Most of my writing will inevitably revolve around my work, so its probably best to start off with my job description. Within the communication's squadron, i manage/run the deployment, training, emergency management, and personnel management programs. Until recently, today actually, my office consisted of three military personnel, a TSgt deployment manager, a TSgt training manager, and an A1C personnelist. None of these people were trained for these jobs by virtue of their AFSC, all these people were trained up while serving in their positions.
My Training manager, is in a critical AFSC, and due to manning shortages in another part of the squadron, he had to be pulled from my section, and sent to another worksection. Unfortunately, there isn't another person who can be pulled to replace him, so I'm going to be shorthanded for the forseeable future. Now, the immediate facts of the situation dictate that I find a way in which i can do the job of 4 people with 3, however, I don't beleive that's the end of the issue here. The commander's executive officer- aka secretary - is slated to PCS in July, and there is yet to be a clear replacement named. Before the current exec took his position, i filled in the position in the interim in addition to my current duties, and its my belief that when the current exec leaves, I'll be asked to preform those duties as well. So my actual challange is how to do the work of 5 people with 3.
Before the recent personnel moves, there was a clear division of tasks within my workcenter, and i was able to fill in for any absenses, balance out the workload when needed, and also help out any other struggleing workcenters with any training/personnel/deployment/emergency management issues they were having, leaving my workcenter to accomplish the day to day while i was able to help the squadron progress as a whole. It also made my workcenter more effective because they do not have any direct control over the squadron as whole, so while they're programs touched every memeber of the squadron, they had no real authority over the squadron, so i was able to serve as a liason to grease the wheels and alternately as a hammer when needed.
I haven't truely had a moment to sit down and absorb how this personnel move will truely affect my workcenter, and neither have my personnel, however if i wait for them to feel the effects, it will already be too late, and drastic measures will have to be taken just to catch up to where we need to be.
I think the most obvious solution here is to revise the division of work, however, if i alone make all the decisions on this one, I'll never get them to truely buy off. Morale will suffer regardless, but i think it will drop even lower if i tell them what programs to take on. My current plan to resolve this is simple, take an afternoon off, sit them down in a room, list out the tasks that need to be accomplished by the workcenter as a whole and the frequency in which they need to be done, and get their input on how best to divide them up. I have faith that they are both team players to the point that they would be willing to take on some additional work in order to ensure no lapse of service to the squadron, plus it allows them to buy in to the process.
So, thats my plan as best i can think of, hopefully I'll be writing a more cheery entry tomorrow.
-Jarzabek
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