My work just wont leave me alone!

MacMickster

OP. Could t be that your predecessor in your role wanted to work this way and have staff check the slightest thing with him?

Time for a meeting with your staff explaining how YOU want THEM to deal with issues in your absence (which includes allowing them to make mistakes without being hung out to dry).

getmore4less

Hedgehog99 wrote: »

Your staff are snowflakes, unable to step back and think for themselves.

Often that is a refection of the way they are managed.

may be the example

I've seen the note in the diary, I'm going to sort the issue, what is it? What should I do? (Tells you right in the note you claim to have read)


reflects that just doing whats in the diary is not good enough.

really management in a diary.


diary, table bookings, suggest this maybe not a retail but a hospitality setting.

Hedgehog99

getmore4less wrote: »

Often that is a refection of the way they are managed.

...but OP says they work well when he is there with them, so they can do it.

getmore4less

Hedgehog99 wrote: »

...but OP says they work well when he is there with them, so they can do it.

Managing is really all about making sure things work when you are not there.

elsien

Yes, but micromanaging can have that effect. Staff need to have confidence that if they've followed procedures they won't get it in the neck when the manager returns if things have worked but have been done slightly differently.

getmore4less

elsien wrote: »

Yes, but micromanaging can have that effect. Staff need to have confidence that if they've followed procedures they won't get it in the neck when the manager returns if things have worked but have been done slightly differently.

so not managing!

preciousillusions

In the first post the OP says he is talking about his employers not his employees. Confused.

-taff

Train one person to start with on how to deal with trivial matters with strict instructions that they, and only they, are allowed to call you with anything they can't sort out. Tell them they have a limit of one call per day or however many you think is too many. If they call with inconsequential problems, you need to do more training. Get your whole team together to explain this is how you want it to work.
Ask them to delegate any trivial matters to other employees.
Pretty soon, your employees will have been top down trained to stop bothering you and to be more proactive in fixing problems and you will have a TWIC to support you.

20aday

I'm not sure what kind of phone you have OP but sometimes it's possible to block numbers (or enable Do Not Disturb) for when you're away from work i.e. holidays.

With WhatsApp Messenger if you go into the Privacy settings you can turn off read receipts, your status etc. That way if you're abroad and have read their message(s) they'll see if it's been delivered but won't know if you've read it.

I'm at the other end of the tree (floor staff) but have been contacted by work on my days off/holidays asking if I'd be able to go in. Because I've said "yes" too many times it feels like it's pretty much expected I'll roll over and go in-needless to say at the end of the month when I'm off for the week I'll be blocking left, right and centre!

TELLIT01

getmore4less wrote: »

Managing is really all about making sure things work when you are not there.

I agree totally. In a previous employment I was one of 9 regional IT support managers who attended a national meeting once a month. The phones of a couple of other managers never seemed to stop ringing because they demanded that they were informed of any problems in their area before action was taken.
Not only was that obviously disruptive to our meetings, it delayed action on problems (clearly counter productive), and meant that their deputies didn't feel trusted.
I would only be contacted if there was a really major problem, and even then it was only to keep me in the loop as my deputy knew that I would support him even if he took a wrong decision. My mobile was a company one so I never took it out at weekends, and certainly never took it on holiday with me, whereas one of the others did take his with him and tried to brag about the fact that they couldn't manage without him. It didn't go down well with him when I said that it was more of a reflection on his failure to upskill his team than anything else.

To the OP I'd just say to identify all the work related numbers and ignore them if you aren't at work.