Careful, you're being dangerously logical about this situation. My primary account got hell-banned for saying stuff like this.
You're right about the need to address the structural issues before the personnel implementing the structure. If we just swap out the personnel, they'll conform to the system as it currently exists and we'll have the same problems...but with different people.
If this goes through, I'm hoping we'll be able to retain enough good people that are willing to jump through hoops like you say. It's a nice way of framing the problem, thanks for that.
I was being sarcastic near the end. That seems to be what the higher ups think. I definitely think there needs to be lots of redundancy, as someone who has been the recipient of a bunch of dumped on extra responsibility with little knowledge transfer as people have left.
That's a good idea, but I was suggesting something slightly different: try to minimize the number of hand-offs by overlapping shifts and stopping the acceptance of new cases for the outgoing personnel.
Wild the employees will go back under a new board and the same structure, first priority should be removing the structure that allowed a small group of people to destroy things over what may have been very petty reasons.
Agree totally. I came here to post exactly this sentiment and saw it had already been done. I have also been in this situation and I can say that this is NOT a technical problem, this is a political problem and the only person that is going to lose is the new guy - namely the OP.
Of course the problem has a technical solution but the huge red flag is that there is no consensus. This means that whatever solution is put forward is going to upset someone and guess who the target of that ire is going to be.
The only way this is viable is if someone with real power is backing the project and what he/she says goes.
Your much more likely to have somewhere to reassign the lower level employee to than the higher level employee simply because there are fewer roles total at the higher level. Unless both must be reassigned, you end up punishing only the lower level employee.
It doesn’t ensure abuse is stopped. It may just expose a different set of employees to abuse. It doesn’t send a message that abuse is unacceptable or will meet with meaningful consequences. It’s only a solution to anything if the only problematic interactions are between two specific employees. If you have an employee with a boundary problem or who enjoys abusing their position or who “just can’t help themselves”, it does nothing to prevent or deter them from subjecting another report to the same unacceptable behavior. Like the molesting priests mentioned in another thread - moving them to another parish accomplishes nothing except to make it clear that they can get away with misbehavior and to expose a new set of victims to abuse.
The right solution is to hire some more people, with input from the critical employee, and have them gradually learn the ropes. And keep the key employees!
You're right about the need to address the structural issues before the personnel implementing the structure. If we just swap out the personnel, they'll conform to the system as it currently exists and we'll have the same problems...but with different people.
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