Work Reform

True employee engagement is Unionization.

But it makes me feel so empowered and involved in change. Maybe we can find the budget to have a pizza party for the team who made the company millions. Probably not though. Money is tight right now.

Every year, we have to fill out a blank "what changes would you make" section, and every year, me and rhe maintenance crew (100+ people strong) put in "4 day work week". Thats all we want. It provides a better work life balance, and we are efficient enough to get it done. But year after year, crickets.

All the office schmos get working from home, "relaxation rooms" at the office, ergonimic furniture, blah blah blah, while us maintenance slobs (who had to keep working in the field through the pandemic) get sweet dick all.

Its frustrating because its not like I want to take away those benefits from the office workers, but it seems things get cushier and cushier for them while our jobs stay the same amount of shitty.

I went HAM on my most recent one. They’re anonymous but I’m sure my direct manager can tell my writing style. But the place I work for has been in refusing to do any hiring including backfills so now I’m a team of 1 doing what 7 people used to do and I let them know I’m not pleased.

I always get super triggered at the "Do you have a best friend at work?" question that my old organization used to roll out during engagement planning. No, you motherfuckers, I already have a best friend. They don't happen to work here.

So I answer no every single time. And then in the interview afterward they go on about how "well, it's not LITERALLY if your best friend works here. The survey just asks the question like that because blah blah blah...". Trying to over examine what it means to "have a best friend at work". To interpret that question in some other way to maybe get me to answer yes next year.

I don't care what the intent behind the question is, they will never convince me to not answer "no", unless my best friend happens to join our team. I feel like they're trying to gaslight me into feeling more connected to the team or some bullshit. Drives me up the fucking wall.

Apart from the inaction, these surveys are not really anonymous and each response gets reported back down individual managers with the response, ratings given, and count of their direct staff that have completed it.

Unfortunately, in my years as lead, I’ve seen this used more for managers to get a pat on the head or for managers to push people out, rather than implement any actual change.

We have surveys at my job 2-4 times a year, where we answer how we feel the company is doing in various aspects on a scale of 1-5.

Last year, they went over the results, focused on the lowest scores, and had our supervisors talk to their teams to have us make "action plans," to address the issues. In retrospect, I think it was my region's way to get us to score them higher on the surveys by giving us negative busy work if we scored them too low. But it backfired; we all said, nah, these are your issues, you action plan to fix them.

The whole thing is just ridiculous. Nothing important ever changes from this feedback.

I put "pay us more money" in every comment box I can. It hasn't worked yet, weirdly... It's just a tool so upper management can jerk themselves off to anything good they can find, justifying their continued repression of the workers. They can point to one comment going "I love it here!" and then say any bad comment must be a bad employee.

Even when I was in the military we did these “employee” surveys. We were encouraged to bring up any issues we had before the survey and leadership would act like they were listening to get us to put down positive remarks. Even if you still brought up your concerns nothing would be done about it.

I recently quit a job that was suspicious of how I interacted with clients since I was uncomfortable with sending "rate me" emails to boost the company's rating on google. I don't even answer those emails when I get them, why the hell would I send one?

Funny enough, I'm about to receive the results of our latest employee survey. I have about 15 direct employees, and at least with the one we use, it's completely anonymous. To just see results, 11 people need to have responded. To see written results, 25 ppl need to have responded (so I'm not going to get to see written results). As a manager, I honestly don't care who wrote what...I genuinely want to improve the work environment to make everyone happier. Employee surveys aren't the only input I use for making things better, and I certainly can't make magic happen, but I use the results and trends of the survey to push hard on upper management for what people are asking for. In fact, I'd say the survey results are the single metric that reflects my effectiveness as a manager. It sure sucks if these surveys are being misused or ignored - why on earth would you want respond?? Happy people are proven to be more creative and innovative, plus its way more fun. If your manager doesn't care about that...all I can say is this manager doesn't represent the mentality of all managers - find a new job :-)

I just got invited to a staff BBQ at the manager's house. It's at 5PM. On Friday. I just spent 50 hours this week with you guys! Wasn't that enough?

I pointed out a glaring issue in my last one that had to do with keeping patient information secure. This was after bringing it up to two different managers and HR within a span of 6 months; an ample amount of time to fix the issue. Of course i was still ignored. Now everybody is pissed at me because the state didn’t ignore my complaint. :^)

All this make-believe "we listen to our employees" crap came to be around the mid 90s when MBAs started getting common in company management.

It's also when employees started being described as "human resources" and making your whole career in just the one company stopped being a thing (at least in Europe).

I was actually starting my career in Tech when this stuff started taking of in the Industry :/

My job actually did listen and gave us 6 holidays paid after the survey.

I feel this post so much.

Does anyone have advice for how to approach 1:1s with my manager when they ask questions like this? I am extremely burnt out. But I also struggle with not being honest about my feelings (my default is honesty and openness). I don’t want more attention from my manager. I just want to quiet quit and suck down as many paychecks as I can before I get so burnt out that I am forced to quit.

My job actually did listen and gave us 6 holidays paid after the survey.

I always include data that shows how they are fucking me on CoLA. Literally every survey and Glassdoor post has wage data included. It's important you point out the good and bad not just to corporate, but to your fellow workers.

I recently tested out our system for reporting problems anonymously. It was utter crap. Raised to my boss who is C-level, I don't know, I think it's intended to be utter crap. Sometimes I just feel like I'm trying to nail jelly to a tree.

i gotta fill out that stupid survey at my own job now and also the lackluster self review.

For three years now, I've put in real low scores and real critical comments on these things, and literally everyone I know at work says they've done the same (we are all so stressed) but then next quarter comes along and the execs share the survey results and wouldn't you know it, engagement is great, the best it's ever been, no problems here!

Amazing how that happens.

Hey, you know what? If it was my job to make management-level decisions, I would be in management. Fuck you, do your own job.

I'm lucky to work for a place that actually listens to its employees, so there's never any real need for 'employee engagement' campaigns.

But when I did, yes, it was insufferable bullshit.