Workplace: Casual, or Totalitarian?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve complained about my workplace elsewhere on the boards. There have been changes, and they aren’t fun.

From the president on down in our division, we had adopted a corporate philosophy based on the Pike Street Market in Seattle. The brass went up there and saw how people had fun with their jobs (e.g., flinging fish around) and that they were productive. They decided to adopt a philosophy of a “fun workplace”. Sure, we all had to work hard; but we may as well make it as pleasant as possible. Our division posted steady profits. We were loading more lines of data, and the data was of higher quality than ever before. Our performance was phenomenal!

But Corporate wanted more. We had worked our butts off over the past few years, but now we were expected to double our business in 24 months. The old management had done an outstanding job of building our business. Now Corporate wanted to bring in a new team to take us even farther.

Our new VP has a reputation for being a taskmaster. She only cares about the success of the business, and not at all about people. (She seems not to understand that it is the people who have done such an outstanding job of building the business in the first place!) I’ve learned these things about her:
[ul][li]She does not want to know any personal information about the employees;[/li][li]She hates people wearing jeans (and in August and September we’re having a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation where employees can pay a dollar for each day they want to wear jeans to work – not to mention that we have “casual Friday” when jeans are commonly worn);[/li][li]If she likes you, you’re “in”; if she doesn’t like you (no matter how well you do your job), your head is on the block;[/li][li]You will not come into her office unless you have a pad of paper and a pen;[/li][li]She hates the idea of people working from remote offices (except for herself);[/li][li]The former Director of our department, a Texan, said “She’s a smart girl,” referring to someone in the company. The new VP called him on the carpet for using the common Texas term “girl” when referring to a female. (Hey, at least he didn’t say “gal”, like another Texan co-worker!)[/ul][/li]Our division was unique in the company, in that employees were given advance notice of potential lay-offs. We were given “retention bonuses” for agreeing not to quit. Now, lay-offs are sudden.

We are expected to do our jobs, and we are expected to not show any pleasure in doing them. If we have enough time to enjoy our work, then obviously we do not have enough to do.

In short, she is trying to turn us all into drones.

People are terrified that they will be laid off. People are afraid to talk to each other, even when it’s work-related. Some people are engaged in campaigns of self-promotion, inflating their own abilities, lying about other employees, and being stereotypical “yes-men” (gender neutral, BTW). Some very experienced people – people we’d be ill-advised to lose – are talking about quitting because the new work environment is no longer a good one.

In your opinion, do you think that work environments should be “fun”? Or do you think that people should come to work, do their jobs, and nothing else? Do you think “Happy workers are good workers”?, or do you think that “Happy workers don’t have enough to do”?

2

Work should definitely be fun, as a relaxed, casual work environment is most productive. Happy workers are also less likely to quit in disgust, thus reducing turnover and the associated expenses. Overall, casual and relaxed is in the best interest of everyone concerned.

3

I have to say, as I read your post I had visions of people throwing fish around my office!

As to your question, it’s tough to say. I think employees have to feel rewarded by their jobs, but what makes them “happy” is an individual thing. Personally, I feel “happy” when I know that good work will be rewarded, the my evaluations are based on fair criteria that I can meet, my salary is competitive, and that my work is interesting. Things like casual attire is a non issue for me. I don’t get a lot of job satisfaction out of how I dress. But to others, casual attire (which we instituted 2 years ago) is a huge morale booster.

I have noticed that in the past 3 years the attitude in our workplace has changed dramatically. We used to have regular lunches with the head of our department to discuss what we wanted to get out of our jobs, where we saw our careers headed, and how the company could help out. Management was very concerned that our jobs were rewarding and really focused on holding onto good employees.

But in recent times, with the market so poor, that attitude has reversed. Lately, the attitude is more of “where else are you going to go in this job market? Shut up, do your work, and be happy we pay you–we can always bring in someone else.” When the economy comes around and we again have more options, I believe the attitude will switch back again.

4

The Pike Street Philosophy is good for some businesses. I have the book in my office somewhere. It was a good fundamental approach IIRC, but there were some caveats that remained unaddressed. If you are familiar with the approach Johnny then you can see there are some work environs that the Pike method doesn’t do so well in. However, in a corporate environment the approach can work quite well. Though in a sweat house in east L.A. I think joyful glee is not permitted.

Back to your fundamental question. Are work environemtns supposed to be fun or are they supposed to be stone faced alduous Huxley Alpha/beta drone facilities? Well the answer is both.
Most people work because they need money correct? Some people have enough initiative that they actually find good work with-in their field, work where the look forward to getting up each morning and getting to the jobsite. Some do not find that and they have a terrible time getting through the day.
Also Johnny, some people do not know how to be happy workers, or fun workers with out going over board. The coworker who leans on your cube or in your office and refuses to go away before they have told you ever forwarded joke they got in their inbox that morning. This is not OK. And those people can and do reflect bady on you if they are caught talking with you. Unfortunately that is all part of working in the jungle, good managers will intuitively know how their workforce is doing and manage respectively.
Your boss sounds like someone who need to think she is on top of everything at all times. Let’s call it the Eichmann approach. They need to be in power, and they need everyone around them to know who is in charge. Unfortunately for her underlings, she probably does very good work on her own. This is because those ‘Eichmann’ types want and need to show thier superiors they are the creme-dela-creme.
But you must rememeber Johnny they are only people too and when you understand what drives them you should be able to manage up* quite easily.
My answer to the OP is two fold. One a work environment should be a productive one, promoting the engine that runs it (people) and making their life as easy as possible so they feel comfortable doing their job. And two, the work environment should cater to the worker, and good managers should know this. I’ve rallied for corporate work shops on psych 101, but I always seem to get declined by my boss, the dean, who says approaching area businesses under the guise of motivational speakers and such is not the way to go about it. I have given workshops before on managing style to increase productivity, but follow up studies in corporations where the managers don’t agree with my people centered tactics, usualy pale to those follow a more humanistic approach.
*managing up - is knowing what your manager wants, and getting it to them before they ask. Knowing what your manager likes and entertaining that aspect of them with out browning your nose. And taking time for yourself after you have completed your duties to the manager, allowing for peace of mind.

5

This was a problem when the Pike model was first instituted. Management and Sales seemed to focus on the “fun” part and lose sight of the “work very hard” part. But once the novelty wore off, the approach was very effective. We all looked forward to getting into our jobs in the morning. I personally got a kick out of finding new ways to improve the quality of our data, and having those ways adopted by the entire department.

In my opinion, micro-management does not work well. The war in Vietnam was micro-managed, whereas the first Gulf War allowed more freedom to the area commanders. True, the situations (political, geographical, etc.) are quite different; but I still think the non-micro-management approach worked better. In my own workplace, micro-management has been shown to be counter-productive. But we’re going back to it. We’ve been through micro-managers and casual managers. I’ve found that the latter allows me the freedom to find things that can be made better, and to come up with solutions.

Many of our records are dropped before loading into our database because they are foreign. This creates extra work for people because they have to research the dropped records, make notes in our tracking system, etc. And the same records are dropped and must be researched every month. I’ve written a program to drop these records before they are processed, thus reducing the back-end work. Then I thought, “Hey, we’re getting this data free! Why not use it?” So I’m capturing them. Our European operations would probably like to have them. Not only that, but Canada (most of these records are Canadian) represents a huge opportunity to expand our business and eventually “steal” business from our competitors.

I mentioned this to our new VP, and she said it was “interesting”. But using this data is a decision that must be made at a level higher than hers. The potential for making millions of dollars is there, but I think I might be ahead of my time. Still, the seed is there. I would not have been able to address this issue (before the new management came) without a good work environment.

I’ve always been more interested in results than in office politics. It seems silly to me to be so interested in how a person dresses, as long as we’re getting results. It’s not as if we deal with the public, where we need to present a Good Corporate Image. And most of us don’t some into contact with executives from other companies. And I think it’s better to let an employee wear practical clothing. As a motorcyclist, my clothes are subjected to road dirt, diesel soot, and all manner of things. It’s usually too hot here to wear something over them. (Although I would be smart to wear protective gear anyway, in case of a mishap.) I’d rather worry about doing my work, than to worry about my clothes.

6

Were fairly casual even by US standards, and Japanese visitors to the office are often taken aback at what they see. Our chairman is the only one who wears a tie, and I’m usually in the top 5 for formality by wearing a dress shirt (no tie) and chinos.

The main reason we can do this is because we’re a creative agency, and are expected to be a little weird in our thinking. Plus, we do good work and we work hard (not unusual to find people there well past midnight), so they overlook the T-shirts and jeans.

7

Capricious workplace rules really bite. IMHO this covers strict dress codes in most cases, though the OP doesn’t say if the new VP is going to actually bring in a formal dress code.

We all know that rules are necessary in any community, the SDMB itself being a prime example. But, as members, we are judged solely by our actions, that is, by what we post on the boards. If by some bizarre circumstance, the mods could say we had to wear suits and ties while posting, and enforced it, nobody would stand for it and there’d be no SDMB. The reason for that is simple: our livelihoods do not depend on the SDMB. But at work it’s different; we do depend on our jobs. When rules add value to the enterprise they make sense, but if they’re only there for management to exhibit its dominance it then becomes a simple case of the strong prevailing over the weak. In abstract terms the employee is thought to be an equal player to the employer, because s/he can just leave and find another job, but in practical terms it’s the entity that issues the paychecks who calls the shots 90% of the time. Or in other words, he who has the gold makes the rules.

8

I used to have a boss who said he didn’t believe in employee morale. We figured that was a reasonable attitude for him to have because there was never any employee morale to be seen whenever he was in the room.

9

Ugh, Seattlite checking in. I can’t even stand Pike’s Place Market for a quick stop off with a visiting relative. If my work place were anything like it, I’d go quickly insane.

But then I’m used to tiny informal shops that haven’t had time to impose corporate philosophies, fish throwing or Hawaiian Shirt Day. In my former job as support technician I wore a Lanz nightgown, listened to my own weird music and had a cat’s tail hanging in front of my monitor half the time. I’m sure my productively would have been virtually the same in a traditional office setting. It would have been a whole lot less pleasant, though.

koee
(semi) retired

10

One of the best things about my job is that the bosses aren’t dictators, and that work can be enjoyable. They trust that we’re all professionals, and that we’ll put in our hours, and care enough to do the job well. The more fascist approach would shut us down really quickly, as staff interaction is essential to keep the office running effectively (joint projects, sharing information, etc). A lot of that is based upon good will between co-workers that would be easily killed if we felt like we had to show each other up.

11

What I’m trying to figure out, Johnny L.A., is how she fits all of those cross-country visits to Joisey in her busy schedule. I mean, we both must be thinking about the same newly-arrived pleasant cheerful VP :slight_smile:

My boss (a director with many years in the company who is an excellent manager) was the first to be axed by her.