In which the CEO encourages employees to work harder by giving them forms to fill in

It is amazing how some managers think they can create forms and procedures that will keep employees successfully in line. We heard a case this week that just makes us want to weep.

The company has many people working from home. The employees do a lot of miles. The CEO has introduced a new form that every employee needs to complete. They need to account for every second of their day including full details of customer visits, why they went there and how long they were there. Then they need to account for mileage and time spent in detail. Failure to complete the paperwork is considered a serious breach and will not be tolerated.

This form is being driven because they suspect one or two people are not pulling their weight. So let us deconstruct the message

  1. We know most of you work pretty hard but, because one or two people are not performing as we would like, we will punish you all with the mindless paperwork this creates
  2. We don’t trust you. We need to monitor and measure your every step
  3. How you spend your time is more important to us that customer feedback and achieving results (which we do not measure)
  4. Senior leaders are watching you to make sure you are compliant. We suspect that, given the opportunity, all employees would spend the day at the beach and pretending to work. This process is designed to put a stop to all that

Now lets consider the effect this has

  1. Loyal people think about resigning
  2. Many hours are lost form filling
  3. The employees quickly work out how to beat the system
  4. The poor employees manage to work around the process
  5. The good employees are far less engaged and motivated

So well done to the CEO for that one…! Surely you have no such rules in your business? Or do you?

Music in the office this week

A new Lloyd Cole album is out which is always worth a listen. The new one is particularly good. We also discovered Anais Mitchell and her album Hadestown. Now we are pretty convinced most readers are lacking a bit of folk opera in their collection. Well thats exactly what Hadestown is so if you have been wondering where all the folk opera artists are in the world. Anais will answer your call. I think you could describe it as fascinating/interesting