I work in the publishing dept. In the early 2000s I would spend most of my time researching and writing. Then I’d send my Word doc to the proofreader, who would send it on to the graphic design department and on to the printer who would turn it into a glossy magazine. Now we do the entire job ourselves, from beginning to end. Instead of producing quality copy, most of my time is spent trying to find the problems I’ve made styling/tagging the Word doc to get it to parse into xml, then running it through the typesetting software several times, each time fixing tables, page breaks etc & fiddling with the xml to make it look presentable. At least 50% of the time I have to log a tech production help request bcs I break it and don’t know how to fix. All done through a digital interface that forces me to work narrowly according to set priorities and in a structured order. If I knew the job was going to turn into this I never would have studied communications and journalism. And this is the third company I’ve worked for in 10 years. They are all like this now. It’s horrible.
It's a universal issue: management saving visible staff costs and in doing so imposing invisible productivity costs across all personnel.
I think of it as "the tea-trolley problem" because I first encountered it in an office in Coventry where I worked as a student apprentice. The tea-lady used to wheel her trolley office to office with tea, coffee and snacks. She had change, once she'd got used to your regular order she just delivered it to your desk. If you were chatty she'd chat, if not, not. Kinda perfect and overall quite efficient. Then her services were dispensed with on cost grounds. Effect on productivity? Who knows, not measured on a bean-counter's bottom line.
Most recently it happened in London City offices where I was working. Support staff were dispensed with, saving visible costs, bean-counters congratulated. Brokers and engineers had to complete their own expenses claims using the most unintuitive system imaginable, often taking half a day after a complex trip. Again, non-visible productivity hit.
Oh yes, when I first started at a firm, they had a tea lady. It was actually lovely. It gave me a break and I would always have a chat with her, and she would know what biscuits I liked. It made the workplace a better place to be at.
I agree wholeheartedly even though I am a techie academic (engineer by training, teaching IT stuff by necessity) but I spend time in my cloud computing lectures pointing out that "on demand self service" = "make the paying customer do the work for you" while you cut employee numbers. And, although I don't often have trouble with these systems myself, I still find them annoying, alienating and frustrating. Don't worry, it might not even be you, these systems often fail because some programmer did not and could not foresee every possible human initial action or response to something the machine does. I was taken aback though, during my recent visit back to Australia, by the way these self service checkouts have been adopted in Target/KMart and they were difficult to use particularly if you are buying clothes as opposed to groceries. And barely a person around to help. Very depressing.
That’s how I got into issues! Buying clothes, and the clothes were in a packet and to scan it, I had to open the packet and put my bag down… oh don’t even start me…
So as a contract lawyer, I’m really familiar with the issue of being unable to foresee everything that arises. You just can’t. It’s why you have to have default rules, for those times when things happen that no one could predict. (May be that I have a forthcoming chapter on this).
I have been on the professional staff side at a uni. I have also been on the academic end. It's awful for both. 2 comments come to mind :
1. Academics often don't have time to tinker around with these new shiny software and professional staff feel overburdened in providing support as they need to hand hold so many people with limited resources and time.
2. Unis don't hire competent people in technical roles who CAN provide the support. Lots of nepotism and bloat in uni admin and it's hiring practices. Academics, especially in Law, are so so technologically slow 🐌 that it makes people cringe, especially younger professional staff. All this effects morale and breeds resentment.
I am not very good with these procedures. I seem to be able to break systems. I am sure I make people cringe. I believe the phone issue has been sorted - maybe I need to ring myself to check. I still can’t work out how to record an answering machine message…
Indeed. An opportunity is created for businesses that do give personal service. It can be done efficiently and using technology though with a person as the interface with the customer. I’m pretty sure some company will discover this.
I work in the publishing dept. In the early 2000s I would spend most of my time researching and writing. Then I’d send my Word doc to the proofreader, who would send it on to the graphic design department and on to the printer who would turn it into a glossy magazine. Now we do the entire job ourselves, from beginning to end. Instead of producing quality copy, most of my time is spent trying to find the problems I’ve made styling/tagging the Word doc to get it to parse into xml, then running it through the typesetting software several times, each time fixing tables, page breaks etc & fiddling with the xml to make it look presentable. At least 50% of the time I have to log a tech production help request bcs I break it and don’t know how to fix. All done through a digital interface that forces me to work narrowly according to set priorities and in a structured order. If I knew the job was going to turn into this I never would have studied communications and journalism. And this is the third company I’ve worked for in 10 years. They are all like this now. It’s horrible.
This is so familiar, MIchelle. And it makes the job much more miserable and time consuming. Another friend got out of publishing because of this.
It's a universal issue: management saving visible staff costs and in doing so imposing invisible productivity costs across all personnel.
I think of it as "the tea-trolley problem" because I first encountered it in an office in Coventry where I worked as a student apprentice. The tea-lady used to wheel her trolley office to office with tea, coffee and snacks. She had change, once she'd got used to your regular order she just delivered it to your desk. If you were chatty she'd chat, if not, not. Kinda perfect and overall quite efficient. Then her services were dispensed with on cost grounds. Effect on productivity? Who knows, not measured on a bean-counter's bottom line.
Most recently it happened in London City offices where I was working. Support staff were dispensed with, saving visible costs, bean-counters congratulated. Brokers and engineers had to complete their own expenses claims using the most unintuitive system imaginable, often taking half a day after a complex trip. Again, non-visible productivity hit.
Oh yes, when I first started at a firm, they had a tea lady. It was actually lovely. It gave me a break and I would always have a chat with her, and she would know what biscuits I liked. It made the workplace a better place to be at.
I agree wholeheartedly even though I am a techie academic (engineer by training, teaching IT stuff by necessity) but I spend time in my cloud computing lectures pointing out that "on demand self service" = "make the paying customer do the work for you" while you cut employee numbers. And, although I don't often have trouble with these systems myself, I still find them annoying, alienating and frustrating. Don't worry, it might not even be you, these systems often fail because some programmer did not and could not foresee every possible human initial action or response to something the machine does. I was taken aback though, during my recent visit back to Australia, by the way these self service checkouts have been adopted in Target/KMart and they were difficult to use particularly if you are buying clothes as opposed to groceries. And barely a person around to help. Very depressing.
That’s how I got into issues! Buying clothes, and the clothes were in a packet and to scan it, I had to open the packet and put my bag down… oh don’t even start me…
So as a contract lawyer, I’m really familiar with the issue of being unable to foresee everything that arises. You just can’t. It’s why you have to have default rules, for those times when things happen that no one could predict. (May be that I have a forthcoming chapter on this).
I have been on the professional staff side at a uni. I have also been on the academic end. It's awful for both. 2 comments come to mind :
1. Academics often don't have time to tinker around with these new shiny software and professional staff feel overburdened in providing support as they need to hand hold so many people with limited resources and time.
2. Unis don't hire competent people in technical roles who CAN provide the support. Lots of nepotism and bloat in uni admin and it's hiring practices. Academics, especially in Law, are so so technologically slow 🐌 that it makes people cringe, especially younger professional staff. All this effects morale and breeds resentment.
I am not very good with these procedures. I seem to be able to break systems. I am sure I make people cringe. I believe the phone issue has been sorted - maybe I need to ring myself to check. I still can’t work out how to record an answering machine message…
Indeed. An opportunity is created for businesses that do give personal service. It can be done efficiently and using technology though with a person as the interface with the customer. I’m pretty sure some company will discover this.