I was driving to a client site yesterday when I got behind a pickup truck with a bummer sticker that said, “I hate my job.”  Now there’s a message if anyone is actually paying attention. It flashes like a neon sign as this employee pulls in and out of the employee parking lot, but I’m guessing it shows up even stronger in the employee’s behavior. 

Let’s consider this “message” from the employee’s perspective first. He knows that during this economic downturn, jobs are evaporating everyday. He also knows that if you loose a job, accidentally or on purpose, finding a new one may be more difficult then before. Yet, the he openly communicates his frustration through his actions and perhaps also through his inactions: a pretty good indicator of the severity of the problem.

He is willing to risk his job because his dissatisfaction is so high. He does not seem to care if anyone notices. I’d like to think he cares enough that he wants to be heard, otherwise, why would he advertise his feelings.

Now let’s consider what this might look like from the manager’s perspective. Let’s call the employee Harry and the manager Mira…

Mira: “Harry is at it again. This is the fourth Friday he’s left his team hanging in the middle of this critical project by not showing up.  How is it he always gets sick on a Friday? If we didn’t need him so badly right now, I’d fire him. “

 A while back, Jan Carlzon, who was President of Scandinavian Airlines, wrote a great little book called: “Moments of Truth” He was talking about the thousands of “moments” that add up to the customer’s total experience. This is a very good way to understand employee engagement too. There are numerous interactions, organizational systems and other workplace factors that impact employee engagement.   One of these factors is leadership’s ability to manage complaints.

A bumper sticker that says, “I hate my job” is a pretty serious complaint. My guess is that it represents a collection of complaints because no one has been paying attention for a long while. Even so, as the leader, you can begin to build engagement anytime you are committed to doing so.  

Many leaders shy away from complaints because they are “unpleasant.” But having an employee who moves into active sabotage mode out of sheer frustration is far more unpleasant. Having to continuously spend time interviewing, hiring and retraining is also unpleasant. Manage complaints when they first show up;  this will create engagement on your team. Don’t allow complaints to mature into full-blown workplace crises. 

Tags: Sightings by Susan S.
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We’ve run our company on Apple computers  for 23 years…long before the world discovered what we’ve always known:  Macs are cool. As much as we’ve loved our Mac’s, we’ve always had one or two applications that required a PC. Since the newer machines now have Intel chips, we easily can run Windows right on our machines without the need for a PC in our office. This, however, is exactly when all the trouble began…

As we were preparing for a presentation using a Window based applications we could not get this application to project.  After a few days of doing everything short of calling Microsoft we had made no progress.

Have your ever actually called Microsoft for help?  This is kind of a touchy subject in our office after Intuit was purchased by Microsoft.  The amazing support we had grown accustomed to seemed to disappear overnight. We dreaded that phone call and headed out instead to the Apple store with our Mac that was resisting behaving like a PC.

We knew this was not Apple’s problem so we disguised the visit with a different need and then casually brought up our frustration over the Window’s concern. Nothing quite like watching an “Apple Genius” thinking about a Window’s problem- these folks aren’t called “geniuses” for nothing. They seem unable to stop themselves when a “challenge” is brought to them. They are relentless. After about 15 minutes of web searching and trying different avenues our genius unlocked the solution to our problem.  He seemed pretty pleased with himself, but not nearly as pleased as we were.

Rule 1 suggests that sometimes you have to break the rules to serve customers. I am guessing Apple prefers that their employees help customers with “Apple” applications that run on the “Apple operating system.” That makes good business sense, but offering “outrageous” customer support (when you can) produces goodwill that can never replicated by even the most creative Apple commercials. 

Tags: 42 Rules of EE, Sightings by Susan S.
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