How to discuss touchy subjects with management
July 24, 2018 12:27 AM Subscribe
I have a meeting this week where I've been encouraged to "brainstorm ideas" about how to make my organization run better. I have ideas, but I'm not at all sure the Boss is going to like hearing them. Please help me find a nonthreatening way to communicate them.
I need to be purposefully vague for what are probably obvious reasons, but here's the outline: I work in a large-ish organization (around 200-250 people). My department is about 45 people total, and I'm a supervisor in the department; I have four or five people who report to me -- it varies.
It's generally recognized that my department generally performs most of the substantive work of this organization; we do the groundwork and everyone sort of works up from there. We also have the most difficult job in the organization because we work on very, very tight deadlines and the work can be mentally exhausting. As I say, this is more or less undisputed by anyone who works here, at least publicly; we hear over and over again how much they appreciate our work and how we're "the heart of [organization]." Which is great! But.
The problem is that we are always, and I do mean always, at the bottom of the heap when it comes to any resources distributed around the organization. The non-supervisory staff is paid less than a lot of the other staff despite having more difficult jobs and far longer hours. (Please just accept that the pay structure cannot change at all, and there's no negotiation on that, so stuff like "ask for more money" is a nonstarter.) And the deadlines are set in stone in a way that makes no sense. They'll rarely ever adjust them even for stuff like illness or death in the family; we're just expected to catch up on nights and weekends. This could be easily ameliorated by occasionally giving some of our work to other departments, but that isn't done for reasons that have never been made clear to me.
We're also also always the ones to be passed over for office space, and to add insult to injury, there have been members of this department actually tossed out of offices to give them to personnel in other departments, some of whom are actually junior to people in my department -- that is, junior in both seniority and educational qualification.
Needless to say, this stuff is pretty demoralizing. I actually have it better than a lot of the staff, who mostly work longer hours than I do. But it's hard to work in a job where you feel totally disrespected day after day. And it somehow makes it better, not worse, that management is always telling us how much we're appreciated. It's as though someone always said, "You're doing a great job! You're awesome!" but never gave you a raise in ten years.
So I'd like to communicate that to management at the meeting later this week. I mean, what I'd like to say is something like, "You really need to stop making it clear that you have total disrespect for the such and such Department -- stop giving away our offices, stop piling more and more work on us, stop acting like our time is far less valuable than anyone else's here." Obviously, that's not terribly diplomatic. How can I communicate my concerns in a way that will be heard and won't mark me as a malcontent? (I have discussed this with many of my colleagues, and there is a consensus that we're treated poorly.)
Thank you in advance.
I need to be purposefully vague for what are probably obvious reasons, but here's the outline: I work in a large-ish organization (around 200-250 people). My department is about 45 people total, and I'm a supervisor in the department; I have four or five people who report to me -- it varies.
It's generally recognized that my department generally performs most of the substantive work of this organization; we do the groundwork and everyone sort of works up from there. We also have the most difficult job in the organization because we work on very, very tight deadlines and the work can be mentally exhausting. As I say, this is more or less undisputed by anyone who works here, at least publicly; we hear over and over again how much they appreciate our work and how we're "the heart of [organization]." Which is great! But.
The problem is that we are always, and I do mean always, at the bottom of the heap when it comes to any resources distributed around the organization. The non-supervisory staff is paid less than a lot of the other staff despite having more difficult jobs and far longer hours. (Please just accept that the pay structure cannot change at all, and there's no negotiation on that, so stuff like "ask for more money" is a nonstarter.) And the deadlines are set in stone in a way that makes no sense. They'll rarely ever adjust them even for stuff like illness or death in the family; we're just expected to catch up on nights and weekends. This could be easily ameliorated by occasionally giving some of our work to other departments, but that isn't done for reasons that have never been made clear to me.
We're also also always the ones to be passed over for office space, and to add insult to injury, there have been members of this department actually tossed out of offices to give them to personnel in other departments, some of whom are actually junior to people in my department -- that is, junior in both seniority and educational qualification.
Needless to say, this stuff is pretty demoralizing. I actually have it better than a lot of the staff, who mostly work longer hours than I do. But it's hard to work in a job where you feel totally disrespected day after day. And it somehow makes it better, not worse, that management is always telling us how much we're appreciated. It's as though someone always said, "You're doing a great job! You're awesome!" but never gave you a raise in ten years.
So I'd like to communicate that to management at the meeting later this week. I mean, what I'd like to say is something like, "You really need to stop making it clear that you have total disrespect for the such and such Department -- stop giving away our offices, stop piling more and more work on us, stop acting like our time is far less valuable than anyone else's here." Obviously, that's not terribly diplomatic. How can I communicate my concerns in a way that will be heard and won't mark me as a malcontent? (I have discussed this with many of my colleagues, and there is a consensus that we're treated poorly.)
Thank you in advance.
Are you the IT/development department by any chance?
What you have is a list of complaints, and however valid, that's not what you've been asked for. They're not asking how to make your life better, or your staff's jobs better. They've asked how the organization can run better - and what they really mean is, how can we do more work in less time or make more money etc - the stuff that they care about. Saying that improved staff morale will increase productivity is not always an easy sell, especially when they've shown that they have no regard for your morale.
How will relaxing deadlines benefit the company? How will giving you better offices improve how the organization runs? You have to look at the complaints you have in concrete terms of how this bad management style is negatively affecting how your department runs. Do you have high turnover? More sickness? Because there are no negative consequences to what they're doing then there is no motivation to change it
posted by missmagenta at 1:46 AM on July 24, 2018 [7 favorites]
What you have is a list of complaints, and however valid, that's not what you've been asked for. They're not asking how to make your life better, or your staff's jobs better. They've asked how the organization can run better - and what they really mean is, how can we do more work in less time or make more money etc - the stuff that they care about. Saying that improved staff morale will increase productivity is not always an easy sell, especially when they've shown that they have no regard for your morale.
How will relaxing deadlines benefit the company? How will giving you better offices improve how the organization runs? You have to look at the complaints you have in concrete terms of how this bad management style is negatively affecting how your department runs. Do you have high turnover? More sickness? Because there are no negative consequences to what they're doing then there is no motivation to change it
posted by missmagenta at 1:46 AM on July 24, 2018 [7 favorites]
They don't care about you as evidenced by their treatment of you.
You can either accept this and work to improve the lives of your colleagues in spite of this or you can make them care.
Path B is difficult. It's why they killed the unions.
Work out how much money it would cost the business if you all quit, or if 5% quit or 50%.
Work out your churn rate and how close you are to those scenarios.
If the business is not incurring any cost in treating you this way, why would they change?
posted by fullerine at 2:16 AM on July 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
You can either accept this and work to improve the lives of your colleagues in spite of this or you can make them care.
Path B is difficult. It's why they killed the unions.
Work out how much money it would cost the business if you all quit, or if 5% quit or 50%.
Work out your churn rate and how close you are to those scenarios.
If the business is not incurring any cost in treating you this way, why would they change?
posted by fullerine at 2:16 AM on July 24, 2018 [8 favorites]
the questions that get asked by upper management when facing any proposal - in my experience - can be mainly broken down to: "Will this proposal increase value in some way? if so, by how much?", or "Will this proposal decrease risk in some way? if so, what is the value gained in this?". Your situation does not sound optimal - for you. You need to make it understood that it is not optimal - for the business. Try to frame your grievances in the form of practically implemented solutions where you can demonstrate value.
posted by alchemist at 2:42 AM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by alchemist at 2:42 AM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
The issues that you describe are likely to impact the company in terms of reduced productivity, increased turnover, and failure to meet deadlines. What you need are suggestions for quality-of-life improvements that would improve your department's performance in those areas. So for instance if rigid deadlines are causing staff to overwork themselves, burn out, stop trying, and then eventually quit, you could propose a more flexible scheduling system that takes into account illness and other unplanned events. If the expectation of working from home is causing people to jump ship for places with better work-life balance, you could propose policies that would improve that. That kind of thing.
However, if I were you I would honestly just start looking for another job at a place with a reputation for valuing its employees. I fought the same type of battle as you're describing for over a year at my previous employer, with absolutely zero result. Then I jumped ship, and I'm immediately much, much happier at my job. It is often easier to invest yourself in a company that already shares your values than it is to try and change the values of the place where you already work. There's a reason your working conditions suck, and it's not because your company doesn't know what it's doing. It's because it doesn't care.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:23 AM on July 24, 2018 [24 favorites]
However, if I were you I would honestly just start looking for another job at a place with a reputation for valuing its employees. I fought the same type of battle as you're describing for over a year at my previous employer, with absolutely zero result. Then I jumped ship, and I'm immediately much, much happier at my job. It is often easier to invest yourself in a company that already shares your values than it is to try and change the values of the place where you already work. There's a reason your working conditions suck, and it's not because your company doesn't know what it's doing. It's because it doesn't care.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:23 AM on July 24, 2018 [24 favorites]
Can they give you some concrete objectives? I ask because ‘make the organisation run better’ is impossible to brainstorm without identying why they think it needs to.
What are the problems they are trying to solve (higher production? Lower turnover? Fewer internal grievances? Reduced costs?). Until you agree where the problems are it’s going to be difficult to show how improving things for your dept will help. For an example, if the high level issue is around productivity you could focus on how to fix some of the workflow, or how to weed out tasks that are low value but keep getting bumped up because it’s someone senior’s vanity project. If the issue is in managing space you could ask to consider relocating your team to ensure your critical tasks don’t get mired in upheaval? If it’s around expanding efforts how about asking for more resource?
Essentially you need them to tell you what they are willing to work with you on, and then you offer a worked through approach. This means using the ‘brainstorm’ to identify and talk through areas for investigation, rather than setting out a load of ‘fixes’ that are unlikely to get buy in. Drill into the issues from their perspective.
You can totally do this constructively, don’t bring individual names in - only ever talk about functions, roles and processes and once the priority issues are agreed tell them you’ll come back with some thoughts on what could help once you’ve had a chance to reflect.
At that point you can draw up some concrete plans to show (for example) how homeworking options or a simplified process or a concentrated effort on fewer tasks or whatever will lead to the result they want.
posted by freya_lamb at 5:43 AM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
What are the problems they are trying to solve (higher production? Lower turnover? Fewer internal grievances? Reduced costs?). Until you agree where the problems are it’s going to be difficult to show how improving things for your dept will help. For an example, if the high level issue is around productivity you could focus on how to fix some of the workflow, or how to weed out tasks that are low value but keep getting bumped up because it’s someone senior’s vanity project. If the issue is in managing space you could ask to consider relocating your team to ensure your critical tasks don’t get mired in upheaval? If it’s around expanding efforts how about asking for more resource?
Essentially you need them to tell you what they are willing to work with you on, and then you offer a worked through approach. This means using the ‘brainstorm’ to identify and talk through areas for investigation, rather than setting out a load of ‘fixes’ that are unlikely to get buy in. Drill into the issues from their perspective.
You can totally do this constructively, don’t bring individual names in - only ever talk about functions, roles and processes and once the priority issues are agreed tell them you’ll come back with some thoughts on what could help once you’ve had a chance to reflect.
At that point you can draw up some concrete plans to show (for example) how homeworking options or a simplified process or a concentrated effort on fewer tasks or whatever will lead to the result they want.
posted by freya_lamb at 5:43 AM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
Your office doesn't exactly sound like the kind of place where everyone's encouraged to speak up and ideas win or lose on their merits. In such an environment, it's important to find a powerful ally to champion your ideas. Do you have any idea who might be sympathetic and willing to stand up for you? I sort of doubt that they will change any of the things you list out of the goodness of their hearts: it's probably working quite well from their perspective.
Find yourself a better job, and when you do, keep in touch with your former colleagues and see if they would like a better job as well. Let them feel the business impact of their policy. And don't be surprised if they're like, "Yeah, it's been factored in. Nothing personal." There are places that knowingly burn through their staff, and some of them do quite well.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 5:43 AM on July 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
Find yourself a better job, and when you do, keep in touch with your former colleagues and see if they would like a better job as well. Let them feel the business impact of their policy. And don't be surprised if they're like, "Yeah, it's been factored in. Nothing personal." There are places that knowingly burn through their staff, and some of them do quite well.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 5:43 AM on July 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
Are there consequences that can be highlighted as a result of what is occurring as you’ve outlined? Does low morale mean higher turnover increasing to higher training costs? More mistakes? Does overworked staff equal more mistakes, and do those mistakes have a dollar amount attached to them? (Or can you infer dollars? These numbers are pretty much always made up in some sense, as long as you can defend them reasonably). In the end, how does addressing these concerns affect the bottom line? Highlight that, and then have a plan to address these concerns that would improve the bottom line. In the end, it’s always about the money.
posted by cgg at 5:57 AM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by cgg at 5:57 AM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
Is this unhappiness leading to high turnover or unreliable work? If not, be prepared to hear/infer that this system (mistreat people and experience no consequences for it) is actually working quite well for the company.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 7:45 AM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 7:45 AM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Maybe frame all this as "risk management," that all this stress has made the department brittle and at risk of sudden high turnover or other forms of collapse / unexpected failure.
posted by salvia at 10:34 AM on July 24, 2018
posted by salvia at 10:34 AM on July 24, 2018
I've been in this situation.
If your department is continually working late, then you're understaffed. Just present: "We need to hire more staff for our department to meet the required workload". It worked for me. If they say no, it will eventually be their problem.
Regarding deadlines, it just happens because of flukes and tides of client demands which are beyond our control. But it helps to stay in close touch with sales staff, and gently educating them about over promising reasonable deadlines. If your department needs more help in specific situations due to staff issues, then request help from other departments if they can (sometimes they can't). If they say no, it will eventually be their problem.
Regarding feeling underpaid in comparison to the new kids: the law of the land is that loyal subjects are generally undervalued, and fresh faces are overpaid, and that there is almost no way for an employer to experience that epiphany about how much they value your labour until after you are gone. The only heavy negotiating power that you have is to leave and go somewhere else, which is what I eventually did, and probably what you should do. (Some people might dangle offers from other places in salary re-negotiations, but that can turn pretty wierd...)
posted by ovvl at 4:52 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
If your department is continually working late, then you're understaffed. Just present: "We need to hire more staff for our department to meet the required workload". It worked for me. If they say no, it will eventually be their problem.
Regarding deadlines, it just happens because of flukes and tides of client demands which are beyond our control. But it helps to stay in close touch with sales staff, and gently educating them about over promising reasonable deadlines. If your department needs more help in specific situations due to staff issues, then request help from other departments if they can (sometimes they can't). If they say no, it will eventually be their problem.
Regarding feeling underpaid in comparison to the new kids: the law of the land is that loyal subjects are generally undervalued, and fresh faces are overpaid, and that there is almost no way for an employer to experience that epiphany about how much they value your labour until after you are gone. The only heavy negotiating power that you have is to leave and go somewhere else, which is what I eventually did, and probably what you should do. (Some people might dangle offers from other places in salary re-negotiations, but that can turn pretty wierd...)
posted by ovvl at 4:52 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Because if the answer is just "increased morale" this organisation has already shown you they are not smart enough to value that.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:11 AM on July 24, 2018 [18 favorites]