Skip to main content

Leading vs Forcing

For leading, the operative word is "Lead".  Not push, force, scare, threat and the like.  People must choose to willingly follow the path that a leader puts forward.  This of course can range from being a zombie and just follow whatever... to being enthusiastic about the journey.

In your workplace which are you?

Employee's get a paycheck, security and healthcare.  Because of this management sometimes think that you should be happy at work.  (most of the time it the non-actual work items that make people unhappy at work, not the actual work they do).

But there are other parties in the company that can undermine happiness at work.  One of these is HR.  The same HR department that literally is called "Human Resources" like it's for the employee is really mostly there to protect the company and NOT on the side of the employee.  A person can not serve two masters, the HR department servers the company.  If there is an issue between the employee and employer, HR is on the side of the employer.

Most of the time HR is not involved in employee lives expect in event changes (hired, fired, etc.).  But they can make their presents felt when HR requires something from employees that the employees can not provide.  I'm taking about "SMART goals"!

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria).  Do a quick search for this for a intro.
Here is a Quora link https://www.quora.com/Can-you-give-examples-of-SMART-goals-for-a-software-engineer
Here is a Medium.com article as well https://medium.com/@tsunamino/setting-goals-with-your-engineers-that-dont-completely-suck-cb76b87e4275

For software engineers this is a problem and a bigger problem if your product / project plan is, shall we say, in flux.  This is where there is a collision between what HR wants and where management / product management is directing the company.  This collision is compounded if any bonuses or salary increased are based on success with your SMART goals.

Conflicting requirements from company -> Employee unable to satisfy SMART goals -> Loss of bonus = Unhappy employees.

This is a self created problem by the company where the HR and management each think they are doing the right thing.  But they are not.

If employee's are with the company, they deserve a bonus.  Make the bonus the same % of each's salary and be done with it.  Yes, it does not reward high performers and does reward low performers but they would differ over time with their base salary anyway.  Don't inject too much HR / SMART goals into their lives and have monthly review about them (do have a constant dialog through out the year, just not about the SMART goals).

You can't force your employees to be happy but you can prevent them being less happy.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Still Life

 Life is never still, at least I don't think you would want it to be.  That's why so many of us (i.e., retired care free people) travel.  Keep seeing new things and places.   Well the Hurricane so far inland was a new thing and one I would have rather forgone but life is what happens.  Life keeps moving. Except a still life is forever and captures a slice of time frozen in a painting.  This is from a wooden bowl of pears onboard our ship during dinner one nice.  Again, just thought it looked nice. Enjoy.
Post a Comment
Read more

3rd Try is a Charm

I've been trying to draw / paint these barns for a couple of years but never felt or got them right.  This time I think they turned out right. So What went wrong before and what's right now with this drawing?  This time, the light was right.  It's coming from the upper right and the shadows just looked right.  The other thing is the corn field on the left had to "be in season", otherwise it's just a plowed field.  I had taken other photos from different angles but they never felt right.  This angle has the road, power lines, corn field, etc. all leading to the right.  The shadows on the lower right helps fill in that corner (don't forget about the corners!).  The last part is trying to draw (ink paint maybe) the trees in the background.  Not so easy when they are kind of a blob is green shades. So yeah, it's composition that is king.  Many times I just don't see it until the drawing / painting is finished and when it's right it feels goo...
Post a Comment
Read more

So THIS is My Style?

 If I play around long enough my style will appear.  I'm guessing that this is kind of it.  I'll keep working on other techniques in watercolor but for now this appears to be my style. I do like it and others appear (to my face) to also like this.  Not every one of my paintings is a success.  About 1/3 so far, but when they do I am rather pleased that anything good comes out of it at all. I do love color.  Color is happy and outdoors is full of color, be it the west or back east with the greens.  Color color color. Also doing some painting on hot press paper and see how that goes. Later......
Post a Comment
Read more