You aren't being honest with yourself if you thought every single person in a meeting was EVER fully engaged in a meeting regardless of if they were in office sitting in a room together or not.
Principal Financial-Remote work
- Thread starter pfgemployee
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People doing laundry in between meetings or washing dishes during a town hall wasn't the problem but I'm not surprised by the crowd stanning for corporations. There's never been a hurdle to firing poor performers (Montana excluded). These blanket policies are lazy and nothing more than passive layoffs that disproportionately impact certain groups. Bring on the dumbs, truth hurts.
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Is it truly an all hands if you aren't side chatting at least 3 coworkers about the BS?
We’re still working through what a post-Covid world looks like, but one thing that seems pretty clear is we need to continue to allow life and work to happen together. What that looks like is complicated, but an employer shouldn’t just expect a parent to willingly pay $10-$12,000/year for daycare when they were making it work. They also shouldn’t just expect people to flip and go back to 40 hour week in the office when they’ve gotten used to scheduling things here or there during the day, taking an occasional trip to the park with their kids for an hour…or even meeting a friend for lunch or coffee. Especially when we know that people actually perform better when they get their head out of a screen for a bit.
Part of that is (in my opinion) adjusting expectations for how we expect to interact with a company. If you expect someone to be answering your call and send you forms or provide on-demand assistance, you might have to deal with an overseas customer service rep. While a Mom may be able to provide more of the type of interaction you’re used to, but maybe that means she’s calling you back in two hours…or the next day. Just some thoughts. Obviously feel free to chime in and/or disagree.
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I’m not defending corporations. I think they, more than any other single thing, cause the highest percentage of issues in this country.
But they exist.
And their goal isn’t to maximize your work-life balance. Or happiness. It’s not even maximizing their customer satisfaction.
It’s share price.
And if a job can be done remotely, it can be done in India. And someone just got promoted because of that cost savings measure.
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That last part may or may not work. I have a hog facility that another company rents from me. The guy they have that does the labor does most of his responsibilities after 3 pm. When a repair gets noticed many times I’m finding out after 5 pm. This requires me to quickly get there, figure the problem out and then hope it’s not something that needs parts ASAP to function since most places are closed by that time. It forces me to change my schedule dramatically. If I could fire the person (I was told the person would be doing the major stuff in the morning but it’s not written in the contract) I would but it’s not my call.
While this is one specific situation for a specific thing, it’s just an example of how if someone is performing their tasks at uncommon times regularly, it can force several others to have to change their schedules or alter their jobs for one person.
If it forces people that depend on you to semi-regularly alter their schedule then that could be a problem.
Totally agree. Those centering the corporations here are missing the forest for the trees. And going back to 2019 isn't happening. The lack of imagination in what the future can look like is extremely prevalent.
Everyone. They’ve wanted return to the office for awhile and knew our short staff would resist. Now they said eff it and they just ripped the band aid off. Downsize is a possibility but can’t imagine with how short staffed we are
With my wife losing her job over a month ago I suppose I shouldn’t find out
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything either of you are saying…at least in terms of that this is how things have been looked at for 20 years…and in some ways much longer. But in many ways we have become slaves to year over year growth and our 401k balances… and what was supposed to make things easier just led to expectations that we would get things done faster/immediately.
The internet and email were supposed to cut down on the work week and make us more efficient. Same with the mobile phone. But I look back at old records and see that it was just the norm for people to have to mail things in, request physical copies, etc…all of which took substantially more time than it takes to do things now. But somehow people survived back then.
It seems to me that 40 years ago it was normal for a family to have one full-time worker…and sometimes one bringing in some smaller amount of income. Pensions were the norm. And prices of cars and homes relative to income were lower. We don’t seem to have improved our quality of life…only pace and stress levels.
So while I understand what corporations are wanting/trying to do, I’m rooting for the workers this time…even if it means I don’t get everything I would like as fast as I’m used to.
I’ve felt the easiest solution is to go commission or per project pay. They have deadlines to be done by and worth X amount. You wanna work a crap load, you paid better, you want to go half speed routinely, your pay wouldn’t be so great. That way as long as you meet the deadline and requirements, you can set your own hours and pay pretty much.
I mean the vast majority of the history of this country people could lead a reasonably prosperous life on one income without some exotic pay for unit produced system. Seems like we know how to do it already.
All the more reason to leave the corporation and start working for yourself.
Easiest way to set your own hours. If you don’t like what your company requires, run your own.
Principal names Deanna Strable as CEO; Iowa native has deep local ties
Deanna Strable, an Iowa native, will become the next CEO of Principal, succeeding Dan Houston. She will be the company's first female chief executive.
www.desmoinesregister.com
