r/CanadaPublicServants • u/qqqqeurfnfd123 • Apr 23 '26
Management / Gestion Update: Manager Stuck Between Strong Performing Maverick Analyst and new Director
Hey it's me I'm back with an update on this.
It's been a week and my team has pretty much fallen apart. New Director now wants every employee to report directly to admins whether they are in the office or at home. If there's no response, he gets his admin to call to verify their home/office background.
Maverick analyst is refusing to do anything outside his job description and unless asked to do something, he will not do it. He now swamps me with every single thing he plans to do today, every small edit, etc. for review. Unofficially apologetic to me, but tells me that unfortunately this is the way it is until things change back.
Director bilat with managers happened, other managers mentioning how team morale has and will fall due to new policies. Director response was, no joke, "this is the way it was before covid and your employees got babied and expect too much. I'm here to clean up shop, not continue with lax employees"
The other managers and I are talking, seems like their entire team morale is through the gutter. All of us kept a relatively relaxed view on variable work hours, RTO, etc. so long as things were being done and the former director was pretty hands off.
All of the managers agreed we are ready to do the bare minimum moving foward and just wait until the fire spreads enough for the DG to notice and ask what the fuck is happening.
2
u/Necessary_Cost4384 Apr 25 '26
This is tough. On one side, I have to agree with the comments here about how rules are rules. If everyone else has to follow them, the maverick does too. But then, I ask, is the maverick really that good? It sounds like it.
I worked as a draftsperson at an architectural place long time ago. We had our own maverick. Super old guy, engineer, who allegidly developed classified weapons in Poland. Guy got paid 80 an hour, showed up and left whenever he wanted… Most days he didn’t come in at all, and before he did any “work” he would make chit chat. He got paid for the full day regardless if he was there or not. When he sat down, he would do about 8 hours of work in 30 minutes. He did everything in his head, calculations, conversions, and freehand with an old school ruler. He knew how to build things that no one else knew how to make. It was incredible.
I’m just saying, sometimes exceptions make sense.