phykell said:
"May well" isn't good enough I'm afraid. Loyalty from the company is a myth these days with bosses more concerned with saving a few quid than keeping their staff happy or even treating them with respect. As I've said, if you know of a good employer who does treat his staff well and does respect them as individuals then unfortunately, they are a dying breed. I believe (this is my own experience of course) that the vast majority of companies have poor management and even poorer employee relations. We've lost something from years ago and that's because we are tending to ape our cousins from across the pond. .....
Well, from my perspective, "may well" will have to be enough, because while this is part of the selection process for promotion, it's far from the only factor. Also, I can't say more than that, because even in companies where it's true, it isn't universal. So much is down to local line management.
As for the dying breed, you may be right. I've always taken the view that what staff give to the company and what the company gives to staff (above and beyond contracted time and pay I mean) MUST be a reciprocal thing. I take your point about companies that take, take, take from staff, and then expect even more. But the converse is true, too. Staff are employed to do certain hours and get paid for it. Don't tell me that many people don't take sickies, or that every employee spends every minute of the working day actually working .... because I won't believe it. Employers aren't the only ones to take, take, take where they reckon they can get away with it.
As an employer, I've always taken great care to give plenty of benefits beyond contracted pay and benefits for contracted hours. For instance, my staff get golf club membership and I'm quite happy to see staff out on the golf course in an afternoon where things are quiet and schedules permit. The converse side of that is that when all hell breaks loose, I expect all hands to the grindstone. I get it, too. This is because staff know full well which side of their bread is buttered. My company consists mainly of highly skilled specialists, and of course, the requisite support staff. The support staff are relatively easy to replace if need be, but the specialists aren't. So I pay better than competitors and provide better benefits than competitors, and therefore I have staff that are quite keen not to work elsewhere. Result? Dramatically reduced costs, overhead, disruption and impact on schedules from having to recruit, train and familiarise new staff.
I end up with a very happy workforce, and a much easier management life for myself as well. It makes me pretty popular with staff (
) ..... and it's actually pretty cost-effective, too.
I find a happy, content and well-paid workforce pays dividends, and keeps costs down. And, my company is one of the "cousins" from across the pond.
But there's a converse side to your comments about management watching every last penny, too. Sometimes, there's no choice. It all depends on the business you're in. IT these days is largely a commodity business. There are a LOT of companies out there offering most services, and getting contracts often means being viciously price-competitive. If the customer pares prices to the bone in a contract, an employer HAS to keep a very close eye indeed on costs, or he ends up making a loss on the contract. Sometimes it's better to make a small profit requiring costs to be viciously curtailed, and that implies a hard-nosed attitude. If you don't, the company goes bust and that certainly doesn't do employees any favours. A hard-nosed attitude isn't always about squeezing the most out of staff just to make extra profit and pay a bit better dividend. And even paying better dividends has implications, not least of which is a healty share price which makes raising capital necessary for expansion a lot easier. And so on. My point is that even with hard-nosed cost-conscious management, there's often more to the picture than meets the eye.
I'm lucky in that I'm not in that situation. I charge through the nose for our services, because I know that supply is limited, and we're (in my view, at least) the very best. I treat staff very well indeed, but I can afford to on our margins. If our contracts were tightly costed, I may well not be able to afford to be generous (even if that generosity has a large element of self-interest in it).
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