Custom made motivational posters, with elegantly typeset quotations and slogans. Part of the same great rebranding/reorganization initiative in which employees got company-branded mugs and pens.
Considering how expensive staff are, I've never understood the culture surrounding penny pinching the stuff that would keep them happy/improve moral/improve retention. Forget the moral arguments for a second, even in purely financial terms it would likely pay for itself in recruitment savings alone, let alone brain drain/efficiency, training costs, and so on. Even a "cheap" employee in a white collar job, is likely c…
See also: open offices.
We've gone from Office Space being everyone's nightmare, to the Cube Farm being an upgrade from the hell of Open Plan. Talk about backsliding.
Currently working at a place, taking a significantly lower pay, just for the morale around here. Last place I worked didn't even have free coffee, and it was a Fortune 100 company. I'll take the coffee and ability to put my feet up, thanks.
My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency…
Ouch. A slap in the face to you and they might as well have burnt that $150 (Likely $300 dollars before taxes) since it had the total opposite effect.
My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency…
I spent 2 weeks basically carrying our team building a proof of concept for a $10 million contract, working 60+ hours a week, and got a $25 gift card for applebees.
My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency…
Damn! My current CEO wants to do the same. But he wants people to vote across teams. EG, backend engineer nominates machine learning researcher. Machine learning nominates HR. For a $1000 bonus, or a new ipad previous generation. Reasoning is that the manager cannot approve because that would reward favoritism, so random people nominating random people it is. Bad ideas coming from a good place I guess, but people are going to feel demoralized for sure in the end.