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Improving Company Morale?
Undaar asks: "I work as a developer for a web development company. We were pretty hard hit (as were many companies that do what we do) by the "economic down-turn". The company went from over 500 people to under 200 in under two years. It's more stable now, but people are consistently laid-off. Consequently people feel like they always have to look over their shoulder to avoid getting fired. Most lunches are spent complaining about lack of enjoyment/challenge from the job and the fact that upper-management seems not to understand what we do. Employers: what have you done to improve employee morale in your company? As an employee, what can I do to improve the morale in the people I work with? How can I make my work environment more enjoyable? What kind of constructive suggestions can I take to management so that they can help improve the situation?"
Heck, The free lunchs I get are perfect for my morale.. yummm.. (donair on friday)
Whores. Lots and lots of whores.
And don't be stingy with the cocaine, either.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
"Firings will continue until morale improves"
;)
- The Management
Sorry, couldn't resist
-- Gxis! Ed.
I work for a software dev company down
here in O.C. It's the same way here.
The way I relieve my stress is applying
for better jobs and talking more sh!t
about management and their crappy decisions
that landed up the company in this situation.
These people should be glad they're able to find work at a job that cannot really be considered manual labor. Be glad it's not the depression. Be glad it's not a factory line job.
In short: Look on the bright side.
"In fact I know this place called Mary-Anne's Hammocks - the nice thing about it is, Mary-Anne gets in the hammock with you! Hahah, I'm just kidding, Homer."
Hank Scorpio rules.
Obviously you haven't been getting enough floggings.
I know the secrets of the video game champs
Random and capricious firings, demotions, reorganizations, and project cancellations help. So do bamboo canes. I would also look into 50% pay cuts for anyone who isn't management. Keep the staff isolated from each other and the outside world, make sure no one knows how the company is really doing in presales negotiation or postsales execution, and then you'll have a really tight rein on them.
Oh yeah, mustn't forget Gestapo-like surveillance techniques and frequent reminders that you don't trust your employees not to squander company time and resources! Crack down hard on anyone who likes to mail jokes around, block access to humor sites and job-boards, and occassionally reject or alter outbound mails "by accident". Finish this off by identifying your employees by number first, name second -- a login and email address like jc7385@company.com really lets them know how much you care.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Having problems with negative talk during lunches?
Get rid of the lunch breaks! If your local labor laws won't alow that, then just make sure each employee has a different lunch time. You may have to vary start times to fit them all in, but that is why the day has 24 hours.
People complaining around the water cooler?
Remove the water cooler! If the local health laws require a source of water, then intall a money collection device. People will think twice about gathering around for a BS sessions if it costs them $.25 a swallow.
Negatiove E-mails making the rounds on your corporate network?
Are their computers REALLY needed?
Isn't web development really more of an artistic thing? I think only one person would really need to have a computer, the rest can just draw there ideas on paper with crayons and submit them to the guy with the computer for entry. And those silly PHP or Perl monkeys spend WAY too much time changing code, tweaking , degugging and stuff. I think most bugs are there because they are not careful or they are poor typists. You could hire a touch typists from you local high school to enter all their code for the day in the evening. Tha way they would be sure to be accurate the first time. Your empyees will be so busy they won't have time to have morale.
You are correct in your assumption that lay offs cause bad morale. NEVER LAY OFF EMPLOYS! Alway make thier job so horrible, so degrading, so painful that they just quit. It will save you a bundle on unemployment fees and severence packages. If you planned ahead you are allready located in an area like Utah, that has a horribly depressed tech sector so a few employees will stay because they know that the only other oppurtunity is flippiung burgers at McD's.
~Z
Best thing for morale?
How about you quit?
After a few months of you still unsuccessfully job searching, everyone at the company will feel really appreciative that they still have their jobs. This will vastly improve morale!
Also you can return periodically to regale them with hilarious job interview anecdotes.
they bring us beer and sometimes margaritas.
:-P
You must be the Microsoft Outlook Security Development team
* hic *
Table-ized A.I.
[excerpt from Dilbert strip] ...
Dilbert: Any idea why morale is so low?
Wally: We think it's your breath.
The software (and hardware) market is full of so many highly-qualified people, most with years of experience, that employers have little to no incentive to care whether their current employees are happy or not.
That's a complete and utter myth. The software market is full of loads of utterly incompetent bottom feeders that flowed into the industry during boom time, however there is a MASSIVE lack of actual knowledge or talent. I'd wager that >90% of software developers out there slumber from day to day not really sure what their doing. Greater than half of all software projects are an absolute failure, while of the remaining half most fail to fulfill their mandate.
At the last company I worked at (Verity) the VP of Engineering kept telling "motivational" stories based on his 3 week vacation in Africa. You know, about hyenas and lions eating other animals. He did this three company meetings in a row. At the same time a number of employees had been told (not asked) to work 7 days a week (which most did since they were H1-B's). Very motivational.
Oh yes, since I left the company I guess he still tells motivational stories based on the vacations he's had since...
"For fun I go to the interview, they offer me the job, then I drop a bomb on their stupid asses. I want 95k/year, 6 weeks paid vacation"
He met to end this with:
And then my mom comes and picks me up in her minivan and takes me to my real job at McDonalds.
Free. (as in Beer)
:)
As in lots of it.
Fellowship 9/11
It's guaranteed to improve morale.
Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Dr. Swanson: Wow, that's messed up!
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
This reminds me of our "official" company motto: The random firings will continue until morale improves"
really, any good manager with a good sense of perspective...
wohaaa... those exist? i thought they were just a myth.
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
Give that man a star! Most of you suck.
Second, when the layoffs actually happened, she held a meeting with the survivors to tell us about it so we didn't hear it through the grape vine.
I can see how that works
"Can everyone who still works here come to my office for a meeting?"
"Where are you going Skyshadow?"
(* Disclaimer: Do not taunt happy fun ball.)
Memo to management:
1. I want to be left alone to do my job. No OSHA training (I can use a fire extinguisher without any explanation from the "Risk Manager," thank you), no safety training (I could not care less about the MSDS sheets - I'm in an office, for God's sake), no sexual harassment/sensitivity training and no drug awareness in the workplace meetings. Do not waste my time on bullshit meetings/classes that have nothing to do with my job.
2. I come in early, work late and work on weekends. If you see me leaving or arriving outside of my scheduled hours, don't worry about it: you're way ahead on the deal.
3. If I can only use my email or web connection for business use, fine: quit allowing people to send broadcast emails about Relay for Life, Blood Drives and Girl Scout Cookies. Either it's for business, or it isn't. Don't allow other people to clutter up my mailbox for "good causes" if I can't send/receive jokes.
4. I am low maintenance, but is it too much to ask that you *not* turn off the fucking hot water heaters and ac units to save money at 4:00 pm every day? Some of us work outside normal hours.
5. If one of my cow-orkers misbehaves, I expect that he be punished. I do not expect that new policies be put in place that have the effect of punishing those of use who did not cause the problem to begin with.
6. Don't lie to me. I'm a big boy, I can handle the truth.
7. Don't get mad at me when I tell the truth.
I manage a small infrastructure team (6 people). We take time out at lunch and at the end of the day (after 5) to play a couple maps of UT.
We name the bots after users we hate, or French presidents.
After 15 or 20 minutes of intense fragging, morale is restored.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Have you seen any contractors who will code for toffee? I've known a few people who will code for cola, but never for toffee.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
(This is supposed to be a humorous Kohan reference, in case any moderators think this is offtopic)
Aww, you hate your job?
There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, we meet at the bar.
See you there!
My mom says I'm cool.
Finished school 30 june, got hired 1st july after i told I learnt fortran. There is such a lack of skilled people wanting/knowing fortran 77 that they hire foreigner not speaking a bits of the language but a bit of english.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org