I Love My Delaware Workplace – Number 1
Go ahead and read it over at TownsquareDelaware.com while I am still not fired. Better yet, read my contribution and leave a comment about how much you love or hate your Delaware workplace.
I can easily trace my interest in the power of employee engagement back to two very different work experiences I had in 1986. These experiences clashed so violently that the sparks that were created lit this philosophical fire in me which continues to burn today. As you might guess, one of the experiences was completely amazing, and one was an unmitigated clusterf-ck.
The amazing experience was working at the High Street Youth Hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland. That job provided a great example of what a business could be like and SHOULD be like. It had just been opened by Peter McMillian, who now owns the largest youth hostel chain in Britain, but at the time, he was just bootstrapping his first venture. The clusterf-ck was working at General Motors.
It is always more fun to work at a startup. A startup always has this electric energy about it. Larger companies can try to recreate that energy but there is usually something fake about it. Sometimes a large company can create some of during the development and rollout of a new product, if there is a sufficiently empowered team that feels a sense of identity and ownership. But then the rest of the company will feel that team is getting special treatment, and they would be correct.
In a startup, you are working one on one with all the key actors, you know what the boss is thinking, and you are in complete control of (or at least participate in) all the decisions and actions that affect your job. The only way you can lose your job is to demonstrably fail at it.
But once the company starts growing, then specialized departments are created and the closed door meetings begin. Decisions come down to you by surprise, many of which you don’t necessarily agree with, or you don’t even know enough to evalute them. The startup energy starts to dissipate in murky darkness and paranoia. You begin to fear you can lose your job not because you failed, but through no fault of your own, due to some unknown conversation others are having about you.
Of course, it must also be fun to work as a securely employed, highly paid, and overly empowered cog in a giant corporation. But for most of us that is a pipe dream.
Good points, but there are simple things that larger (departmentalized) companies can do to keep that start up vibe.
I don’t think this is about large corporations as much as it is about the employee-centric mentality of unions. I’ve worked for a few successful, non-union large corporations where teamwork was encouraged. My husband works in a non-union factory of a large corporation where employees are well-compensated, cross-trained and encouraged to help other departments when necessary. Not to get into a philosophical debate about unions, but the irony of unions is that, while their goal – even their name – is unity, the spirit of teamwork is lost when the focus is shifted from the success of the company to the success of the individual.
the spirit of teamwork is lost when the focus is shifted from the success of the company to the success of the individual.
Here’s news for you: These days, management represents the “success of the company” even less than unions do.
If I had to choose who is chasing their own individual success at the expense of the company, management wins over unions hands-down.
Unions create pressure on the labor market that pushes nonunion companies to compete with good pay and benefits. Everybody wins.
Anon has a point about management. Particularly of publicly traded companies, when stock price it the only arbiter of managerial success or failure – expect short term success and long term failure.
Management’s hands are tied by union contracts. How can you run an efficient business when it’s not cost-effective to unload bad employees and virtually impossible to reward exceptional ones?
I agree that the fear of unions drives merit shops to treat their employees better. I’m not saying all unions are bad all the time. Nor am I saying that the existence of unions will necessarily sink a company. I’m just saying that union rules don’t necessarily lend themselves to a spirit of cooperation, teamwork or even innovation.
I think what Jason experienced at GM is not uncommon in union companies. Take a look at any list of the ‘Top 100 Companies’ in terms of employee satisfaction. I would bet that every one of them cites employees who felt a sense of camaraderie with their co-workers and a healthy level of respect and appreciation for their employers (who are generous by choice as opposed to being forced to be). Happy employees = successful companies. I don’t know a ton of union employees, but the ones I know rarely have good things to say about their employers. That’s probably because unions create an adversarial relationship with management rather than understanding and accepting that the relationship is symbiotic. They need to make it more about the big ‘us’ than ‘us vs them’ or everyone loses.
Management’s hands are tied by union contracts. How can you run an efficient business when it’s not cost-effective to unload bad employees and virtually impossible to reward exceptional ones?
Every union contract has a process for getting rid of bad employees. “Contract” meaning the process was agreed to by management. If the employees really are bad then use the process. If you follow the process and still can’t get rid of them, then maybe you were wrong about them being bad. If management doesn’t want to follow the process then fuck ’em.
unions create an adversarial relationship with management
No. Unions level the playing field and remediate an adversarial relationship created by management.
They need to make it more about the big ‘us’ than ‘us vs them’
The us vs. them talk starts in the boardroom with or without unions.
I don’t know a ton of union employees, but the ones I know rarely have good things to say about their employers.
Think how bad their jobs would suck without the union.
nice job anon.
Dom, you are a corporate cog. management loves you because you let them be the masters of your life. Unelected people who have final say over your income, thus your well being, love folks like you who surrender your fate to them and JUST TRUST they will do the right thing.
ahh to be young and innocent.
I’ll grant Dominique has a limited point. Only certain kinds of jobs are appropriate for unions. In general the suckier your job is the more you need a union. And we are growing sucky jobs quickly these days. There probably should be a customer service union for anyone whose job it is to say “May I help you?”
But there are lots of jobs where unions would be inappropriate, and in those cases Dom’s points would be more applicable.
The anti-union rhetoric Dom is parroting comes from the 1970s which did have examples of union excess and corruption – which Republicans seized upon to create a narrative of union evil that persists to this day, even though unions are mostly flat on their backs now.
And may I point out that a lot of jobs that would be prime targets for unionization, are now occupied by illegal aliens. And even if there aren’t actual illegals in those jobs, the pressure created by illegals acts as a deterrent to organizing.
Jason, great article! I recently did a presentation on employee benefits and part of that presentation was on employee communications. Based on a recent survey by MetLife, here is one of my slides:
“The 9th Annual Study of Employee Benefits Trends delivers a clear message to employers:
Reprioritize employee loyalty and satisfaction, or economic recovery may arrive with unanticipated setbacks for retention and productivity.”
“More than one in three surveyed employees hopes to be working elsewhere in the next 12 months. And this intent is true no matter the company size. Employers – lulled by a period of low turnover – may have become less focused on employee job satisfaction and retention.”
Just reinforces your message on employee engagement. A huge part of employee engagement is open and robust communications.
The grocery business is notorious for poor working conditions and it is highly unionized.
Wegmans consistently ranks in the top 10 companies in the nation to work for. Wegmans is non union.
One size does not fit all. While some will point out that places like Wegmans are an exception (and exceptional). Painting certain industries and even large corporations with the same brush gives the wrong impression and is incorrect. Naming the best and worst companies is much more accurate than generalizations.
In labor intensive industries (manufacturing and agricultural for instance), unions are almost necessary to achieve stability in the workplace. In other places (air traffice control for example) unions serve little purpose and in fact are often hinderances for both the company and the individual.
P.S. Google is another exception. Ditto Microsoft.
American industry came of age at a time when labor was seen as just another “input.” Workers were disposable in the full sense of the term, so they naturally organized.
In spite of the corporate PR, Many companies view labor as a “cost” rather than an “investment” and cannot break the habit of dealing with employees with their boxing gloves laced up.
Companies, like Wegmans, view employees as stakeholders not cost centers.
Costco is one of the best places to work in the US and they have a combo of unionized and non-unionized facilities. They are pretty regularly beaten up by the Wall Street analyst class for paying their people well, for providing many of them with an opportunity for health insurance and other bennies that the Wall Street Analyst Class think is money better given over to shareholders. I haven’t checked on this in awhile, but there was quite a period there where CostCo was even outperforming WalMart and Target on the stock market.
Even when hey went public, Google let the shareholding world know that they would not make any changes to the way they hire or compensate people.
Firms that see their employees as part of their long term success are places that work at safe workplaces, are family-supportive and will spend abit extra upfront to get great workers that they will treat well.
Only certain kinds of jobs are appropriate for unions.
This is just silly. And one of the biggest reasons why the middle management, professional class is being wiped out. Because someone redefined being *professional* as working 70 hours per week while being compensated for 30 or 35. Why should your employer profit from all of this uncompensated time when you do not?
I sent in my contact information to be a contributor! let me know who if knowing you or Burris get’s me in!
well done and great looking site.
Anyone who blames unions for today’s problems or still drinks the swill slathered about by well funded anti-union businesses and ISN’T a millionaire should reconsider their positions.
Union membership is at historic LOW levels.
Yet, they are the only well organized group petitioning the government OF THE PEOPLE for fair treatment for ALL working people.
How many attacks on the middle class will it take before they RISE?
once the unions are gone, we all have a better chance of being rich. It’s a numbers game, plain and simple
Why do we Americans assume that the only empirical source for testing economic theories is the USA?
What has been said here by some about unions is pure rubbish on empirical grounds. Look at other industrialized economies, especially the ones whose citizens per capita enjoy a better standard of living than the USA. In every case a greater percentage of the workforce belongs to unions than the workforce in the USA. That’s not the entire explanation for the difference, but it certainly is the substantial source of the difference in everything objective that I’ve read on the subject.
Comment by donviti on 17 May 2011 at 8:08 pm:
Once the unions are gone, we all have a better chance of being rich. It’s a numbers game, plain and simple
Don, try this on for size.
Wife started at MBNA in ’88 worked there (non union) for 20 years making more than me (union). After BoA took over for the next few years she received little or no pay raises (you are at the top of your pay grade). She got canned in ’08 because they were (restructuring) funny that they fired the good employee with the most seniority who didn’t call in sick or bring a lot of drama to the job, but kept the junior employee who was on notice for sick leave usage but didn’t qualify for a pension since she was hired after the merger.
Now take the old broad and put her in a union shop at BoA and she keeps her job (junior man gets canned) her pension continues to grow and when she retires she has a better living standard in retirement than she will in a non-union shop. Now she has a new job making 30% less than she use to, no defined pension, and a new 401k to start all over.
And just for giggles I now get work longer (at my same union shop) to make up for her lost earnings.
DON’T BUY INTO THE B.S. THE RICH KEEP FEEDING YOU.
@political wizard – not to mention, with her earning less than they would have been, due to her hard work all those years
your family standard of living will be LESS than it would have been,
thereby ensuring that your family has LESS disposable income to spend in your senior, leisure years
Money that would go to extras maybe (if your health was good, etc) as most older folks have paid off their houses and are not overly fussy about having the newest car on the block.
Lets keep the money in the hands of the folks that really spend in (I know – sounds funny) the ecomomy – the Lower income and middle-class.
Sounds right, but economist I am not………someone (trust worthy preferably, clue me in)
@ Don Viti-Employers,the state and federal governments are now telling workers what they are worth,in their estimation.
Take away unions, and they will DICTATE what they “feel” they are worth.
There will no longer be an organized voice or push back for the average American worker better known as the middle class.
Hear me now and believe me later.
We will soon look like Mexico or another struggling third world entity.
Try finding patriots to fight for us then you fucking asshole.