Monday 19 April 2010

How Not To Deal With A Cynical Staff: Part Three

In the previous two posts I showed you a mail from our Director that was supposed to be a response to the awful rating we gave the business in matters of morale and development, and explained what was wrong with what he said. Here's why it matters.

Well, first let's explain why I get worked up about it. Which is not quite the same thing. I am an alcoholic from an alcoholic background and guess what? Denial sets all my alarm bells ringing, twice the volume when it's an authority figure doing it. You don't have that problem so you don't even think the guy's in denial - you just think he's being evasive or going through the motions. That would be pretty much the same as denial in my book. If you're English and therefore think that denial is a desirable state of mind, you don't even think he's done anything wrong and are even now making excuse for him - except you think the excuses are reasons.

Now here's why it matters to you. You many be one of the wives, partners, friends and children of the 140,000 people who work at The Bank - because all the managers behave like that. In which case you have someone in your life who is just slightly more pissed-off, cynical, fed-up, distracted, harassed or stressed than they need to be. Which affects the quality of your life. I grant that the second-hand work-related crap you get is as nothing compared to the second-hand work-related crap teachers' partners get, but that doesn't mean your life couldn't be better if our Director didn't lie to us. (That's what denial is - lying.)

And if they don't listen to their own staff,  do you think they listen to you-the-customer?  Or do you think they treat as an idiot who doesn't get it. Do you think they listen to you when they do those surveys? Do you wonder why they provide what it suits them to provide, not what you want? And you wonder why you got mis-sold? And why they don't give a damn that you're complaining? A senior manager who is prepared to BS his staff is more than prepared to BS his customers as well.

And you wonder why non-one ever seems to know the answer to your questions? Why they always have to call their supervisor, ask a colleague or refer you to another department? That what the lack of training for us means to you. The average us simply doesn't know the answer - oh we could look it up on the Intranet, if we even knew where to start because, let me assure you, Wikipedia our Intranet is not.

What's really irritating is that it wouldn't take much to fix some of these things. It's not like it takes much to get a training and development programme going. This same organisation can spend a fortune on Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel and other bureaucratic wastes of time. Promotion is an issue in an organisation with a shallow pyramid (each manager has about eight-ten direct reports even in Head Office, whereas the Armed Forces do it in threes.) Sideways movement (aka job rotation) and pay rises are not so difficult. They shouldn't even ask us if we feel involved in decisions as a corporation isn't intended to be a democracy - they shuffle the deckchairs every year without any consultation (bad sections get the gloomy parts of the office).

What's interesting is that someone must be taking the results seriously because otherwise our Director would have said nothing. I'm guessing it's his one weak spot and the only thing that might be used to keep him back from the Next Big Move.

No comments:

Post a Comment