Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Jolly Roger

My workplace is suffering, nay bleeding through an open wound, massive attrition at the moment. If this was related to Pirates (like everything else at the moment), it'd be a case of queuing to walk the plank.
Actually, I think there are people offering discounted self-service planks in the foyer, but hey.

It's extremely interesting, from a 'why' perspective.

As is the case with all things corporate, it ultimately boils down to a case of finger-pointing and blame evasion. Given the KPI structure of any medium to large corporate entity these days it's of no surprise. The behaviors of staff are governed not by an altruistic desire for greater company good, but instead are driven by a culture that rewards 'small poppydom'.

If you keep your head down, and don't have an opinion, you are rewarded.
If you observe something that warrants concern, you merely piss somebody else off - namely somebody whom is responsible for that particular facet of the organisation.
Not only that, but you then run the risk of being performance managed yourself for 'not being a team player' or something equally as ridiculous, especially if the defendant has unofficial ties with senior management.

It's fairly transparent.

Where the performance mandates of a role enforce behaviors of looking after one's self, then how on earth can anyone expect to bring an organisation together towards a common goal? It's laudable, at best.

In the case of my employer, it all began about 12 months ago with a curious restructure. Right from the get-go it was apparent that there were personal interests at stake, amongst senior ranking members of the staff.
At the time, I was foolish enough to share that concerned viewpoint, in the interests of promoting an engaged culture with a determination to add to an effort of ensuring the path we were embarking upon was headed off at the pass.

Needless to say, my tall poppy was lopped off at the stalk, and I was thrown into the compost bin. I was far too red amongst a sea of bright grey.

Which brings us to current.

As previously described, and utterly predictable, the blame game for the recent spate of mass voluntary attrition has begun.
And, as also expected, those that lead the charge for our fucked up 'restructure' 12 months ago are placing themselves farthest from said blame, instead turning to those beside or underneath them for explanation.

That there will never be an opportunity to connect those original decisions with the current situation, is infuriating but similarly entertaining.
In fact, it's one of the only reasons I bother to turn up at all - you couldn't write a more interesting black comedy, even if Voltaire himself were to return from the grave.

Nevertheless, the current situation remains, and in fact worsens as the days go by. More and more staff are leaving, irreplaceable IP is seeping down the drain (replete with zero effort to displace this loss), and the word is beginning to spread to recruiters that our ship is polluting the ocean with rats.

And no, I don't think handing out gold bullion-esque parcels of cheap chocolate will have any effect on our rudder, *Brilliant* idea tho! That'll plug the hole! :-|

Who would have thought this, 15 months ago.

Oh wait; although saying this makes me feel both elitist and narcissistic:
I Told You So.

5 Comments:

At 4:10 pm, July 02, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The same thing happened at my work. No chocolate coins for us though,, :-(

 
At 9:20 pm, July 02, 2007, Blogger Zarres said...

Yep. Sadly, it's far from uncommon.
Swept under the carpet for sure, but not uncommon.

I have some further and interesting tidbits around the subject making their way to another article shortly..

Z.

 
At 9:10 pm, July 07, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The moment you start saying I told you so... is the moment you should leave.

 
At 4:49 pm, July 08, 2007, Blogger Zarres said...

Good point. Didn't think of it that way - I guess it means that whatever I was certain would happen, has indeed happened.

 
At 8:03 pm, August 02, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yep, there's no good getting upset, just look for greener pastures and take off into the sunset....

 

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