(02-14-2019 07:47 PM)bullet Wrote: Work is moving to open offices. People demand immediate action with their constant e-mails. The emphasis on teamwork means endless meetings. There is no administrative support so all but the top execs are doing more and more clerical tasks.
So people are involved in trivia and constantly distracted.
Yes, all of that and more. I witnessed it the last 5 years before I retired. Corporations are lousy with busy work at each administrative level requiring educated decision makers to essentially fill out endless on line reports for various higher up departments. That keeps them from having direct supervision of those under them who fill out reports to them. In the end the clients feel alienated, the week and then the month is consumed with video conferences with those at a higher position justifying their existence, the aforementioned reports, and online complaints which move to the front of the line because HQ has a record of them. The people waiting in the lobby meet only low level non decision makers and leave pissed off. And since many of these business are owned by conglomerates some of them aren't expected to make money and are used for political or other reasons and as a write off against those that do turn a profit.
In these businesses everyone's focus is up instead of out toward the consumer or client.
It's the first thing I noticed after leaving 20 years of non profit work. Prior to the non profit I had had 16 years of corporate sales all with 90% face to face time with customers and clients. In my early years the emphasis was on the bottom line and most sales reps were on commission only and the home office didn't look over your shoulder if you were successful and your clients and customers were happy. In fact the only time you were asked about your business practices were at the year end meeting when they wanted you to pass on your most successful strategies and techniques. It was fun and quite possible the most satisfying job I ever had. I retired when I realized that I had to call no joy in the modern technological workplace. I sat on my butt in front of a computer screen about 70% of the time for a company whose worst issue was customer relations. There was no esprit de corps because of HR practices, and precious little productive time because of active shooter drills (damned silly for this business), fire safety requirements, and CBE's which ate up about a day a month.
What had been a simple expense report for personal use of vehicles turned into a down to the 10th of a mile computer log which required a different page entry for every daily call. I just gave them that damn money rather than waste another day a month filling out the log. My simplog for the IRS still worked just as well and the write off was better than the company one. Too bad that's gone now.
Bullet the bottom line was that technology had become a new and more horrible bureaucracy than anything I had ever contended with. Employees 40 and younger had few interpersonal skills, loved the tech, and spent way too much time on Facebook, LinkedIn, and shopping online. If you called them on it another electronic report had to be generated. A verbal warning was forbidden. The trust level sucked, and the young folks loved to play deny responsibility and assign blame.
My first day on the job lasted 8 days until the IT people showed up to give me the access codes required for the position. To put it into perspective those were 8 of the most productive days I spent there. I think I landed them around 10 new local accounts in those 8 days. After those 8 days the damned computer logged most of my time and that's the way they wanted it. The 10 accounts wasn't proof enough for regional boss to prove I had worked. He wanted to be able to see my time online.
IMO they deserve to be bankrupt. I might have stayed and worked another few years but I could retire and I hated walking in the doors of a company that had no business being in business and I didn't want another position. I haven't regretted it at all. I'm much happier and save the family money now that I have time to manage a mother, a mother in law, our affairs, and kick in extra time for charity, and work with my hands around the home instead of always having call someone in to do crappier work for more money.
I look at the state of American business now, and at the work ethic within the current workforce and think if we are leading the world in trade then the end is indeed near! God help us! I finished out 40 years in which most weeks in Sales I averaged 60 to 70 hours, but had my weekends, then in the 20 years of non profit I easily worked 70 hours a week including weekends. For my last 4 years I worked around 45-50 hours a week, and hated every minute of it. I remained productive but felt every day that I had an electronic governor on me to slow down my productivity. Perhaps the worst feature of all was that the accounting was handled in three different locations and the data entry personnel were wage and hour. I bet I spent a quarter of my time there tracking down which accounting location entered data incorrectly.
Sorry but I forgot to mention that my Supervisor in the structure on two occasions told me to pace myself and said at times he thought I was trying to make him look bad. The thought never crossed my mind to want his stupid position. I was just watching the calendar and counting the days.