Do You Feel Overworked and Overstressed?

I don't know you, PW, and I'm very appreciative of many of your posts. The very idea that the solution to this question is for an employee to suggest that they are a member of a force that has reached it's maximum efficiency, so the solution is for me to hire more people, so I can do more business, and ostensibly make more money, is offensive to me.

Most business decisions at quality companies revolve around finding ways to utilize personnel. Productivity is absolute king. Human input is so variable, and so valuable, that typical employment scenario's probably revolve around finding out how to make cash flow support the employees for the 95% of the time that they are not "bringing it".

This is excellent and acceptable, because no one can perform at that level very often. But the possibilities for tapping into that intellectual power are most often realized by putting people in very high stress, high demand situations. Many people dislike that, and it can be destructive. If you don't want to be forced to examine your roll and find ways to improve your company's product, even if it is just by increasing productivity, I understand. And if your particular situation is one in which all of your co-workers are equally committed to radical improvement, you are in a special place. Like Bell Labs in the 40's, or Apple in the early 80's, or Dominoes Pizza in the early 90's. I wake up each morning trying to practice what I preach, which is that you must find ways to outperform, and that is the expectation I have for all of my employees.

Our retention rate is not above average. But our performance is.

So who does feed the cat?

Or they decide your productivity is lower than other workers out there and you are a troublemaker, then they lay you off and seek another younger cheaper source of labor to do your job working more hours for less.

Is this concept somehow offensive to you? You must improve operations, increase your personal value, contribute to the success of your employer. Otherwise, you will be replaced. It is in fact very troublesome to pay for lower productivity than you can get somewhere else. It's the road to bankruptcy. Seems harsh, huh?

Umm, actually I presented no emotional bias one way or another, just the alternative that could occur. My response above was in regard to the statement, "The solution is to learn to say "no, thank you" to overload work requests, and to work the contracted hours only. When the company analysts realise that they can do more business by hiring more people again, everyone's a winner." You seem aweful quick to jump to a conclusion about some emotional bias based on the presentation of an alternative scenario of what might occur if you respond as the OP indicated above. Are there some underlying business profitability issues?

What is harsh is the trend that upper management and investors get all of the soaring, improved profit while those who innovated the improvement get less than the going inflation rate.

I see that you clearly believe the mantra that the flogging will continue until the moral improves.

<....the flogging will continue until the morale improves...>

Quite. If morale is low, then there are better places to work. The difficulty lies in not possessing the courage to go and find them.

Been there, done that, got sued. After two years of my new employer paying for the lawyers the suit was thrown out for a lack of evidence. Immediate counter-suit for defamation of character and (how did the lawyer put it) attempt to deprive a livelihood, the previous employer choose bankruptcy instead of the seven figure court ruling. The only tangible thing I got from the ordeal was an ulcer.

There are technicians promoted as managers/engineers who is prepared to work extra hours without extra pay if a car and end of the year bonus are given to them. They set a bad example to others. The Govt should monitor these practices by the department of

Labour.

Well, in the US there is nothing that requires a manager to be an engineer, that would be extremely problematic for many non-enegineering companies. They can however can get in a whole lot of trouble promoting a non-professional engineer to a position that requires engineering management of professional engineers' work product, or giving them a title like Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, or any of the other protected engineering titles (if they use those titles in dealings with clients). As far as US State's go they require the State licensure to use the title. The federal governemnt doesn't require any State licensure, but prefers it in some cases, depends on position and agency involved. there really is not Federal requirements for use of the title engineer, so it wouldn't make much sense in the US for the labor department to check on compliance with their regulations, as it isn't mandated. So each State would be required to verify status. Currently, because of limitations on man-power, State boards tend to investigate complaint and levee fines for violations (usually a couple $100 upto maybe $1200 is the highest i think i have seen but usually the higher fines are for civil engineers exceeding their practice authority in practicing land surveying).

Throwing more bodies at the problem is not always the solution. Process analysis can often identify waste. Once the deficiencies are identified and made redundant, it may turn out that the person has more time to complete the task. Ultimately, it may be possible to actually flex a person from one task to another.

In my experience, busting your &ss any harder than you already do does not work. It only leads to stress, resentment and frustration. Not to mention health issues.

....which leads to sick-days increasing and the business going into a downward spiral.

The best solution I have ever found to an over work problem is to get the boss to work as hard as everyone else does.

You can bust your butt all year and get zero return on your labor but make him sweat along side you for 10 minutes and you are guaranteed to have new additions and improvments in the work force within a day or too!

My dad in his second career of RF assembly work had an amusing response to requests for him to work overtime. He insisted that his boss had to first admit to making a mistake somewhere. Then and only then would he accept to do the extra work load on a temporary basis. He worked for that firm for many more years than I did.

Seems to me that globalization is, ultimately, what has caused fewer employees to be asked to do more work -- not necessarily lack of productivity. Labor costs outside the U.S. have put pressure on businesses here to lower labor costs to compete. That can be done in 2 basic ways: 1) switch (substitute) to the lower cost labor for the labor in your organization (outsourcing, in general) or 2) reduce the higher cost labor force within the organization to reflect a lower total labor cost. Some companies do a combination of both.

For PFR to say PWSlack's suggestion is "offensive" is a bit harsh. The tone is such that if I substitute the word insulted it would feel the same. I also note, that PWSlack's response got 3 good answer votes while PFR's has not. This would indicate to me that most of the posters here are in the employee category rather than the management category. I think the best management strategy would be to, at least, let employees be part of the dialog of "How can we keep our company competitive, in the environment of globalization?" (Of course, that means letting employees know a bit about the finances and budgetary status of the company and the corresponding managerial decisions, which may not be desired. But what's to hide?) It may not lead to any better solutions, but you've at least let employees come to the same conclusions as management and feel like there is a partnership in the effort. No one likes to be dictated to. PWSlack's response is basically saying, "Hey, we're humans, too. Not machines."

I'm all for efficiency. As Chris288 suggested, if people are being asked to work long hours, maybe management hasn't met the mark in planning... or maybe it's just the way it is in today's work world. In either case, it's better to find a way to keep employee morale up and feel like partners, rather than a "them against us" mentality. Unhappy, stressed out employees certainly doesn't help efficiency.

Interestingly, I heard of a study recently conducted, reported on KGO, that indicated a vast majority of employees surveyed felt they were being overworked without adequate recognition for their efforts and if another opportunity was available to seek other employment they would. While most manager surveyed felt their employees were happy and loyal, and would remain even if other opportunitys availed themselves. The basic discourse was regarding the disconnect in communication between managemenet and their workers. They also mentioned that executive bonuses have increased on average by over 24% in the last couple years, while workers compensation has increased on avergae about 1%. there are certain types of jobs you can not adequately outsource, doctors, lawyers, certain types of engineers with local knowledge.

Very well said, and I agree that the goal has got to be effective production of product, and us (employers) against them (employees) does not work. You must have satisfied, motivated employees or you won't get to mine the great talents they possess. To make money, and to grow a company that provides a great place to work.

I was trying to make the point, poorly, that that if your response to working overtime is that you believe it involves poor planning by management, you may be offending those people have worked so hard to create opportunity for you. If you don't want to work overtime, maybe you know that there is nothing in it for you. It is relative. Almost all high performers work extremely hard and long hours. I only want high performers, so I'm biased against anyone who won't fall in line. But to get them, I have to give them a piece of the reward, at least eventually. But not at first.

I would also like to point out that "globalization" is simply a byword for expanded competitor base. Cost per unit of production is reduced when a competitor offers a product that costs less to build. Your employer responds or loses. The widget will never be American again. If you are engineering products, you have undoubtedly already been assaulted by the inexpensive talent available in Russia, China and India.

PWSlack, I apologize. I have been reaping the benefits of your comments, Thanks.

Globalization is more than a expanded competitor base, because under globalization, the rules also differ, and some countries will change their labor laws to fit certain businesses that have influenced the government in some manner. Globalization is much less about competing labor, as much as it is about manipulating governemnts agaisnt each other such that the businesses can seek some favoritism from the governments, these favors, can be tax breaks or finacial incentives (as in israel trying to give some incentive for Intel to move many new facilities there), labor regulations exemptions or changes to labor laws, reduced cost or fixed prices incentives on raw materials. Basically it is governments using tax monies from the workers to offsett businesses costs with incentivies to get work into the countries, and countries competing for cheapest bidder with adequate quality of resources to support their minimal business needs (or even make it cost effective to discover or improve resources, e.g. educate the labor forces). The benefits to the countries, can sometime be the gain of new technologies that can be utilized lateally from a business application to another government application, such as the transfer of electronics knowledge from gaming to military applications. Manipulation of governments through globalization efforts of businesses to manipulate governments agaisnt each others drives for governments to conglomerate and to a set more universal standards for businesses, much like you see trends in europe for the EU.

Agreed. But within that "game" where the U.S. (government, as you say) is trying to "compete" and provide incentives to companies to open operations here, labor cost is still a factor that any would-be new business (or old, even) can't ignore. Most other things being equal, a company will choose a labor pool that costs much less, if available.

However, that assumes all else being equal. If the transfer of technology and educations were restricted such that the highest technologies and training were not offered freely to other nations by these businesses upon discovery by some US university under government funded programs, then all else would not be equal. All else is never equal, government subsuidize innovations, and other government steal innovations through deals with business interests, where it is high technology or a device to microwave bacon more cleanly. Admittedly this doesn't offer much for the low class laborers who refuse to stay current and modernize, like the union auto workers, but it keep the US on the leading edge of innovation and forces these other countries to increase taxation to pay for discoveries and new innovations themselves, thereby driving up labor cost as laborers must earn a living at some survivable rate. Place a similar level of restriction on businesses that you'd place on physicists working at government labs. Why can a person be tried for treason because he discusses what he knows, but a CEO can not because his company discloses government protected trade secrets (some of which have much greater national security implications).

for my part... a customer called wednesday and asked if we could speed up the delivery of his finished cabinetry products from next friday to this friday just past, and was hoping to pick up saturday morning.

I thought I had verbally communicated the request to 'jump' the order ahead in the queue to the affected people in the shop...

only to discover late friday, when the customer called to check, that they had not jumped it...

and I and one other person worked extra hours friday, and myself on saturday, to expedite the job...

when I arrived this morning, she was in the bosses office complaining about the poor planning...

I didn't get a 'talkin' to... but there is obviously room for improvement.

things are definitely getting busier around our shop. and clear communications is also, absolutely essential... or there will be angry bees...

but as the planner... who else can I blame?

Chris

If the costumer is happy and pays the bill, all else doesn't count. He is happy, isn't he? If he isn't tell him to call me, I'll sort him out, and his supporters.

Hope all went well, Ky.