I read a business article which spoke about people who don't do shit but are still employed.
It said how any one person in any department could give you names of five people who can be made redundant right away as they don't add any value to the company.
I thought about it and to me it was true, I work at a telco and I can pick five people (I can even see them right now) who can be made redundant.
is it true for others can you see those five ?
I do live the same day and same conversation over and over again
You do wonder if they ever bother to talk to the people who will actually use the area, rather than the consultant colour co-ordinator.
I'm going to reserve judgment as some of it seems quite good but i have no idea how people are going to go cope with not having an assigned desk
We have 3 towers only our own staff can access the main high rise, the other 2 are ours but with different purposes. which our staff do occupy but they work with 3rd parties in them.
I'll be keeping my lunch hour permanently blocked because i'm not missing out on Mario Kart tournaments to be hijacked with meetings instead.
@Toons:
Management come up with these great ideas, then have to deal daily with complaints about noise and not being able to get work done.
I used to "own" my office space and have everything set out for maximum efficiency and ergonomics.
After several office moves because my boss apparently couldn't find any worthwhile projects to undertake, I gave up and treated my work space as temporary.
In my first job, a long time ago, I had my own office and closed my door when I needed to concentrate.
I've never worked in a productive environment since.
I wouldn’t say there are people that add no value, but there are definitely underperformers and incompetence aplenty. We had a mass VR exercise where HR (mostly outsauced/contractor) and a new CEO decided we needed to reduce numbers at all costs.
So offering very lucrative packages, all the people that knew their worth and skills, took the package and got employment else where, leaving those who (mostly) had no idea, but could talk the talk, to fill the holes.
So now we face daily buzz words and surveys and meetings to prepare for meetings, without any progress taking place.
all the people that knew their worth and skills, took the package and got employment else where
Not you then…
There are always exceptions, I'm on contract so no VR for me.
I heard that managers making new positions so they can hire more people so they look better is a very real thing.
So they can hire their friends from the last place they worked at.
Or their mistresses (looking at you, Barnaby)
Like others have said. We all have our roles to play.
If you're not management I'm not sure if it's exactly your business to judge / perceive what other people are doing. I tend to just mind my own business and actually focus on what I pay to do, and be good at it.
It's actually those lazy people that make me look extra good for less work and instead of wondering why they can get away with doing so little work I just remind myself that my work ethic is my work ethic and that can't be changed. It's not my fault I want to be or am better at work than others. There's some saying that you can go to a different place, but it won't necessarily change who you are.
Though it is equally as likely that I'm just crap at doing what I do and others are more efficient so because I might actually be the lazy one they just back off a little to allow me to catch up!
"the turd that won't flush"
Worst thing about working in a very large office, nobody treats the nice bathrooms for a company with any respect i've seen cleaner public toilets and the cleaner comes round every few hours. I'd also be pretty sure that none of these guys who think they are pretty special would treat their own bathroom like it.
The biggest problem all these people chugging energy drinks and protein shakes, I won't go near the bathroom till first round of cleaning is done you would think you had walked into an outbreak of gastro
We literally have this guy in the office no-one knows what he does but seems to survive restructure after restructure. One guy referred to him as "the turd that wont flush".
I can pick five people (I can even see them right now)
you can't see me, i'm ducking down at my desk
i'm also in telco and my team leader and the manager above should both be given the sack. same with half my team.
ive spent at least 6 years mastering how to survive in a role like that, government of course. Team leaders and managers were the most unaspiring, poor role models that passively taught you how to fill a seat. Reading Animal Farm will calm you down and make you feel better about your position.
The skill gained from being in the situation thought, have carried out and improved so many other areas of life. now that i work overseas where <90% of the workforce is influential, committed and motivated, I have picked up skills that have further improved surviving in an office workplace. Im never bored and self motivated because i understand the expectations of my role, and work up from the position.
its important to understand the deadwood. and to get yourself out of it.
Which cubicle are you in ?
No one here has heard of the 20/80 rule? 20% of the employees do 80% of the work.
The majority of OzBargainers could be one of these "five" people. Be kind.
Very true. It's very frustrating.
The more competent you are, the greater the workload.
The more incompetent you are, the more likely you will complain and management will just leave you a alone.
Or promote you. I read somewhere…. People are promoted to the highest level of their incompetence!
agreed!
That's the Peter Principle, named after Peter Drucker, who came up with the idea.
I think lazy and incompetent people should be made redundant. The lazy individual might know what and how to do something but if they muck around, nothing will get done at the end of the day. Meanwhile, the incompetent individual is equally as bad. They can work fast or hard but if they stuff up over and over again without improving, the costs will add up.
I find yearly reviews absolutely useless because companies don't end up getting rid of these people despite a myriad of evidence stacked against them.
Lazy people can actually be useful:
"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it."
-unknown
Didn't Bill Gates say that?
Depending on who you ask the quote is attributed to Bill Gates or Walter Chrysler.
In reality there is little evidence that this quote or similar was ever uttered by them hence the unknown tag.
Honestly, before posting this quote I also held the notion that this quote was attributed to Bill Gates (lifehacker).
Sources:
quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/26/lazy-job/amp/
This actually happened and I made one of our tasks a lot more efficient maybe by 30 to 50%, my boss even commends me on my work ethics of working smarter not harder. Some people just don't get it and call you lazy just cause they are too stupid to see end results can be achieved more than one way
Are they on OzBargain during work too?
Yes, but they are only reading posts. They're too lazy to actually post any commente
Jeez, some people!
A few gigs back I was in a team of 4 (in a department of 102). In our team of 4 we had a single contractor who was new and was paid significantly more being that he wasn't assured a long time gig - lets name him person 'Shane' (his name isn't actually Shane).
He was working 1-2hrs longer than us on a daily basis, not just in our team of 4, but our entire department of 102 people. Despite him working 1-2 hours longer he wasn't getting any more work done because we were simply more efficient and our stake holders worked really well with the rest of us being good people persons.
After 3-4 months of this pattern where he was pulling longer hours the manager came down and said although it's not in our contract, we should be taking after Shane and putting in the extra work (hours) at a lunch we pulled the 3 of us aside without Shane. The rest of the team had rebutted that we were accomplishing the same work but was told sometimes we needed to just be back there for 'show' or 'perception'. He told the team that Shane had been going to different managers saying he was doing all the work, that he needed to stay late to carry the team and the rest weren't committed as he was.
Now I'm going to stop here and point out that the last sentence is the relevant part to this topic because in his eyes, whether warranted or not, Shane had actually thought the rest of us were 'lazy' (or perhaps just wanted to make himself look good by talking trash on the rest of us'). So while I totally get that some people can be removed from a company tomorrow for worthless to their craft, I always take the place that sometimes people we need a reality check.
Continuing on. I pretty much refused to do 1-2 hrs extra hours a day because I was really good at what I did, within the hours I was paid for - no other team in the department of 102 people had to do this, and a lot of people came to resent Shane because he just kept reporting people for stuff that didn't matter - like one of the IT guys going for a lunch break 10 minutes longer. The following week I went on vacation for 2 months - a week into it I received a text that the two girls left in my team because Shane made is very unbearable the longer he got comfortable in his role. A month into my vacation our manager was fired and guess who was his replacement..Shane - now in a full time position.
The day I arrived back Shane pulls me aside and tells me there's a dozen + fires I need to put out because no one else knows how to do it, and he would appreciate if I could put an all-nighter in because we were super behind with everything. So I get back to my desk and one of the big dogs walks by and asks Shane how everything was going? His response was that everything was going great and on time, complete opposite to the meeting I had minutes ago.
At that point I knew it was time to resign. Luckily I moved onto something bigger and better, as for Shane..well I received a call 3 months later that he was 'found out' and they'd love for me to come in as the manager role.
Everything always comes down to the circumstances, and at times it's all perception.
There is a saying “a consultant is someone who tells you the time using your watch”. I hope you told them to keep their job. Although, there is a certain sense of satisfaction in walking into a forest fire and putting it out. That is when you ask for the substantial pay rise. Shane probably spun his way to another lucrative contract with another clueless set of management elsewhere. The serious problem is people like Shane screw over their fellow employees and all management does is hear the talk rather than seeing the walk.
It's not about how hard you work, it's about how hard you appear to work
Fake story bro.
I find that story all too familiar - always someone else fault and never my fault. In most of the cases, the blamer get too caught up in the blame game while the perceived lazy, stupid (aka Shane) put in the hours , get the job done (doesn't matter what the outcome is as it is all about perception) and get ahead in the game. My take to this is very simple: either I leave the company and find a better one or do what people always say " IF I CANT BEAT THEM JOIN THEM"
Or you know mind your own business and do your job. Unless you are in position to fire them or tell them what to do, get over it.
Snitches get stitches or so they say
I work 2 jobs 1 is a government organisation and the other is my own business
This is the simple fact of life if you dont give financial incentive to workers they will not work any harder then they have too
Also anyone workin for less then $35 an hour i wouldnt blame them for doing f*** ALL
The fact of the matter is Management is usually the most overpaid people in the work place for the lack of work they do. The fact that 5 people in your work place do sweet f*** all is the managers fault not theirs
Working in a government organisation has taught me that management is 99% always the problem - sure people are lazy and unmotivated (god knows im prob one of them) but if you paid me to do more i would. At my work place they refuse to pay bonuses for meeting KPIs, give paid overtime only time in Lieu etc it is useless shit like that, that makes works do less.
MORAL OF THE STORY YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
Flip side when im working my own business and earnings is directly related to performance i bust my ass and basically dont stop for anything unless im not busy.
This.
Put in minimum effort, get paid. Put in 140% effort, get same pay
Mngmt wonders why employees dont go "above and beyond"
Obviously this is a generic statement and doesnt apply to all businesses, but to enough to make it matter
Ages ago in a job I busted my ass in a job, day and night, on weekend etc to get it stable, and got a 2 percent pay rise during yearly review. The useless gronk opposite to me who did nothing but speak utter Sh&it, got 5 percent, and he was useless as tits on a bull.
I stopped working Hardin that role that day.
I'll work hard by default but if it's unnoticed, and even worse the reward goes else where, I stop
The flip side to this attitude is that they are never going to be picked for any opportunities, promotions, pay rises etc. Doing the bare minimum is how you become a "lifer" in whatever job you're in.
Lol you clearly dont know government jobs - though i agree 'sometimes' the best worker gets the job usually for big jobs they are advertised both internally and externally hiring someone else that suits the position.
HOWEVER in my work place (government job) it is literally the CEOs mates doesnt matter if you are qualified, skilled hard working etc if you are not one of his old mates you got not chance in hell making it up the ranks. - I feel most companies have a who you know not what you know approach to promoting workers.
My friends that are tradesmen will all contest that point that it is literally the bosses mates (or family member) and has nothing to do with hard work and commitment to the job
The only way to truly get the best out of people is to provide a financial incentive to work harder - the lazy ones will no hack it and leave it works well in the real estate, Law, sales and insurance industries
I am a manager. Plenty of studies and my own experience is that intrinsically motivated people perform better than extrinsically rewarded people. That performance is sustained better with intrinsic rewards.
Extrinsic rewards only provide short term motivation before they become an expectation rather than an incentive.
When I employ people I try very hard to get people that have intrinsic motivator and that works exceptionally well.
I've known people in sales and insurance industries and they resent their reward being linked to sales targets. It makes them unhappy and they'll only do what they have to do to get the reward. So is a poor motivator.
@Thommo: Pretty sure you made the 1st part up, people paid more preform better the research STRONGLY supports that also business that have better remuneration packages get a better pool of talent ALSO an economic fact. - IE This is why CEO get paid so much…Although higher paid CEO doesn't equate to better business performance interestingly
There are studies to support better work place environments do result in better moral but simply put money over rules all
I agree that people who work in high pressured jobs don't necessarily love there job but they stay in the job because of one simple thing….Money!!!
But maybe your right but in my experience i work to the level I get paid i work in health care and unless you leave the profession for management you basically have a flat career structure
Well I am both a manager and a trained economist who has studied the organisational economics literature. You're both a bit wrong, but Pastry is wronger.
The divide on financial incentives is between those where you can easily and unambiguously measure someone's value to the firm, and those where the individual workers' value is real but hard to measure. A lot of team based jobs, a lot of knowledge workers and almost all 'caring' occupations - nurses, police, etc are the latter.
If you can easily measure output, the measure can't be easily gamed, and the output depends mostly on the INDIVIDUAL workers' effort, then cash really works. Think real estate sales, or piece work in a garment factory. In all other jobs - the great majority of jobs - financial incentives are at best merely a supplement and at worst utterly counterproductive. There you have to mainly rely on other motivations - pride in craftsmanship, belief they're making the world a better place, unwillingness to let other team members down, etc. That is, intrinsic motivations.
@derrida derider:
Money 'Merely a suppliment'
I don't see too many workers, working for free
As someone who works with a lot of doctors I can tell you a lot of them don't care about making the world a better place it is why a specialist appointment is like 300+ for 10mintues
I agree there are intrinsic motivators but that cannot be qualified what motivates you won't motivate me nessesarily but money motivates all
However….you are the expert and
Well I won't argue with an economist I conceded I'm wrong
@derrida derider: This topic reminded me of a youtube video which states why money incentives don't work.
I have two rules that I follow with every role I've ever had:
Start teaching someone on your team to do your role from day one. If no one can easily take on your role, you can't easily move out of it. Some of my closest friends over the years have been people that I beat out for a role, and I taught them as I learned myself. They almost always ended up taking over from me when I changed roles.
Learn your peers and your managers roles. I reach out to my peers in each new role and sell myself as a "universal backup". If they're willing to give me visibility and an opportunity to learn.. i'll help them out and back them up when needed. I offer to learn the roles on my own time, and at no expense. If you already know your managers role and those of your peers, you're a perfect candidate for the management position if they move elsewhere. You're also a good option for consolidation if one of your peers leave, and you can take on their staff and responsibilities.
I've worked my way up through the ranks in multiple companies now, and have my dream job with my dream company. I've worked alongside my share of people that have no ambition and only want to deliver the work that they believe they're paid for.. most of them are still in the entry level jobs they started in 20 years ago. I don't hire those people for any role in my org, and I reward the people that have ambition and show it in a non-destructive way. There are good companies and managers out there, that will reward you for your effort. If you're not currently working in one, it's worth looking.
@kingmw: excellent video, thank you for sharing. actually comes at a good time. i am having this very same internal argument (money vs enjoying work) right now. the only thing that does make things slightly difficult is the cost of living, however, depending on who you speak to, its all relative and the current age, overall cost of living is the lowest its been in a long time.
i guess sometimes we also need to step back and be appreciative for where we live, compared to other places in the world. no one is trying to shoot us, drop bombs on us, we have excellent healthcare systems, plenty of land, fresh air and water etc
one thing ive noticed from working in various corporate environments: workplaces are very similar to high schools. what i mean by this is you still have the regular groups, cool kids, nerds, jocks, all wearing a different type of uniform. at a management level, this still applies, its human nature to some extent to surround yourself with like minded people, so if a manager has a choice of promoting someone he likes and works well with, compared to someone they dislike and just cant get along, the choice is obvious.
@derrida derider: Excellent observations.
There's also the "stage of career" effect too, as in older, more established, workers tend to chase money less and other intangibles more (prestige, not having to do overtime, etc) than younger workers.
Spot on mate.
@Praeto: Yet to find one that doesn't expect you to work every single day of your life and in your sleep.
One day though.
These people make me look smart in comparison. Can't complain there :p
I know what you mean though. We must work at the same place.
TLDR - Grass is always greener. Forget other people and just focus on your career and getting that dream job you always wanted.
Good leadership is the key. Refer 20 60 20 leadership rule. About 25% from the bad 20 is what I would personally fire without a second thought
If everyone is in on it then happy days.
One of the 5 your looking at is now looking at you… Lol
Was it an article by Boston Consulting Group? They just fired 6000 ppl in NAB.
Its a pointless loop anyway, if a supervisor lets people be lazy, then your complaints wont do anything.
We had a dude at my work quit, then get rehired despite everyone openly hating him for all the issues he causes.
Maybe the problem is that they cannot, "be fired easily" . Fair work laws are good and all, but it does make it much harder these days to fire someone, even if they are lazy and/or incompetent. Easier to keep them on then to fire them might be the reason some of these people remain employed there.
Laziness has led to innovation for me. I can pretty much do anything in 20% of the time it takes others. Then you establish the position of the radar and stay under. 80% of personal time to do whatever the hell you want. Welcome to corporate bs.
You are still not the people I am talking about mate, I am talking about those lazy people who wont finish their work and made random excuses to palm it off to the other person. I dont care if someone finishes their work in 10% of their time and then watches you tube the whole day.
Having spent over 5 years working in contact centers where the shared workload (call queues) is highly visible I can tell you that every person, from the absolute laziest to the hardest working, believes that they are doing more work than the next guy. Just remember that it's often hard to see the real amount of work someone is doing and people work differently (i.e. high output/average quality vs. high quality/average output) so unless you're in a management role just stay in your lane and don't bother yourself with it.
Work in a normal office environment and yes all the classic corporate rules apply:
- can pick a few people easily who are clearly dumber or more lazy than the rest
- the performers just get lumped with more work cos management knows they are reliable
- ideally said people get rewarded at performance review type processes, but being a big corporate environment the whole process is bullshit thus no appropriate compensation
Our manager is a great guy but even he I think knows it's more hassle than it's worth either getting rid of someone or threatening them to doing a decent job (I definitely don't use the word "encourage" cos they are over paid as it is for the lack of output).
20/80 is probably about right for our office.
hows this for life in 2018: an employee put in a "bullying" complaint to HR because their manager asked them to do extra work. you cant even fire someone nowdays without a formal 3 step process for fear of litigation.
True, performance reviews seem to follow the bell curve, and management doesen't seem concerned or have put things onto the too hard basket.
For my business I would rather employ lazy people because they always find the quickest ways to do things and no it's not related to my username. I know you all want to make a snarky comment and can't resist I KNOW!
you think you know but you dont
As much as i want to believe that lazy people find the quickest ways to do things like the next person. Reality is they find ways not have to do things because lazy.
Agree they find dodgy ways to take sick leave's , wont come on time, when a new process is made they make smart a** comments and push you onto projects at the last time
Worked in the public sector and in my experience you could of layed off half the department.
First, they came for the lazy people and I did not speak out…
Yep sure can. Just need to find 4 names as Im one of them.
I vote for Dave, get rid of him. Bloody Dave…
Who here has read 'The great american dream' by Moonshine from the something awful forums - its a perfect read for this thread, but i just noticed is no longer accessible where i knew i could find it: http://shii.org/knows/American_Dream
Anyone got any ideas?
In a commercial or knowledge-based environment, anyone who cannot or has not put themselves through an Honours year or program of similar mental rigour is probably easily replaceable. The hurdles to undertake an academic qualification in law, commerce and other disciplines have dropped considerably as the number of acquisitive 'universities' continues to expand. Competition and consequent unprecedented employment requirements for professional roles (it appears, anecdotally, that most non-medical G08 graduates, even with double degrees and a litany of impressive extracurriculars, will never secure a full-time job in their field) seem to confirm this view.
Not sure why I'm being downvoted, even if my post is a little digressive.
I could use this post to write a paper Titled "The Applicaiton of Dunning-Kruger to Human Resource Management".
The person that you would fire, because you don't know what they do, because it's not your business to know, might actually play a key role in you getting your pay in a timely manner.
You can fire me, so long as I get a decent redundancy package, and so long as you realise when I come back as a consultant I'm going to charge at least four times as much.
they have probably done their share of the work by the time you see them sitting around doing nothing, not everyone doing their work in the same pace :)
The perception can stem from not understanding what people do in the first place, especially in places where sr management and plebs are co-located; but generally speaking, there is a lot of deadwood out there…
Great thread. Not quite as good as the cake money thief, but still good.
Get her fired??? Effing jail time i say. Gotta make an example of these cake money thieves.
/s
I thought about it and to me it was true, I work at a telco and I can pick five people (I can even see them right now) who can be made redundant.
The fella using his work time to make these posts on a website unlikely related to his job might be one of the five people….
My wife (and her team) got called lazy at work once, by an external auditor, who had been there a whole 3 days.
They all took annual leave for 2 weeks the next day, given they were lazy it would make no difference right, and management could not say so no, given they hired the auditor to make this sweeping assessment.
The proviso being,
1.) if the company wants them to come back earlier, they will, but the auditor must cease work and leave the building.
2.) if they are indeed lazy and not missed, they will happily find new jobs.
3.) in that 2 weeks they will attend interviews for new jobs regardless of 1 or 2 and risk the staff leaving.
i'll let you decide which one happened. after a whole 3 days
Just because you think someone is lazy, might just be your perception. My perception of you is if you have time to notice, you might not be doing too much yourself.
Some people work in bursts and are quick, some people work slower over longer periods. Some people start early, some start late, some work at home, some talk all day, some dont talk at all, and some just dont work .
When you manage people you need to understand everyone is different, and to try and work with them to get the best from them
for what its worth i was once in charge of blokes who worked 3 * 16 hours shifts a week and made a bucket tonne of money, and probably did nothing 75% of the time. its what they could do when needed that was important. Are they lazy?
This is a funny question. I own a software company and after one of our recent projects the good guys that did all the work quit because they were sick and tired of having to carry the deadwood. Obviously the deadwood guys hung on. We now have the prospect of going into the next project with only the deadwood so I fired a few of them. The supervisor that recommended this action to me has been receiving calls from the now unemployed guys and is feeling sorry for them. he is telling me to hire them back, when i ask who is going to do the work and run him through the history fo them getting drunk at work, sneaking off during the work day to sleep in their car in the carpark, pretending to be sick then posting pictures on facebook of themselves playing golf when they should have been at work etc etc, all whilst the rest of the team is pulling all-nighters to get the project finished, he says 'I know they're useless' but I feel sorry for them. I think that a bit of this goes on. Unfortunately for those guys their pay comes out of my back pocket and i am liable to my clients if we dont get the project delivered. I dont feel sorry enough for them that i am prepared to risk being sued so that they can enjoy a carefree life.
Spot on Mate, My original post got side tracked, this is exactly what I meant. I am tired of filling up for lazy colleagues - especially those five, they take sick calls at the last minute (brining in dodgy doctor letters) this led me working on a project that I wasn't across and made me miss my daughters birthday. I have worked with these deadwoods for 3 years now and they don't seem to get better, I have tried to help them in every way, but they de-motivate others and never seem to leave. They come in late making up excuses and when asked to stay back they want overtime. Ughhh its a pain to even talk about them…..
But that's MY stapler!
Yes.But I think the laziness in mind is worse then action laziness.
Sounds like purgatory