed when "leaning out" a company is management. Yet they are always the last (if ever) to go.
    via mikemojc
  • 26
    438867 Working harder due to staffing shortages (intentional or not) only make somebodys poor decision look good. Good on you for being the good manager.
    via mikemojc

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