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How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

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Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#101

Post by jackowayed »

electromagnetic wrote: post #98
abstractbill wrote: post #4

From the comments: My sister used to work for a large multinational that pressured people to come in on Saturdays. The employees would come in but they would work on personal tasks like paying bills and balancing their checkbooks. It was all for appearance and it just pissed off the employees. She left the company after this pressure started. Part of her Saturday "work" was looking for a new job. In my experience thi…

What I found ironic in the post is that the CEO wants to implement a time-card system, but also wants his employees (probably a lot on salary) to work extended hours. I'm not sure how it is in the US, but here this would result in the company paying a shit-ton out at year end in banked time. Forcing your workers to do overtime and work a half-day on saturday would land a company paying near to two-months wages at yea…

It depends on their contracts. If the contracts make them exempt workers (meaning they don't get overtime even if they work >40h, which almost certainly was the case) and also require them to work at least 40 hours a week or have the difference counted as vacation time, then the time cards could be used to ensure that the employees are meeting the 40 hour minimum, but the company wouldn't owe the people anything even though they were now measuring that some of them were working, say, 50 hours a week.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#102

Post by robryan »

Periodic wrote: post #41
abstractbill wrote: post #4

From the comments: My sister used to work for a large multinational that pressured people to come in on Saturdays. The employees would come in but they would work on personal tasks like paying bills and balancing their checkbooks. It was all for appearance and it just pissed off the employees. She left the company after this pressure started. Part of her Saturday "work" was looking for a new job. In my experience thi…

It's a case of misplaced metrics. I can't find the name of the paper or the researcher, but I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. Measuring number of hours in the office is not a direct measurement of productivity, and these employees were meeting the metric, but onl…

This effect is a lot less pronounced in physical labour based jobs, it's harder to portray that your doing things in these jobs. Sure overall your productivity may be down over long hours but the extra time worked makes up for this.

To take this to the extreme I'd say the place you get most value for pushing extra hours is a production line where an employee is repeatedly preforming one simple task.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#103

Post by wazoox »

zaa wrote: post #59
wazoox wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't excuse being an horrible asshole.

It is just a business, nothing personal :-)

Finally he could have said it more nicely and clearly: "if you work for me, you're expected to have no family life, no personal life, to be manic crazies who live and breathe for their work only ."

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#104

Post by jufemaiz »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

I'd actually like to take a step back from the hate-fest going on in the comments here and evaluate this. Before you downvote me, at least read what I have to say. This email is a classic example of poor communication. It's very clear that the guy is frustrated and is taking it out via an emotional response. However, we don't know the whole story here, do we? From my reading, it sounds like this has been an ongoing p…

Have to say that as the leader of the company he's failed abysmally.

>My measurement will be the parking lot: it should be substantially full at 7:30 AM and 6:30 PM....The lot should be half full on Saturday mornings. We have a lot of work to do.

His response is about bullsh!t metrics - not about the work. There's not one mention of productivity, of not meeting targets, of poorly performing staff. The management may, or may not, be doing so - but the sole defining reason for his diatribe is the lack of attendance during what he perceives as reasonable work hours (~65hours/week).

Why wasn't the focus on not meeting targets? on improving productivity? on making progress?

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#105

Post by mrvir »

hyperbovine wrote: post #81
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

I'd actually like to take a step back from the hate-fest going on in the comments here and evaluate this. Before you downvote me, at least read what I have to say. This email is a classic example of poor communication. It's very clear that the guy is frustrated and is taking it out via an emotional response. However, we don't know the whole story here, do we? From my reading, it sounds like this has been an ongoing p…

To get where the author of this memo got (CEO of a publicly traded corporation), work essentially has to be your life. I mean, your #1 priority, ahead of friends, family, fun, and everything else. I have never seen an example of such a person at the helm of a large, multinational corporation, who does not, generally, appear to fit that description. This memo illustrates the total disconnect between that sort of perso…

And the irony might be that he gets a company that outwardly looks exactly like he wants. The sheep willing to conform will stay and others will move on. Now I'm not saying anything about productivity, that's another question then.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#106

Post by captaink »

gruseom wrote: post #100
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. After years of direct involvement in measuring productivity, I would accept that as a general axiom. I've likened it to badly applied wallpaper: push down a bubble and it just pops up somewhere else.

So what would you say are the best ways to measure productivity?

I would say the best way is by the outcomes, by the results. By productivity - be it units produced, share price, value added...

Productivity is not = hours worked.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#107

Post by _b8r0 »

Wow. I'd never work there. If I did, I wouldn't work there for much longer. We work on the principle of letting people manage their own time. When there's stuff that needs doing, it gets done but there's always at least some time off afterwards to make sure people can recover from late nights or weekends.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#108

Post by lsc »

jackowayed wrote: post #101
electromagnetic wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I found ironic in the post is that the CEO wants to implement a time-card system, but also wants his employees (probably a lot on salary) to work extended hours. I'm not sure how it is in the US, but here this would result in the company paying a shit-ton out at year end in banked time. Forcing your workers to do overtime and work a half-day on saturday would land a company paying near to two-months wages at yea…

It depends on their contracts. If the contracts make them exempt workers (meaning they don't get overtime even if they work >40h, which almost certainly was the case) and also require them to work at least 40 hours a week or have the difference counted as vacation time, then the time cards could be used to ensure that the employees are meeting the 40 hour minimum, but the company wouldn't owe the people anything even…

My understanding is that if you dock people part-days for not showing up, you can get in trouble if you don't pay time and a half overtime, even if your dudes are 'exempt'

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#110

Post by dsulli »

This is a CEO of a company that wants to get a product out the door. Sometimes that's not easy. He's basically using the tools at his disposal. It sounds like he's given his team a year, and they still haven't delivered. An email like this can sometimes shake out the non-performing team members and lead them to quit. In a company with 7,600 employees - I'm pretty sure not every one is a star performer.

Anyways, I've worked for a CTO who basically was a raving lunatic. Every couple of months there would be some kind of a blow up. But, looking back, we also did some amazing work under him, and created a cutting edge service still used 6 years later.

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