Productivity

Too Many Hats

Hats(1)Another update from the Jungle…

Tina was the first employee at her company, hired a month after Drew, the owner, created the company.  Tina got the job because she was a friend of Drew’s and she was willing to work for an erratic paycheck.  Also, Tina had a liberal arts degree from a state university which turned out to be not much good when job hunting.

So Tina worked for Drew and was excited each time the company grew. In the early days, they shared ramen noodles for lunch and pooled their money to pay for coffee meetings with prospective clients.  Tina liked the sense of adventure and the fact that each day was different.

Over the next three years, Tina worked on everything from the sales brochures to updating the logo to handling disgruntled customers.  She handled administrative tasks such as ordering office supplies and equipment so that Drew could focus on the company’s strategy. She also helped Drew interview and hire new employees.

Each new employee was hired for a particular job, even though they lacked written job descriptions. Any job that didn’t fit into another employee’s skill set slid onto Tina’s desk.  She knew the history of the company, the way things has always been done, and she was willing to help solve problems faced by other employees.

Hats(2)Drew was happy to delegate employee issues to Tina. But Tina didn’t know anything about employment laws or human resources best practices. She Googled key terms periodically and filled out paperwork to the best of her ability. The company’s CPA was able to answer her questions related to payroll processing, but basically Tina was on her own.

Now Tina’s burnt out.  Although it’s a fine spring day, she’s slumped at her desk, exhausted and dispirited. It’s time to plan the monthly employee birthday party and she just can’t face it. Working for Drew isn’t fun anymore.

What options are available to Tina?

  1. She can continue doing all the tasks that none of her co-workers want to do until she becomes a bitter old woman.
  2. She can explain to Drew that it’s time to professionalize the back office so that the company can grow smoothly.
  3. She can quit and go sit on a beach in the Caribbean drinking rum and eating rum-soaked fruit.

In the actual situation, the company decided to hire a subject matter expert to help them create a formal structure for the administrative side of the business and to implement best practices. Then the subject matter expert helped train a new employee to handle administrative tasks.

 

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

Ebook Link: https://hrcompliancejungle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/skh-employee-theft.pdf

Join the HR Compliance Jungle today. Click here!

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Chaos Kills Morale

Chaos

Another update from the Jungle…

Jason felt lucky when he was hired about six months ago by Buckeroo, Ltd., a company that makes camping gear for outdoor types. During the hiring process the sales pitch by the HR representative and his soon-to-be manager sounded wonderful.  Of course, anything would have sounded good to Jason who was unemployed for almost a year.

Jason came to work his first day anticipating a rosy future with a great job and a great boss. Two weeks later his great boss, David, left the company for another job.  One of Jason’s co-workers, Teresa, became his boss. Her promotion caused all but one of Jason’s co-workers to leave. The remaining co-worker reminded Jason of Dilbert’s Wally, a guy picking up a paycheck but not working.

A month into the new job, Jason went to see Martha, the HR rep, to ask what had happened to his paycheck.  Martha spun a confused tale about “glitches” caused when the company changed payroll service vendors.  By the end of her convoluted explanation, Jason felt relieved that he would actually be paid eventually.

In addition to his payroll problems, Jason is annoyed by a steady stream of requests to complete HR paperwork.  Martha repeatedly calls Jason to her office to complete forms that he is certain he already filled in during his orientation.  Jason isn’t the brightest guy but he’s beginning to wonder about Buckeroo’s organizational savvy.

Chaos 2Yesterday, Martha emailed Jason to remind him to complete the company’s required web-based training. Martha copied the email to Teresa and seemingly every member of senior management. Jason’s had enough.

He emails that he hasn’t done the training because he never received a password to access the on-line training. He hits “reply all”.   This morning, Teresa called Jason to her office to chew him out for “making her look bad” by copying her bosses on his email yesterday.  Jason stares at Teresa.

What should Jason do next?

  1. He can point out to Teresa that he didn’t create the email cc list and he won’t be blamed for failures beyond his control.
  2. He can tune out Teresa’s rant and mentally revise his resume so that he doesn’t lose any time in looking for another job.
  3. He can accept that the company lacks systems to operate efficiently which means employees will waste time repeating tasks.

In the actual situation, the company muddled along for years refusing to adopt systems or processes to improve efficiency.  The muddling caused high turnover and low employee morale.  Eventually, the company was bought by a competitor.

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

Ebook Link: https://hrcompliancejungle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/skh-employee-theft.pdf

Join the HR Compliance Jungle today. Click here!

Follow us on Facebook & Twitter!

Visit us: http://www.complianceriskadvisor.com/

The Micromanager

Another update from the jungle…

MicroMan 1Sarah joined the company as an experienced lateral hire.  She was attracted to the company after they offered her a chance to use her diverse experience. Sarah likes variety because she’s easily bored by routine. She bailed out of several previous jobs when they became boring.  Now she does all the special projects for her new employer and each day offers a new challenge. She likes everything about her job except her boss, Dean.

Dean is the second most dreaded type of boss: the micromanager.  The most dreadful managerial sort, of course, is the psycho boss.  Dean can’t just assign a project to Sarah. He spends half an hour explaining in detail how he would complete the project. Then he tells Sarah to use her own judgment.

Sarah has high personal standards which require her to thoroughly research an issue before making recommendations. She is also a perfectionist and agonizes over each memo and report to ensure that the information is accurate and the words are clear and concise.  Then Dean ruins it.MicroMan 2

As her boss, Dean wants to see Sarah’s written memos and reports before they are sent on to the senior management team. Sarah understands the need for quality control but he’s a micromanager and he can’t resist meddling.  His review of her first report for the higher ups resulted in a sea of red ink. Dean had revised the entire report.

Sarah stared at her destroyed sentences and asked Dean why he had changed it. He said he thought it read better with the changes. Sarah pointed out that all the changes were stylistic. Essentially, he had re-written her report to reflect his more verbose style of writing. Dean smiled and assured Sarah that things would change as he became familiar with the quality of her work.

Of course, nothing changes. As the months pass, Sarah’s frustration grows. She daydreams of beating Dean senseless with his own laptop computer or forcing him to listen to rap music.  She discreetly asks the HR director to transfer her to a different manager but is told such a move is impossible.

What options are available to Sarah?

  1. She can continue hoping that Dean’s management style will change.
  2. She can continue objecting to Dean’s management style, which is contributing to a perception that she’s bitchy and not a team player.
  3. She can do the minimum necessary to earn her paycheck while she looks for another employer.

In the actual situation, the subordinate eventually found a new employer where her new boss wasn’t a micromanager.

 

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

Ebook Link: https://hrcompliancejungle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/skh-employee-theft.pdf

Join the HR Compliance Jungle today. Click here!

Follow us on Facebook & Twitter!

Visit us: http://www.complianceriskadvisor.com/

Dis-Integration

Mentor

Another Update from the Jungle…

Several years ago Cindy suggested that her company should create a mentoring program to reduce employee churn.  As the HR manager, she was spending most of her time interviewing applicants or completing termination paperwork.  At first, selling the idea to the owners of the company wasn’t easy.

The owners thought a mentoring program was a waste of time. The company founder told her that employees should be happy to have a job and didn’t need “touchy-feely crap”.  Cindy countered with diagrams showing years of trashed productivity and reduced profits caused by the revolving door of new hires. So the founder grudgingly consented to a mentoring program.

Cindy’s next hurdle was finding mentors. No one volunteered when she posted a notice on the bulletin board in the break room.  Her blast email calling for volunteers was ignored, except for the idiot who hit “reply all” when he commented to a co-worker about snowballs and hell. The idiot doesn’t know it yet, but Cindy has decided he needs to volunteer for quality control visits to suppliers in McAllen, Texas in August and Buffalo, New York in January.

Mentor 2Cindy eventually found enough mentors to run a pilot program.  Now six months later she is meeting with the mentees to ask for their feedback on how the program can be made better. What she learns is illuminating but a bit unexpected.

Brian says his mentor took him to dinner at an establishment with pole dancers and cheap booze. Brian admits he doesn’t know much about the company but he now carries lots of dollar bills just in case. Susan’s mentor complained incessantly about the company leading Susan to discreetly search for a new job.

Daniel, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about his mentor. She introduced him to key employees in each department, meets with him regularly to answer his questions, and urges him to volunteer for new duties in order to broaden his experience.

What should Cindy do next?

  1. She can recognize that the corporate culture’s defeatist attitude needs to be fixed first.
  2. She can ask Daniel’s mentor to create a list of her successful mentoring techniques so that others can copy it and hope a successful mentoring program will fix other problems.
  3. She can give up trying to make the workplace better and streamline the firing and termination processes.

In the actual situation, the senior management team never saw the value in a mentoring program and failed to support the initiative. The company continued to experience over 40% turnover in personnel and low productivity and employee morale.

 

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

Ebook Link

https://hrcompliancejungle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/skh-employee-theft.pdf

Join the HR Compliance Jungle today. Click here!

Follow us on Facebook & Twitter!

Visit us: http://www.complianceriskadvisor.com/