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So my team mate and I get an invitation to come meet the manager and our team supervisor for a pow wow about some supposedly important performance statistic he's been watching, has emphasized is important and wants to drive home the point we should be more vigilant about it. He gives us a sample of a few stats to illustrate his point and claims that we weren't answering our VIP customers as fast as expected.
Well guess what? First he starts asking our team, so if hypothetically half the emails we received per 24 hours arrived during your shift, would it be fair to say that the way you prioritize your work is directly proportional to the statistic I have in front of me?
(To that I thought, never mind hypothetically, show us the real stats and show me if I'm answering customers emails fast enough or not depending on when we receive them and when I'm scheduled to work).
So the manager shows us the stats and guess what....only like 25% of the VIP customer emails we received last week came during our normal business hours shifts, not the hypothetical 50% he was referring to. Plus, the statistic that triggered the meeting, where according to him we answered a certain percentage of VIP emails within an hour just 30% of the time, a rank that was at the bottom of 10 teams' results was obsolete. When I asked him for the latest stats, since he was waving it in front of us, he showed us that 65% of VIP emails were answered within an hour in the past week and that our team was the best-ranked. Ha ha ha! Rather, he should be praising us, not talking about some new review mechanism and asking us to make more of an effort.
Plus, in other news my supervisor "forgot" to indicate my schedule from next week onwards on their intranet and it gave the impression that I would no longer be working from then on. At the time it also said that a new hire was TBA (to be announced), which resulted in me thinking that they were finally going to give me the boot for frequent lateness. As you may recall, my supervisor told me that they were "actively seeking a solution" and that she wanted to add someone else to the team. But I heard that there may be a hiring freeze now and so I guess that plan was nixed.
Needless to say, I really wonder about management sometimes. Are they just looking to **** employees off with their nonsense about improving even the most finite stats, to give the impression they're doing something to "improve" the process and affect the bottom line? I'm all for answering customers more quickly and our company developing a reputation for such rapid service, but if management approaches me about concerns they have, at least pull up the right stats! Telling us we're slacking when we're actually the best performing team doesn't exactly add to their credibility.
Haha, that's good stuff. I refer to that as 'squeezing more out of the 5%'. What that means to me is; If you were to look at a pie chart showing what problems prevent a company from reaching its goals, you'll notice managers spend their efforts on the 5% slice, because the 95% slice belongs to them.
Be cautious with metrics, it's a measurable way to record your imperfections, often so they can fire you. Do whatever you need to do to meet the goal they set.
Plus, in other news my supervisor "forgot" to indicate my schedule from next week onwards on their intranet and it gave the impression that I would no longer be working from then on. At the time it also said that a new hire was TBA (to be announced), which resulted in me thinking that they were finally going to give me the boot for frequent lateness. As you may recall, my supervisor told me that they were "actively seeking a solution" and that she wanted to add someone else to the team. But I heard that there may be a hiring freeze now and so I guess that plan was nixed.
What makes you think they didn't just decide they can manage without you--hire/no hire? Places can fire or lay people off without replacements.
I don't think they "forgot," and I think you know what I mean....
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