I work for a big industrial supplier as technical support. They've made a lot of cuts over the last couple of years. Yesterday was told all non managerial staff eligible for overtime that are on salary are going to be hourly employee's starting Jan. 1. We never work overtime. I can see benefits getting reduced and all kinds of other issues. I told the boss, who it doesn't affect, it's like getting demoted. We're going to have to sign in 1st thing in the morning and will be docked pay if we sign in too much after our start time but can't sign in too early or it will show up as overtime. Then we have to sign out at the end of day and can't be a minute early. How convenient for the boss, she's the worst for coming late and leaving early or finding an excuse to "work from home". If we have appointments or need to leave a little early, it has never been a problem but it will be come Jan. If they want to treat us like this, we should play strictly by the rules... no starting work early, taking 2 coffee breaks and our lunch away from our desks and at quitting time we're done. We have 10 sick days now so don't if they will be gone. I know if they change the employment conditions too much it's considered constructive dismissal. I know I was hired as a salaried employee and have the employment contract somewhere. I'll have to find it and read it. It's a bunch of BS and I hope my new flat track is popular and I can do that full time. Anybody went through something like this where the employer has you under a microscope and has no clue how much it affects moral at the company? I think it could be really backfire on them.
Well, this is why I LOVE self employment. It always backfires somehow. If things start not getting done and customers start bitching, their tune may change quickly. I believe it was something similar to this that ended up being that final push I needed to go self-employed, maybe for you also!?
While never was salary I went through the same kind of BS a short time before I retired. For 40+ years I worked and just turned in a hand written time sheet that day or even the next day. Then all of a sudden they had to have an electronic sign-in and sign-out system. Being a stone quarry work locations were spread out over a large area. So now in place of people getting to their work site and ready to begin work at say 7:00 am everyone had to be huddled in the lunch room waiting for the clock on electronic sign in terminal to click on the "legal" starting time. The 20+ people would stand around while each one took their turn swiping their cards in and pushing a button or two. If your work location was at a place where you needed a truck to ride to it along with a couple other workers you stood around waiting for them to swipe in. Then at the end of work shift the procedure was repeated. To avoid someone getting OT everyone had to be again huddled at the lunch room waiting for "legal" swipe out time! I would say that the plant lost about 1/2 hour production everyday and that assumes the terminal was not acting up or someone made a mistake in swiping in or out. Thing is most people still had to fill out paper work reports detailing what they worked on, equipment down time, how many loads went to crusher or stock piles and so on. Maybe all this would make sense in a large operation with hundred or even thousands of workers but for a relatively small operation like ours seemed to be a waste of time and resources. I can't imagine how it must be for the even smaller plants with less that ten workers. If the plant superintendent does not know what his people are doing he should not be the superintendent!
And sometimes the more layers of rules that are imposed on people the more loopholes are created for cheating or abuse of the "system". Something of a side note to this one is how for a couple years at the quarry there were two of us who would stat work an hour earlier than the production people. Norm and I would go down the line of trucks and loaders giving a quick look over, checking oil and coolant then start the machines, unplugging block heaters in cold weather. Then when operators got in the equipment was warmed up with full air pressure ready to go to work. If there was a problem we either fixed it or had a spare machine ready to go. If a machine had a problem we would spot it long before most of the operators would bother to say something, they did not want to run the spare machine as the radio might not work good in that one! The the "NO OT" orders came down machines not started till start of actual work shift. You would have up to a dozen people sitting around waiting for machines to warm up or build air pressure and no one would mention that their machine lost all air over night, something that Norm and I would have made note of and checked into. Not pointing finger at operators but I wondered how many actually did check oils. I don't think everyone did, would not want to get dirty first thing in the morning!
I went through the same "management" before I left. I attribute the changes to people without real knowledge of the operation. I went from motivated to clock watcher. Sad for the company and me. I used to enjoy going to work.
I've saw this type of thing when the digital revolution came about. When people time in on a computer the company no longer needs a book keeper to input time sheets. Digital information also makes for lots of data points some managers will use to inflate their importance. The seagulls spend big bucks for hardware and software claiming it will reduce the costs of labor. Then they control how the data is displayed and even hide data that might shine a light on what is actually happening. The numbers they can't control though are the hard numbers of net profit. Unfortunately the people in charge of the money sometimes don't pay enough attention to the bottom line and good companies go out of business.
The company is hurting but I think this is just going to put moral at an all time low when that's the last thing a hurting company needs. Employee's will not care and won't be willing to go out of their way or do any little extra's like they do now. I think it would be better to embrace the employee's and give them all the right tools to help sell more product. It all comes down to treating people like you want to be treated. I think it will be come in, put your time in and go home. Something doesn't get done, oh well, do it tomorrow if you remember.
Once the moral and motivation leaves a business it seem to never come back
In regard to the digital revolution. When we did ELD’s the owner asked me about tracking, GPS etc. I said no. Don’t go there. The 5% of the time it might help you doesn’t cover the 95% of the time the guys feel like big brother is watching. We’re a small company, they don’t need that. Plus I’d have been on the hook to audit that info. Idle time, speed, hours etc. I can only do so much!
Not to mention if all your doing GPS for is to keep tabs on everything it ends up costing more to keep tabs and track it all than what they were originally losing from people wasting time Got to hand it to these bean counters these days they really must be able to sell anything cause most of the time it costs more than any value that the situation had
They've started the "real time" observation ability in some of the new cranes. i.e. You could see what a crane is doing in real time from a remote computer. I look at it and the gps and the camera's in the cab's kind of all the same way. If I don't trust a employee to work, without the possibility that I'm looking at them on camera, I don't need that person as a employee. I look at welder dave's problem more as a big vs little company problem. Generally speaking, the bigger the company, the bigger the paychecks, the bigger the amount of b.s. you have to put up with to get the paycheck, and the less likely there is to be a paycheck at the end of the week. Little companies, less b.s., less paycheck, less office politics, and less likely to get bought out or a 300 employee layoff. All that is in general, none of us is guaranteed tomorrow.....
I could see the GPS tracking in some dealer shops I've dealt with. I don't know how many times I'd have to leave my shop and run down to the local choke and puke to find the dealer wrench that was supposed to be on my site and hour and a half earlier. Other times it would have been nice to find out the company service truck was half way across the state pulling a boat on a trailer home on a Sunday rather than get the phone call on Monday about how that truck caused an accident. I can see tracking the right kind of data in the right places. That means where it can educate and improve things like working conditions, bad habits or illegal acts. If it is sold to the work force correctly it's a great tool. If used to micro-manage it's a lever to force compliance. That word really grates on me for some reason. It's like "resistance is futile."
By the end of the year the 31 locations they still have will be will call only. A few years ago they had 175 locations! They've gone to direct ship and are worried Amazon will take their customers. Will call means people can call and order stuff to pick up but customers walking in won't be able to just buy what they need and be on their way. They can place the order but they'll have to wait a couple hours for it to be picked and ready for them to take. I just think there's still a lot of customers that just want to go to the store and get what they need because they need it now, not in 2 hours or the next day. I think the competitors with fully stocked stores are going to gain a lot of new customers because of the new strategy. I think what they're doing could backfire in a big way. Taking away from the employee's certainly isn't a way to motivate them. It's more likely to have them resent it and look for another job... Unless they're hoping some will decide to leave on their own. There is a lot of BS in bigger companies.
Sometimes adding BS is a way of finding out who the loyal employees are. The good ones will whine a little and try to make things work. The bad ones will back bite everything and everyone and try to make things fail. Once the employee base is classified the layoffs come.
The tech support group I'm in is acknowledged as the product specialists in the company. They got rid of all the product managers that actually knew something and replaced them with people that have no idea and have never worked with or sold any of the products they're supposed to responsible for. There's so many mistakes on their website and in the computer system we basically stopped reporting them because it would be never ending. The website doesn't "talk" to the computer system so you're never quite sure what is accurate. They got rid of a lot of long term employee's and went to call centers staffed by people who have no clue about industrial supplies and receive almost no training. They'll have a picture of a package with a part number and don't even bother to enter the part number in the system to see if we have it and get the vendor code or just too lazy to look in the catalogue.
Time to get out...somebody hired a “management consultant” to bring in a lot of BS ideas from the “good idea fairy”
I can tell you from experience that it will only get worse. You are in a buyer's market as far as finding another job in this strong economy. Run Forest run.
Management Consultant = Seagull A bird that flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything and then flies out!
Thses stories sound much like the BS that happened where I worked. Company was a more or less family run operation working mainly in NY and Penn. Then back in the late 60's they sold out to a national company doing for the most part completely different things. Things were not bad for several years then the buy-outs and mergers started. Every new owner added a new layer of management. Back before the first take over you could count on one hand the layers of management from your immediate supervisor to the top man in the main office. The last 20 years it got so you didn't know even what country the top man called home let alone his or her name. And all those added people and layers of management did absolutely nothing about getting the stone from the quarry face through the plant and on the customers truck and out the gate! But they all had to get paid and someone had to make out the reports they asked for to make them look needed!
I worked at a Nuke plant rolling schedule 24/7 as power has to flow, we were allowed a 2/10 hr turnover 'Grace Time' to keep from exceeding NRC working hours restrictions against 12 hr D/N shifts and assorted 8 hr relief or training week shifts. We were on Honor System until we weren't, NOT supposed to be In the gate prior to a certain time, could not relieve the watch Too Early as someone may get more or less time actual on the clock. They did not make us stamp a clock but COULD retrieve gate access and departure times for our badges, they have since installed cameras EVERYWHERE. The guys that had more than 10 years last contract(two years back now) retained pension program and after retire health insurance, those under ten got SQUAT. They get Cash Balance retirement where I saw the formula as to calcs in negotiations a genuine fkng, they also lost ALL insurance as soon as retired, issue them $12,000 for each year to 65 AFTER 60 (MAX $42000 less taxes) to buy their own, retire earlier than 60 no insurance at all, retire after 64 no insurance payback. The Management got these 'Deals' when the company pulled them off the pension program some eight years ago, set them up for success as for them 67 was earliest FULL payout of CB program, the younger employees that moved to 69 and will move again next contract to who knows where. On the honor system we got a lot done, now they lose around a hour a day to the turnovers and around two hours a day each shift for beginning/end of day briefings for whatever good that actually does. The plant slips a little further behind each month. OT became a game of numbers as to After 40 then After 48 and now is calculated against the 36, 32 and 48 hour schedules where NONE are actually OT but percentage payup not even to time and a half, I call that Imaginative Book Keeping. Had the same style BS when worked a chargeable hours shop. There if a short week you got a percentage of your OT hours against the Total charged hours for the week, some guys never made the base pay on OT, on the Long weeks of full hours and fuller schedules they had some misconceived calculation again if you EXCEEDED chargeable of forty then there was a reduction prior to the calc to figure percentage, needless to say NOBODY but the boss saw time and half. Bosses wife was quite the witch on figuring it all out and making it sound Guuud!