Fly High Little Bunny

[eggwards]

Work morale seems to be going down the toilet as our department is shedding people faster than Chris' dog, Joey, sheds fur (you'd have to see what was in the vacuum cleaner two weeks ago to know of what I speak). Tuesday we had to work our people for an extra 2-and-a-half hours of mandatory overtime to finish the work, which unfortunately the SEC says we must do.

I know that members of my team are looking to move out of the department, although they try to hide it. They have been unhappy with an assignment of late, and they are looking for greener pastures. If they only knew that some of their colleagues were actually leaving without a new job prospect, they might think first. Well, maybe not, but you think that more of management would notice that people are frustrated enough to jump without a net - certainly something I haven't been willing to do.

Still, I'd prefer that those leaving us wouldn't do a goodbye 'victory lap' around our workspace. It's like running through the halls loudly with your hall pass in school. It only causes more dissent among the ranks - including me.

Comments

[randomcub.livejournal.com]

What's a "victory lap"? Do they actually run?

[eggwards.livejournal.com]

No, it's not actually done very quickly, but two people yesterday moved around the office floor shaking hands and taking congratulations from other coworkers like they won a race and should get a batch of roses.

[airbearma.livejournal.com]

I hate working at a place when the morale is so low that everyone is bailing out as fast as they can. I worked for a company that had solid products and sales. We had a number of very talented design engineers working there. There was another division of the company located in Sunrise Fla, (not exactly a hi tech mecca) where they used to constantly belittle and threaten the employees because the management knew there was no other hi tech jobs within 50 miles.

The company Chief Technology Officer came up to our division from Fla and had this speech of how we all sucked as engineers and that most of us couldn't even cut it as truck drivers. He was trying the Fla tactic of promised firings if we didn't tow the new line. Everyone in this room was pretty aghast at what this moron was saying. Up until this speech, moralle was high.

Since the high tech job market in MA was booming at the time (unlike Sunrise Fla), people basically started to bail in droves. Within 4 weeks over 75% of the engineers had either bailed or gave their notice. It got to the point within 2 months that they decided to close our division as there weren't enough engineers left.

In the end, they were concerned about us finishing up a last major product design and they realized it wouldn't be done without some kind of major employee incentive. Those of us left collaborated on what we would want for a "stay on bonus" for us to stay till that project was completed and I had contracts drawn up at a law firm I worked for part time. Basically we demanded 16 weeks pay as a stay on bonus plus a severance of two weeks pay for every year worked for the company with a minimum severance package of at least 2 months pay. We had them by the balls at that point.

I had the contracts drawn up so the only way we couldn't collect the "stay on" payout would be if we voluntarily quit. If we were fired or laid off prior to project completion, they would still have to pay us off. After a bit of a fight, they gave in to our demands so when we finally closed the doors there, we felt good about our final payoff. I was able to start work at a new company within a couple weeks of leaving that job and I was absolutely giddy a year later when I discovered that Racal Datacom had gone completely belly up.

[cubziz.livejournal.com]

When morale is low and people can't move on, it really gets bad. It's sort of the situation of where I'm at now. Probably half the group is applying for new jobs AT WORK even, and just not finding anything. Management refuses to do anything because no one HAS left yet, so as a result, morale goes even lower (because they KNOW it's low and feel no need to fix it.)

*sigh* Work sucks.