Keeping Boss Informed

Rather than have my boss constantly checking on me when working from home, perhaps the best way to keep him or her informed is to bcc every correspondence!!

Picture created using FB Avatars

Facing the Boss

I woke up this morning feeling a little depressed over my job situation. I have been having such moods frequently of late ever since the team I was working in was absorbed into another department headed by a lady boss using top-down management style.

The lady boss is a practitioner of every aspect of what we typically learned from management studies in using negative motivational tactics to get staff working in fear following a hierarchical structure. Her personality and disposition is generally fierce, and she constantly breathes down the necks of her staff every weekly department meeting. Words from her are like fire—hot and fiery, and like storm—cold and harsh, filled full with regular reprimands. The way her staff is handled is similar to the way elementary school teachers treat the kids. It is as if every of the staff owes her a living, and any difference in opinions finds trouble for oneself. Few are willing to put their jobs on the line to practice the freedom of speech.

Such is the depressive moods I faced these days, which similar feelings have once faded from my past many years ago. No such negative feelings existed when I began working in this corporation some six years ago. Things have been fairly well with everyone doing their part as a team, working with each other to resolve issues rather than being driven from top-down. When I woke up this morning, however, the first thing that came to mind was the urgent need to calm down and seek God. I knew in my heart there was a verse that express well how I felt and therefore desperately searched for the Bible verse to calm myself and cry out to God. I knew I was already late for work, but felt the need to read the verse I was seeking to express myself, and eventually found it.

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. (Psalm 42:5 NAS)

I then read the entire Psalm 42 and realized the cry in verse 5 ended with the same starting words in verse 11, but with a different ending.

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

In my desperation I cried out to God. Yes, I shall call upon the Lord and seek His face in my time of difficulty.

Difference between Bosses and Subordinates

Ever wonder why you work so hard and still get nowhere?

You may be more skillful or knowledgeable than your supervisor or your boss, but you are the one doing all the work while he or she is the one who needs only to do the talking to get things done. It is, of course, possible that your supervisor knows better than you, and his or her time may be more precious than yours, but at the end of the road, it is usually (or always) you who sees things through.

Here lies the difference. People believes bosses use brains, subordinates use brawn, skills, or qualities most deem not worth much. In reality, all these are plain abuse, the conditioning of a capitalist's wayward mentality, shaped by governance and society. The philosophy underlining this belief is:

"Being able is good, but being able to make use of able people is better" - me.

If you, like me, are facing the same nonsense as an employee, then you must learn to do things differently. You'll need to do whatever you can to show your visibility, to obtain the recognition you deserve, to show the work you've done, or lose your credibility and be misplaced or replaced eventually!

Problem with Corporate Management

Many of us working in organisations often wonder why the management seems to always make lives difficult for their staff.

We constantly see organisational and departmental restructuring which affects the way we work. We see corporate reengineering exercise where people get axed. We see and hear things that threaten our livelihood and we feel our supervisors are always picking on us. We suspect and know there are spies for management who are our peers, always lurking around our backs, ready to stab on us at every opportunity.

One of the many ways our management keeps an eye on us is through spies tapping on the grapevines. Grapevines are informal gatherings by colleagues to discuss anything in general, and in general, workers talk about their bosses, their unhappiness at work and the likes. A manager can either directly plant a spy in grapevines or indirectly insinuate to get his or her staff, especially secretaries, to convey messages. For example, the manager can unofficially leak news about possible retrenchment to secretaries who unknowingly hint about it at these informal gatherings, thus motivating staff to work harder, or make them demoralised and then play saviour to win support from staff.

Such are the politics working in a corporate world and these by no means are totally the fault of management. The truth is, managers are trained by education to do such things. Attend any business management study and you will find all these written in the textbooks.

Another technique frequently used by management is the reinforcement theory, which takes the view that workers are by nature lazy and must be scrutinized or manipulated constantly in order to yield results expected by management. In short, it means behaviour modification. The management may introduce a consequence or change the environment in order to increase or maintain frequency of staff participation. These may include punishment, controlled rewards, psychological segregation, or other methods. For examples, the threat or rumours of possible retrenchments, punishment of a staff to set an example, and the cutting of bonuses. By using such shock or depravity tactics, staff will then modify their behaviours and change attitudes toward work.

Some of us who are reading this article may be supervisors, managers, or bosses in our own companies. As people in a position to determine the behaviours of others, we must constantly be reminded that not all techniques we learnt from books or education are in real life practical. We ought to treat staff as human beings and hence we must use our own brains to decide what is best and not rely on learnt knowledge. Instead of manipulating, we may wish to consider how to increase staff's job satisfaction so that they may willingly sacrifice their time and efforts to go an extra mile.

To workers who are suffering at the hands of the management, know that all these exploitations are not necessary intentional on the part of the supervisors or managers. All these techniques used by them are not new and have been taught in academic schools. It is a flaw of the education system that makes them what they are. If we can make them see their wrongs and 'educate' them through staff consensus and feedback, or even through unions, let us try to make it work. However, if such methods don't work, then use the techniques they use on us to reverse the role, and hopefully in this way get attention from them by getting our message across.