95% of Companies Just Don’t get It
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What don’t they get?
They don’t understand that they need to look after and nurture their employees and stop treating them like idiots with zero intelligence. I’ve talked about this before and it is one of the areas of business that really interests me.
Jason Fried, from 37signals has been featured recently over on AZcentral.com and he talked about how employees should be treated:
In order to appeal to us, employers need to rethink their rules a bit. Forget rigid 40-hour workweeks. Forget traditional company hierarchy…
One company that has led the charge in shifting the work-life paradigm, especially when it comes to employee relations, is 37signals. Headquartered in Chicago, it’s a multi-million dollar organization deeply committed to maintaining a work-life balance for its employees.
President Jason Fried says today’s employers present the biggest roadblock. “Simply put, employees are treated like children. They are not allowed to think for themselves, and there are too many layers of approval, just too much insulation that prevents anyone from doing anything. The traditional workplace is broken, and until someone realizes that, there’s always going to be conflict.”
This suffocation by protocol is dead on and will never allow an employee to “go beyond” or achieve something extra for the company. This is a critical link that most organizations continually fail to acknowledge. They are too focused on ensuring employees do no wrong that they actually prevent them from achieving anything beyond status quo.
Does your company do this? Or are you in the 95% (or higher) who don’t?
Related posts:
- Is your work place a good place to be?
- Good Customer Communication from 37 Signals
- Big companies love Google Apps
- Which Web 2.0 Companies are you using then?
- 10 Easy Steps for a Small Business to Get Set Up for Community Management
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6 Responses to “95% of Companies Just Don’t get It”
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BBC News- You may like to read this...
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Sounds like where I work, initiative is encouraged, right up to the point that you actually use it.
Also on the treated like children front, we can’t have glass pint glasses for water any more because of the danger that someone might break one. So now we’re stuck with plastic pint glasses. The way things are going I guess I should be happy they’re plastic pints & not those plastic drinks cups that have a lid and a handle on either side.
Stu, sounds like bibs may be provided too
It staggers me that employees initiative, creativity and positivity can be crushed so easily. They’re more concerned about not standing out for trying something, perhaps something remarkable. The thoughts go along the lines of
“keeop my head down, do as I’m told and don’t rock the boat”.
And you wonder why so many companies struggle to do something noteworthy. They should just treat their people with respect, and perhaps give them the 20% time that Google does, so they can actually use their grey matter once in a while.
yes, it really has got to the stage in our place were it’s better to do the wrong thing that you’ve been told to do than it is to do the right thing that no one told you to do.
no doubt there’ll be much discussion of this on the 4th
The 4th!?
yeah, I’d heard there were a few people planning on popping out for a quick coffee somewhere!
Doh!!! I really must buy some new memory!
I’ll check with the people who have expressed interest to make sure they can make Saturday.