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Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

tribunemag.co.uk

141–150 of 232 posts

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#141
The issue with these workplace wellness themes to me is that they violate normal personal and adult boundaries as if to try to access the psyche of employees, and this dismantling of personal boundaries is precisely what creates the psychotic and abusive relationships that appear in business environments. It is the lack of personal boundaries, and not the presence of them that creates harmful interactions and relationships.

The worst possible way to create a 'safe' environment is to infantalize people and direct them like emotionally dependent children because by treating people as non-adults, it removes their basic dignity. Without this, people act out without normal boundaries, and think personal observations and other bizarrely inapproapriate behavior is acceptable or warranted. Corporate yoga and pseudo religious mindfullness probably often has the opposite effect. "Asking" people to submit to religious activities like meditation, smudging ceremonies, ancenstral acknowledgements, mindfulness, hypnosis, yoga, and others is not relating as normal adults. Sometimes I wonder what the conversations on an HN for HR people would look like.

The most successful wellness programs I have seen came in the form of a self-improvement/hobbies bonus, and the 10%-20% open research/dev projects in some tech companies.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#142

Core to all of this is that anything provided by an employer could be used against you. Even if I wanted therapy sessions I’m not going to share my work related issues with an employer provided coach, hell no. One thing I’d like to see is independent co-operatives which a group of tech workers (across different companies!) chip in to pay for. They could include veterans for mentorship, agents to help with negotiation…

"anything provided by an employer could be used against you". 100% this. I worked as a manager at a large company and the managers and directors were clashing. HR organized a sit down with the managers so we could express our frustrations. They listened to us, walked away for a bit leaving us some busy work, and then came back and told us that essentially the directors are our bosses and we have no right to complain and doing so is very unprofessional, essentially yelling at us for 15 minutes. I left as soon as I found another job a month later.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think middle class society in the West has already reached this stage. I was talking about this the other day with my wife, after stewing about it bitterly for hours into the night. The most common form of interpersonal interaction has changed from genuine offers of assistance to displays of status and evaluations of said displays. It's unthinkable to do something as basic as ask your neighbour to "borrow" an egg o…

> The most common form of interpersonal interaction has changed from genuine offers of assistance to displays of status and evaluations of said displays. I don't actually mind the lack of cake. There's never going to be "too much cake", even if the communists got what they think they want. I'm not much of a gift-giving person, so if a neighbor brought me cake, I'd feel like I owe them something in return, which is a…

> But you can't treat a studio apartment as a real estate investment

Why? In cities with universities a studio will rent out immediately and has the best cost to rent ratio (at least where I live)

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over here, yes, it has gotten worse since 2001 -- asian shops press much harder now, cheap remote labor really easily available ... competition vent through the roof. Longer hours, guilt feels stronger, sloppier work, inter-team communication destroyed (all-email in some language foreign to everyone), and -- still more lost deals. This is for everyone, workers and management. True, people maybe feel more entitled. Bu…

Yeah, but how much of that is your current employer fault? Let's take housing costs. Absolutely insane in California, Canada and some other places. Education/student loans - modern day slavery for many. Healthcare costs - seem to grow much faster than inflation or wage increase. The end result - destruction of the middle class as we know it. Or 'shrinking middle class' to put it less dramatically. So, I take it you l…

Oh, don't get me wrong, I am far from blaming employer on that. Or anyone for that matter (not Canadian, Europe, our govt does what they can ... you cannot break bones to national business culture in one-election-term timeframe).

It is just that it feels hopeless either way: companies who strip it down bare to what the employed work really is -- a wolf-pack hunting together -- don't feel that great, and the opposite, pretending that we all are in the middle of a nice cozy great-place-to-work -- gets down on nerves after some point too.

The only solution, switch jobs regularly by all means. Play the national lottery.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workplace is a family This one is the biggest eye roll for me. Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat.

> Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat Oh, but society sure is hard at work moving towards this. Edit: I'm short of time, but as someone asked me to elaborate, I'll briefly give a few examples: - "Networking" replacing genuine friendships; related things such as "cut out friends who don't let you grow" which may be valid but usually translates to "replace them…

> Parents making children pay rent after they turn 18

i have two boys, if they're >= 18 and doing nothing but laying on the couch i don't see asking for rent being unreasonable at all! Coddling young adults as if they're still children does so harm to everyone.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workplace is a family This one is the biggest eye roll for me. Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat.

>Family and friends don't give performance reviews I don't know about you, but I absolutely got 'performance reviews' every single time a report card came in. At least my manager doesn't beat me when I fail to meet expectations.

The intent is very important though. Your family beats you (hopefully, metaphorically) for poor metric performance because those are metrics of what they perceive as your future wellbeing. It's viewed as a proxy measure to your future happiness and personal success by many. They want to see success in your education so you'll be able to provide for yourself and find happiness (again, hopefully).

A business simply fires you for poor metrics with little notice because they care nothing about your past, current, or future well-being, they care about the metric itself that presumably measures how you help them.

If there was an overall well being performance review or report card, your employer wouldn't really care unless you were neigh irreplaceable. Your family on the other hand would care deeply (again, hopefully).

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#147
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty commmon in departments such as sales, trading or marketing as incentive to e.g. invite $singer upon hitting the years sales target. Or organize a short holiday, visit to a sports event, fancy dinner, something. Seems to spill over to engineering or the whole company in some places.

As a previous engineer manager this sucks . While sales people get all kinds of bonuses for doing their job. The Engineering team gets a pat in the back because nothing broke down.

I'd have to say that I would prefer the pat on the back to what most bosses consider good entertainment.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#148
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workplace is a family This one is the biggest eye roll for me. Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat.

Start getting late for appointments and family gatherings. I want to see how long it will take until someone stops meeting with you or at least makes a remark. Start promising things to friends and family, build expectations and then never deliver. In the end you can start doing drugs and see how people react when you show up to grandma birthday stoned. Family is also a family as long as you stick to some norms. No o…

Family is just the wrong word.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat Oh, but society sure is hard at work moving towards this. Edit: I'm short of time, but as someone asked me to elaborate, I'll briefly give a few examples: - "Networking" replacing genuine friendships; related things such as "cut out friends who don't let you grow" which may be valid but usually translates to "replace them…

I think middle class society in the West has already reached this stage. I was talking about this the other day with my wife, after stewing about it bitterly for hours into the night. The most common form of interpersonal interaction has changed from genuine offers of assistance to displays of status and evaluations of said displays. It's unthinkable to do something as basic as ask your neighbour to "borrow" an egg o…

some people are jerks. period. If you were stewing on this for a couple hours then you probably had a bad experience earlier in the day with someone. Not everyone is like that, in fact, jerks are sort of rare but they do exist.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liability for what? Burn-outs? They are liable. When the company goes bust they lose their money.

Unless they lose more it's not liability. Ed: I can't take the first question seriously... Is it really a serious question?

Yes it is! I wouldn't even know how to measure the responsibility of a shareholder. What if I own just 1 stock of Apple? Am I then liable? I don't get it
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