Recently I had a discussion with a coworker about some tasks expected of some other members of our company. In this company there are a number of people who frequently do not perform the tasks they are assigned. I’ll call them the “slackers”. One of the great things about this company is that there are also some people who are willing to help out others with little prodding. We call it teamwork. Let’s call these people “cheerleaders”.
In the past few months it has become apparent that the slackers have been relying on the cheerleaders. It’s not only during peak business periods where the cheerleaders have to pitch in. It has become expected, and the slackers don’t even make an attempt to perform all of their duties, they simply say they’re too busy, and the cheerleaders have always come to the rescue.
I have a few problems with this. The slackers appear to have plenty of time to perform all of their tasks, if they simply spread the work out over the whole day instead of waiting until afternoon to try to do everything. It has become a sort of codependent/enabling relationship in the workplace.
How will the slackers ever learn they have to do their own job? What about the cheerleaders’ own jobs? Isn’t productivity suffering since the cheerleaders are doing jobs other than their own?
I would love to hear others’ opinions on this topic.