Social experiment. FREE food

[Darth-Baiter]

i have a really good team.  they get the work done, and i leave them alone for the most part.  i do call for the occasional meeting.  the dreaded mandatory meeting.  "mandatory" must means something else, because someone will flake.  i dont get my panties all bunch up to deeply, because i will run them down for updates anyways.  

 

Well, to celebrate the holiday i offered to buy them breakfast.  i disquised it as a mandatory meeting.  i figured i would lose a few.  NOPE!!!  100% attendance!!  who knew?  in record time, they all accepted.  hahahhaha...

 

[12poundbass]

That’s cool you do that. Our company does that 2-3 times a year. Once a year they do a tech appreciation week, where there’s all kinds of giveaways (Blackstone grills, TV’s, gift cards, ect) and a day where each team does a cookout, bowling, whatever the supervisor decides to do.

 

Small gestures like that goes a long ways with most. 

[Darth-Baiter]

1 hour ago, 12poundbass said:

That’s cool you do that. Our company does that 2-3 times a year. Once a year they do a tech appreciation week, where there’s all kinds of giveaways (Blackstone grills, TV’s, gift cards, ect) and a day where each team does a cookout, bowling, whatever the supervisor decides to do.

 

Small gestures like that goes a long ways with most. 

I work for government, so this will be out of my pocket.  but dang it if I wouldn't love a gig where they gave out the occasional Blackstone grill!!  wow!!!  I want one of those things. 

[DitchPanda]

2 hours ago, 12poundbass said:

That’s cool you do that. Our company does that 2-3 times a year. Once a year they do a tech appreciation week, where there’s all kinds of giveaways (Blackstone grills, TV’s, gift cards, ect) and a day where each team does a cookout, bowling, whatever the supervisor decides to do.

 

Small gestures like that goes a long ways with most. 

We have slot of little things like that during the year as well..it really does help boost morale. We have a safety scavenger hunt going on right now...if you complete it you get a cool company hat. If we get 100% participation we get a rib eye lunch.

[12poundbass]

27 minutes ago, DitchPanda said:

We have slot of little things like that during the year as well..it really does help boost morale. We have a safety scavenger hunt going on right now...if you complete it you get a cool company hat. If we get 100% participation we get a rib eye lunch.

I left this company almost 8 years ago because they worked up to the bone 6 days a week from March to December. The turnover was unbelievable! I went to the competition and was extremely happy! Fast forward to January this year and the company I left bought out the company I left for. To say I was sick to my stomach would be an understatement! They’ve really turned things around. They do things like I previously explained, they do weekend off rotations, and are highly focused on a work life balance. The turnover has slowed, the lean and mean mentality is no longer. They’ve been pretty good to me and the technicians, so I have no complaints. 

[DitchPanda]

12 hours ago, 12poundbass said:

I left this company almost 8 years ago because they worked up to the bone 6 days a week from March to December. The turnover was unbelievable! I went to the competition and was extremely happy! Fast forward to January this year and the company I left bought out the company I left for. To say I was sick to my stomach would be an understatement! They’ve really turned things around. They do things like I previously explained, they do weekend off rotations, and are highly focused on a work life balance. The turnover has slowed, the lean and mean mentality is no longer. They’ve been pretty good to me and the technicians, so I have no complaints. 

 That's awesome...hope it turns out that way where I work. For all the things they do right they do just as many wrong. Kind of in a unique situation right now where we can't find decent candidates to hire so they really can't fire anybody for less than murder. So when the management team drops something unfair or unprofessional on us guys are speaking up and putting them in their place. Heard the GM Monday morning quarterbacking on how things were handled over the weekend..then I heard someone say if you can do it better then you do it...he shut his mouth.

 I realize its the job of the GM, PM and maintenance manager to get more out of there guys with constructive criticism but when its not constructive and damaging for morale...welll...you really gotta know when to hold em know when to fold em. 

 Back during our fall shutdown our GM really made himself look like a jackass by criticising the guys running the whole deal-myself, my plant manager and my shift supervisor. He we are working back to back 60+HR weeks getting our ***** chewed by a guy taking vacation during a shutdown...which is against company policy btw unless your better than everybody else. To say it ticked us all off is a gross understatement I heard everything from he has lost all my respect to talk to me like that again and you won't have teeth left. He knew he was wrong because he tip toed around us for weeks after but he has such an ego he never could apologize. 

 The point of this rant I guess is that I'm hoping there is some kind of change in our plant because the way he is pushing is not sustainable- and the knowledge required to run our facility is not easily replaced with somebody off the street. It takes months of on the job training to be even aware of what's going on and years to get it dialed in. Hopefully he realizes people over profit before its too late. We had a sister plant that struggled with production because of horrendous turnover. Corporate went in and found out the issue was the management team...so they fired them and put new guys in their place. Problem solved. So this old school mentality of im the boss and I'm untouchable and therefore superior is completely false.

[Darth-Baiter]

GREAT insight.  i added a work/life balance discussion into my interview.  its important to me, so i wanted the potential hires to know that is how i roll.  

 

turnover kills production.  

[Eric 26]

Reading the post above reminds me of being a child and listening to my father who was a QC manager at a well known  company. He said the upper management had treated the employees like garbage and argued as much. He taught myself and my siblings that no matter your role from the janitor to the CEO everyone deserves to be treated with respect and when that is lost bad things will eventually happen. He left that company shortly after and within a handful of years the company went under. It’s a life lesson I’ve never forgotten. I’m certainly no boss by any means in fact I’ve said it before I drive a truck for a concrete company but the owner of our company has always treated everyone who works here fair and with respect . In fact I just had a great conversation about last weekends Michigan game with him yesterday after work. 

[slonezp]

On 11/28/2022 at 5:14 PM, 12poundbass said:

That’s cool you do that. Our company does that 2-3 times a year. Once a year they do a tech appreciation week, where there’s all kinds of giveaways (Blackstone grills, TV’s, gift cards, ect) and a day where each team does a cookout, bowling, whatever the supervisor decides to do.

 

Small gestures like that goes a long ways with most. 

Small gestures are nice but I'd rather have the gesture on my check.

 

The company I work for throws a weekend getaway every September for all the employees. They also do an annual dinner in February, normally at a steakhouse. They also occasionally throw an after work thing which I never attend because that means I have to drive to and park in Chicago proper. I'm not going to head into the city during rush hour and pay $30 to park, if I'm lucky enough to find a spot for the SuperDuty, to have a couple drinks and then drive 40 minutes home(providing there is no traffic).

 

Honestly, the best part of working here is they leave me alone and give me free reign to do what I want. I took a store that had stagnant sales of $800K for 5 years to $1.2M my first fiscal year and to $2M my second fiscal year.  

 

Now....

I have an employee. He's paid hourly whereas I am hourly plus commission. My conundrum, Do I give him a spiff for Christmas. I didn't get one when I was a "branch biatch" as the branch assistants are known as. He generates $ but also generates headaches. The headaches come out of my paycheck, not his. His mistakes cost me $2K this year since May when the powers that be brought him in. OTOH, he's probably increased my income simply because he's breathing. Prior to getting an assistant, If I missed calls or took too long to respond, my customers would just call another store. He's wrangling calls for me when I can't get them. 

 

He'd be the perfect employee if he could get out of the box he lives in. Great work ethic. He just refuses to ask for help. 

 

My attitude is I don't have to know everything. I just have to know where to get answers for the things I don't know. He tries to know everything and would rather beat himself up than admit he doesn't know everything. 

 

[12poundbass]

26 minutes ago, slonezp said:

Small gestures are nice but I'd rather have the gesture on my check.

I agree 100%. I’m not holding my breath I’ll see a bonus or anything extra in my check because, the company I work for has around 10,000 employees. 
 

We do get a $200 work boot voucher every year for the field employees and as you know if you’re paying good money for boots there going to last longer than a year. So next year I’ll place an order for a nice pair of hunting boots. 

[slonezp]

17 minutes ago, 12poundbass said:

I agree 100%. I’m not holding my breath I’ll see a bonus or anything extra in my check because, the company I work for has around 10,000 employees. 
 

We do get a $200 work boot voucher every year for the field employees and as you know if you’re paying good money for boots there going to last longer than a year. So next year I’ll place an order for a nice pair of hunting boots. 

Company I work for has about 50 employees. We used to get a Christmas bonus equal to a weeks pay. They decided to pull the bonus and blend it into the weekly salary. No one lost pay. I'd rather have the extra check at Christmas. Boss gave a $500 Christmas bonus companywide last year and a $2K bump in pay companywide this spring as an inflation adjustment. 

 

While I say I'd rather have the money, and yes I would, respect from the owner of the company goes a long way with me. The 18 months mom was sick with cancer and she eventually passed, the owner of the company told me to take off as much time as I need, and he paid me for all of it. I never took advantage of it and I could have. 

 

I've been offered jobs by a number of my customers. I have a number in my head that, were it offered, I'd leave. That number encapsulates the respect I would lose if I ever left my company. My loyalty is to myself and my family first. My current employer is a real close second. It is the only employer I have had in my working career that I would even say that about.  

[N Florida Mike]

I switched companies almost 4 years ago. I do the same job ( sales) I did at the last co.

It would take 30 minutes or more to explain all the positive differences my new company has. Family owned and operated. 3 weeks vacation. Bonuses. A great attitude from the owner and managers. Better benefits. Better pay. More work to do( which means better pay). Complete freedom to come and go. Company car and phone. 

Yesterday we had a nice lunch at a sports bar as we listened to the new company insurance man give out the info. The list goes on…

[TOXIC]

A lot of information contained in these posts that a person in the position of “management” should pay attention to.  It highlights what motivates different people….perks, pay, fairness, recognition, etc.  A good management person knows how to motivate and all of those factors can be on the same team and as a matter of fact usually is.  It is surprising to realize that a pay increase for a team may not motivate all of the members but I’ve seen it happen more than once.  When I took over a group of employees on one of my assignments, I had a BBQ at my house for everyone.  It gave me the opportunity to stand back and assess how the “team” functioned and what it took to motivate them.  Not to toot my own horn but I took a dysfunctional group of employees and turned them into a well oiled machine that was pumping out 1,200 contracts a month.