Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
[…]
I also hear that the pause on the interactive work is temporary. I’ve heard them request time. I am comfortable granting that request, but no one is required to agree with me. They’ve also said that the person with the most information is on vacation. As someone who has seen employees go through considerable stress in the last years, the entire executive team is working to establish some cultural standards around supporting vacations. We want people here to feel comfortable taking proper vacations and sometimes that can even need to happen in a crisis. People often plan their vacations well in advance and may not know that something tricky will come up. Just so you understand one bias I bring to this conversation.
[…]
I concur with DJ in his initial mail that this is not a use- ful practice, and I doubt very much that it relieves employ- ees' stress. It conveys the organizational expectation that employees are SPOFs without any backup. An employee should not experience their time off as a period where his work load is just temporarily buffered until his return, but where colleagues will step in and take care of business. Especially such a major decision like "pausing" a team should not depend on the inner thoughts of one employee, but be backed and explainable by others.
Tim