Work would be great if it weren't for the people

[pluckyduck]

It's hard to remember how young and idealistic I used to be...not that long ago. Amy's post in the "employer/enough" thread made it all come flooding back to me:

Of course, you have to realize that my dream of winning the lottery involves buying a business and running it so that my employees feel that they are living in Sweden. I have no dreams of being the next Bill Gates, but I often to fantasize about creating the "perfect" company for employees.

Shudder.

If you are a parent, you can get a feeling of the fantasy/reality jolt I had if you remember what you said you would do or not do as a parent when you were,oh, eight , and compare that to how you parent today.

Here are a couple highlights of my naivete' (there are many, many more):

I thought that the perfect work environment could be created based on mutual respect. We're all grownups here. If you respect other people's judgement, and don't nitpick the small stuff, everybody's actions will work toward the greater good.

Showing up for work on time.

I had the perfect plan for Sweden. (Actually, it came to be referred to as Happy Valley -- the guy I pulled in to run the department after I made a mess of things called my vision of the world Happy Valley Happy Valley needed a sheriff. )

My plan was simple - people could pick any start time. I run hours from 8 in the morning through 7:30 at night. Pick a time, any time! Taking into account there are morning people and afternoon people -- what could be more perfect. A lot of traffic between you and work? Avoid the rush hour! Kids to take care of after school? Pick an early schedule! I thought to myself, so many businesses are short sighted in creating an artificial work day that puts pressure on an individual and a family to work around it. If you let people pick their own times, then you've completely avoided a major workplace stress - the late employee.

My only rule was pick the time and show up at that time and work until the time that you were supposed to leave.

How do you think that worked out?

Virtually everybody was still always late. Some people were late by five minutes, some people were late every day by 20 minutes or more.

Were people making the time up at the end of the day? I don't know! I have a job! I certainly could not spend my day babysitting people and their schedules and seeing if they were making their time up!

So, the people who were late every day, I'd call them into my office and say, hey, you appear to not be able to make your start time, could you please pick a time that you can make? Just pick another time! And invariably they'd say, no, that's the time I want, I'll make it.

Took me way too long to catch on to the part that they weren't picking a START time, they were picking an END time. Even if they couldn't make it through the door until almost 10, they didn't want to commit to staying in the office until 6.

Multiply out the financial impact here. If I have 14 employees (I think that's about right for that time), and each one loses half an hour work a day (I didn't even get into what was happening with lunch times), I've lost 7 hours of work a day! That's like hiring a full time person and telling him to not bother coming into work, we'll just send you your check.

At its absolute worst, before everything pretty much imploded on me, kind and sweet and forward thinking me was walking around the department like a raving lunatic, hair standing on end, visibly writing down the time that everybody walked in the building. (Can I emphasize how much Happy Valley had turned into a group of people who couldn't stand me? )

Sick time and the employee

Oh, man, another one of my Happy Valley disasters.

Remember, I started out small, hiring one employee at a time. (You are going to laugh at me.)

I had no real sick time policy. I told people when they started that they officially had five sick days, but we were flexible. I emphasized to people that this was a personal responsibility area. This actually worked fine for a few years as I was growing the staff slowly...it didn't get abused. We had a hiring burst and...

Then, the new people started calling out sick right away.

My "flexible" policy was meant to cover people who worked for me, whom I knew and trusted were doing a good job. It hadn't even occurred to me that new hires might start digging into sick time right away. (Was that the turnip truck that just dropped me off or what? ) I found that in every batch of new hires, there was always at least one who was a problem....I'm not talking goofing off so much as just a completely different standard for what your responsibilities are to a new job. I had no policy, no way to "earn" sick days...so, I'd hire 'em, they'd start calling out, and I'd be paying them and getting angrier and angrier and angrier.

Little miss Happy Valley turned into a first class bitch.

It took us about three years to undo all of the damage I did, but we're finally there. We still have flex time (in fact, I just expanded the hours all the way to 7 in the morning to accomodate a mother who needed to leave at 3 to take care of her kid), but I have a swipey card time machine thingy, and everybody swipes in and out. People grumbled loudly when we installed it, but Happy Valley is much happier without me running around like a lunatic.

Turns out I'm not nearly as smart as I thought I was.

Andrea
much older and somewhat wiser

[magenta321]

You know, I've been thinking about this.

I worked at place A. 10 or 15 years ago, people left place A (long before I worked there) and opened up place B. I now work for place B.

Everyone knew place A had a lot of faults. Place B was going to be neverland.

In some ways it is, but in some way it isn't.

I haven't used them yet, but the thing that impresses me a whole lot right now is that place B has free "women's" supplies. Pads and tampons are in the little machine like you find for a quarter most places. Here, they are free. That's a small token, but, it shows that the employer was thinking about what they could do to make working there enjoyable. And ladies, who hasn't been surpised from time to time, only to realize not only are you not prepared, but you don't have a quarter either!!! That can be a nightmare.

Score one point for place B.

Also, they pay for medical insurance for the employee, all of it, except five dollars every two weeks. Five dollars out of my paycheck every two weeks for health insurance is something I can deal with.

Score another one for place B.

I don't have the opportunity to open my own Eden, so I can only comment on what makes a place Eden. Those two things go a long way to Eden.

[lynnzop[$]]

Andrea, to back your comment on flex time.

Our company is quite flexible with when you can start/end, depending on what you are doing. Those with a lot of client interaction have to pretty much stay within the 8-5 realm.

But anyone else (which is the majority of our company) are free to work out days/times that they will put in their time - 4 x 10's , early start, late start, etc.,

I've been lucky to work for bosses who have been very accomodating. My "normal" work schedule is 6:30 - 3:00 so I can pick up the boys from the bus. However, there are days when I get in at 6:15, 6:45, leave at 3:15, 2:45 (yesterday I even left at 1:00 because they were out early, and I was really tired of having to hire an afterschool babysitter!), and my boss is great to work with me on them.

But she knows that my work will get done, on time, and that when she needs me here over and above the "normal" schedule, I'll be here (or will work from home). We're all flexible, knowing that the most important thing is that THE JOB GETS DONE.

I think (in my environment) that's the perfect set up. I don't take advantage of her flexibility, and she doesn't take advantage of my willingness to go the extra mile when it's needed.

But you have to have the right personalities to be able to do the flexible scheduling thing. Some people will just take advantage of it, and never plan to "pay back".

I read Amy's "create a perfect company" post yesterday and wanted to respond with "will you be my boss?"

Lynn

[Redlass]

I have so many mixed feelings on this topic. I certainly see that flex time can get abused. One of the reasons I've been willing to work somewhere with no room for advancement, though, is because of the extreme flexibility I have.

It wasn't always this way. I went from being a borderline employee on the verge of being fired to a top performing employee who has received several years of perfect performance evaluation. The only change was my boss--my work and work habits stayed the same.

The first boss was extremely tense about my arriving late at work. We were in the middle of a huge project and I was staying at work until 3 a.m. nearly every day. However, when I would arrive at work in the morning at 8:45 a.m. or even 9 a.m. rather than 8:30, I would get reprimanded. My timesheet had between 60 hours and 110 hours every week during this project, and I was being told how much I was hurting the department by walking in after our official start time. Now, had I been smarter and not so young and idealistic, I would have responded by arriving to work on time and leaving precisely 8 hours later (we were supposed to have a 7-hour work day with lunch being paid time-off). Instead, I stayed focused on meeting the deadline and getting the project done. My frustration and stress went up through the ceiling.

There were also problems with dress. I wore business skirts or dresses every day (I'm a writer and editor, very rarely do I see our customers face-to-face). That wasn't good enough. My boss wanted me in suits every day and heels (I refused to wear the heels). She then went into about a six-month project to get me to lose weight because my weight, apparently, was not professional. She commented every day on what I ate and how I was dressed (to the point of complaining about any wrinkles my skirt might have), suggested that I go to a modeling school to learn how to dress and wear makeup (I still refused to wear makeup), etc. etc.

We didn't have an HR department at the time, so I really didn't have anywhere to go to complain. I simply started writing everything down with dates and notes about who witnessed the comments. When we got a new CEO, she was fired.

Since then, I've felt almost as if I'm in a worker's paradise. I still put in lots of hours, but I don't really have a schedule. There is a strong emphasis on family. People give a lot to the company when we're working because the company gives us a lot back. (And Margaret, you're right, the free female supplies are a nice touch.)

[amykhar]

In my vision, I would only hire the best and the brightest and then spoil them rotten. Spoiling a geek rotten means a)letting them wear what they want to were within reason b) getting them the latest and greatest hardware and software to learn with c)sending them to classes of their choice d) good health benefits. My employees wouldn't pay a dime. e) Good pay.

With those things in place, I could be picky as hell when it comes to picking employees. Once I get the right group, and I knew them I could extend the spoiling a bit to include things like working at home, more flexible hours, etc.

With a programmer, I just want the job done and I want it done right.

I also want to be able to take an individual's needs into account. If a great employee suddenly has some serious health or personal issues going on, I want to be able to help them.

Utopia would have to be built gradually. Get the right people and then KEEP them would be my goal. I hate mediocrity, and I hate change.

Amy

[quasar]

Andrea if you tried that at most companies I've worked for you'd be the one losing. Most people work a hell of a lot more than 40 hours a week but in return they get treated like responsible adults. And I know from experience as soon as any sort of strict rules about time start coming into place people get resentful and stop working the extra hours or going the extra mile.

If I work from 8am to 2am one day I don't expect to get yelled at for not getting to the office until 11am the next day. If I work 15 hours one day I don't expect to have to take 2 hours off if I only work 6 the next.

You start complaining regularly about nitpicky things like that and you're going to get an 8 hour day from folks just like you wanted. No evenings. No weekends. No staying overnight. No extra effort.

Janice

[pluckyduck]

Originally posted by quasar
Andrea if you tried that at most companies I've worked for you'd be the one losing. Most people work a hell of a lot more than 40 hours a week but in return they get treated like responsible adults. And I know from experience as soon as any sort of strict rules about time start coming into place people get resentful and stop working the extra hours or going the extra mile.

If I work from 8am to 2am one day I don't expect to get yelled at for not getting to the office until 11am the next day. If I work 15 hours one day I don't expect to have to take 2 hours off if I only work 6 the next.

You start complaining regularly about nitpicky things like that and you're going to get an 8 hour day from folks just like you wanted. No evenings. No weekends. No staying overnight. No extra effort.

Janice

Setting things up so that the end user or the customer is taken care of first, is important, especially in a service oriented business like mine...or there's no business to pay anybody's salaries, you know?

If you called my company to place an order at 10:30 in the morning and there was nobody to help you because everybody just decided to come in at 11:00 that day, I doubt you'd call back again.

If you placed a rush order with us and we missed your deadline because we couldn't get a proof through the art department because the artists didn't show up until 11:00 that day, you'd be pretty pissed.

One has to orient for the customer first. As long as the customer is taken care of, people can hang nekkid by the chandeliers any time of day they want, as far as I'm concerned.

No one could have been more disappointed than I to discover that not everyone comes by the customer oriented philosophy naturally. Rules may be yucky, but if rules help the customer get taken care of properly...rules there must be. That way we all eat.

Andrea

[Redlass]

I think you have a very good point, Andrea, about the type of business a person is in. Does a person have to be there to answer the phone? Are there time-sensitive matters to take care of? Is full coverage necessary?

Different businesses can do different things for their employee based on what they need to do for their customer. Heck, different departments within the same company can do things differently based on who their customer (internal or external) is. So the flexibility that works in one place won't work in another.

[quasar]

Yes, I can see where you'd need to make sure you had coverage for the hours the phones are open to customers. That certainly is important. If I were someone answering phones from customers then I would expect to be there at set times to ensure coverage and whenever possible give advance notice of dr. appts, etc. so coverage could be arranged as I took time away from the office.

This is just a topic that really burns me because I see more and more people cutting off their nose to spite their face. In jobs that don't necessitate having specific coverage, but are very much "do this pile of work" with maybe a meeting or two a week that did have set hours being too strict leads to the stuff I described above. It's not a good working environment and is, in my experience, much less productive than the trust and respect route.

Janice

[jgibson2[$]]

Treat people like grownups? That sounds like a good idea.

Want to hear a funny? My hospital installed a new time clock (swipy thing, as Andrea calls it). They did that a few years ago. Prior to the new time clock, you had to clock in and out, and if you worked more than your standard hours and wanted to be paid for it, you had to fill out a piece of paper. No problem. Most of us didn't bother. I once threatened to make it snow on the unit manager's desk when she docked me 15 minutes for leaving 1 minute early -- and didn't bother to pay me for the 4 days I'd left 20 or more minutes late. I hadn't filled out the papers for those days, but I never expected to get docked for leaving a minute early either.

Enter the new swipy system. Not only do you still have to fill out the piece of paper, but you have to do it whether or not you want to get paid. On the clock? They have to pay you. Don't pee on your way out, you might clock out late. Get here early? For pete's sake, don't clock in -- you might get written up for it. It seems that the new swipy system is a budget buster, because it links directly to the payroll computer. It can be altered, but it takes some serious finagling.

If things are like this at other hospitals, it's no wonder there's a nursing shortage. Trust me with controlled substances, but not with a time clock.

[pluckyduck]

Oh man, do I hate bureaucracy.

I will quit work and live on money from collecting soda cans before I am party to a bureaucracy. Sorry for your trouble, Judy. That's just infuriating.

Here's how our swipey card thing works. (I will never call it a time or clock anything.)

You come in, you swipe your card. You leave, you swipe your card. Periodically (not every day) either the company controller or my sales manager pulls the information up on the computer and looks for any trouble spots.

If somebody is having trouble getting here at their chosen time consistently, it's suggested that they pick another time. Good people can have a poor memory...they might think they are 15 minutes late only once in a blue moon, having no idea it's four times a week. The swipey card thing removes the personal from the interaction, which I've seen is way easier for people to deal with.

What the swipey card thing does for us (and me especially) is it relieves all the pressure of having to glance at the clock when somebody walks in the door. I can just say "Good Morning!" now.

FWIW, the people who work directly with me in my marketing department can do whatever the hell they want (just don't tell the rest of my folks!). All I ask from the folks who aren't working directly with customers is that they are here their eight hours, anywhere between 7 in the morning and 7:30 at night. (The warehouse and the art department staff needs to stick closer to their preagreed schedules, too, because the customer service/inside sales staff depends on them in order to serve the customers.)

Our new building , is going to have the swipey thing as part of getting into the building. It becomes a security key, which means I no longer have to call it a swipey thing. (We need better security anyway.)

Information is a good thing, information in the hands of idiots becomes bureaucracy.


Bridgette wrote:

The first boss was extremely tense about my arriving late at work. We were in the middle of a huge project and I was staying at work until 3 a.m. nearly every day. However, when I would arrive at work in the morning at 8:45 a.m. or even 9 a.m. rather than 8:30, I would get reprimanded. My timesheet had between 60 hours and 110 hours every week during this project, and I was being told how much I was hurting the department by walking in after our official start time.

I didn't feel like quoting your entire spiel about that witch with a b, Bridgette, but that is outrageous. She is outrageous.

She also had a lot of time on her hands. I'd imagine she was pretty ineffectual at the rest of her job if she had nothing better to do than try to control the folks who worked with her like that.

Get a life, you know?

The thing that puzzles me about behavior like that is....what end is it that people possibly think they are serving? I mean, what's the thought process?

Of course, I don't have an appreciation for a dress code...maybe I should. I wore a dress and real shoes and stockings and everything today because it was so pretty out I felt like it, and everybody about fainted. Usually I'm grunging out in jeans and a denim shirt.... I started to think today that it might be time to dress up more. Everybody seemed happy that I looked decent!


Amy wrote:

Utopia would have to be built gradually. Get the right people and then KEEP them would be my goal. I hate mediocrity, and I hate change.

Have faith, I don't mean to suggest that even Utopia is impossible - just that I couldn't do it.

I haven't lost faith myself though, really. (It did go missing for quite awhile, but it's returned.) I absolutely believe in creating a positive atmosphere that the majority of people are glad to work in.

One of the things that I've found attracts and keeps the people that I want, is the same standards that might chase other folks away. People are genuinely proud to work for our company because we are the best (she said modestly)..or, if we aren't the best in a certain aspect, we're working to get the kinks out so that we are.

Laughter is another thing that's working out well for us. We try to laugh a lot. (Epinions, btw, loosened me up... my work emails are often an Epinion in and of themselves...I've gotten a few MH's for them. )

We're certainly nowhere near the Utopia I'd dreamed of. But hey, if it weren't a J-O-B, then they wouldn't call it work.

Andrea
who is trying to squeeze a coffee bar into the new building - that's Utopia!

[magenta321]

Judy, are you sure you don't work at the hospital I just quit working at? My mother still works there. I thought the post would be familiar to our troubles, and she just rolled her eyes and asked if you worked at ____ Hospital too.

This is the one I love about the hosptial I left. We gave ourselves our own review. Very progressive you say. But here are the guidelines. There are several key areas that are pretty much universal to any healthcare worker (such as keeping info confidential, giving quality care regardless of race, etc. etc.) There were about a hundred or so of these, broken into sections, such as critical responcibilities, personal relations, etc. For each one, you rated yourself on a scale of 1 - 4, with one being "I do not fulfill this task" and 4 being "I fulfill this task above and beyond expectations 100% of the time".

Now, the rules:

No one is a 4.

All you can hope is to be a 3. "Fulfills this task 75% of the time."

If you really feel you do go well above and beyond what is expected, you can give yourself a 4 on something, providing you have evidence, such as a letter from a patient saying that you went out of your way. One letter equals one piece of evidence, which means, you can give yourself one 4.

Now, say you have a few letters from patients. Unless you can get like ten or more letters, that fall under each responsibility category, can you ever come up with an overall score of a 4. I've never heard of anyone who did not get all 3s. Things aren't averaged (say, 8 "4s" with evidence to 2 "3s" will still equal a 3 overall).

Now, say you were truly outstanding. You managed, to amazingly, get yourself some 4s in categories. Then the categories are "averaged" together, but using a formula that makes it unfair (again, 8 "4s" and 2 "3s" will equal a 3 overall).

No one is a 4. Did you forget?

So all employees, no matter how outstanding, are forced to fill in a packet to prove that they are shitty employees who only fulfill expectations 75% of the time, and therefore are not entitled to a large raise.

Or the punch clock policy there. That's another good one. One must punch in and out, unless they are a supervisor. Excuse me? Want to know who the biggest abusers are? You guessed it.

So, then people who were being bad, started punching in, and then going to the cafe to get breakfast. Bad. Those employees should be reprimanded. Instead, they decided to move the time clock. The radiology department is very large (it takes up a floor in two buildings that are connected together). Now everyone had to punch in and out at this clock. It took more than five minutes to get to that clock when you were in my area of Radiology. Thus, everyone was late, or had to adjust the time they left (which has now happened, but is a pain in the ass). This, over two employees, whom I can name (and anyone else in the department could tell you who they were too).

I really think I could have run that department better than the people who were. They came up with the most assinine policies. The worst part is that the head honcho type was a tech herself a year ago, has had next to no education (only graduated high school and Xray school) and can't be trusted to do anything beyond matching her shirt to her skirt.

Makes you wonder who is up above her, and up above that person, etc. etc. That's why hospitals don't work. They hire idiots to be management, and wonder why employees hate their jobs.

[phoenixx]

As I was reading this, I received this email. Enjoy the funny!

RULES ON WORK BREAKS

Due to increased competition and a keen desire to remain in business,
we find it necessary to institute a new policy.

Effective immediately, we find we must ask that somewhere between
starting time and quitting time, and without infringing too much on
the time usually devoted to lunch period, coffee breaks, rest period,
story telling, ticket selling, golfing, auto racing, sporting events,
vacation, and the re-hashing of yesterday's T.V. programs, that each
employee endeavor to find some time that can be set aside and known as
a WORK BREAK.

To some this may seem a radical innovation, but we honestly believe
the idea has great possibilities. It can be an aid to steady
employment and it might also be a means of assuring regular paychecks.

While the WORK BREAK adoption plan is not compulsory, it is hoped that
each employee will find enough time to give the plan a fair trial. It
is also hoped that those employees not in favor of adopting the WORK
BREAK idea will have fully completed their vacation plans.

Leslie

[murasaki]

With my military employees, we don't punch time clocks. Everyone is expected to be on time for first formation in the morning (usually for physical training anywhere from 5am to 7am). Don't be late for that.

Coming in for work, there's a little more leeway unless you have a meeting first thing--don't be late for that.

Soldiers who are consistently late and/or leaving early get counseled by their supervisor.

With civilian employess, although they're on salary they act like they punch a time clock and will not work one minute past their end time so they damn well better be on time or I'll counsel them.

With my first civilian employees, I took a very laid back approach about if they are five minutes late, no problem but then they need to make it up at the end of the day. I started noticing more and more of them coming in consistently 5-10 minutes late every day and still leaving on time. To circumvent this, I would give them something to do five minutes before they were supposed to leave for the day--something that would take 15 minutes or so because I'd said up front if they come in late, that's fine just be willing to make up the time. They got the idea and started making it on time.

I had one abuser who pushed me. She came in consistently late, left on time and then would take sick leave with out my prior approval. I marked her AWOL for the afternoon she took sick leave without approval (mine or my boss's) and it screwed up her pay for months. (She also got a reprimand for some other stuff.) She shaped after that.

--naomi