One company I worked for had a problem in that some employees were offsite for, sometimes, months at a time. This made for an uncohesive team and low morale, it was reasoned. Management “solved” this problem by instituting a mandatory meeting every week. On Fridays, to be exact. from 4 to 6. Most offsite employees left at around 5 every day. And we were expected to make up those hours, as they were billable.
The second of these meetings had no topic. “Does anyone have any issues they’d like to discuss? Anyone? Anyone?” It was a 2-hour staring contest.
Eventually it was decided that some people had to travel way too far for a 2-hour meeting. So the meetings were extended to 6 hours. When the company expanded, it was felt that a mere 6-hour meeting was a waste for people to fly clear across the country, and sometimes overseas. So the meetings became all day Friday and all day Saturday.
This was all to improve morale, remember. And oh, what fun it is for a programmer to listen to someone with no public speaking skills and a bit of a stutter drone on about quarterly marketing projections.
The last such meeting I remember was catered. Three times. And it went on so long, I was hungry when I left. 7am to 9:30pm. My morale was in the toilet.
Dangerosa, I think there’s a big difference between being recognized during the workday–though I’m with you on the balloons; what am I, eight years old?–and “morale-boosting” activities that take place during non-work hours. My off-time is golden. I have a real family and real friends, and I’d much rather spend my evenings and weekends with them. I don’t care how fun the stupid activity is, if I’m doing it on the weekend with my co-workers, you’re taking time away from me and I’m going to resent the hell out of it.
Part of treating employees well is identifying the other employees who are dragging down the group, giving them a clear opportunity to shape up, and then bouncing them. By definition, treating employees well explicitly excludes soft-hearted tolerance of the mouthy, self-absorbed slaggards who are destroying the group’s cohesiveness and efficiency.
Seriously, what the hell? My morale is primarily improved by the time I spend AWAY from work. I can’t imagine why anyone would think that dragging employees in on a weekend or at night would do anything OTHER than breed resentment.
We have “Convocation” in a couple of weeks at the University I work for.
I work second shift, 3-11pm. But I’m expected to be there, ON MY DAY OFF, from 8:30am to 1pm, to listen to a bunch of 5-year plan bullshit and speeches by bigshots who otherwise wouldn’t have the time of day for us.
I don’t care that it’s overtime. It’s my freaking day off and I don’t give a flying fuck about the five year plan.
(I’m not going, btw. Fuck 'em. Let them write me up if they want.)
And yet, some people feel really cheated when these events get cancelled or don’t happen. Not everyone responds the same.
The thing I’m trying to get at is that everyone doesn’t believe the same behavior is being “treated well.” Some people think that the company retreat is a huge perk.
(I’m not a fan of these things being mandatory by any means - but I’ve never come across them where they actually are. “My kids have a soccer game” or “Its my mother’s birthday” always seems to work. If they are a condition of employment, that is stupid.)
It’s not the books or a video that takes the moolah. Think abut all the time wasted on this. Meetings. Pre-meeting meetings. Pre-Meeting pre meetings.Post meetings. Endless meetings, which don’t really get much accomplished (even at the more efficient places I’ve been, I’ve never seen a meeting which could not have been accomplished in half the time). They waste oodles of everyone’s time doing things which don’t help.
Fair point. It’s just hard for me not to think of those people as sad losers who have no life outside their job. As long as it’s held against me for not attending, I don’t care if others do.
I loved Mr. McAlister. No Bullshit there. His meetings were short and to the point. And the point was, tell me what I need to know using as few words as possible. If one of his meetings got to more than 5 minutes long, he’d say “No. Stop. Can you make Thursday’s deadline or not?”
That’s all well and good on top of decent treatment, but it’s not a replacement. That’s the problem. If you treat people like crap, muck around with them as much as possible, pay them terribly … and then give them a balloon on their birthday, they’re not going to respond with love and affection for the company. (However, so help you if you got someone ELSE a balloon for their birthday, but not them, because then it’s a slight.)
I’ve worked for a company that hired temp employees, promised them hire and then took an extra 3-6 months longer than they said, paid well below standard for the area, hired any idiot and never did anything about poor performers, hassled good employees to perform better to make up for the bad performers they wouldn’t fire… and then would want to know where they should buy their $5 gift card that would fix the morale problem.
Extras are great. One of the things I like about my work is the little stuff, like a free Costco membership. But if I was stressed and mistreated in my work, it wouldn’t fix the problem.
I spent many years as a manager. The only people who left my group also left the company. I had tons of people wanting to transfer in. I agree with the treating people well part, but that is a lot more important than the paying people what they’re worth part.
Most surveys show that people quit jobs because their managers suck, not because their pay is bad. Some people will never get paid what they think they’re worth, some people feel they get plenty of money, but hate the job anyway. I get paid reasonably well, but I wouldn’t leave this job for a 20% raise, because my managers let me do what I want, I’m appreciated, and we’re all doing good stuff.
Good managers should know enough about the job to be respected. I’ve always worked in technical jobs, and clueless managers got scorn from the engineers who knew what they were doing.
Good managers protect the people who work for them from bureaucratic crap.
Good managers are not threatened by those smarter than they are.
Good managers are happy when someone they hire or who works for them gets promoted and goes far.
Good managers don’t expect loyalty from reports unless they give loyalty to reports.
The biggest problems I’ve seen are those who are so insecure that they will point a finger at a report whenever something goes wrong, who will only hire people they can dominate, and who are scared of not knowing something. A lot of this is trusting the people who work for you. If you can’t, they should go.
I’m confused. OP=“you”? If so, I’m still confused: is it the same OP? or are you implying we ought not trifle with workplace decency because baristas spit in people’s latte?