High expectations/ Low recognition - Service Canada Benefits Officer Service Canada Employee Review

I found the day-to-day work repetitive and not very fulfilling. It didn’t give me a strong sense of impact or ownership, even though the work was important. The environment felt heavily bureaucratic. Processes were slow, decision-making was layered, and it was hard to see tangible results from the effort I was putting in. Growth felt structurally capped. Even when I performed well, advancement seemed limited without a bachelor’s degree, which made it feel like a dead-end long-term. My performance was judged mainly by production stats—how many files I completed—without properly accounting for how complex or time-consuming a file could be. If I was consistently assigned difficult cases that required more care, my numbers looked “low” and I was treated like a low performer. That standard felt especially wrong because the work involved people’s lives—often low-income individuals—where time, care, and sensitivity are necessary. The pressure to hit numbers pushed the work in the opposite direction. The targets were extremely high, and our region had less budget and not enough staff. Instead of adjusting expectations, leadership pushed harder for higher output, which created constant pressure to rush. No matter how hard I worked, it never felt like it was good enough. The demands were unrealistic, and the pressure was relentless. When I stepped into acting team leader roles, I saw it from the other side. Leadership knew the expectations were unrealistic, but still pushed that pressure onto employees anyway, which I found pretty disgusting.