How NOT to motivate your staff 74

[chiph]

OK, this forum is dedicated to sharing ways to motivate your technical staff. I've decided it also needs a place to provide negative examples -- thus, this thread.

I'll start it off with:

- Have an HR director who spends most of his time locked behind his office door. Problems with your pay? Send an email, so that the IT staff can read it too!

- Offer free sodas, but don't assign anyone the responsibility of refilling the refrigerator/soda machine. Yummm! Nothing better than a warm soft drink first thing in the morning!

Chip H.

 

[chiph]

For the most part, the events in this thread are real, with only the names changed to prevent being sued.

I thought what I've heard was "Land of Opportunity", not "Land of Opportunists".

"Land of the Capitalists" would be more correct.

One concern over such a long contract is that it could be viewed as indentured servitude. While this country does have a history of such (it's how many of the skilled trades were populated in the 18th century), after the US civil war and the civil reforms of the 20th century, such things are not technically illegal, but could be considered borderline.

If you're OK with the terms of the contract, then stay. But if there's a hint of dissatisfaction, it might be worthwhile to talk to a lawyer about the possibility of getting out early, or renegotiating the contract for more favorable terms.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[willir]

medic's description is somewhat similar to this sad story...

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?SQID=844534&SPID=655&newpid=655&page=1

Having said that, a friend of mine took an 18 month sabitical to work in South Africa on the Aids problem. Another took their family for two years to help in South America. Although we are not always happy with our current situation, there are others whose way of life puts a totally different perspective on things.

The sad things is that these unfortunate would probably jump at some of the opportunites we consider distasteful. And the even sadder thing is that there are businesses / people who would capitolize / exploit the desperation.

Ain't life grand.

 

[medic]

Well, I guess I'm in a better situation than the person in that thread. At least, I get all the most challenging tasks, and I enjoy it. Makes me temporarily forget about my "bad" situation.

 

[zaznet]

Reduce your 3 man night shift down to 2 by cutting one of the 2 best members. This ensures you leave at least 2 nights a week with one employee who constantly has to wake management in the middle of the night for direction on how to handle ciritical issues.

Increase the work schedule of the night crew by adding the new contact on to their responsabilities so they have two unique customers to support.

Move the team into a new secure area where they get one desk and only one computer per network with 3 networks to work on. This ensures that they can only support one problem at a time even if they are both present that night. Now of course the "victim" employee here who is able to support the systems just grabs one of the day guys desks and works from there to get the job done.

Give the problem employee a 4 day work week so management can get more sleep. Since the employee will now only have 4 nights a week when he might have to call, that's 1 more night of sleep! This reduces the cross-coverage days down to 2 per week.

With only 2 days cross coverage per week, both employees are only able to take off 2 days vacation, or holiday time per week. Of course both of these days fall in the middle of the week and they are not approved for taking weekends off.

Give the problem employee his 2 consecutive vacation request because he got some other department manager unfamiliar with the staffing needs to sign his time off request. Make the other employee work those 2 weeks straight to provide needed coverage.

I'm just glad I was the third man who was moved off the shift. I have long since changed employers and saw most of the other issues like training, management changes (re-org), meetings and paperwork as described above. So much so that I almost wonder how many of these other posts worked at the same place!

Nathan aka: zaz (zaznet)
zaz@zaz.net

http://www.zaz.net/

 

[jaymaechtlen]

to Medic

1. check contract very carefully (mandatory)
2. what happens if they want to fire you? Do you have residency here, or must you return?

following that, there are possibilities:

only work hours and times absolutely required
find "real" work or training elsewhere as needed.

let us know what you have discovered!

 

[OhioBill]

Speaking of contracts...

In a place I used to work everyone had to sign a non-competition contract which specified the next two years and/or five hundred miles, whichever was better for the company. The company hired a new VP of Sales and Marketing who did an outstanding job for the next three years. When the VP parted company for greener pastures next door, The Company pointed to the non-comp contract, then did a double take as the VP's contract seemed to have gotten lost. The VP claimed never to have signed such an agreement.

On his exit interview, The Company hatchet lady (VP of Personel) asked the ex-VP of Sales to sign the agreement "just as a formality". I saw the VP of Sales walking out the door, still smiling and laughing over that one.

 

[medic]

to jaymaechtlen,

The contract, however I read it, favors my employer only and obviously written for my employer's protection and assurance. To answer your question (and modesty aside), firing me out can cause them to lose the new clients (and currently interested prospects) we brought in because of the applications I made. But should I leave my employer, I may just return to my own country. I know the INS rules and I don't want to do what the previous programmers did. Now, the INS is after them.
Finding another programming job here would not be easy because my technical proficiency is not supported very well in paper. Unless if the prospective employer will give me the chance to prove my skills.
For now, I'm somewhat happy doing my programming jobs, and knowing my employer is happy with my performance. I know my time will surely come.

 

[columb]

I've only just found this forum - it seems that IT is the same the whole world over.

I know it will seem trivial to many but my favourite was the skills register with a list of skills to tick which included
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Oracle 7
Oracle 8
Oracle 9
Oracle Reports
Oracle SQL

And oh - yes, Unix
As we support four different flavours it was nice to see how the complexity and diversity of our skills is appreciated when compared to our co-workers in the Windows and Oracle teams

 

[SteveBreit]

Ok, all you guys have great examples of what NOT to do to encourage and motivate IT staff. It is kind of scary that the things you listed seem so prevalent but then that unfortunately seems to be how corporate (in my case - America) works!

Consider this as well - A number of years ago to be a salaried employee one had to fit certain criteria, specifically you had to be a manager or supervisor and this was determined by the number of employees you managed or supervised. Many IT staffers were made salaried employees because of the long work hours they ultimately would put in for support and maintenance on backend systems. Paying these techs an hourly wage might get expensive! (Let’s not consider fair compensation for conscientious, thoughtful and diligent work) Well, at least according to the then labor codes for the state of California this was illegal. So what did California corporations do? Well they talked to their lobbyist buddies in the capital and they helped influence legislation that changed those labor codes specific to salaried employee classification and guess what? (Really big surprise) IT staff are now classified as professionals (like doctors but without the prestige and pay scale) and are therefore exempt from not fitting the classification of ‘Salaried’ employee. (Like how they called it an exemption rather than to be concise and straightforward) So now it is perfectly legal in the state of California for IT staff to be salaried. (Maintenance window Wednesday night at 11pm, upgrade mail servers this weekend, support call after hours or fault monitor notification on my pager at 3:00 in the morning at a remote facility. You know all of these don’t you guys!)

A good supervisor or director will protect his team and reward them as much as possible. I remember paying out of my own pocket when executive management refused to pay for things like IT training, small gift certificates, team lunches for IT staff, etc.. These were small rewards and acknowledgements for staff members working long hours and unpaid overtime, but then that is precisely the reason there seem to be so many of the posts above (what NOT to do’s) because companies don’t get it! They generally cannot value the job that IT does and only see that department as a cost center, a drain on the organization rather than necessary to maintain the systems that they absolutely must rely upon to even do business. (by the way, I resigned from that company since they also saw fit to lie through their teeth not only to IT but the rest of the employees, breaking promises with contracts and the like…)

It doesn’t have to be expensive (just cost effective) but I digress, another topic another time!

All you IT guys out there, just know this, someone, somewhere appreciates what you do – it just probably isn’t your immediate boss!

Sb

 

[xaqster]

Here is one for you:

Actually said to my team by the team leaders during a meeting: "Nobody this year is getting a pay rise. This is because of the state of the IT industry in general. If you want to earn more money, good luck trying to get another job, because there aren't any!!"

Bare in mind this was for a job working rotating 12 hour day and night shifts, 3 hours drive away, for a total of a 18 hour day.

Luckely enough I found out that I had got the better paying job in my home town that I had been interviewd for 2 days later, so I could quit on them! YES! Hows that for good luck now, Mr Manager!!!

Sorry, just needed to vent!

---

"I'm just here to regulate funkyness"

http://www.kerbside.net

 

[MasterRacker]

xaqster: Good for you.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[KenCunningham]

xaqster, how could you possibly bring yourself to leave such a forward-looking and caring employer ;-)

Well done!

 

[loppydog]

Just a general reply to everyone out there. Believe me the UK's NHS has got to take some beating in the bad managers game. Checkout SamCant.co.uk for true tales of incompetence and bad management.

Loppydog is a friend of SamCant.co.uk

 

[chiph]

Bob Cringley has reported on Microsoft's bidding for the NHS contract:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041111.html

and

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041118.html

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[Gwreng]

Well I figured I'd Post here cause I need to vent a bit and get some ideas. I'm a computer tech and have to do service tickets, I can usually do them remotely and usually last maybe 5 minutes. My boss today for the second time in a few months called me into her office. And said to me "I don't know how you can sit at your desk and get your work done, I think you need to go out and visit the users a lot more than you do." Thats what she said to me before but this is the new bit, "and if it continues I'm going to have to have you turn your desk around." The implication here is that she thinks I'm doing something I shouldn't be at my desk, and will treat me like a 2 year old and tell me to turn my desk around instead of telling me what the actual problem is so that I can actually fix or correct the behavior? Anyone run into this problem before? It bothers me because they're changing things around a lot in the office and this is a similar path to the previous tech that got "asked" to leave. It wouldn't bother me at all if she had just said I don't think you're keeping up with your work can you fix that type thing? Just the way it was said I guess.

Now comes my delima not sure if I should go to my boss individually and ask her what the deal is because I believe this is definately a preformance related issue. Or Check with the Director to see if he knows of any problems, or go to both of them and set up a meeting. Although I don't know how that would work because our office has a tendancy for some behind peoples back comments and things?

Any ideas?

 

[chiph]

Try reposting this in the "My own development as a professional" forum -- you'll get better advice over there.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[Apollo13a]

Great Thread!
Sounds like AT&T before and after we were outsourced to IBM
I have only one word, I'm afraid to say it, management won't like it, but here it is, UNIONIZE. Give credit and compensation to the people who actually make it happen.
Why is it that when an employee gets really good at performing his/her duties they get promoted into a management position surrounded by a whole bunch of MBA's with computer science degrees from the 70's telling me that he used to be a network architect specialize in AOL installs? Wha? AOL? In order to access my IBM personal information and do my job I have to have you show me how to put in a cd, and well, that's it just put in the cd. They actually pay you for that and call you a Network Architect?

 

[JimmyZ1]

I was given a contract and that caused me to quit my job. They waited till 9pm on friday night to call me before starting on monday, pushed my start date back 2 weeks, called 2 weeks later, pushed it back again, then 2 weeks later pushed it back indefinately. Called me 4 months later with the same job offer, and when I didn't show up for work on Monday, they called me wondering where I was and why I didn't show up....

I told them one good screw deserved another...

 

[Stella001]

How about giving them a 1% raise and then telling them they have to add 10 hours to their work week. Now that is motivation.

 

[KenCunningham]

Hubba hubba. Go team!!