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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?"
Two years ago I wrote this: Management Techniques of the Bottom 95% of U.S. Corporations.
:)
Just take all the advice and reverse it.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
It's going to be very hard in your present situation. A ping pong table or lunches aren't going to cure the problem: that you've been laying off in stages, causing people to believe that more stages are yet to come. My only suggestion is to open the books a lot, to let people know that you are cash flow positive and that they don't have anything to worry about. If you aren't cash flow positive, then make another cut, but cut very deeply, deeply enough to get the company in a survivable state, and then open the books.
If you can't cut, then you'll need to readjust salaries. DON'T OVERPROMISE. Don't say things like "you'll take a cut here, but when things get good you'll get this kind of bonus" and then later make projections like "we'll be doing well by 3Q03." People remember this shit and when you don't follow through, every promise you make is suspect.
If you don't do something drastic, what will happen is this: the best developers will find a new job fairly quickly for today's economy (about two months). You'll be stuck with the worst ones: the inarticulate, the inexperienced, and the difficult to work with. And then your company will really suffer.
-no broken link
No, seriously. That really helps at my company. Granted, it's only a small company of around 30 people, but every last Friday of the month (and occasionally others) they bring us beer and sometimes margaritas. Everyone hangs out in the kitchen and lets off some steam and it really does help. There's usually leftovers too, so my friend and I sneak back there about 15 minutes before quitting time on other days and have our own little party. Several times the owners have walked past on the way to the bathroom and occasionally they join us.
I read an article about 10 years ago which was about some guy in Brasil, I think it was, whose rubber company was about to go down the toilet financially. So he went to his workforce and said "Here's the situation - we're up shit creek financially, either I make half of you redundant, or we take half pay, until the situation improves - you decide" and put it to the vote. The workforce apparently decided on the half pay option, but productivity soon improved and they could afford to pay their old salary. The guy went on to experiment with introducing worker democracy on a wide scale - salaries, job descriptions etc. and apparently the company became very successful. I've always thought that sounded like an interesting idea, has anyone else heard of this?
I reserve the right to be wrong.
When a boss needs to cut things to show he's ding things to keep costs under control, he invariably heads for 'the little things' first. Like that espresso machine. Or the supply of bottled water. Or Mountain Dew. In many cases these are what employees will consider made the place 'livable', and when the perceived quality of life drops, morale soon goes out the door as well. Especially when all the old guys tell all the new guys "Back in the day we had blah-di-blah blah"
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Or, if you must lay off, act like you don't want to do it.
I've been through or in six rounds of layoffs at four different companies since I was an intern in '98. The very best handling I've seen was when I was with SGI (the company formerly known as Cray at the time) as an intern.
First, you could tell that the boss genuinely hated, hated laying off her people and felt like she'd failed them somehow. 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. Finally, the department took the whole afternoon off. We had the option to go home, but instead we grabbed some beer and a couple of pizzas and went to a local park, played frisbee and hung out (the people who'd gotten laid off were invited too, which I thought was classy).
At my last company, they laid off like theives in the night. They'd call people in out of the blue, then send out an email apparently designed to scare us all into working harder and longer. One time, we laid off a dozen people and the CEO's wife (who was executive something or other) went out and bought a new Lexus the same day. It's amazing nobody took an AK-47 to that shithole -- they definately had it coming.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
At my last job, we were required to play at least one game of fooseball per day, and we had an office-wide Counter Strike game almost every day after work. Even the vice prez played. It was really great for morale and team togetherness.
Also think about what kind of extra services you can easily offer your employees using existing resources. Set up a webserver where employees can host personal web sites, for example.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Do some reasearch on Demming and the paradigm shift from the factory model of production.
The more workers feel like they "own" the company; they are proud of it and understand their contributions and sacrifices, the better their output.
This also has a tie-in with business process. The more that business process reflects the way that workers actually work, the more people are willing to comply with it.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If things are bad then trying to raise morale is nothing but an attempt to deceive employees. To try to convince them things are OK when they're not. But employees aren't so stupid. Nothing tells an employee that their company is in trouble more than morale boosting exercises from management.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Yes, and what is the biggest focus in IT right, now? Getting rid of these exceptions in order to cut costs. I could justify keeping around a couple of extra Java/XML guys for future growth, but my first priority is to get the legacy folks on-board with something standards compliant, or at least less arcane, or get rid of them. And those folks are followed closely to the door by those people that refuse to share knowledge. You make yourself indispensable by being a leader, not by hoarding knowledge. In reality, nobody is indispensable.
On the other hand, as far as hiring and firing in this market goes... A lot of people seem to have bought into the myth that employees are interchangeable. Maybe to a certain extent someone's technical skills are interchangeable, and that's debatable, but their personality and their "soft skills" are not. Believe it or not, soft skills matter in every part of the company. So, getting the right person is often more important than getting exactly the right skill set.
It's odd to see how opinion seems to break down into extremes, like indispensable or interchangeable, in adverse conditions, when, really, any good manager with a good sense of perspective doesn't believe in either of those opinions.
Flexible work hours and an open plolicy regarding internet and telephone use is a very good policy, but the absence of this type of policy is a symptom of a deeper problem within corporate "culture," by that I mean the treatment of employees like any other "just-in-time" business resource.
Many companies today layoff and re-hire (euphamistically called "contract hire") employees as they're needed. Contract prices today are generally no where near where they were a few years ago because of the surplus number of contract workers and the new rage to outsource work to drastically cheaper overseas labor pools. Corporations spent the 80's and 90's trying to convince people that it really was in their best interest to function as resource units, even suggesting that it put the individual worker in the driver's seat, but in realitiy of course it was always in the corporations best interest. An excellent book on this subject is Thomas Frank's One Market Under God which chronicles the enormous PR and marketing resources expended by big companines to cultivate thier self-serving pseudo-populist image. Great insight also into the backgroud behind all those MCI and IBM commercials featuring throngs of third world looking people and the proverbial work-at-home CEO mom. Does Microsoft really stand in awe of us? I don't think so.
Few people are doing well contracting today. Employers need to realize that paying employees well and not treating them like children, indentured servants or worse as a simple "resource" like computers or other equipment but instead like fellow human beings, is the best way to make everybody happy and productive.
All companies should make reading the Hacker FAQ mandatory for all employees. Even IBM uses the Hacker FAQ!
My personal favorite:
0.2: How should I manage my hacker?
The same way you herd cats. It can be a bit confusing; they're not like most other workers. Don't worry! Your hacker is likely to be willing to suggest answers to problems, if asked. Most hackers are nearly self-managing.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Taken from Fuckedcompany.com in Dec. (Jo Anne was soon fired afterwards, go figure).
From: Jo Anne Miller
To: Gluon - Site - All
Sent: 12/6/2002 3:03 PM
Subject: Commitment Message from the ALL HANDS MEETING
Importance: High
As those who were present at the All Hands Meeting this morning already
know, I am seeking the PERSONAL Commitment of everyone at Gluon to the
Release 2.1 development schedule. I expect a return email from all the
staff to tell me if they can step up and make the commitment to DO
EVERYTHING IT TAKES, INCLUDING POSTPONING DECEMBER VACATIONS to hit the
2.1 ready for field trial milestone of January 20, 2003 and ready to
deploy milestone of February 21, 2003. I also need to know if you will
volunteer to be here the week of December 23-27 and Dec. 30-Jan. 4.
Please consider this decision carefully. Don't say yes if you don't
believe that you and your fellow Gluon teammates can make this happen.
Don't say yes, if you aren't ready to find bugs, fix bugs, document the
product and get this ready to go out the door. Don't say yes if you are
too burned out to look forward to continued late nights, long hours and
stretch milestones.
Now more than ever, the Gluon team must have the start-up/do whatever it
takes mentality. If any of you are not of that mentality anymore, have
personal/family issues that prohibit you from making the full
commitment, please tell me that as well and I will do whatever I can to
assist you to find a job outside of Gluon.
I am attaching the four key slides from the all hands related to our
commitment to refresh your memory of what is required and why.
Looking forward to hearing back from everyone
Jo Anne Miller
Gluon Networks, Inc.
5401 Old Redwood Hwy.
Petaluma, CA 94954
707-285-4001
www.gluonnetworks.com
www.bleepyou.com
I worked a summer job in a laundry. One day midweek, I looked up from the %meaningless task% I was doing to see the owner of the entire chain helping fold sheets.
I asked how often he does this, to which he replied "Whenever I feel like a change".
The girls on the line really liked it. He didn't have his own table at mealtimes, didn't have his own parking space, and you could call him "dave".
Ace fella. And even though the job was shit, most people were happy at it.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
I got fired from ClientLogic without warning. The morale of the place among the workers wasn't very good. Seems everyone I talked to had some bitchfest about the place daily. The turnover rate was very high, because they were being bitchslapped around by Bellsouth. Their rules were archaic, and we were stuffed into cubicles, not one, but two at a time. Forced to run programs that crash every five minutes, and forced to be tech support, sales AND customer service. Not to mention that promotion was only a $.10/hr increase in pay. Add to that the fact that the vending machines were always broken and that they regularly lay off half of their staff where I worked, and you get low morale. I heard through the grapevine that we were getting paid $5 less than what we should have. And we were missing benefits. All so the company could profit a little more. ClientLogic was getting paid almost as much for giving us the privilige of working for them as we were busting our asses for them! And they slashed our benefits.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
My last job (incidentally, 70 weeks ago, unable to find work since) required me to relocate 3,100 miles from the Right coast to the Left coast, to work for them, leaving a very stable job behind. A week after I got there, my hiring manager was fired, along with 76 other people. We were 250 people at the time.
Over the next 14 months, we went through 5 rounds of layoffs, including the last one which liquidated my entire department, leaving me as the only person standing. Even my boss was let go.
In 18 months time, we had gone from 250 people to 30, and were on our 4th CEO. All three founders had resigned, two failed merger deals (one with a company that just recently bit the dust themselves), two sexual harassment suits pending against the first CEO and his team, and it only got worse from there.
We originally had free vending machines, but those were soon turned into pay-only machines. The senior management team had free parking in a mostly-empty garage space, and we had to pay $20.00-per-day to park across the street. The middle-management groups were internally promoting themselves, laying off more and more people, and making the remaining people work longer and longer hours, for less pay. We were earning (as developers) roughly 1/4 of what the managers were earning at the time. They were working 4-day weeks, 5 hour days, feet up on the desks, while we were camping in the offices overnight sometimes to meet customer deliverables.
Every day, people would come in wondering if "..they were next". That's not a nice way to come to work, not wondering if you're going to lose your job, but when.
In November 2001, I decided to pack up my things, and resign. The company wasn't going to survive a 6th round of layoffs, and now with the board in control, they had changed direction, completely tarnishing their name with the Open Source community. I moved back 3,100 miles to the Right coast, and haven't been able to find a job since (yes, it's incredibly tough out here).
After I left, they worked on a product, and after the remaining developers completed version 1.0 of the product, and delivered it, they were all fired, en-masse.
How's that for morale for you?
Heh. I don't have to imagine that because the staring into submission doesn't work on me. The easiest way to get me to dig in my heels is to try to exert peer pressure.
They chose to come in late. Screw them guys, I'm going home.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
My experience suggests that things are more two-tiered. In my last IT job, in which I was hired as a new graduate, the company would periodically retrench people during down times and to cut costs. After about a year, I was retrenched also. The HR chick told me that it was nothing to do with performance, but it was obvious to me that they would not retrench people who they considered had performed well.
These guru programmers - and there was a sizeable number of them - were told, in performance reviews and elsewhere how valuable the company considered them to be. They were frequently given payrises, promotions and bonuses also. The company would charge through the nose for their services. They could have had no fears about losing their jobs.
While I would have preferred not to have been retrenched (after being hired as a graduate!) this approach has worked wonders for the company, enabling them to produce high quality work and greatly enlarge their client base.
I am not a lawyer but my sister is, so don't mess with me
As a currently very happy employee myself, I can tell you what specific conditions exist at my job that make me happy. Most of these conditions are a function of the job being A) unionized, and therefore solid with good benefits and a living wage, and B) in government, so there is a well-thought out bureaucracy in place to keep things running smoothly. BUT, the specific happiness inducing effects shouldn't be too hard to replicate in private industry -- IF the bosses want them to be. So, as a public service message from moi, here are the factors which lead to happiness:
1. Pay your employees a living wage, and AT LEAST give them medical and dental. Note that this doesn't mean you have to make them rich! But if you're not paying them at LEAST in the 40K range, they're going to be too busy worrying about getting their rent money together, to worry about YOUR work. In places like NYC or Boston, better make that 60K or your employees will be living in cardboard boxes.
2. Don't breathe down your employees' necks. Where I work, the bosses leave you alone as long as you produce. So, if your employees aren't missing deadlines, leave them alone and let them do their stuff. When managing programmers (as with herding cats) less == more. Just tell them to keep you posted on their progress, at least once a week (say, Friday before COB). If you need to find out how something is doing, ask casually (this is good because it shows interest and lets the programmer know he's not forgotten). The trick is to LET the programmers produce instead of trying to force it. You'll find they come to YOU to tell you how things are going, because people like to talk about what they're doing. And they'll like you more (this does matter).
3. Don't be anal about when programmers come and go. We're not the most precise people when it comes to getting up in the morning, or going home at night. We may get in a half hour late and leave two hours late at night -- you get a free hour and a half, and we barely notice. But if you enforce business hours, we get pissed and come in and leave on a much more exact schedule.
4. Casual dress code. This means, generally, something comfortable but tasteful, like jeans and a polo shirt. Don't enforce the whole "dockers and sky blue shirt" thing (god, that is SO over), or (worse) suits. If you're uncomfortable, you're worried about stretching your shirt collar, not coding that loop. This doesn't mean you have to let them walk in in a kilt and a see-through rubber shirt, either. But, let them be comfy.
5. Cubicle decoration (within the limits of good taste) should be encouraged. A cluttered, chaotic cubicle is a happy, productive cubicle. A pile of paper on a desk is a sign of activity. Don't sweat stuff like this.
6. Coffee. Lots of coffee. Don't skimp on the sugar and half-and-half, either, or no one will drink the coffee and that's like no coffee. Any old coffee pot will do as long as the coffee is a reasonable, good brand and when people notice the pot is empty, they can set a new one on to brew. I can't stress the importance of caffeine and sugar to programmers enough. They WILL find ways of acquiring it; if you don't supply it, they'll be taking breaks to make coffee runs. Which do you prefer; three minutes to fill the mug at the office coffee pot, or fifteen minutes to walk a block to the Starbucks, with you playing Spy Games to figure out who's going where and when?
7. When nothing serious is going on, let the programmers do pilot projects that will eventually be good for the department. You can direct this a little; if you know, say, that you're going to be using some specific set of email tools, mention it to a programmer who isn't too busy and ask him to fiddle around with it and see what he can make it do. Then, keep the source code around for when the project ramps up. Remember: idle hands are the devil's playthings.
That's about all you have to do, really, to keep people happy. Leave them alone, let them do their thing, keep up the supply of interesting things to do, don't push them unless you really have to, feed them lots of coffee, and let them dress comfortably.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Welcome to every company everywhere.
Actually, that's not entirely true. To the original poster's questions:
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?
Here's what I've learned in my brief time spent on this earth about management and leadership. I've learned most of what I know from real-world inferences derived from what not to do. However, I have read a fair amount of leadership, management and sales literature (it should probably be said that I'm a software engineer by training/trade). I've found it boils down to a few things along one main theme:
You've probably already spotted the theme here: people, people and people. Unfortunately, if upper management doesn't buy into this, you're fucked. There's very little you can do (unless you're in a leadership position yourself) to combat this.The best you can hope for is to be laid off so you can collect unemployment while you search for a new job. Think of it as bozo cancer which has metastasized. If you are in a position of leadership, here's some things you can do:
moto411.com
Are you kidding? In software development that requires highly qualified people, it is never easy to replace them. It can take months to dive into a new codebase; every day spent on grokking a new project means less constructive work done on it.
Sure, you and I know that, but management is not willing to believe it. They would much rather believe that programmers are plug-and-play widgets that can be replaced at will.
We once had a coder (call him Joe) who received an offer from another company and gave our employer a chance to match it. They told him no, so he took the other job. Jane was chosen to take over Joe's projects, and she was skilled but had no experience with the projects. A few weeks later, there was a minor-version OS upgrade for security reasons, and a critical application broke. The latest version wouldn't even compile any longer.
From my office, which was very close to management row, I was able to hear the (very loud) wisdom of the top IT manager. He ranted at length about how it was unforgiveable that things stopped working just because some guy name Joe was gone. He yelled about how if we had proper documentation (which we did) anyone should be able to walk in and perform Joe's tasks. He shouted about having proper processes and how that would make individuals irrelevant. It was quite an eye-opener for me.
At any rate, Jane called Joe, and he was nice enough to walk her through far enough that she was able to prove it was a problem with COTS software and have it resolved. The end result: four days down-time on a critical application and a whole slew of useless new rules on project documentation that waste a great deal of time. Management is generally clueless.