Business Culture in the UK
Feb. 5th, 2008 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueIt makes me wonder sometimes, if 'business culture' in this country is just completely messed up.
I mean, I see many places, where 'face time' is what's important. The hours you're in the office, and LOOK like you're grinding hard are valued far more than the productivity.
I see so many people 'wasting' time, filling in spreadsheets, and merging data from one spreadsheet, to another, to another.
And updating them, and ... essentially reproducing the 'paper office' in electronic form.
I can't help but wonder if this is endemic. If we are, in fact, shooting ourselves in the face, by actively not making it worth 'working hard' by punishing those that do, by giving them more work - I mean, if they're not busy, they can take on more, right?
If I write a shellscript to do a proportion of my job, as ... well more or less happened recently, this was discarded as showing off, and otherwise 'being out of line' for not accepting the tools provided. But I guarantee if I had started automating my whole job, tben I would suffer in comparison to the guy at the end of the desk, filling in row after row on his spreadsheet.
We live in an IT age. Computers are great - they move data around, they manipulate things, they do all manner of mindless, repetitive thing. Why then, do we get people to step the computers through, one thing at a time, and essentially entirely discard this extremely powerful tool?
It's quite simple. We have places where people don't care, because they know full well that the person 'measuring' what they do, has no clue how to measure their performance, except by
'seeing if they're in work and typing'.
Worse still, if said person actually tries to be efficient about it, and ... automates it, then goes off to chill out whilst it does ... whatver... well, that's clearly SLACKING isn't it?
Worse, it's making the rest of the department LOOK BAD.
We need to remodel our business culture. EVERY employer, and place of work out there, should positively reward people based upon getting stuff done. It should be _worth it_ for me to write a script, to do my job.
It should be worth it, for me to make infomation dissemination easier, faster and more efficient - to make computers do the mindless moron jobs, and leave the people to do the stuff that computers can't do AMAZINGLY WELL.
But it's not. If I clear my workload, then I guarantee you, that doesn't mean 'oh good, I'll go home early then'.
So it pays me to slack off, in a vaguely constructive looking fashion. It pays me to be frantically typing in notepad, regardless of whether I'm setting up a change request, or writing my novel on company time.
But we're just still caught in this rut, of pay = hours. And hours = pay.
I mean, I see many places, where 'face time' is what's important. The hours you're in the office, and LOOK like you're grinding hard are valued far more than the productivity.
I see so many people 'wasting' time, filling in spreadsheets, and merging data from one spreadsheet, to another, to another.
And updating them, and ... essentially reproducing the 'paper office' in electronic form.
I can't help but wonder if this is endemic. If we are, in fact, shooting ourselves in the face, by actively not making it worth 'working hard' by punishing those that do, by giving them more work - I mean, if they're not busy, they can take on more, right?
If I write a shellscript to do a proportion of my job, as ... well more or less happened recently, this was discarded as showing off, and otherwise 'being out of line' for not accepting the tools provided. But I guarantee if I had started automating my whole job, tben I would suffer in comparison to the guy at the end of the desk, filling in row after row on his spreadsheet.
We live in an IT age. Computers are great - they move data around, they manipulate things, they do all manner of mindless, repetitive thing. Why then, do we get people to step the computers through, one thing at a time, and essentially entirely discard this extremely powerful tool?
It's quite simple. We have places where people don't care, because they know full well that the person 'measuring' what they do, has no clue how to measure their performance, except by
'seeing if they're in work and typing'.
Worse still, if said person actually tries to be efficient about it, and ... automates it, then goes off to chill out whilst it does ... whatver... well, that's clearly SLACKING isn't it?
Worse, it's making the rest of the department LOOK BAD.
We need to remodel our business culture. EVERY employer, and place of work out there, should positively reward people based upon getting stuff done. It should be _worth it_ for me to write a script, to do my job.
It should be worth it, for me to make infomation dissemination easier, faster and more efficient - to make computers do the mindless moron jobs, and leave the people to do the stuff that computers can't do AMAZINGLY WELL.
But it's not. If I clear my workload, then I guarantee you, that doesn't mean 'oh good, I'll go home early then'.
So it pays me to slack off, in a vaguely constructive looking fashion. It pays me to be frantically typing in notepad, regardless of whether I'm setting up a change request, or writing my novel on company time.
But we're just still caught in this rut, of pay = hours. And hours = pay.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-06 12:08 am (UTC)I mean, we aren't like that - or at least bits of the CorporateMonolith try very hard (and sometimes quite effectively) to discourage this behaviour - and we pay
no subject
Date: 2008-02-06 12:20 am (UTC)But at the same time keeping with the real of 'reasonable doubt' within the terms of the business relationship.
Oh yes, there's _requirements_ but usually these _requirements_ are negotiated by two people with only a passing clue what the hell is realistic.
And of course, reporting on whether these requirements are met or not, isn't always done by the person most able to fulfill it in ... shall we say, and unbiased fashion.
Not that I'd say this is happening in _this_ situation, you understand, because clearly, my employer can be trusted in all things, but it remains that case that one _could_ apply that sort of logic to the outsourcer relationship.
Not so much a friendly relationship, as a bullying and bullshitting contest, where the underpinning contract servers only as a battlefield.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-06 12:10 pm (UTC)We have two sets of reports *our own company eyes only reports* and *virgin media viewable reports*. It should be pointed out that we are actually very honest about both having two sets of reports and that the data in the reports the client see's is as acurate as we can make it.
However there is nothing that is making us be honest except for our own integrity and the fact that we are tied in a love hate relationship with the client. (if the client goes under we loose our jobs, if the client is doing very well we actually get paid less???)
In my department there is a very large degree of trust. Officially I'm paid for 37.5 hours work a week. But in actuallity my boss doesn't care too much how long I am in work for as long as I get my work done. I actually get paid bonus's based on the new methods/procedures/scripts etc that I create during any given quarter.
She did however begin to get a bit nervous when (due to automated processes tying up my computer) was getting through about 150-200 pages of novels a day. When she asked me if there was anything I could do while it was going on I answered that until I had either a second computer (which would only fix some problems) or had a sql server to work with then I was stuck while MS access dealt with far more data than it is designed for.
These days this is not so much of an issue as I have a SQL server!
The amusing thing is that although our department is more work focused than time focused we provide reporting for exactly the oposite. What I report on is call centre workers who are specifically paid to be a bum on a seat and a voice on a phone for specific periods of time. We do however give them about 20% extra to there wage if they can perform very well and do more work than you would normally expect from call centre agents.
So not all places have the problems mentioned (we have completely different ones....) But here it tends to be who you present the idea to. I can present a timesaving idea to my boss and she will love it (but she's rare) or I can present my "headcount saving idea" to the manager of the department and he'll love it.