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October 14, 2005
And the winner is...
Having worked as an IT consultant for a while now, I've had the opportunity to peer inside the corporate cultures of many of the companies playing at "the big end of town". Perhaps not surprisingly, the level of homogenity exhibited within these companies is truly remarkable. Much like supermarket shopping these days, you often have to make yourself consciously look around for the store's name as there is previous little difference between your average Coles and Safeways/Wollworths (apologies for the local references to non-Australian readers), a similarity presumably deliberate in it's cultivation.
A common attribute I see in every large corporate client I've worked for is the reward system for duties "above and beyond the call of duty" (which acronms quite nicely to ABCD :-)). On every project, there are regular presentations of some nominal gift (usually in voucher form) to those persons voted by peers or management seen to have gone one extra step in getting the project home.
But given you CannotMeasureProductivity, how is this selection of the project uber-workers achieved? As I'm sure you're all aware, it's almost always based on hours worked: the longer you spend at your desk, the higher your ABCD rating climbs.
So what are the downsides of this sort of behaviour? Principally, rewarding working longer hours sets up a feedback loop where staff feel pressured to work long hours to further their career. This has both long and short term downsides. In the short term, emphasis shifts inexorably from being smart enough to get the work done in the alloted time to no longer looking for more efficient ways of working. Where is the reward in taking half as long to get something done when the person who takes twice as long ends up with a weekend on the beach?
In the long term, the effects of prolonged periods of overtime are legion. Reduced morale, reduced productivity, poor health, increased stress on personal relationships are all natural outcomes of spending too much time at work.
What is needed is a way of rewarding people who work smarter, not longer. I'd be much happier seeing rewards go to the people who've worked hard to get their job done in the alloted time or who have instituted changes to allow the entire team to work quicker. But given that you cannot measure productivity, I'm quite frankly buggered to come up with a plan as to how this can be done properly - any ideas anyone?
Posted by Andy Marks at October 14, 2005 07:39 AM
Comments
I particularly like it when people receive awards for taking time out from ther holidays to go i to work and fix problems they created just before they went on vacation ;-)
Posted by: Simon Harris at October 14, 2005 04:04 PM
Could you ask coworkers in your team to vote on any reward allocations and promotions. If you save them time and this means that they do not have to work overtime, they will likely want to reward you.
They are also better understand what your work involves, and if you are doing more or less than should be expected, and be less likely to be taken in by those who try and manipulate the perceptions of management. As none of them want to work long hours, they probably won't consider this when voting.
Posted by: Richard Jonas at November 7, 2005 06:01 AM
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