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58% of Malaysian employees say they are burnt out from work, according to a report by human resource solutions provider Employment Hero, as reported in FMT.
Almost every company has, at some point, or another, been through the “not enough staff” phase. It often happens when there’s an expansion with new projects and/or clients.
But a chronic staff shortage means there’s a problem in management, and things will get worse. Here’s one such tale:
Rizal had started as an intern and was already overworked before being confirmed.
Image via Unsplash
Rizal, a fresh university graduate, landed his internship and was determined to do well to get a full-time job at the same company.
But he knew he had a lot to prove: There were three other interns and only one slot available for full-time.
Competition for that one opening was fierce. “I was young and eager to get started,” he explained, “but from day one, the workload was enormous.”
“I remember getting enough work for at least two people. That was everything I knew: From coding and bug-fixing to even networking engineering, which I had very little knowledge or experience with!”
After the first week of punishing 12-hour days, Rizal asked his superiors if this was normal. He was told, “Around here it is,” and “Don’t ask about more staff. Management won’t like that.”
“I thought that was more than a little crazy,” he continued, “But I kept my head down and didn’t cause trouble: I still needed good marks on my internship evaluation to guarantee I could graduate.”
After getting promoted to full-time, Rizal was given more work
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Rizal would complete his internship and earn the coveted full-time position.
The good news is that it came with a pay increase.
The bad news was that it came with even more duties, responsibilities, and even longer hours.
He felt that since he had a full-time position, he could do something about the staffing situation that management needed to be aware of.
After raising concerns to his superiors, it turns out they were aware of it – they just didn’t seem to consider it a priority.
Their response was: “We have no additional budget for manpower “or “insufficient talents available to hire.”
If that was true, what about the two other interns? Were they not “talents available to hire?”
Rizal felt that if customers were getting the support and services they needed, management honestly did not care about the severity of the situation.
Since there were no full-time positions, the interns left and were seeking full-time employment elsewhere.
“I believe I got the full-time position because I was more outspoken and I was kind of the leader within the group. But we had worked well together and I felt like we could have kept that dynamic if given a chance.”
Rizal’s repeated attempts to get new staff hired, including hiring the two former interns, placed him in the crosshairs of management.
They began to label him as a “troublemaker” and “problematic employee.”
Everyone started working 50-60 hours a week
Image via Unsplash
At this time, the company then took on a massive new project. In Rizal’s estimation, the size of this project was one they could not handle.
However, while workloads increased, more help did not arrive, and business carried on as usual.
Rizal believed that, “Management was overconfident from the fact that we were still able to hit the deadlines.”
The shortage continued, and everyone’s stress level mounted and increased. People worked late into the night and on weekends to meet the targets.
“We did our best,” said Rizal, “We streamlined a lot of things, implemented as much automation, and used a lot of shortcuts.”
With strenuous efforts of 50–60-hour work weeks for three months, Rizal and his colleagues delivered the project on time.
This created a Revolving Door situation.
Image via Unsplash
The project’s completion resulted in half the employees taking time off due to physical exhaustion and mental fatigue.
Of course, already short-staffed, this started a revolving door situation.
This is a cycle in which employees do not remain in a position for more than a short amount of time before they leave, thus requiring the position to be filled frequently.
At this stage, there was always somebody on medical leave at any given time due to fatigue, stress, and burnout.
The tools and workflows that had carried the team through the project were a stopgap.
Rizal explained, “All the automation and shortcuts don’t help when you don’t have enough staff to do the necessary work.”
With someone on leave, the others would pull together and take over their workload. This would inevitably lead to even more people taking leave at a time.
The company’s success hid their manpower weaknesses
Image via Unsplash
“There was just never enough staff,” said Rizal, “The place was understaffed when I joined, and it just stayed understaffed.”
The irony of the situation was not lost on the employees, even if it was lost on the management.
“Our success when so critically understaffed was our undoing,” said Rizal, “They refused to hire the other two interns back on, even as part-timers, and no new staff hired either.”
When bonus time arrived, there were no bonuses for anyone.
Though management kept silent on the matter, the overall message that workers took away from this was simple.
Things are worse at other companies, so they should be grateful: Other people don’t have a job. If they didn’t like it, they could leave.
Mass resignations started to occur. This created a domino effect.
Image via Unsplash
As such, some like Rizal eventually did end up leaving.
“For me, that was the absolute limit,” he said.
Exhausted mentally and physically broken down, Rizal handed in his resignation and spent most of his lunch breaks sleeping at his desk.
It turns out that Rizal’s resignation was not the only one. At least five other people applied for whatever leave they had and then tendered their resignations.
“Several more people tendered when they saw the incompletable mountain of work and the blame for missed deadlines that would become their burden.”
The last two weeks saw a lot of shuffling of workloads and responsibilities as people left to clear their leave balances and never returned.
“When you have only ten programmers and software engineers and half of them quit, of course, management notices.”
Now awake to the problem, management started scrambling to hire and desperately negotiated to keep some staff on the way out.
You Reap What You Code
Image via Unsplash
To be fair to the management, hiring replacements does take time.
It is understandable when a company cannot find employees with the right knowledge and skill sets in the short term.
But when you expect a heroic few to sacrifice themselves for the needs of a company, this has the potential to occur.
The first one to say “I quit” could trigger a cascade of departures, as nobody wants to be the last rat on the sinking ship.
“They lost almost 3/4 of their programmers and engineers in a few months,” said Rizal, “If they had spent some money hiring, they’d still be around.”
If you’ve got a personal experience, let us know at: hello@inreallife.my
For more stories like this, read: www.inreallife.my/how-are-malaysians-really-doing-in-singapore/
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