But all of those are general terms, whereas “direct report” indicates a specific relationship between a manager and the employees that report directly to him/her. In a fairly flat organization it’s not a useful term, but in large companies with several layers of management and multiple departments, it is. I’m employed by Acme, Inc., and work for my boss, and his boss, and his boss above him, up to the CEO, but I’m only a direct report to my immediate manager.
If the objection is that it’s bad English, OK. It’s obviously a nounification of “report directly,” which may grate on the sensibilities, but to say it’s obfuscatory is off the mark.
ETA: I see that in the time it took me to type this, the point has already been made, but I’ll add to the pile.
Someone I manage may or my not be a direct report - I can manage someone and not have direct responsibility for them - several of my project teams have been run like this. In that case, intercorporate dating really doesn’t need to be my problem unless its affecting my project team - in which case, I’d bring it up with the team members direct manager (aka LINE manager for another piece of corporate speak).
I am going to repeat an earlier point I made. The jargon here did not clarify jack shit. Is anybody talking about inappropriate relationships? No, of course they’re not. Instead, we have one side saying a phrase is pretentious and stupid, and the other side saying that the phrase can’t be pretentious and stupid because, hey, they use it.
Meanwhile, the problem of sex in the workplace is lost. We can blame the lack of focus on the fact that some will only give up their jargon when you pry it from their cold, dead ISO 9000 handbooks.
Now, does anybody have an opinion on a chief officer sleeping with a mid-level employee?
OK, so HR is in charge of deciding how many staff members you need, right? And obviously, you wouldn’t be writing to us if all the work were getting done. Right?
So what this situation really needs is a careful documentation of the workflow and staffing, which backs up a request for another staff member who would be contributing to the completion of the work intended to be done by Lazikins.
Let HR decide whether he/she wants to continue in a relationship with Lazikins once it is made clear that Lazikins work is being left undone. You may be surprised. But it’s no skin off your back if Lazikins gets shuffled off onto a Special Project while you get the needed addition to your staff.
Just concentrate on getting the work done. Any thought or intent which falls into the realm of Getting Other People to Do the Right Thing is counter-productive. You are a dedicated team player who is completely focused on the mission.
Yes, I know.
Yes, yes, I agree totally.
Now please re-read the above. The job-market sucks right now.
We really don’t see any issue with it. Furthermore: We wonder why anyone would come on this forum and ask this question in this way, using this ‘jargon’.
In consulting we just call them “staff”. Although that term is generally reserved for junior folks below manager level.
I think what you meant to say was let’s re-examine our communication framework, reset our relationship benchmarks to a new baseline and pivot to a more collaborative and transparent goal-seeking paradigm.
“Direct Report” is a ubiquitous bit of corporate jargon, because it clearly defines a relationship. This means it is good jargon, which explicates, not bad jargon, which obfuscates.
You can manage a team of hundreds of people, and only a couple of those people directly report to you. The rest report to your direct reports, or to their reports, and so on. A word like “subordinates” or “staff” confuses things, because there may be lots of people in the company senior to you, or junior to you, but you’re not their boss and they’re not your boss. Large companies often keep clear that there’s a difference between seniority and responsibility. There are often senior people who don’t have any direct reports.
You also have people you work with every day that you might routinely tell what to do–but those people do not report to you, they report to another manager. A development lead has developers who report to him, but the testers on the project report to a test lead. If he has a problem with the testers he can’t fire them, he goes to the test lead. And even if you have direct reports that doesn’t mean you have the authority to hire people or fire people. You’re just responsible for their day to day work.
“Direct Report” is useful because it clarifies exactly who you are responsible to, and who you are responsible for. You don’t have a situation where you have 6 bosses. You have one boss. You don’t have a situation where you’re responsible for everyone below you, you have certain people you are responsible for. If you have a large team you pick out team leaders, and assign team members to those leads, so you don’t have to deal with dozens of people trying to get your attention. If you’re the boss of the office you pick out department heads. The department heads report to you. Their staff reports to them.
If you’re routinely being told what to do by your boss’s boss, then you’ve got a shitty boss, and a shitty boss’s boss. If you’re routinely telling your subordinate’s subordinates what to do, then you’re a shitty boss.
None of that has anything to do with using words such as ‘direct report’. There has to be a better way of saying it. A ‘report’ is not now, nor has it ever been, a person. ‘Superior’ and ‘subordinate’ are nice comfy words. Why don’t we try using them?
There was no bad English. The OP used terms that have specific meaning (and used them correctly). If he is guilty of anything, it is not realizing those words are not a part of everyone’s vocabulary (a forgivable offense). Odds are if you’re not familiar with the terms, you are also not very familiar with corporate culture, and as such perhaps not best qualified to comment on the problem he describes.
I’ve seen plenty of posts (in GQ especially) dripping with jargon but don’t ever recall a pile on the OP for his choice of words like in this thread.
Perhaps only because it was never occasioned in such an egregious fashion…but such language certainly is out of place here. I object to this kind of talk quite strenuously. If you want to come to a discussion group to ask advice, you should ask your question in such a way that you can be understood. Otherwise, some people could regard it as insulting, as I do.
If the OP had been in the military and used different but analogous jargon to ask the same question, I would have been interested to learn the military jargon and how it reflects on both the question and culture.
Here, the terms were defined for you in the sixth post. Why are you till here bleating about it? If you don’t like this thread, there’s lots of others on this board. Go hijack one of them.
