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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.





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