"Victim mentality" might not be the right phrase in this situation, so let me elaborate.
My company went public not too long ago and due to overconfidence and underpreparedness, we floundered for our first 6 quarters. In that time, there were layoffs, people quit, and management used and discarded new ideas like tissues. It was a very rough year and a half for everyone.
Since then things have stabilized. We have a clear path forward, we have a stable client base, and the backfills are getting up to speed and alleviating the general workload. All in all, things are about as good as they've ever been.
The problem is that we were in a slump for almost two years. That's longer than a sizable number of people have even worked here - they've never known the good times. Unfortunately, these individuals have developed a personal narrative of victimization by the company. Not enough to leave or speak to the managers, all of whom are reasonable when it comes to mental well being, but enough to only do their bare minimum workload.
If asked to help with special projects, like organizing the mess that was created in the last two years, they fall back on being too busy - despite the fact that their at half the caseload of six months ago.
I do want to stress - things were hard in the company. There is no question about that. But now I'm in position where we need to start making things better and I don't know how to approach this group of people in a way that respects their hard past, but also gets them off their butts to build something better for the future.
Any advice?
It sounds like from their perspective their jobs were really shitty for two years or as long as they've worked at the company. It sounds like this was an endemic, pervasive issue that most people experienced. I'd hazard that if "shit" is the norm, most people aren't going to go to their managers and say "Hey what's with all this shit? It's shitty." I'd also say that because basically everyone had to deal with the shit, its all-encompassing nature would probably discourage employees from talking to their managers about it (you know, all that shit). If things suck for you, but also seem to suck for everyone, you're going to conclude "shit is the way of life around here," and/or "there is no option but shit." neither perception would lead one to believe that one direct manager would be able to alter that employee's personal amount of shit, in either quality or quantity. After all, if all it took to fix things was talking to a manager, wouldn't everyone be doing it? Wouldn't things stop being shitty very fast? If a direct manager was able to fix the shit, why would things have been allowed to get so shitty in the first place? Bad jobs/work environments build distrust and resentment between levels. (Side note: If I had a shitty job for two years I'd be trying to get out of there so fast.) You say you want to make things better but I don't see how you are actually trying to do that for the employees. If you don't believe that they are too busy, develop and launch a simple time tracking initiative to see how everyone is really spending their time. Any automated systems they use (like dialers in call centers) could also be used to build this data. Why don't you actually see where all the time is going instead of simply not believing what they see about their workload? Do a side by side with someone in the floor and see how long various tasks actually take in execution. It doesn't sound to me like you are an individual contributor but probably dept head or similar. The distance of such a role easily lets one forget, overlook, or simply never know how much work, time, attention etc, must go into each step of a process. Instead of coming up with a project to improve things and forcing it on your employees unwillingly why don't you have a brown bag session where you discuss needs and potential ways to fill or improve those gaps. When an employee has a good idea first praise and be supportive, then ask him or her to take ownership of their proposal. They will be much more engaged, feel more valued, and work harder when they feel it is their idea which they are convinced will help them. Even if they come up with the same idea that you have. I think you need to get more in touch with what's going on behind the scenes here. Also I feel like anyone with any experience in corporate business would have been able to come up with and follow at least some of these steps without asking a kind of random, mildly anonymous Internet forum with no focus in business or management. Don't you have a manager, mentor or guru who would have been better placed and more informed, probably more experienced, to turn to for advice in times like this? I also feel like some of this would be covered in people management classes as part of a decent MBA curriculum. I don't mean to sound too negative here but there are a lot of easy ways to drive engagement, it just sounds like you aren't prioritizing that - you're prioritizing your project. If you want things to get better for the people, start by asking the people what they want and need. If you think your employees are shirkers exaggerating their time spent on current products do time tracking and touch base with managers weekly or biweekly to monitor team workloads and downtime. (That will not make anyone happier about your company, though. Time tracking always implies a lack of trust, a suspicion of dishonesty or inefficiency, and not to mention is an additional burden to complete in and of itself.) I feel like you are thinking "fix the company, then the employee situation will right itself." But I think you need to flip it and work on the employees first. It's very expensive and time consuming to keep bringing in new hires and right now I would expect people at your company to feel almost driven away. Also like your chosen verbiage - "victim mentality" is really dismissive. I see you mention it might not be the best phrase. I don't think it's a phrase you should ever use in the context of a business setting, honestly. Not behind closed doors, certainly not when you are "trying" to troubleshoot things. Imagine a laptop manufacturer who approached interface/user issues with the attitude that "our users are just so stupid, this is really easy, they just need to catch up to how things are done now" - vs. "this approach isn't working for our users. why not? how can we fix it?" I've worked at a few big (global) companies in my time and employee engagements taken pretty seriously, so long as you aren't Bank of America. Good companies see disengagement and try to solve it from their end, instead of dismissing it as the lazy employees' fault. Finally : if the sentiment that work is shit there is truly universal, why is your conclusion that your employees are universally lazy/shirking assignments? Why aren't you paying attention to the fact that everyone (but you) seems to agree there are issues with the current work environment still? You may be CEO my friend but even as CEO if your "gut" tells you 1 thing and then 100 qualified people line up and tell you that your gut is wrong, would you choose to ignore all of them and follow your gut anyway? When your gut doesn't even do anything on the ground floor of the work environment and they all do? 100% of your employees can't be lazy liars. If so you are really shitty at hiring. Trust them. Stop listening to your lonely opinion. this is like the girl who always dates assholes moaning about "why are all men assholes" and it's like "yo girl not all men are assholes, probably not even most, the problem lies with YOU and how you are interacting with everyone else." You're like "all my employees suck lie and are unhappy, none of them will do what I want." Dude I know corporate America. There's a guy willing to rim ass for a promotion on every team of 4 or more people. People want to work. People don't want to lie. Trust me dicking around for 8 hours a day for a paycheck actually sucks. So I think the problem may lie with you.
This is so fucking insightful that I feel like my response is utter shit in comparison. I'm more than tempted to delete my post so I don't have to face such feelings of inadequacy. Lady, if we ever meet in person, remind me that I owe you a beer (provided you're of age of course). ;)
I don't love the business world, but I do get it. This post was interseting. I started to form perceptions of the company based on the post. I think: smallish company; OP is CEO or similar high-title; all OP's direct reports are people managers, so there's bureaucracy separating him and anyone who's actually executing. His approach is business centric bc of his role - but since he's used to looking at everything from an executionable standpoint, this view has transferred over to his employees. OP - I want to say - if this is on point, it's reasonable. We all get blinders on at work. But you have to realize this is a blind spot for you and mitigate it. I don't think OP has much experience in a highly corporate atmosphere/in a big company because while I did make several actionable suggestions, none are that unusual - if you've worked corporate a while. So I'm guessing it's a start up. I feel like it would really help OP to develop a mentor with a lot of experience in business. My dad has taught me a lot about the business world, and we don't work in the same industry. Something I think OP maybe hasn't thought of: The company's priority is the company. It is not the workers, and the workers know this. A company will not be loyal to you. So you shouldn't be loyal to it - that's dumb. When a company invests in its workers it is demonstrating an amount of trust and loyalty. People respond to that. OP has been paying company bills on charge card - promises - not cash. He said "Employees, loan me your hard work for a year, and it will pay off. Things will get WAY better." And the employees trusted him. A year later he's come back: "I need another loan. THEN the company will get fixed!" while his employees look at their first loan still oustanding and think, "what a crock." Companies aren't stable. People get laid off a lot. Promise of future payment means little. If a company changes its mind and doesn't want to pay you, easy - they can fire you instead. Cheaper, too. A company will survive if one person quits but a family might not if their breadwinner gets fired. The company has way more power here. So the company needs to invest in its employees first, generously, and repeatedly. Make them grateful and happy to work for that company - and I do believe that the company will get paid back in work across the board.
See, in my defense I'm just a team supervisor, so it's all about motivating the troops. I'm also not a big thinker either, so I tend to be stuck focusing on the obvious and short term. You made it pretty obvious it's something I need to work on. Once again though, super insightful and stuff I'll take to heart if I ever decide to move up in the world. I know all about broken promises and being told to wait it out only to get burned. That's something I'd never wish on anyone.
Empathy is a hell of a drug. Your perspective is that you guys had a rough time going public, lots of churn, difficulty for everyone, but everyone pulled through and now it's time to get to work. Their perspective is they jumped into a pigfuck, worked their asses off, saved the goddamn company and for gratitude they're being told to work harder. You see victims. They see ingratitude. You see a drop in their responsibilities - they likely see that they pulled your company's nuts out of the fire through sweat and effort and now that the nuts are no longer in the fire, what possible justification do they have for expending the same sweat and effort? When you hire someone in crisis mode, they'll give you crisis-mode efforts... until the crisis is over. then they've earned a break. Then they've earned some health time. Then they've earned the space to determine if the company warrants their continued allegiance. Damn right they've never known the good times. You've never shown them the good times. You call them "backfills" and list their greatest accomplishment as "alleviating the general workload." You think they see themselves that way? "What do you for a living?" "Oh, I alleviate the general workload." They have a "personal narrative of victimization." Of course, they're keeping that to themselves - they're not bailing on you (who would "alleviate the general workload" then?) and they're not bitching, but for some reason they're not giving you panic-level efforts now that the panic has subsided. You know how you deal with "victim mentality?" You recognize that your staff saved your bacon and you make sure your staff sees you recognizing it. You reward them, you listen to them, you lavish them with value (not just praise) and you enroll them fully in the future of the company. "Hey, you - clean up this mess that happened before you got here." How's that go over? "We need you guys to spearhead our next-level workflow system so that nobody ever has to deal with the past year's frustrations ever again." You're stressing that things were hard on the company but you're still thinking of "this group of people" as some set of others who need to "get off their butts." Give 'em a reason that doesn't start with "I," "me" or "mine."
Empathy is a hell of a drug. Try imagining that I'm caring human being and empathizing with that instead of assuming I'm some corporate demon. The "backfills" are new hires who are alleviating the workload for the people who worked through the rough times. The people that I'm talking about don't have lowered work loads just because the storm passed, but because we brought in and trained up those new hires so they had fewer clients. So no, they're not being asked to work harder, they're being asked to do new things. Now, why are they being asked to do new things? What I'm implementing are programs that they've asked for as people who survived hell and don't want to go through it again. But they are the subject matter experts and so, at a point, they are the only ones able to make the training content. This is a project they have decided will save them time and heartache in the future, so that nobody ever has to deal with the past year's frustrations again. I get it, righteous indignation is your thing, but if you're going to go around proselytizing the virtues of empathy, you should try to practice it first.
Empathy is a hell of a drug. I don't know you, your workers, your company or your industry. All I did was build a perspective opposite the one you presented for purposes of... You know, empathy. You can recognize that construct for what it is: a synthetic insight into a hypothetical situation that doesn't matter in the slightest to its author... Or you can get defensive. Calculating the marginal utility of either approach is left as an exercise for the student.
Do you ever do any fun team building activities? Either by team or department. My advice: work pays for it, it's done on work time during the work day, find a good well-reviewed non-dangerous not-too-physically-demanding (secretary ass) team-building clinic, and do that for 2-4 hours. End by 2pm. Then let everyone go home early for the rest of the day. If you are really crazy take them out to a happy hour. I mean it really sounds like even if the storm has blown over there has been no "Thank you" or acknowledgement that things were shitty. There is just this expectation that things are getting better and going to keep getting better and cool, that should be enough. My company gives us a budget every quarter for a "fun day" or "fun activity" that we get to do on work time. If we can spare it every quarter despite a general lack of any kind of work crisis or shittiness, then I think you could see the value in doing it at least once after a prolonged period of stress. Just don't pull a Michael Scott at the Dundees. Or the coal walking bit.
Pay well Give off time. Always listen to employee thoughts and allow them time off for schools, work, home life. Provide a great system of decent benefits for hard work and innovative thinking. Provide parties and things, on company dollar. Treat people well, they will return the favor. If not, you can hire people who will once they see how well you treat people. Unfortunately, if you see that and think "we don't have that sort of money" then you probably deserve the shit workers.Unfortunately, these individuals have developed a personal narrative of victimization by the company.
If you think people can work harder, tell them you think they are great and can handle it. Don't tell them you think they're lazy and not doing enough. For me, the former makes me play "Eye of the Tiger" in a my head and Get Shit Done. Any hint of the latter leads to insecurity, resume submissions, and I'm gone in a month.
Option 1) Slowly build up your expectations of their output over time. Be subtle about it, so they don't feel like they're being burdened. They'll adjust and rise up to meet their new expectations with little effort. It's non confrontational and gets results, albeit gradually. Option 2) Explain to them, first in a meeting and then individually if and when needed, that expectations have changed. It's their job to meet them. If they fall short, performance action plans will have to be implemented. You'll make waves, but people will know immediately and with no uncertainty what is required of them. Option 3) Do nothing. Get frustrated. No matter what option you choose though, encourage, reward, and support every step of the way. If you don't have their backs, they won't have yours.
Option 1 sounds like the most feasible for my position. It's just such an odd dynamic I've never been in before. It's just this one team that has the mentality, where everyone else is back up to speed. But my frustration some won't fix it. I'll calm down over the weekend and try something simple in Monday.