Dearest readers, hope everyone is still enjoying their summer. No matter how busy all of us get, summer is an entire season that doubles as a perfect excuse to slack off just a bit, enjoy the long weekends and also create some long weekends of your own by calling in sick haha. Now, speaking of work, it's something I do a lot of. As most of you out there, I wasn't lucky enough to inherit a trust fund so instead I put trust in funding myself. I haven't always been self-employed though, and most of my friends work for companies of all sizes. So, through my own past experience and conversations with my friends, I keep track of how modern workplaces are evolving here in Canada (and the States). Suffice to say, there are more than a few things I see and hear that I really don't like- things you may agree with whether you're a regular employee or management. Luckily, since I don't directly depend on any of these companies for pay and survival, I can freely express myself and see if anyone out there thinks or feels the same way. Why does this matter? It matters because our economy is tied to not only how much business we do in this country, but also how business is done! Let's have a look at what grinds my gears haha.
The first thing that really grinds my gears are open concept office floors. This is one of the worst trends in recent history of doing business. Every employee is their own individual with their own job description and their own way of (hopefully) meeting and exceeding company expectations. As such, every employee needs their own space carved out on the office floor. If you work at an office floor and someone needs your help or to work with you, they need to physically leave their space and enter yours, fully understanding each of you has their own boundaries. If you don't have that, it is all too easy for some employees to begin to believe and act as if all tasks of all employees at an office floor are collective tasks. This leads to a group of employees increasingly asking for help or cooperation from other, more capable and harder working employees. This makes those who delegate tasks look good by exploiting those who truly do a good job. No physical barriers between employees makes that oh so much easier and everyone who ever worked in an open concept office knows this full well. Also, another bad thing about open concept office floors is that personal becomes communal. Each of us has a different set of good and bad habits; each of us has good days and bad days. In an open concept environment, it is all too easy for these things to become a matter of public discussion and influence, which often makes things worse. You can't have your workspace set up the way you want, privately bite your nails if that's your thing or take 10 minutes to nurse a hangover without everyone chiming in, things will quickly evolve to an entire office floor becoming a hostile and toxic environment and a cesspool of workplace lawsuits when some people can't take it any more. Cubicles or traditional offices go a long way to remedy this situation. Finally, in the mind of some people I talked to who have a political science background, they say that open concept office floors remind them of communism, and cubicle or traditional office spaces remind them of capitalism. Go figure.
The second thing I really dislike about modern workplaces is the lack of appropriate manpower to handle the company's operations. A long time ago, I watched an episode of US version of Undercover Boss with an owner or CEO of a golf store chain. One of the things that stuck with me was his belief that there's a problem if all work can't be finished in the 9-5 time frame. Basically, he didn't seem to believe in under-staffing and overtime hours- a trap into which many modern companies get caught. I thought he was full of it; at least, that was my initial reaction. After I've given it some thought and talked to people about it, it turns out that he was right. If you have enough employees to get the work done right and within business hours, a miracle happens. Since there is enough of them and you made sure when hiring them that they're all experienced and competent enough for their roles, they know the work and they don't make stress-related mistakes. When you're understaffed and your employees make many mistakes during business hours, of course they have to work overtime, and of course you or your management will be getting late night or early morning calls about all sorts of crises, which of course ruins their free time. Now, if it's difficult for a company to hire more full-time or part-time staff, there's always an option in many different types of companies to have a budget distributed among managers to hire temporary outside freelance help here and there when they know permanent staff will get overwhelmed.
The third thing I really dislike is the toxic mix of crazy job requirements and stagnating pay. Allow me to explain. I know a few Marketing people who explained to me that, in their line of work, things are getting kind of insane. As more and more companies are getting into social media marketing, online ads and e-commerce without understanding the ins and outs of it all, they create these insane new jobs for very little money without even thinking about the time and money invested in acquiring the requisite knowledge, skills and experiences and how rare the people are who check off all the tick boxes. Apparently, to get an ad campaign going and manage social media channels all by yourself, you need college or more likely university level research and writing skills, you need to be creative when designing images or videos for the ads, you need to know all sorts of random apps and have a grasp of Adobe's Creative Suite (more or less), you need to know how to generate useful reports and insights from campaign data in order to improve performance, and so on. Ok, so where do you get someone who is both creative and analytical? These are two diametrically opposed skill sets. Of course, when naive companies need someone like this to boost their business and they don't fin an exact match, the positions remain unfilled for a long time until the company settles and hires someone who can't get it all done. Then, the position suffers from the revolving door effect and that has negative financial consequences for the company. In my mind, the solution for this is simple. Some positions require companies to be ok with letting employees hire freelance help through companies like Fiverr. For example, you could have a Marketing person who does everything well except digital art. That's cheap and easy enough to take care of through freelancers. So, you either allow the employee to rely on that out of pocket if they want to excel at their job, or you accept that the best course of action is to have a Fiverr budget available to certain employees in the company. After all, we are being told today that a modern employee is like their own company, their own brand. So, there should be no issue with an employee outsourcing some of the work to others because that's what a company does anyways.
For the fourth and final point, I'll share with you a bullet point list of more things I dislike haha:
So there you go, dearest readers- I hope we share a few of these thoughts and insights on modern workplaces. If nothing else, please remember: A lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on your part! ;)
The first thing that really grinds my gears are open concept office floors. This is one of the worst trends in recent history of doing business. Every employee is their own individual with their own job description and their own way of (hopefully) meeting and exceeding company expectations. As such, every employee needs their own space carved out on the office floor. If you work at an office floor and someone needs your help or to work with you, they need to physically leave their space and enter yours, fully understanding each of you has their own boundaries. If you don't have that, it is all too easy for some employees to begin to believe and act as if all tasks of all employees at an office floor are collective tasks. This leads to a group of employees increasingly asking for help or cooperation from other, more capable and harder working employees. This makes those who delegate tasks look good by exploiting those who truly do a good job. No physical barriers between employees makes that oh so much easier and everyone who ever worked in an open concept office knows this full well. Also, another bad thing about open concept office floors is that personal becomes communal. Each of us has a different set of good and bad habits; each of us has good days and bad days. In an open concept environment, it is all too easy for these things to become a matter of public discussion and influence, which often makes things worse. You can't have your workspace set up the way you want, privately bite your nails if that's your thing or take 10 minutes to nurse a hangover without everyone chiming in, things will quickly evolve to an entire office floor becoming a hostile and toxic environment and a cesspool of workplace lawsuits when some people can't take it any more. Cubicles or traditional offices go a long way to remedy this situation. Finally, in the mind of some people I talked to who have a political science background, they say that open concept office floors remind them of communism, and cubicle or traditional office spaces remind them of capitalism. Go figure.
The second thing I really dislike about modern workplaces is the lack of appropriate manpower to handle the company's operations. A long time ago, I watched an episode of US version of Undercover Boss with an owner or CEO of a golf store chain. One of the things that stuck with me was his belief that there's a problem if all work can't be finished in the 9-5 time frame. Basically, he didn't seem to believe in under-staffing and overtime hours- a trap into which many modern companies get caught. I thought he was full of it; at least, that was my initial reaction. After I've given it some thought and talked to people about it, it turns out that he was right. If you have enough employees to get the work done right and within business hours, a miracle happens. Since there is enough of them and you made sure when hiring them that they're all experienced and competent enough for their roles, they know the work and they don't make stress-related mistakes. When you're understaffed and your employees make many mistakes during business hours, of course they have to work overtime, and of course you or your management will be getting late night or early morning calls about all sorts of crises, which of course ruins their free time. Now, if it's difficult for a company to hire more full-time or part-time staff, there's always an option in many different types of companies to have a budget distributed among managers to hire temporary outside freelance help here and there when they know permanent staff will get overwhelmed.
The third thing I really dislike is the toxic mix of crazy job requirements and stagnating pay. Allow me to explain. I know a few Marketing people who explained to me that, in their line of work, things are getting kind of insane. As more and more companies are getting into social media marketing, online ads and e-commerce without understanding the ins and outs of it all, they create these insane new jobs for very little money without even thinking about the time and money invested in acquiring the requisite knowledge, skills and experiences and how rare the people are who check off all the tick boxes. Apparently, to get an ad campaign going and manage social media channels all by yourself, you need college or more likely university level research and writing skills, you need to be creative when designing images or videos for the ads, you need to know all sorts of random apps and have a grasp of Adobe's Creative Suite (more or less), you need to know how to generate useful reports and insights from campaign data in order to improve performance, and so on. Ok, so where do you get someone who is both creative and analytical? These are two diametrically opposed skill sets. Of course, when naive companies need someone like this to boost their business and they don't fin an exact match, the positions remain unfilled for a long time until the company settles and hires someone who can't get it all done. Then, the position suffers from the revolving door effect and that has negative financial consequences for the company. In my mind, the solution for this is simple. Some positions require companies to be ok with letting employees hire freelance help through companies like Fiverr. For example, you could have a Marketing person who does everything well except digital art. That's cheap and easy enough to take care of through freelancers. So, you either allow the employee to rely on that out of pocket if they want to excel at their job, or you accept that the best course of action is to have a Fiverr budget available to certain employees in the company. After all, we are being told today that a modern employee is like their own company, their own brand. So, there should be no issue with an employee outsourcing some of the work to others because that's what a company does anyways.
For the fourth and final point, I'll share with you a bullet point list of more things I dislike haha:
- Way too many meetings and long meetings; when do people actually get to work?
- Project management software; unnecessarily complicating team projects where everyone should simply know what to do and what the deadline is.
- No smartphones or tablets allowed during work hours. Ok for some workplaces (industrial, fast-paced), but ridiculous for most others. Some job tasks are done more easily with smartphone or tablet apps and you can totally use your own. Some people use performance or health tracking apps and need devices close to them. Slide shows, weather and news. Emergency messages, calls, smart home surveillance notifications (Nest, Ring).
- People looking down on your for getting up and stretching. Hourly get up, stretch and rest your eyes should be mandatory.
- Politics, religion, sexuality talk in the workplace. When will people learn this leads nowhere good?
- People killing themselves with work. EVERY BIG COMPANY EVENTUALLY GOES BANKRUPT OR GETS BOUGHT UP OR BOTH! Employees can do nothing to prevent it- only delay it.
So there you go, dearest readers- I hope we share a few of these thoughts and insights on modern workplaces. If nothing else, please remember: A lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on your part! ;)