Society & Culture Is your workplace stingy?

[BACCS]

In my experience many employees underestimate how happy employers are to see certain whingers leave

It's not a good thing to constantly turnover large amounts of staff though. A strong workplace culture goes a long way to a successful business.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

The concept of leaving any money for a cup of office instant is so foreign. How hard can it really be for them to stump the pitiful amount it costs for an office jar?

Hahahaha we had no coffee, tea etc. provided. People would on occasion be coerced in to purchasing some for the office.

Head office would also provide these bizarre group targets for sales staff, involving higher than expected volumes of cheap, low purchase services like the now non existent $5 data pack, in what I expect was an attempt to game them out of sales bonuses. Not all floor staff benefited equally, but store management would "request" even junior staff to purchase, then cancel data packs (in the next month) just so senior staff or management got their bonus.

Funny thing was, they had all these BS cost cutting measures but just did soooooo many things that were grossly counter productive and would have cost far more, both on a local and national level.

For instance, the company was one of the last in Australia to use enterprise bargaining agreements and would also under staff certain locations. This means the best staff would often move on as soon as able, or students would leave ASAP once summer break was over, costing the company a fortune in training costs.

The changing monthly sales targets, with one or two items set unreasonably high, or often bizarre stretch targets, meant floor staff would spend far too much time chasing unlikely and low yield sales at the end of the month.

Our regional manager in particular though, was the oddest unit. He would randomly appear at the store and get sales staff and even on occasion people in the office (hybrid office/storeroom :S) to rearrange the shelving. This would take place no matter how busy it was, whether it was the end of the week/month and targets needed to be reached, nor whether reports were due to be submitted or stock orders needed to be completed. Amazing that a multi billion dollar company had no standard interior floor plan for it's shop fronts (back then). However at the time they were still using a mash of maybe 4-5 different 1980's computer systems. One for inventory, one for contracts, one for business/fleet, one for current customers and so on. The height of costly inefficiency.

This isn't even the worst place I have worked... A friend of mine who is starting out in the film/TV industry has been scripting alternately a sitcom and feature comedy on the other, so I will refrain from discussing it. Well that and the owners+manager engaged in serious criminal behavior, both in their treatment of staff, running of the business and their lives in general. Also funny when you see the real side to a local industry icon be at such complete odds with his public persona.

 

[Underdog]

I don't think the figures are too far off. There is a set culture, they all stop for lunch at same time, finish at same time - beer's cold, each have 2 before leaving for the day. Friday arvo often finishes around 3.

"Wages" pays an extra 10% About an extra 6k on a salary of 60k.

"Extras" has Xmas Bonus ($1k cash),
Xmas Party (~$500 per employee for families food, drink, presents, entertainment).
Lunch each day ($25pw = $1000),
6pm Beers and Friday drinks ($50pw = $2500).

Think it's pretty close. If anything, Extra's are probably slightly less, but not by much. (They get the cars overnight/weekend though).

One group (extras) appreciate it a hell of a lot more though.

How many companies have all these "extras"?

I've never received a Xmas bonus.
I've never had a Xmas party with anymore than partners going to dinner which could be a couple of hundred dollars per employee.
I've never had my company pay for weekday lunches, only the odd pub lunch occasionally.
I've never had after dinner drinks EVERY day, only on Fridays.

However, they give me coffee, milk, biscuits and stationary which makes me comfortable at work.

Let's not pretend extras must equate to your list.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

It's not a good thing to constantly turnover large amounts of staff though. A strong workplace culture goes a long way to a successful business.

Sanders is a troll, ignore him.

High staff turnover and training costs is a major issue for Australian retail, especially with some of the larger companies. Across the board one of the biggest controllable contributing factors, is poor middle management practices and a culture in some companies that promotes the wrong kind of personalities into these roles.

A certain multinational glasses retailer/manufacturer that my brother worked for was losing money hand over fist in it's WA operation in part due to very high staff turnover and awful middle management. At the time my brother left, they took a major hit at the peak retail period where a large number of staff across three outlets simultaneously quit.

 

[Collingwood 4 eternity]

Wouldn't work here. Never had a pen long enough for it to run out because some silly aways bloody nicks it. Pisses me off. Our shop sells pens ffs, so whenever someone needs a pen all they have to do is grab one off the shelf and write it off to the shop. But nope, they still bloody pilfer them from me.

Seeing as most people inadvertently put the end of a pen or pencil in their mouths whilst using them , just let it be known how you use your pen pencil to clean out you ear wax sometimes , or you use it to scratch the unreachable part of you lower back just above your bum crack occasionally.

Guarantee you pen pencil won't get nicked again

 

[Sanders]

You also have a very poor understanding of workplace culture and productivity. This aint the 1950s

It's not a good thing to constantly turnover large amounts of staff though. A strong workplace culture goes a long way to a successful business.

What personal experience are you drawing on here?

you were unemployed since graduating last I heard

 

[Sanders]

High staff turnover and training costs is a major issue for Australian retail, especially with some of the larger companies. Across the board one of the biggest controllable contributing factors, is poor middle management practices and a culture in some companies that promotes the wrong kind of personalities into these roles.

sounds like something you read in a text book

A certain multinational glasses retailer/manufacturer that my brother worked for was losing money hand over fist in it's WA operation in part due to very high staff turnover and awful middle management. At the time my brother left, they took a major hit at the peak retail period where a large number of staff across three outlets simultaneously quit.

That your brother worked for...

Nuff said

 

[Collingwood 4 eternity]

My friend said that one year his boss was really generous with some of the damaged stock at the woollies that he worked in.

Each Friday one of the care nurses from the local elderly nursing home would collect , with his bosses permission , any of the chocolate coated peanuts , almonds etc that had been shipment or shelf damaged during the week.

This continued each week of the year.

Come the end of the year the nursing home were so grateful for his stores generosity that each Christmas the elderly nursing home residents would give each of the staff in the woollies store a small Christmas gift as thanks.

After Christmas when the nurse came in to collect the next batch of damaged chocolate nuts some of the staff asked her to pass on their thanks to the nursing home residents for the lovely gift and that they had got , and that the gift was voraciously eaten at the Christmas dinner table on Christmas Day.

Until one Woolies staffer said to the nurse "Gee the residents must love eating all the chocolate nuts that you collect for them ?"

and the nurse replied "Oh you see they each don't have any teeth , so they just suck the chocolate off and put the nut in a jar on the table next to their bed."

You see the elderly residents they had no teeth and would suck all of the chocolate off of the nuts and each put the remaining nut in glass jar which they would then give the store as Christmas gifts.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

sounds like something you read in a text book



That your brother worked for...

Nuff said

Mildly provocative post with no actual substance, vintage Sanders.

 

[Sanders]

Mildly provocative post with no actual substance, vintage Sanders.

Point stands though

 

[kickazz]

Point stands though

What point? That a lack of personal experience automatically precludes somebody from being knowledgeable about a particular topic? What a load.

 

[JuddsABlue]

I did used to work (not for fosters directly) in exporting all of fosters products (all of their beers/kegs in all shapes and forms).

In my time there I started packing the beer to running the floor of the entire fosters section. There was quite a lot of spillages because all the beer was manually handled so it meant throwing out full slabs if one bottle/can broke

We had a locked bin for all our spillages that contained 90% full fine beer cans/bottles but we were under strict instructions from fosters not to give out/take home any of the product. They would sometimes but rarely do random bin checks when on site to see how full it was (it ****ing stunk)

This would upset a lot of people throughout other areas of the site who couldnt stand to see free beer thrown out but could you imagine what would happen if staff knew that whatever slabs they broke/dropped they would get to take home?

We'd never have enough slabs to fill a container

 

[Sanders]

What point? That a lack of personal experience automatically precludes somebody from being knowledgeable about a particular topic? What a load.

Absolutely.

Why would you disagree?

 

[SugarShane]

Seeing as most people inadvertently put the end of a pen or pencil in their mouths whilst using them , just let it be known how you use your pen pencil to clean out you ear wax sometimes , or you use it to scratch the unreachable part of you lower back just above your bum crack occasionally.

Guarantee you pen pencil won't get nicked again

I already do both of these things but haven't made it known. The satisfaction of knowing it in my mind is nearly as good as keeping the pen though.

 

[Norwegian Blue]

Deserves quoting because so many employers IME massively underestimate the costs of replacing staff.

Dunno where you've been working but IME management is acutely aware of how much it costs to replace someone. We reckon it at about $20k.

 

[kickazz]

Absolutely.

Why would you disagree?

I would think that is obvious, but here goes...

One's personal experience is precisely that - personal experience; and as special as each of us think we are, in the grand scheme of things we are but a speck in the wide world out there. Of it's nature it provides a narrow perspective.

The advantage of the great human invention known as written language is that we have the power to draw on the experience of hundreds, thousands of others. It opens up our perspective. Personal experience adds an edge, no doubt - but to say you know nothing at all unless "you've been there" is hogwash. As an example, there would be countless WW1 historians that were not even born that know tons more about the war than a soldier that played a bit part.

Closer to topic, compare a professor at Havard Business School who has read and researched hundreds of works on labour relations and a fish and chip shop owner who has only ever had three employees. Who do you think would be more knowledgeable in general?

 

[JuddsABlue]

I would think that is obvious, but here goes...

One's personal experience is precisely that - personal experience; and as special as each of us think we are, in the grand scheme of things we are but a speck in the wide world out there. Of it's nature it provides a narrow perspective.

The advantage of the great human invention known as written language is that we have the power to draw on the experience of hundreds, thousands of others. It opens up our perspective. Personal experience adds an edge, no doubt - but to say you know nothing at all unless "you've been there" is hogwash. As an example, there would be countless WW1 historians that were not even born that know tons more about the war than a soldier that played a bit part.

Closer to topic, compare a professor at Havard Business School who has read and researched hundreds of works on labour relations and a fish and chip shop owner who has only ever had three employees. Who do you think would be more knowledgeable in general?

while you make a good point I dont think there are any Harvard Business students or fish and chip shop owners in this thread

however there are a lot of employees who like free coffee and a positive work environment and care little about the bottom line of the company they work for (due to lack of understanding more than anything else, everywhere I've worked employees have overestimated the money the company makes if any at all)

 

[Sanders]

I would think that is obvious, but here goes...

One's personal experience is precisely that - personal experience; and as special as each of us think we are, in the grand scheme of things we are but a speck in the wide world out there. Of it's nature it provides a narrow perspective.

The advantage of the great human invention known as written language is that we have the power to draw on the experience of hundreds, thousands of others. It opens up our perspective. Personal experience adds an edge, no doubt - but to say you know nothing at all unless "you've been there" is hogwash. As an example, there would be countless WW1 historians that were not even born that know tons more about the war than a soldier that played a bit part.

Closer to topic, compare a professor at Havard Business School who has read and researched hundreds of works on labour relations and a fish and chip shop owner who has only ever had three employees. Who do you think would be more knowledgeable in general?

Flowery but empty words.

Relevant experience always beat school book theory.

how many people work for you?

 

[kickazz]

however there are a lot of employees who like free coffee and a positive work environment and care little about the bottom line of the company they work for (due to lack of understanding more than anything else, everywhere I've worked employees have overestimated the money the company makes if any at all)

Interesting point, most places I have worked they communicate profit/loss fairly regulalry. I suppose there would be many businesses that do not have public reporting requirements though that would have employees assume this.

Regarding employees not caring about the bottom line, I think it's just because of that - they don't care. Maybe lack of understanding comes into it, but I think unless they start to wear the effects of a poor bottom line (via pay freezes / lack of project funding / staffing cuts, etc) I think it just comes out of the selfish motivators.

I think 'stingy' in the spirit of this thread is about cutting out relatively small cost things that contribute relatively high to morlae. I've seen significant waste at some companies and wondered why they are stingy in other areas - I think it is just a cultural thing.

 

[kickazz]

how many people work for you?

None. They all left because I am such a tightarse.

 

[Doss]

while you make a good point I dont think there are any Harvard Business students or fish and chip shop owners in this thread

however there are a lot of employees who like free coffee and a positive work environment and care little about the bottom line of the company they work for (due to lack of understanding more than anything else, everywhere I've worked employees have overestimated the money the company makes if any at all)

Grouping 'free coffee' in with all the other stuff you've been talking about (like the Friday night drinks) is a bit misleading, though.

I can well understand workplaces shirking the whole work drinks scene- that does have the potential to be very costly to the bottom line.

Supplying coffee and tea for the office isn't a shade on that sort of expense.

 

[rocker_oz33]

Theres alway's some people that take advantage of these free things like coffee,tea and biscuits etc.
We had a water fountain that almost everyone used.They wanted us to pay,but to get everyone to agree to paying was another thing so they got rid of it.Now you can buy a water (bottle) for a dollar.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

What point? That a lack of personal experience automatically precludes somebody from being knowledgeable about a particular topic? What a load.

I am not sure he had a point.

 

[dont bowl there]

Grouping 'free coffee' in with all the other stuff you've been talking about (like the Friday night drinks) is a bit misleading, though.

I can well understand workplaces shirking the whole work drinks scene- that does have the potential to be very costly to the bottom line.

Supplying coffee and tea for the office isn't a shade on that sort of expense.

Personally I think the amount of money a company might spend on drinks etc doesn't nearly equal the amount they might spend on training new employees. It is such a small cost to pay to keep a group of people happy in the long run.

 

[Catfish Alley]

I'm pretty lucky to be honest. We have quite a few functions, well-catered meetings, free coffee and soft drink, a fitness allowance to spend on gym membership or sporting equipment, a chateau in Whistler we can use, bonuses etc.

I've mostly worked for larger companies where there have been at least monthly drinks and a good Christmas party. Some of those jobs have been crappy though. Benefits are nice but the job itself and the people you work with are much more important.