Work sucks..

[Fishheadjoe]

Perhaps some downsizing is coming down the pipe and rather than get saddled with large payouts to long time employees, they simply hire a "snake", for lack of a better term, to come in, turn the place upside down and semi force some folks to leave on their own accord.
IF your fellow employees are long standing employees, it is much cheaper to have them leave and replace them with folks who can do the same job, but are not at or near the top of the salary grade for the position.
Or, she is related to someone in the organization and that is how the job was created... and she's trying to impress.
It's all speculation at this time, but that does not negate what I wrote earlier, get your resume up to date and out there... be prepared!
Fishheadjoe

 

[aborgman]

Yup. Not sure if she is one, but "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" seems to be a foreign concept to many MBAs.

Well, you have to justify your job somehow...

 

[Relic]

Perhaps some downsizing is coming down the pipe and rather than get saddled with large payouts to long time employees, they simply hire a "snake", for lack of a better term, to come in, turn the place upside down and semi force some folks to leave on their own accord.
IF your fellow employees are long standing employees, it is much cheaper to have them leave and replace them with folks who can do the same job, but are not at or near the top of the salary grade for the position.
Or, she is related to someone in the organization and that is how the job was created... and she's trying to impress.
It's all speculation at this time, but that does not negate what I wrote earlier, get your resume up to date and out there... be prepared!
Fishheadjoe

Abso-ma-lutely!

 

[1958Bassman]

No really... so we have a new boss. In the short time she's been here, we went from being trusted and allowed pretty much to police ourselves as well as being allowed to work from home. Morale was outstanding, everyone pretty much loved their job and we were getting rave reviews from the management. I've saved several emails from management commending the work we were doing.
So enter new boss. She's now monitoring every phone call, every email, tracking our break time down to the second, enforcing strict sick day numbers, making us account for EVERYTHING we do, and has ended our ability to work from home. This has had no effect on productivity other than making it poorer and morale is at an all time, absolute low.
Remember - there were no issues before this. Had we been abusing the hell out of what we do than I can 100% understand it. But we were not.
What is god's name would make someone in management think that all of this is a good idea!?? Can anyone out there who may be in an upper management position explain to me how this might be beneficial?? I'm miserable as is pretty much everyone who works with me..
My one comforting thought is that at the moment, I HAVE a job. For that I'm extremely grateful, but damn.... I can already see where this is going - low morale, low productivity, bye bye everyone... unless that's the idea...?
Sorry just venting. As I said, I'm eternally grateful to have a job in this current climate but damn...changes when they are not really needed is a very idiotic thing to do.

Would you walk into a new management position and trust everyone without knowing them? I doubt it. She may not have said it, but she may be doing this until she has had a chance to see how everyone works and interacts. If she's not bitching up a storm, tuning all of you up in public or eliminating the possibility of everyone to be productive in all other ways, I don't see much of a problem. Working from home is great but it's a bit of a luxury most people don't, and will never, have.

The lower morale and productivity is your group's reaction to the new boss- it's her job to keep an eye on ALL costs and you (your group) are complaining about her being strict about sick days, which offer the company ZERO PRODUCTIVITY. If you hired someone, would you be OK with them taking sick days when they weren't needed? Would you be OK if they worked from home and claimed time that wasn't spent working? Would you be OK if they spent time sending personal e-mails and making personal phone calls when they were on YOUR TIME? I seriously doubt it. You can sit there and say "as long as the work gets done" all you want but when it's your money coming out of your pocket, your employees using your time for their personal tasks, you'd put an end to it pretty damn fast.

Trust has to be earned and a new boss starts with a blank slate. If I had a group of employees who were PO'd because I kept a close eye on all of the department's expenses and made sure the people were working when they were in the office, I would make it known that when people are at work, they should be working, not doing personal things.

 

[aborgman]

The lower morale and productivity is your group's reaction to the new boss- it's her job to keep an eye on ALL costs and you (your group) are complaining about her being strict about sick days, which offer the company ZERO PRODUCTIVITY.

Actually - this has been shown by numerous studies to be false.

Sick employees who take sick days are more productive long term than those who come to work sick.

You can sit there and say "as long as the work gets done" all you want but when it's your money coming out of your pocket, your employees using your time for their personal tasks, you'd put an end to it pretty damn fast.

No, I wouldn't... but then I'd rather pay someone for 8 hours and only have them work 7 hours at 100% than pay someone for 8 hours and have them work 8 hours at 50%.

One needs to consider how policies touch productivity - and numerous studies have shown that lack of sick time, lack of vacation time, excessive hours worked, etc. generally lower productivity.

Trust has to be earned and a new boss starts with a blank slate. If I had a group of employees who were PO'd because I kept a close eye on all of the department's expenses and made sure the people were working when they were in the office, I would make it known that when people are at work, they should be working, not doing personal things.

Lets not forget the excessive costs that come from training and ramping up new employees to replace the ones you've driven off with poor management.

 

[Relic]

Would you walk into a new management position and trust everyone without knowing them? I doubt it. She may not have said it, but she may be doing this until she has had a chance to see how everyone works and interacts. If she's not bitching up a storm, tuning all of you up in public or eliminating the possibility of everyone to be productive in all other ways, I don't see much of a problem. Working from home is great but it's a bit of a luxury most people don't, and will never, have.

The lower morale and productivity is your group's reaction to the new boss- it's her job to keep an eye on ALL costs and you (your group) are complaining about her being strict about sick days, which offer the company ZERO PRODUCTIVITY. If you hired someone, would you be OK with them taking sick days when they weren't needed? Would you be OK if they worked from home and claimed time that wasn't spent working? Would you be OK if they spent time sending personal e-mails and making personal phone calls when they were on YOUR TIME? I seriously doubt it. You can sit there and say "as long as the work gets done" all you want but when it's your money coming out of your pocket, your employees using your time for their personal tasks, you'd put an end to it pretty damn fast.

Trust has to be earned and a new boss starts with a blank slate. If I had a group of employees who were PO'd because I kept a close eye on all of the department's expenses and made sure the people were working when they were in the office, I would make it known that when people are at work, they should be working, not doing personal things.

Oh please...
No, I'd walk into a new management position and learn what the job is actually all about. I'd learn what everyone does. I'd reach out to my employees and get their input, their opinions, their views on what's working and what's not working and why. We have means to track everything so I'd go through that and look at the numbers to make sure things are actually getting done and folks are not talking through their butts. I'd speak with our clients to get an outsiders view of how they feel we're doing as a service provider and armed with this info, I'd go about fostering a team attitude. If changes needed to be made, I'd make them and I'd communicate to my employees WHY these changes are being made and where I expect these changes to lead to.
Now, sick time, personal emails etc etc? I would find that a serious issue is our numbers were down, BUT, guess what? last year we had a record year, sport
So, please tell me again how poor morale, added stress, an decidedly adversarial relationship now between management and workforce (where there never was one before) is going to help? I'm all ears

oh - and lemme correct you on one point - you said that working from home "was a luxury"? Uh no. We were sent home as it was *saving the company money*. Nothing is done out of love and compassion in the corporate world, dude. This is how it was sold to us - a money thing. Granted, no arm twisting was necessary but it saved us money and it allowed the company good publicity with a nice newspaper article at how we were "going green". When we were brought back, along with teh little we were told, we were also told that this is costing the company more. So, where's the luxury? I understand the principle of it, but it is what it is.

 

[Funky Ghost]

When I was employed at Intel ( My brother is still there ) They let you work from home. We were able to work from home through what was called the "bridge". It's essentially just a conferencing device allowing communication with all the necessary parties.
I enjoyed it because 1) I was at home and 2) I saved a serious amount of gas as I was 17 miles of surface street driving from work. One way.

I'm not certain, however, if it saved Intel any money. I'd wager they lost out as I was addicted to the cafe they provided. Seriously good food. The down side, for me, was not being able to use the gym.

 

[Relic]

When I was employed at Intel ( My brother is still there ) They let you work from home. We were able to work from home through what was called the "bridge". It's essentially just a conferencing device allowing communication with all the necessary parties.
I enjoyed it because 1) I was at home and 2) I saved a serious amount of gas as I was 17 miles of surface street driving from work. One way.

I'm not certain, however, if it saved Intel any money. I'd wager they lost out as I was addicted to the cafe they provided. Seriously good food. The down side, for me, was not being able to use the gym.

I know Intel very well!

Well that's just it. When we were home, we were not "unsupervised". We have to log into a system that tracks what we do - breaks, calls, email, time spent on various projects. In fact, we were tracked FAR more at home then years ago when we worked in the office. So, now we're back in the office and having our breaks tracked - and I shite you not - down to the second. I actually heard from my boss that I was literally 2 seconds late getting back from break. Does that sound absolutely OCD or what? Not only that but our calls are now listened to, emails read over... it's like grammar school all over again

 

[JohnMCA72]

People like that are often compulsive ladder-climbers. She probably has no interest in or expectation of hanging around long. Just long enough to "make an impression", then onward & upward. I've even known managers who would creat "crises" just so they could be visible fixing them. I'm sure she'll be promoted out of your hair someday. The question is, can you hold out until then?

 

[aborgman]

When I was employed at Intel ( My brother is still there ) They let you work from home. We were able to work from home through what was called the "bridge". It's essentially just a conferencing device allowing communication with all the necessary parties.
I enjoyed it because 1) I was at home and 2) I saved a serious amount of gas as I was 17 miles of surface street driving from work. One way.

Must have started that after I left - when I was there you could flex your schedule, as long as you were in the physical building between 10am-3pm... but they wanted us to physically be there every day. At least the design engineers.

I'm not certain, however, if it saved Intel any money. I'd wager they lost out as I was addicted to the cafe they provided. Seriously good food. The down side, for me, was not being able to use the gym.

Oh do I miss that cafeteria...

 

[Funky Ghost]

I fell in love with the cafe as a green badge By the time I was a blue badge the damage had been done.

I.T. got to work from home ( well the main frame folk do at any rate ) You have a beeper on your hip 24/7 that will buzz you. Well, more specifically the SERVER that is having issues will buzz you. If you can't fix it via remote access, then you need to high tail it in. The times you had to actually drive in were so few it's really not worth mentioning. Got bonuses for working like that too Of course the biggest loss was the Sabbatical. I'm very jelly when my brother gets his.

 

[aborgman]

I fell in love with the cafe as a green badge By the time I was a blue badge the damage had been done.

I.T. got to work from home ( well the main frame folk do at any rate ) You have a beeper on your hip 24/7 that will buzz you. Well, more specifically the SERVER that is having issues will buzz you. If you can't fix it via remote access, then you need to high tail it in. The times you had to actually drive in were so few it's really not worth mentioning.
Got bonuses for working like that too

Yeah... I had to be there every day - but I had the beeper from the server (well, job running on the server) thing at times also. Plus when I'd have to run in (thankfully only about 3 miles) at 2am, I didn't get paid extra for it.

Of course the biggest loss was the Sabbatical. I'm very jelly when my brother gets his.

I left about 6 months before I was going to get mine.

 

[nutdog]

I thought you weren't posting as much lately.

 

[lowfreq33]

I found the best way to counter micro managers is to make sure they micro manage EVERYTHING! My latest boss is a micro manager and when she came on she was double checking everything and driving me nuts. So I started to flood her. Then after she would start checking stuff against reports that had nothing to do with my data, I would further suggest other reports that were also different. She was double checking stuff I was doing for a consultant that she really had no business looking at. So I gave her more. She was working overtime while I was leaving on time. She finally, and by finally I mean after a year or so, got tired of doing all the extra work. I still ask her if she wants to look stuff over, but she usually declines now.

I used a similar tactic to the boss before that. He took some of my work away from me, which I had been doing for 7 years, and would not delegate other stuff. I let him do that. Guy was working 70 hour weeks while I was doing 40. I let him keep all the work and made no effort to take any away from him. Dude left after 2 years. Sadly, I later had to spend a lot of time fixing stuff he screwed up, but the whole thing was rather funny.

Let micro managers micro manage. Flood them! Ask them to micro manage everything! Quietly get co-workers to do the same. You can really use their bad management against them!

This is really good advice. Imagine if she had to spend all her time reviewing the work of the entire department. She might as well set up a murphy bed in her office.

Or, start sleeping with her, then file a sexual harassment suit, claim that in this economy you were afraid of losing your job, she boiled your rabbit, HR wouldn't hear your grievances, etc. Could work.

 

[Relic]

This is really good advice. Imagine if she had to spend all her time reviewing the work of the entire department. She might as well set up a murphy bed in her office.

Or, start sleeping with her, then file a sexual harassment suit, claim that in this economy you were afraid of losing your job, she boiled your rabbit, HR wouldn't hear your grievances, etc. Could work.

lol, nice.

In regards to gttim's advice, I got a chuckle out of that as well but she's got that covered already unbelievably. She's redefined virtually all the middle management's positions to be internal-facing. In plainer terms, she's got her own group of spies to do her dirty work. The lady's nuts, I swear to god..

 

[Tituscrow]

lol, nice.

In regards to gttim's advice, I got a chuckle out of that as well but she's got that covered already unbelievably. She's redefined virtually all the middle management's positions to be internal-facing. In plainer terms, she's got her own group of spies to do her dirty work. The lady's nuts, I swear to god..

If she is monitoring your emails, make sure she hasn't got spies checking out any other Internet related activity... Let's all keep our eyes peeled for new TB'ers acting suspiciously, you never know, she might be lurking here too

 

[Waffles and Scotch]

If she is monitoring your emails, make sure she hasn't got spies checking out any other Internet related activity... Let's all keep our eyes peeled for new TB'ers acting suspiciously, you never know, she might be lurking here too

Good point. We should probably start a "Who's Relic's boss" thread. Then ragequit if we don't get an answer in 24-48hrs.

 

[Sixpack324]

As a Small Business Owner and previous Corporate Vice President, I have a few thoughts....

You say that previously, your collective productivity was high and all was smooth and creamy for both the employees and the company. How do you know?

I understand that you got a few e-mails from upper-management indicating that you did a great job, but.....I remember telling my kids that they did a great job when they first learned to tie their shoes. Did they?? Yes they did, but it could have been done faster and more efficiently. I didn't tell them that part, obviously, but the same theory applies here.

Upper Management may subscribe to the business management philosophy that, simply put, "A little praise goes a long way". However, after sending the e-mails, they may have compiled their cost analysis reports and found that your department isn't meeting the goals they have set. Or, you may be meeting those goals, but they have decided to raise those goals. That's how businesses grow. A sound business model includes growing the business wherever practically feasible.

Sick days. Ahh the fringe benefit situation. As a former employee (20 years ago) I can see the employee's side of the debate, but as a business owner, I have a different opinion on this topic. A certain number of sick days is a part of your compensation package. They aren't unlimited. You may have gotten away with a few extra sick days in the past, but if someone decides to make you play by the rules THAT YOU AGREED TO WHEN YOU TOOK THE JOB, then what's the problem? If you (or anyone else) has an issue with the sick day policy, why did you agree to it when you took the job?

Work Hours..... Why should you be paid for 40 hrs/week if you're only working 35? Is that what you agreed to when you took the job? Probably not. I understand that there's a give-and-take with salaried employees, but in this economy, most employees are working the hours that are required to fulfill the company's needs.....40....45.....55....60.....you get the idea. Point is: If you don't want to work the full 40+ hours, you'll be terminated and replaced with a competent employee who will work the hours. There's a lot of exceptionally competent candidates out there who aren't working right now, so you're easily replaceable. You're going to find this in just about any employment situation. History shows this to be the case anytime the economy goes south.

A few years ago, when the economy was thumping, most businesses and employees did well. Now....the theme seems to be doing more for less. Being more productive with no immediate raise in compensation. Giving up fringe benefits to be more productive and increase the company's productivity. We're all (businesses) operating on paper-thin profit margins as opposed to the margins of 5-6 years ago.

Personally, I was operating on an average profit margin of 22.57% 6 years ago. I only contracted for work that I wanted to and I was very selective. Now, my profit margins are at 7% and I take on work that I would've not even have bothered to contemplate 6 years ago. Why? Because I have to. I'd rather earn 7% than 0%.

In this economic climate, you will be very fortunate if this is as bad as your situation gets. If you were my son, I'd say "Just roll up your sleeves and do what you gotta do. So long as you're not being disrespected, it's better than the alternative."

 

[aborgman]

.

In this economic climate, you will be very fortunate if this is as bad as your situation gets. If you were my son, I'd say "Just roll up your sleeves and do what you gotta do. So long as you're not being disrespected, it's better than the alternative."

To the second monitoring of breaks and an adversarial attitude toward employees ARE disrespect.

I think a lot of companies are going to find themselves dealing with a lot of employee replacement once the economy starts churning again - and some are going to find their poor treatment of employees during an employers market will come back to bite them when it's vice versa.

 

[Relic]

sixpack, thanks for that insight. There's really a lot more to this than I can post here but I need to be careful. Having 3 kids myself, I often give them similar advice as what you mention about "rolling up the sleeves and doing what needs to be done" That's why I'm still where I'm at. I like my job and that's exactly why this is ticking me off so much.

In regards to things like sick days - it's a lot similar to breaks and such. We're allowed a certain number and so long as we stayed around that, it was fine. If it was ever abused we'd be called out on that. I can't argue with that fairness at all. But now? As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got called out for coming back from break 2 SECONDS late. TWO SECONDS, no bs. That to me and everyone else here, that borders on harassment. Normally, I'm 2, 3 minutes EARLY coming back as I've got stuff to do. Often I'll even work right through my break. Will I come back early or work through break now? Hell no. They just lost 2 to 15 minutes working time for trying to grab 2 seconds. See what I mean? That concept is biting them in the arse now with sick days. Everyone's hesitant now about calling out sick. Yesterday we had almost 8 people out with the same bug. If the first person who was sick would have stayed the hell home and not come in and spread it around? By forcing people in, they're actually ending up with more people out!
Emails/praise from the boss - well they included verifiable numbers and client feedback so either my boss is outright fabricating info or we're being seriously misled. If we're not doing well and are being lied to, how can that help?
As an employee, if my company is doing poorly, then COMMUNICATE that to me. Tell me we're in danger, tell me productivity needs to rise, tell me how we're going to do that, tell me what I can do to help, tell me that things like breaks and sick time and working from home programs need to change, TELL ME!!! Dont sit there and just tell me that "we're going to take it to a new level" or "we're going to raise the bar" you know and I know that that's just empty corporate-speak. I've been here for 13 years, I think that I've earned a bit of honesty. If things are failing then it's teamwork that's going to get us out of it. Destroying morale will NOT help. Part of leadership training is the knowledge of how morale effects productivity. If you ignore that, then what else is being ignored?