with all of the crafts and equipment standing by so that the plant can be re-started within 2 days. Overall, there is less downtime and the production and maintenance operations both run more smoothly (with fewer avoidable costs). Do you have an example, perhaps from your own experience, of a situation where by trying to improve productivity the end effect was the opposite? How did this situation affect the people involved? Were some people affected in other ways to others, or less affected? Why do you think this was? Was the situation improved? What did it take for this to be changed An example which you may want to consider and elaborate on is – during the COVID-19 pandemic a lot of employees were released due to oil and gas projects being put on hold and reduced budget. The manpower was reduced so much that even with projects that were put on hold, it was still a lot of scope to cover with the remaining employees. Now that things are returning back to normal, new projects have started, new budgets released for projects, old projects have resumed (workload increased) however, the number of manpower has not changed since employees were paid off. Employees are expected it have the same output as what it was pre-covid. This has affected people by fatigue, stress, workers morale low, employees resigning, absenteeism, lack of interaction between departments, working long shifts and affected the company with an increase in number of significant incidents resulting in work stoppage, downtime and loss of production, annual goals not achieved, KPIs affected etc. Some employees were generally happy to get on with the work and happy they still held a job during these tough times, other employees resigned and started looking for other work.
