Tuesday 10 June 2014

Work's Great Idea

Last week mysterious symbols began to appear around my office.  There were four different types and looked like some sort of code from a dystopian future.  They were closely followed by an email from Corporate management to tell us something big was coming and we should all be prepared. 
So we waited and prepared for another rubbish management idea.

Nothing was heard till the weekend and then on Monday morning we all came in to large decorated white boards and markers on every floor - yes corporate has decided that we needed suggestion boards to go along with our new themes of customer first, work together, honest and transparent and forward thinking - oh the excitement.

Now when you put up suggestions boards in a large local government office and let the staff write on them what do you think it going to happen - yes the staff are going to write suggestions but they are not the ones that management are going to want to hear.

Within 30 minutes the board had its first suggestion - stop spending money on rubbish like this when you are cutting costs elsewhere and so it continued.  By the evening the board on my floor was covered and there were only 2 positive suggestions (roast beef monster munch in the vending machines and can we have an ATM).  The rest were completely negative.

But perhaps this was only my floor, nope - a quick tour of the building revealed the following
courtyard, and ground floor almost identical in negativity, third floor a few more positive suggestions but again mostly negative and my personal favourite,the second floor where management lives, one post about how great this idea is followed closely by if you think this is good check out the board on the 1st (my) floor that's were the best suggestions are.

So once again one of corporates bright ideas to get us all involved has only served to further alienate staff and generally cause disharmony - another fabulous idea.

So my challenge now is to think of something to write before the boards get taken down (I give it a week).  I was thinking a picture of the lorax and the following

Unless senior management start to care about staff a whole lot nothing is going to get better its not