Martha’s response to the Top 5 Reasons to Hate Your HR Department post is a good one.
“People ( including HR people) have hearts, and feelings, and compassion. Companies are made up of people, but companies exist to make money for the owners and shareholders, and their commitment to keeping employees satisfied is based in that profit motive.”
For the most part, everyone’s stuck in the same boat, and the HR people are people just like you and me.
My complaint is against the culture and the mindset that has caused so many HR departments to behave according to the Top 5 mentioned above. Making a profit can be done in many ways. There are companies that make the extra effort to treat their employees like people rather than resources, to understand their employees, and to take action to suit their needs.
I think it takes more effort from the leadership to create a system that acknowledges the complexity of people, but the benefits to doing so are obvious. The companies that have seen that and acted on it should be congratulated. Happy people work better than strained resources, and that means greater profits through improved productivity and reduced turnover.
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7 responses so far ↓
1 Alan // Jul 13, 2007 at 1:27 pm
So while I did get some laughs out of the office olymics entries, and I get that HR, is not perfect, I can’t help but feeling that we have some responsibility here.
Why does big business treat employees like resources to be managed; because often times we behave like over grown two year olds who need to be managed. Take a step away for a second, and think about what we do at work on a daily basis (myself included). Come into work and play games to avoid doing the work that we are actually being paid to do.
My grandfather was a construction foreman and he once took me to one of his jobs when I was very young and pointed to two men lolligaging on the job while everyone else was working, and he look down at me and told me, “Alan when a man pays you to do a job, or to work by the hour, do the very best job you can, or work hard for that hour, because if that man is paying you to do a job, and you are not doing it right, and you still take his money, then that is steeling. He promply got out of his truck and told those men to get back to work, or they could go home, and that he was not going to pay them for that hour.
Now that didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but when you think about it, being an employee is a contractual agreement. You agree to do X work, and they agree to pay you Y dollars for your hours of “work”. You have agreed to do the job to the best of you ability, and they have agreed to pay you for it.
What if our employers took upholding their end of the bargain ( paying us) as serious as we take upholding ours?
I understand that most jobs can suck, and that most people hate their jobs, which is unfortunate, but that is no reason to steel, or lower our own personal standards. If you are not challenged at work, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, life is too important to flitter it away playing silly games to avoid doing anything productive.
What if we were a nation of people who took pride in what we did at work instead of taking pride in how much we got away with not doing.
Or maybe for starters What if I was a individual who took pride in what I did, and didn’t try to avoid being productive.
I had better get back to work I just stole $10 of my employers time to write this response.
2 peggy // Jul 13, 2007 at 2:38 pm
“I had better get back to work I just stole $10 of my employers time to write this response.”
LOL!
This is titled “Don’t hate the player, Hate the game!”
Sadly, there are players out there that make us hate the game we love. Can you say Barry Bonds or the entire NY Yankees team???
No, seriously, you could have a lot of good people in the right positions but it is the one guy at the top who is ruining it for everyone. I worked at a place like that where there were wonderful people who were very good at what they did and very happy doing what they were paid to do except when the Head Manager was in the office. So sad.
I actually had corporate looking into this guy but the corporation sold out to another company before they could do anything about it….
3 heath // Jul 14, 2007 at 10:54 am
I think maybe this should be called “Don’t Hate The Game, Hate The Player.”
Let’s say I have a mind-numbing or grueling job and though I’m dedicated, I become worn down. So I take a break and throw a muffin or bat a ball. Twenty minutes later, I’m back ready to go. Probably working better than ever. (Those familar with Covey will recognize this as Sharpening the Saw, his seventh habit).
However, if I don’t care about work, and I’m simply there to waste the time, then I could agree that it is stealing.
So I don’t think the games are wrong, unless they are used for evil instead of good (improved work habits).
4 Chuck Westbrook // Jul 16, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Alan,
Thank you for your thoughtful post. Much of what you have to say, I would agree with, especially that we should not be satisfied with jobs that fail to reward and challenge us and there are things we can do to improve that situation.
However, there are places where I would disagree with your comment. The question isn’t whether or not people need to be managed and motivated–that is a given. The question is how they ought to be managed and motivated.
Your grandfather set a reasonable expectation and enforced it. That is a principle of good leadership, in my opinion. There is nothing keeping big companies from doing the same. If an employee’s work is unsatisfactory, they can be fired (excepting unions). That is the essence of the legal contract–it has nothing to do with best effort as far as I know.
Is it good and right to give your very best effort anyway? Yes. This is a part of a broader understanding, perhaps an ethical one. Are there other important agreements beyond what is in the legal document? Again, yes.
Respect, raises, and promotions are often expected by the employee in exchange for excellent work. What’s common here is that in either case, what is given is above and beyond the legal obligation.
I could write much more about this, but I have a feeling I’ll be doing a full post on this at a later date, so I’ll save it. Thanks again for the thoughts and the contribution!
-Chuck
Peggy,
Doubtless there are cases of bad apples being in command. I’ve worked for a couple of them in my time.
-Chuck
Heath,
I think that’s a good point. Most employers understand the need for a break and levity up to a point. Then again, if it becomes a problem, they’ll take action. I imagine Alan was reacting to the notion of “killing time.” People play games for both reasons. Now, is the killing time approach the same as stealing money?
-Chuck
5 Rene // Jul 16, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Today we are in a world where in a business the front line employees represent the face of the company. It only makes sense to treat all employees not as resources but as individuals and with the same respect and benefits as those in the higher strata.
6 Dawn // Jul 16, 2007 at 9:02 pm
To keep motivation levels high and improve productivity so that employees are not stealing time, a good approach is to turnover staff once every twelve months. This will make the employees feel motivated due to the expectations in a new work environment. And in turn, profit margins will increase.
7 Michael // Jul 18, 2007 at 10:24 am
Like Toby, I am basically the HR person for my company now. Hopefully I am not hated as much by my boss as Toby is. I feel like HR functions best when it is really tied into the rest of the company. I have a lot of responsibilities like hiring, training, and employee evaluations, but I am also involved in daily operations of the company and getting to know employees on a personal level. Obviously, this setup probably wouldn’t work as well for larger corporations but I think it works great when possible.
My last company was basically an outsourced HR department and I helped people get hired and then actually had to be the one to fire them when their company was tired of them. I can only imagine how terrible a feeling it must of been to have some guy who you’ve only talked to a couple times on the phone and met once call you and tell you your actual boss doesn’t have the guts to let you go and to not show up for work the next day.
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