What will you say to a subordinate who asks you in the hallway if you have a minute to spare? Would you say, “Not now, I have two consecutive meetings to attend”? Or would you say, “Oh, yes, please, come walk with me to my office. What I can do for you?”
There’s the story of an ambitious, driven senior manager whose department was plagued by an unusually fast employee turnover. Once in a while, she would launch massive recruitment of rank-and-file employees to keep up with productivity quotas she herself had thought up to earn for her brownie points from the higher-ups. Her non-negotiable requirement: Keep her direct reports and the staff busy by having them work overtime most days of the week so her department would be known as the prime driver of company profit.
Time was when the traditional suggestion box in offices was as ubiquitous as the traffic enforcer willing to lend an ear to commuters and motorists who’d lost their way. Today, you will hardly see one in corporate organizations. And if you do, it has generally turned into a mere office fixture coated with dust—something that sticks out like a sore thumb.
In this nation, consumers and entrepreneurs have to be on the alert at all times. The fact is, they cannot always rely on the government to protect them and their interests.
Susan and some co-workers had wished they could hit the sack after their night shift ended at 7 a.m. But they chose to stay until 10 a.m. (the hour their department manager had set their meeting) lest they earned her ire.
“We need to get rid of rules—real and imagined—and encourage the independent thinking of others and ourselves!”
We’ve all heard of workaholics—those who work out of compulsion to earn a lot of money, pursue wealth and keep up with the Joneses, get promoted or please a boss, those who set impossibly high standards, or those who have become so dependent emotionally on work that without it, they’ll probably fall apart or lose their identity.
The CEO should have just sent us all an e-mail.”
For a lot of people, a new year brings with it some hope that they’ll get another crack at making good some resolutions and promises they broke the previous year, especially with regard to handling their finances. But truth be told, it’s not so much as vowing to do several undertakings as taking the first steps that will lead them to that direction.
’Tis the season to give and pay back, and the sound of cash registers ringing loudly in malls is temptation enough to shop till you drop. But with money getting tighter by the day and more people not finding jobs, families are now more careful about how they spend their income and windfalls. For parents and couples, the holidays have become a source of family conflict and stress—what with so many people to give gifts to.
Let’s face it—the workplace isn’t where people are treated like family or a home where everyone may be forgiven for committing grave sin, much like the prodigal son. Far from it. In fact, the workplace is known by some unsavory names: “jungle” (where survival of the fittest reigns supreme) and “hell” (literally and figuratively). This is, of course, not to say that employees should be jaded, paranoid, or distrustful everywhere they turn. It’s simply that they should not be naïve or assume too many things at work. Here are some of them:
MANILA, Philippines—Ever encountered a co-worker or colleague who’s had a penchant for encroaching on someone else’s job description thus creating resentment and squabbling? Or overheard someone at another department saying something like “don’t show this to the guys in finance—they’ll just screw it up”? The first example may well be someone overzealous about revision and [...]
