This Business and Moment...

[The Funktopus]

So, after getting myself pushed out of my last job with 3 weeks notice due to nepotism (literally told the day I arrived on the platform that that 3 week trip would be my last), I’ve managed to land myself a new job, that’s not only a core crew slot, so permanent versus agency (I was told at interview that my last job was agency with an eye to going permanent), but I’ll also be working 2 weeks on 3 weeks off, as opposed to 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off where I was for not much of a change in salary at all. Result.

Guess that cretin of a manager who abused his position to get his daughter’s boyfriend a job he wasn’t qualified for has done me a favour after all.

 

[potatolord]

Two weeks into a side-project i got given, i've managed to get a deadline on Friday. It's moved from a 10 week project to 7, so i have have 5 weeks left to complete- two of which is my christmas leave.

Added to this, the PM still isn't being clear about detail of what my final report should be.

Also got told Friday the other teams haven't started yet.

Not happy!

 

[NickK]

Was on the steerco, GD of finance, various pins in the org tree.. got to be fun.. yes - no budget for next year because someone thought they didn't need it. You cannot make up this level of ingrained cross-company hate/mismanagement/incompetence.

The new boss(es) basically gives me the mushroom treatment and then I see this.. Basically all the hallmarks of not a good place to be in.

Got some funding but I'll be surprised if we're not needed after. Lots of noise about other demands but none of that is real without a budget..

 

[Noxia]

Bored of Christmas leave already, obviously I'll be moaning it was over too quick come January. This year I intend on transitioning from delivery to dev ops, if I don't like it then I have the PM/Delivery stuff to fall back on so very little risk. I may have to drop down a grade to do so but that doesn't bother me.

 

[Rroff]

One of the girls at work was munching through a bag of some kind of chilli snacks today as if they were nothing, other people were having one bite and on their hands and knees in agony which was hilarious as a spectator - dunno what they were but they looked like they would be strong just by the look.

EDIT: If what I think they were from Googling then they are only 9000 Scoville.

 

[iamdjdz]

Had a random management decision to make everyone do psychology test things and then have individual meetings with the company who run them. Cannot see a point in this tbh, the only thing I can see is that it could cause fear for people thinking they may not be the right personality for the company or on the flip side discriminatory actions based on what peoples personality type is. No choice so I'll click random answers and see what happens in the meeting.

 

[OspreyO]

Had a random management decision to make everyone do psychology test things and then have individual meetings with the company who run them. Cannot see a point in this tbh, the only thing I can see is that it could cause fear for people thinking they may not be the right personality for the company or on the flip side discriminatory actions based on what peoples personality type is. No choice so I'll click random answers and see what happens in the meeting.

HR inventing jobs for themselves so they can promoted while at the same time trying shift any attention from their recruitment processes that hired so many unsuitable people.

 

[iamdjdz]

HR inventing jobs for themselves so they can promoted while at the same time trying shift any attention from their recruitment processes that hired so many unsuitable people.

The problem is that as far as I know most people are perfectly suitable and are actually doing pretty well in the job. Really got no idea where this has come from or why - perhaps a baseline for future recruitment or something.

 

[malachi]

Had a random management decision to make everyone do psychology test things and then have individual meetings with the company who run them. Cannot see a point in this tbh, the only thing I can see is that it could cause fear for people thinking they may not be the right personality for the company or on the flip side discriminatory actions based on what peoples personality type is. No choice so I'll click random answers and see what happens in the meeting.

The good old pointless tick box excerises made by HR because some external people told them it was a good idea.

 

[OspreyO]

The problem is that as far as I know most people are perfectly suitable and are actually doing pretty well in the job. Really got no idea where this has come from or why - perhaps a baseline for future recruitment or something.

Can't be too many places that have hired only perfect people.

 

[OspreyO]

The good old pointless tick box excerises made by HR because some external people told them it was a good idea.

Exactly. We must have about 5-10 of these exercises a year. Company culture surveys is another one.

My first question is this compulsory. If not I don't do it. If it is (rarely thankfully) I'll put in ridiculously positive results. Because they are never anonymous, even if they claim to be.

 

[HangTime]

I have a somewhat different mindset on this, where I used to work Employee Engagement survey was definitely a useful thing that was used to drive action to improve employee experience. I didn't appreciate this as a boot on the ground but when I joined the leadership team it was apparent how much thought and planning went into analysing responses and planning actions. Definitely not a box-ticking exercise and taken very seriously. My personal answer to "I believe positive action will happen as a result of this survey" went from neutral to strongly agree once I saw how we handled it.

As for the psych testing again it can be useful to understand personality types because you can then understand on a personal level where your blind spots might be and/or how best to engage with others. Although I've seen less of this implemented in practice.
It's absolutely not about "this is the wrong fit for this company" more about "this is how we can best motivate this individual, how can we best leverage their approach, what is our personality mix across teams" etc. Probably other stuff I'm not familiar with.
The bit that sits less well with me tbh is when you do these tests as part of a job application. I'm a bit more wary then of if the organisation in question is seeking a particular subset of personalities - hopefully its more a case of using it to help decide what areas to probe more deeply at interview, but then there might be a risk of unconcious bias and asking different candidates different questions based on their personality profile.

 

[OspreyO]

What action did you take as a result of the surveys.

 

[rypt]

no budget for next year because someone thought they didn't need it. You cannot make up this level of ingrained cross-company hate/mismanagement/incompetence.

Sounds like my line manager - who never asks for budgets for his own projects, and then expects everyone to just accommodate his "urgent / critical" items out of their regular budgets.

 

[peterwalkley]

Exactly. We must have about 5-10 of these exercises a year. Company culture surveys is another one.

My first question is this compulsory. If not I don't do it. If it is (rarely thankfully) I'll put in ridiculously positive results. Because they are never anonymous, even if they claim to be.

Yes ... those "We notice you haven't filled in the completely anonymous survey" emails

 

[HangTime]

What action did you take as a result of the surveys.

• Booking time with teams to ensure our takeaways from the survey was aligned to their views and not our misinterpretation
• Playing back our plans to address the lowest scoring areas and providing updates on this
• Increasing communication around strategic vision
• Having managers sit with their teams
• Building clearer career maps / pathways (i.e. clearer progression routes between roles). Aligning job roles so there were fewer 'random' job titles with different prefixes etc
• Increased recognition / awards
• More cross-teams comms explaining what different groups did (one-pagers, show and tells)
• Managers spending more time in satellite offices
• Inviting business stakeholders as guest speakers to team meetings to help technical teams appreciate why their work matters / big picture
• Speaking with consultancies around how they interacted with our employees, joint socials to improve relationships etc

There was a lot more but it's a few years ago now so I can't remember everything that was tied to it.

Yes ... those "We notice you haven't filled in the completely anonymous survey" emails

So I think it comes down to how far you want to take anonymisation. Ultimately the point is responses are anonymous is the context of the people reviewing the survey results... behind the scenes yes a system will be tracking the users who have not responded so they can send automated prompts, but HR/Managers won't see that, the inner workings of response tracking are a black box to them. Very few systems that have to be tied to employee accounts are truly anonymous in the purest sense, what matters is who has access to the un-anonymised data.

 

[NickK]

The problem is that as far as I know most people are perfectly suitable and are actually doing pretty well in the job. Really got no idea where this has come from or why - perhaps a baseline for future recruitment or something.

Sounds like that was pure lick (read not an HR decision) hence they’ve been asked to find the magic juice cto replicate for the rest of the org but don’t have a scooby whay that is.. so hire a consultant.

 

[NickK]

• Booking time with teams to ensure our takeaways from the survey was aligned to their views and not our misinterpretation
• Playing back our plans to address the lowest scoring areas and providing updates on this
• Increasing communication around strategic vision
• Having managers sit with their teams
• Building clearer career maps / pathways (i.e. clearer progression routes between roles). Aligning job roles so there were fewer 'random' job titles with different prefixes etc
• Increased recognition / awards
• More cross-teams comms explaining what different groups did (one-pagers, show and tells)
• Managers spending more time in satellite offices
• Inviting business stakeholders as guest speakers to team meetings to help technical teams appreciate why their work matters / big picture
• Speaking with consultancies around how they interacted with our employees, joint socials to improve relationships etc

There was a lot more but it's a few years ago now so I can't remember everything that was tied to it.


So I think it comes down to how far you want to take anonymisation. Ultimately the point is responses are anonymous is the context of the people reviewing the survey results... behind the scenes yes a system will be tracking the users who have not responded so they can send automated prompts, but HR/Managers won't see that, the inner workings of response tracking are a black box to them. Very few systems that have to be tied to employee accounts are truly anonymous in the purest sense, what matters is who has access to the un-anonymised data.

it depends heavily on culture.

I’ve been in an org where the Board actually buried the results of the the previous (and first) year’s employee survey due to report. They only cemented my observation on the culture when they cancelled surveys moving forward.

Current place I’ve twice stated what the external perspective on career relayed on announcing I was joining the company. I’m not one to pull my punches and simply nod as a yes man. The first time was with the entire group CTO office and the second with a panel canvassing with the group transformation director- each time I opened my mouth he was scribbling notes. So even if my tenure is short I hope the truthful input enables some change for good (I’m optimistic and positive but also ruthlessly realistic in analysing the options and acting on them).

Should have a quiet coffee chat with a few people tomorrow. However this place has a massive culture problem.

 

[iamdjdz]

I have a somewhat different mindset on this, where I used to work Employee Engagement survey was definitely a useful thing that was used to drive action to improve employee experience. I didn't appreciate this as a boot on the ground but when I joined the leadership team it was apparent how much thought and planning went into analysing responses and planning actions. Definitely not a box-ticking exercise and taken very seriously. My personal answer to "I believe positive action will happen as a result of this survey" went from neutral to strongly agree once I saw how we handled it.

As for the psych testing again it can be useful to understand personality types because you can then understand on a personal level where your blind spots might be and/or how best to engage with others. Although I've seen less of this implemented in practice.
It's absolutely not about "this is the wrong fit for this company" more about "this is how we can best motivate this individual, how can we best leverage their approach, what is our personality mix across teams" etc. Probably other stuff I'm not familiar with.
The bit that sits less well with me tbh is when you do these tests as part of a job application. I'm a bit more wary then of if the organisation in question is seeking a particular subset of personalities - hopefully its more a case of using it to help decide what areas to probe more deeply at interview, but then there might be a risk of unconcious bias and asking different candidates different questions based on their personality profile.

I agree on the employee engagement survey front, as long as they are anonymous and are filled in correctly - where better to learn how to improve but from within.

I am not sure about the psych tests being actually useful in reality, they often come out with a category of personality that people or their peers could have put them in anyway. And that's only if they've been understood and answered correctly, often times they are vague. From having done recruitment process ones you just get the feeling they are to weed out the really outgoing, outspoken people and those who are so introverted they can't work as part of a team. Having done a couple whilst in office, I have no idea what they were for apart from someone in management feeling good that everyone summed their personalities up with random 'best fit' words.

 

[OspreyO]

• Booking time with teams to ensure our takeaways from the survey was aligned to their views and not our misinterpretation
• Playing back our plans to address the lowest scoring areas and providing updates on this
• Increasing communication around strategic vision
• Having managers sit with their teams
• Building clearer career maps / pathways (i.e. clearer progression routes between roles). Aligning job roles so there were fewer 'random' job titles with different prefixes etc
• Increased recognition / awards
• More cross-teams comms explaining what different groups did (one-pagers, show and tells)
• Managers spending more time in satellite offices
• Inviting business stakeholders as guest speakers to team meetings to help technical teams appreciate why their work matters / big picture
• Speaking with consultancies around how they interacted with our employees, joint socials to improve relationships etc

There was a lot more but it's a few years ago now so I can't remember everything that was tied to it.


So I think it comes down to how far you want to take anonymisation. Ultimately the point is responses are anonymous is the context of the people reviewing the survey results... behind the scenes yes a system will be tracking the users who have not responded so they can send automated prompts, but HR/Managers won't see that, the inner workings of response tracking are a black box to them. Very few systems that have to be tied to employee accounts are truly anonymous in the purest sense, what matters is who has access to the un-anonymised data.

That is quite the litany of systemic issues much of it cultural, very hard to change, and it sounds like it's wasn't a regular event.

In my experience we have these regularly and they always show mostly positive growth, yet the same issues are raised every time. Both can't be true everytime.