Working Like A Dog

Where did that phrase come from? I've rarely seen a dog work (dog sleds and seeing-eye dogs being the exceptions). Mostly, they just eat, sleep and evacuate.

Anyhow, our Project Team Leaders (which I'm a member of) agreed to have on-site Fridays. This doesn't affect me much, but it affects my work team. The on-site Fridays isn't too bad of a concept - it promotes cross-team working and keeps our team members productive on Fridays. The problem that I have with it is the enforcement of a 4pm end time on Fridays.

Though this doesn't affect me (I stay the whole day on Fridays because I'm "local"), it does affect some of my team members. I'm not too concerned about the ones that I suspect are less productive on Fridays. However, I know that I have a few team members that bust their butts when they are off-site and the only flights available to them are at 3:30pm. Their next available flight isn't until 9pm. Getting home at midnight on a Friday isn't a good way to reward your good workers. It's punishing all employees for the sins of the few.

The truth is that on a project of this size, you get plenty of productive people and a few unproductive people. The unproductive people need get their rears in gear or get off the project. Their manager needs to address the issue early and curb the behavior. If they don't, they end up in the situation that we're in now, punishing the whole for the sins of the few.

The last company I worked at put a policy in place that said that all Exempt employees needed to work 50 hour weeks. The reason for this policy was to address issues with a few employees who would show up at 10am, go to lunch at 11am, then leave work at 2pm and go to a Cubs game. All the policy did was piss off the people who were busting their butts. In other words the overachievers were being punished because some managers didn't have the backbone to tell their employees to work a decent working day.

That's what I'd call making your employees work like dogs, except dogs occassionally get a biscuit when they've done a good job. If we're going to ask our employees to work a little harder perhaps we should find a few more biscuits to hand out.

Have you ever been lucky enough . . .

. . . to write your own job description? Two weeks ago, upon my return from the IHRIM Conference where I was graciously awarded with an Excellence Award, I was given that task. I sat down with my VP and she informed me that my new boss who was hired in February had given notice that he was leaving our company. My question: "What does that mean for me?"

She dropped two scenarios in front of me and honestly I don't remember the first because it wasn't very appealing. However, the second idea seemed to make sense: manage the company's HR systems globally. Neither of us really understood what the responsibilities were, so she tasked me with writing the job description and a transition plan to the new position.

I considered including things like: "Responsible for leading corporate wide nap efforts" or "Required to work in chocolate production facility as taste-tester" (yes we do produce chocolate at some of our facilities) or "In charge of making others accountable for their actions." Yet, in the end I put together something a little more professional which required only 25-33% travel (as a global systems manager, it would be hard to drive that down to 0%) as opposed to my current 100%. That means more time at home with Beth and RJ.

Tomorrow morning we're going over the draft of the job description that I wrote. Hopefully she hasn't marked it up too much with her red pen.

What would you put in your job description if you got to write it?

Buzzword Bingo

How many "Lives" does your company have? What? I was asked this question once today at the IHRIM HRMStrategies Conference. Then I heard the term "Lives" in another educations session later that day. Let me put a stop to this now. Companies have employees, not "Lives."

If you are one of the people that is currently trying to promote the use of "Lives" as opposed to the terms "Employees" or "Headcount," you seriously need to stop trying to play buzzword bingo. You’re failing miserably.

Companies employ people to do work; that is why the terms "Employer" and "Employee" exist. Even though you may like to stake claim to our lives, please note that it is inappropriate to do so.

Stop it.

Now.

I mean it.

The Typical Irish Work Day

Typically the Irish work day starts at 9am and goes until 5:30pm with an hour around 12:30 for lunch. Yesterday was not a typical day for me, nor are the standard Irish working hours typically the hours that I work. Though, that's also true when I'm back in the US. I tend to work longer than the standard work day would require.

Yesterday, I started at 8am and finished at 1am this morning (with a break here and there for lunch, dinner, and to talk to my wife). That's a 17 hour work day. I do believe this was the longest work day that I've logged. I've gone 12-13 hours before, but never have I had a marathon like I had yesterday.

I hope that this is not par for the course on this project. At the end of last week I received a copy of the project plan, where my hours for this week were supposed to total over 80. Considering I'm losing Friday to a flight back to the US, that would mean that I'd need to work 20 hours a day. Perhaps we have a resourcing issue?

I guess I'll be working on the plane - something I typically try not to do.

On the Back of a Fag Pack

Just to clarify: on this side of the pond, fags = cigarettes.

In Human Resources, we often laugh at the absurdities that occur throughout the business day. You need only look into any employee file to find scribbled notes on quarter-sheets of paper that say things like: "Give John a 3% increase," or "Jane missed work because of 'woman problems' today." Usually these notes are undated and indecipherable.

Since HR has developed as a profession, you find these absurdities occurring far less frequently, but they still occur. They are usually discovered when a large company acquires a small Ma & Pop establishment, where the owner's word was law - regardless of what actual laws are cast by the local regulatory agencies and governments. When auditing the acquired company's personnel files, you usually find all kinds of strange notes and other privacy violations. This usually occurs because the person that was doing the HR work at the acquired company has never formally been trained in legal compliance.

In the US, we have a euphemism for this kind of practice. We say that the agreement was made "on the back of a cocktail napkin." During a meeting today, I learned that the Brits have a different euphemism for the same practice - "on the back of fag packs"- or to translate for my US friends - "on the back of a pack of cigarettes."

The idea is obviously that whoever makes the declaration, doesn't care about a process. They simply just grab the nearest writing implement and the nearest scrawling surface - be it a cocktail napkin or a fag pack. The writing implement is always lost to history, but cocktail napkins and pieces of fag packs find their way into employee files and sit there for decades. Have you ever had an inkling to ask to see your employee file? You have the right.

P.S. By the way, that picture is an actual warning that is put on some cigarette packs in the European Union. It reads: "Smoking may reduce the blood flow and cause impotence" A colleague of mine that smokes jokingly told me one day while holding up his pack of cigarettes, "Dammit, I got impotence again."