The mood at work has really soured. I didn’t post last night because I wanted some time to think it though and not just to scream into the universe, but I might have a problem.

New KPIs went into effect this week, and they’re a big increase - what was, before, “a really solid day’s work, excellent effort, you’ve done a bit better than planned” is now considered “just about barely adequate, maybe”. Not good, just minimally adequate.

We’ve been busting our collective ass to keep churning through work as everything changed around us. The “new benchmarks” are based on productivity we were flogging ourselves for, with the understanding that we could breathe once things stopped going bananas. We’re undermanned, senior members of the team have been seconded out to back up other departments, the system we use is old and breaking regularly…

Nope. Now the “busting your ass” productivity is a permanent requirement. Everyone hates it.

Me personally, I type with one hand. My right hand won’t do much of anything, so it’s all with my left. I can’t realistically get much faster at processing than I am…and the new benchmarks are set so high I’m only just scraping past them. If I have a day with particularly complex work, or any technical issues at all, I won’t make it.

I like my job. I’d quite like to be competent at my job, and I’d like to feel there was a realistic way for me to improve at my job.

At the moment, it doesn’t feel that way. My absolute best is now barely good enough, and I can’t see a way for me to get any better than bare minimum (and permanently worrying about being pulled up for low productivity) while still “only really being able to process work with one hand”.