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Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

tribunemag.co.uk

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Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#131

Post by xtracto »

corty wrote: post #102
gmueckl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about Beyonce, but it's pretty common for big companies to organize private concerts with big names for their employees. I guess it's a case of just spending enough money to make this happen.

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.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#132

Post by shoto_io »

geofft wrote: post #109
shoto_io wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say exactly that. There is pressure everywhere. CEOs are scared of boards. Boards are scared of shareholders. It's just not that visible because there is no tool like "OfficeVibe" showing this transparently. Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.

Stop having boards and shareholders then. Or, at least tell them, our growth target this year is 2%, our growth max is 10%, if we grow more than that I'm concerned about the pressure on my employees and my goal is to have a great and sustainable place to work and not to fill the universe with paperclips, and I'm going to start laying off sales and marketing if we're taking on more commitments than we can handle. We'r…

Well, it depends what you want to achieve I guess. Apple and the like are very, very successful. And not because the pressure there is low. Quite the opposite.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#133

Post by ozim »

mtberatwork wrote: post #50
kumarvvr wrote: post #23

Workplace wellbeing Wholesome workplace Workplace is a family and a myriad of other touchy-feely terms are just plain bullshit. Whole industries have cropped up to support the efforts of managements to keep workforces in control and deflect resentment (people don't leave companies, they leave managers ! and other crap) The ground reality is when the company feels you are not needed, all that touch-feely stuff goes do…

> 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 one loves you unconditionally. Workplace is a family but there is obviously different set of expectations and evaluation is more direct.

While family doesn't expect you to deliver value for them every day like a workplace, there is still a lot of expectations to be met.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#134

Post by [deleted] »

kumarvvr wrote: post #23

Workplace wellbeing Wholesome workplace Workplace is a family and a myriad of other touchy-feely terms are just plain bullshit. Whole industries have cropped up to support the efforts of managements to keep workforces in control and deflect resentment (people don't leave companies, they leave managers ! and other crap) The ground reality is when the company feels you are not needed, all that touch-feely stuff goes do…

[deleted]

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#135

Post by ganzuul »

shoto_io wrote: post #101
granshaw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me tell you, delivery pressure exists even right at the very top. You think there’s no pressure as a CEO/COO beholden to 30% top line growth this quarter? I sometimes think about being in that position and it seems pretty scary too

I came here to say exactly that. There is pressure everywhere. CEOs are scared of boards. Boards are scared of shareholders. It's just not that visible because there is no tool like "OfficeVibe" showing this transparently. Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.

Shareholder liability is much too limited.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#136

Post by cptnapalm »

SyzygistSix wrote: post #86
mathattack wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how many people don’t realize that the Beyoncé concert in the office comes from the same pool of money as compensation. (The company only does it because it’s cheaper than bonuses) And everyone showers Instagram with photos of the show.

Was that a real thing or was the Beyonce concert hyperbole?

Not really related and I don't know about Beyonce, but during the dot com bubble, a company called Pixelton had a party with KISS, Tony Bennett and a reunion of The Who. They went bankrupt.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#137

Post by shoto_io »

ganzuul wrote: post #135
shoto_io wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say exactly that. There is pressure everywhere. CEOs are scared of boards. Boards are scared of shareholders. It's just not that visible because there is no tool like "OfficeVibe" showing this transparently. Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.

Shareholder liability is much too limited.

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

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#138

Post by ganzuul »

shoto_io wrote: post #137
ganzuul wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholder liability is much too limited.

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?

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#139

Post by hallway_monitor »

toyg wrote: post #60
nicoburns wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your average corporation is a soulless greedy machine, constructed purely for extracting money. Trying to put a lipstick on a pig doesn't change the fact that it's still a pig. I think average working conditions did get worse over the past few decades, primarily because so many more jobs are working for such companies. Consider how many more grocery store jobs are working for a huge supermarket chain vs owning your…

Owning your small store is extremely stressful, and arguably provides worse working conditions (on average) than the equivalent middle-management job in a supermarket chain. However, it might well be perceived as more satisfying by the worker, because s/he is less alienated from business outcomes and more autonomous in long-term choices. In this, the article probably has a point (although coops are not a panacea - if…

Having worked for a midsize customer owned cooperative with a large engineering shop, I think there is something to be said about the structure. Our board was our customers, who cared about continued support and customer service rather than quarterly earnings. Things did go downhill correlated with a new CEO, but it was a great culture to work in for a while.

Re: Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?

#140

Post by ReactiveJelly »

JackPoach wrote: post #47
dudul wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is compensation really meant to derive from productivity? In practice, your compensation is a factor of how difficult it is to find someone else to do your job.

Yep. If compensation was a function of productivity, farmers would be the richest people in the world, because their productivity is something like 50-100 times than it was pre-mechanization and pre-green revolution.

Measuring productivity is unintuitive because it's not linear.

Sure, if there were no farmers, there'd be no food.

But if there were no mechanization, the current number of farmers would be wildly insufficient.

We're adding 1 + 1 and getting 102, and the tricky part is dividing the extra 100 points amongst everyone.

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