Meanwhile, down on the leaves of the org tree, you have delivery pressure from users, peers, and so on. If the pressure is high, no amount of messaging about wellbeing will make any difference. Taking time off, whether it's some kind of leave or for some wellbeing meetings of some kind, just takes time out of your workday, resulting in increased pressure because now you're even further behind.
It's quite hard not to become cynical about the disconnect between aspirational messaging and these pressures.
There are answers, but they require cultural and managerial enforcement. Heroism needs to be discouraged. Delivery slippage and failure to make dates need to be seen as organizational process and planning failures, and not as individual failures: feedback that schedules are too tight, expectations are unsustainably high, resourcing isn't right.
If your team or org has a culture of heroism - people risking burnout, working into the night, on weekends, on holidays, to make deadlines - stop it. Don't reward it. It's not sustainable, it creates peer pressure to do the same, and it is one of the most damaging things you can do to employees' wellbeing.
The most stressful part is that as you transition from IC to manager and work your way up the org chart, you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself. More responsibility, less direct influence.
Some managers struggle with this pressure and resort to trying to make their teams feel as much of the pressure as possible. Good managers learn how to set a healthy cadence, manage expectations upward, and keep a healthy but reasonable amount of delivery pressure on the team.
There is no realistic scenario where teams have zero delivery pressure, but it needs to be kept in balance. Burning everyone out all the time only works if you have a constant stream of replacement employees as everyone leaves, but then you lose institutional knowledge and reputation tanks. Managers who use these tactics need to be coached or removed from the company.
Truly, my heart bleeds for the plight of the beleaguered CEO.
Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.
Why not? Can’t lose.
When it's short term, put pressure.
When it's long term, plan.
In a sense, a company run by the owner is more inclined to think long term than one where some CEO takes the wheel for 5 years.
That and a general narrative from the news media that C-Suite has it pretty good relative to the rest of the world (financially they definitely do).
And the only real way to make it real is for management, starting at the Board, being willing to take some pain - real pain like "we didn't get X done because we were concerned about employee wellbeing" instead of the "pain" of a budget item for some consulting company.
Workplace wellbeing
Wholesome workplace
Workplace is a family
The ground reality is when the company feels you are not needed, all that touch-feely stuff goes down the drain.
No, my company is not my family. I may have good friends and great co-workers, but, at the end of the day, I only have the amount of loyalty to the company, as much as it has towards me.
Perhaps its time the internet comes up with training sessions that promote the real face of large corporations.
Now I have this question for all the HR departments who engage in spreading those "touchy feely" terms : either you do realize that there's a problem with that, then why do you go on spreading it OR you don't realize there's a problem, then why do you feel those terms are acceptable for the employees ?
I honestly ask. Because all of that looks to me as a total intellectual scam. And usually, when I think this way, either there's really a scam, either my system of values is completely at odds with reality (and I need to understand my blind spot)
Most upper corporate messaging I've seen is an intellectual scam or intellectual dishonesty (be it HR or any department), although I'd say that's putting it far too politely.
These are typically well educated and skilled individuals that aren't oblivious of reality. They have careers and want to maintain them, so they maintain the corproate narratives that work and pass responsibility for lower level managers to maintain plausible deniability as to why efforts seem disingenuous. There are strategies to any of these moves or messaging and rarely ever are they in anyone's interest but the business unless you coincidentally have interest alignment with the business.
It's a lot easier in business (perhaps in life) to strategically lie and achieve measures of success than to be honest and be successful.
I am completely and utterly cynical of any piece of information and communication passed off by corporate entities or those who have heavy sway in their control and direction. They have far too much incentive and motive to be intellectually dishonest and little-to-none to be honest. Even apparently benign information is often strategically crafted, reviewed, and re-reviewed before passed off with very carefully chosen wording. It's not until you get to the underlying employees that I have any trust in what they say.
HR honestly seems like a terrible career to me if you actually care about people in modern business environments (I couldn't do it). You're essentially powerless in terms of business decisions and more often than not act as damage control between what business management unilaterally decides to do and how it effects employees. If your goal pursuing an HR career was to improve wellbeing of employees, it seems like a career where you'd be in for quite a culture shock in most environments. Of course they also serve to maintain and smooth out other legal compliancey issues and staffing needs.
This one is the biggest eye roll for me. Family and friends don't give performance reviews and push other such metrics down your throat.
Oh, but society sure is hard at work moving towards this.
Edit: I'm short of time, but as someone asked me to elaborate, I'll briefly give a few examples:
- "Networking" replacing genuine friendships; related things such as "cut out friends who don't let you grow" which may be valid but usually translates to "replace them with someone who will lead you to material success" (that is, "networking")
- Parents micromanaging their children's lives, measuring their performance on various tasks and rewarding/punishing them accordingly, often without regard to possible underlying issues (e.g. mental illness)
- Parents making children pay rent after they turn 18
- "Tinderification" of relationships, followers as social currency, etc.
My point is basically that family and friends are being replaced by the individual and advertising oneself.
I don't know about you, but I absolutely got 'performance reviews' every single time a report card came in. At least my manager doesn't beat me when I fail to meet expectations.
Start promising things to friends and family, build expectations and then never deliver.
In the end you can start doing drugs and see how people react when you show up to grandma birthday stoned.
Family is also a family as long as you stick to some norms. No one loves you unconditionally. Workplace is a family but there is obviously different set of expectations and evaluation is more direct.
While family doesn't expect you to deliver value for them every day like a workplace, there is still a lot of expectations to be met.
Having to put up with shit "because it is family" can be really unhealthy.
Statements like "workplace is a family" really give me the creeps. I have never experienced it though so not sure how I would react.
People encouraged to bring their ‘whole self’ to work has made my workplace miserable. I miss the days when work was just work, devoid of world politics, beliefs, and all the “let’s all exercise and be happy together” activities.
In part I'm paying 40% in tax so if I'm going to buy coffees it's actually more effective to have them provided by the company. But in general, that sort of convenience and benefit is often worth more than the monetary value.
Tea/coffee in the office is very different to a expensive social events, but it's all on a spectrum, and I value some of those things more than the money. I do however earn a good salary, this could well be different for many others.
I actually started of my working career as a factory worker (nightshift, 12 hour shifts, seven days a week). It was customary to bring along a flask of coffee and a packed lunch.
Right now, even though we have company-provided coffee, I'd rather they just give me the money to bring a flask of my own coffee.
It's more convenient, I get to make a trade-off between quality and cost as the situation calls for it, I get to switch coffees if I need to.
In current reality, though, you are correct - overall it's cheaper for the company to provide coffee instead of giving you the marginal cost of the coffee you consume. I just wanted to provide an alternative viewpoint.
Just let me choose how and with whom I spend my time, thanks.
"oh you wanna play videogames/have a massage/play table tennis after work? sure! but you can't leave the office, which means you are accessible by everyone even after hours. and because you are not technically working, you won't get overtime. oops."
Did you mean “coaching”? Or is “couching” some new SV term I am unfamiliar with?
The real problem is, wellness seminars are an attempt to push the issue on the employees. Just like "plastic recycling" initiatives push the guilt and the effort onto the consumer. It's a redirection strategy.
It's not a genuine attempt to solve the root cause; so much as a way to alleviate symptoms just enough so they can keep ruthlessly exploiting the employee.
I wish my company would give us a handbook...
I agree with b0surk that this is redirection and fundamental changes to society need to take place. Like an end to wage slavery.
I feel like this is the point of the first half of the article. Obviously if you work for a generous, profitable company, and you get good remuneration, healthcare and work–life balance, then workplace wellbeing may be honest and beneficial for both employers and employees (this side doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the article). If you work for a company that pays poorly, has poor benefits, and low margins, then workplace wellbeing is more of the same. That all seems pretty obvious (there are benefits which are perhaps harder to fake, like pay or vacation days or limited working hours per week.) I suppose there is also a third kind of wealthy employer which tries to pamper employees into not wanting things the employer doesn’t want (eg collective bargaining).
The first half of the article seems to just be a vehicle for a proposed solution to poor working conditions, which doesn’t really seem so connected to workplace wellbeing.
You know what's also more stressful? Having to make more decisions in domains outside my circle of competence.
Give me total autonomy in my area, while also not burdening me with having to contribute to EVERY decision.
Meanwhile, the whole IT department had to be moved at some point in a tiny office with no windows. They were also putting a lot of pressure on employees to come work on weekend to fix bugs and get releases ready - and of course at no extra pay. But yeah, you had cake on your birthday and free pizza once a month. Such a great place to work for!
"To thank you for your hard work, I've ordered pizza for everyone!"
'What time is it arriving?'
"7pm"
'Right so you're stealing 2 hours of my time, which you're valuing as a couple of pizza slices - and imagined I'd be grateful?'
The worst possible way to create a 'safe' environment is to infantalize people and direct them like emotionally dependent children because by treating people as non-adults, it removes their basic dignity. Without this, people act out without normal boundaries, and think personal observations and other bizarrely inapproapriate behavior is acceptable or warranted. Corporate yoga and pseudo religious mindfullness probably often has the opposite effect. "Asking" people to submit to religious activities like meditation, smudging ceremonies, ancenstral acknowledgements, mindfulness, hypnosis, yoga, and others is not relating as normal adults. Sometimes I wonder what the conversations on an HN for HR people would look like.
The most successful wellness programs I have seen came in the form of a self-improvement/hobbies bonus, and the 10%-20% open research/dev projects in some tech companies.
A good example is working from home: now it's the employees responsibility to find a good environment for working. The company now has several responsibilities less... I couldn't care less for that chair or desk that the company offers. Work environment isn't about where I put my butt and my computer. Hopefully working from home will become and option and never a mandatory thing.
Anyways there is more and more responsibilities on the employees and less on the employers (at least it feels like it).
Lucky you :) Seems you didn't work on uncomfortable chair or on the kitchen table with kids running and screaming around. For me such basic stuff is very high on the list of priorities regarding work environment.
One thing I’d like to see is independent co-operatives which a group of tech workers (across different companies!) chip in to pay for. They could include veterans for mentorship, agents to help with negotiations/job-hopping advice and possibly even representing you during negotiations, lawyers to help cross out stupid post-working-hours IP clauses etc
Something like a union but minus the grossest parts like mandating actual pay, employment terms, and benefits. More of an easily accessed professional services group. I’m sure this exists in other industries.
We used to have decent cadence in releasing software - maybe every couple of months, or even six. Now, everyday seems like a fire drill or a race to nowhere in particular. Managers generally seem to have lost the ability to plan or predict out over periods longer than a month. I thought this was just my bad luck, but after talking with others, I realize this is commonplace.
And, everyone on the team could at least partially explain most things in the system. Now, I run into so much copy-paste code. When I ask the programmer about what it does, they say "Not sure. I found it online."
And, there was a time when the programmers used to be the ones with offices with doors, if you can believe that.
There was also a short period of time (around when programmer salaries went to 6-figures) when programmers used to make more than their managers. Then, managers scoffed. To account for the rise in salaries, managers gave themselves bigger raises and decided to not hire as many senior programmers, because they're too expensive (or too old).
These days (before COVID-19, because that made things a bit unusual) the industry standard is open spaces without fresh air. Daily meetings in the morning, and then optionally more meetings during the day. Doing a few things in parallel, almost every week is a deadline for something, no time to refactor or learn new things. Free coffee.
Leave: It used to be that most companies had a formula for accruing leave, and that vacation and sick were separate buckets and you could accumulate quite a bit. You earn X hours of vacation and Y hours of sick leave per 40 hours worked. This was nice because it was an asset that belonged to the employee and had to be paid out upon separation. Most companies also paid out unused leave over the rollover amount at each year end, and working overtime meant more leave would accrue. Now most companies put everything in the same bucket, give you 30 days, and it's "use it or lose it." This amounts to financial engineering on the company's part, as it makes their balance sheet look better by not carrying all those liabilities, and they generally twist it to make it seem better for the employee.
Health insurance: this just adds to the cacophony of voices lamenting the state of health care in the US today. When I first entered the workforce in 2002 health insurance provided way better benefits, more doctors took the typical insurance plans provided, you didn't have to fight the insurance company, file pre-authorization paperwork, etc. Now every time I get a medical procedure it's a battle waged via paperwork.
Where can I find a job with 30 days of leave? A lot of places seem to think 15 days is beyond generous because they treat all PTO as vacation time and ignore that sick time used to exist. Meanwhile, my health issues make it extremely difficult to bank any amount of PTO.
This is for everyone, workers and management.
True, people maybe feel more entitled. But I think we also are getting introduced to a phenomenon new since 2001 -- having a solid "living wage" (which Trubune says noting else replaces), but burning out repeatedly, hating the job but being unable to quit, as providing for family takes more now than it used to in 2001, too.
I have no doubt some people manage to find this, but at this point I want a job that pays well and is tolerable, I've done the fun job for less money enough to know I'm terrible at predicting what's going to be "fun" to work on.
If I'm paid more I need to sell less of my time and get to find things that are enjoyable without my livelihood being tied up with it.
Definitely look for a job with high pay, good benefits, lots of time off, etc., etc., But it's extremely unlikely you're going to find one that actually brings you joy - so learn to live with that.
Something has to give when you need to making up time, when there's no slack. That's where the wellbeing deficit comes from.
Alternatively, I would really love to keep the same pay levels, but reduced working hours, to account for increased productivity.
You are not wrong, from the BLS:
"For several decades beginning in the 1940s, productivity had risen in tandem with employees’ compensation. However, since the 1970s, productivity and compensation have steadily diverged." [1]
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/understanding-the-labo...
I think average working conditions did get worse over the past few decades, primarily because so many more jobs are working for such companies. Consider how many more grocery store jobs are working for a huge supermarket chain vs owning your own small store in 2021 vs 50 years ago.
In terms of salary and purchasing power in Western countries, yes I think so.
I have had people fiercely contesting this with me during a table conversation, only for them to eventually begrudgingly admit in the end: "Yeah, I see your point, maybe preaching yoga to very stressed people who already almost don't have free time in their day isn't the best way to go about this...". And I am like -- oh, you think, dude?
There are a number of things that can be done but I found many organizations to not care about enforcing policies like "no Slack messages after 19:00" or "minimize emails religiously" or "is this meeting actually useful for anyone except me who is in a chatty mood?" etc. Not to mention have people who police the meetings to keep them on topic and brief. And somebody paying attention if you are loaded with responsibilities outside of your job description? That's science fiction.
Start from these: multi-tasking and having too many responsibilities. Reduce these two factors for each person as much as possible -- or, if the person likes the extra load, maybe consider a pay bump plus reducing a smaller chunk of their stress.
Before something else outside of empty virtue signalling is done, the problem will persist. Companies just refuse to see the huge problems that even a single employee possessing a lot of institutional knowledge leaving will entail, so I guess they'll just keep suffering and pretending that some extremely half-done measures will fix the problem.
They will not. Nobody cares about your luxury coffee at the office. Nobody cares about the funny furniture. Nobody has their life sustainably improved by a free neck massage for 15 minutes a week (although it does help somewhat).
If any manager or business owner is here, take this single piece of advice: aim for measures that solve problems long-term.
Similar to 'self-guided learning' - Sure it's nice being able to get cash to pay for any online course I like, but it doesn't give me the "week in a room just focussing on a topic" that a more formal course would provide. It's the time given, not the course provided that was more valuable.
It can work though if initiatives are related, ranked clearly and measured. (Hypothetically) A company might provide bonuses to management for the profitability of projects. Simultaneously, it might wish to discourage weekend working - people quit and quality suffers. With those two goals disconnected, you can guess what happens.
If you link them - say internally bill for hours worked and double for weekends, rather just time-elapsed, then suddenly weekend work mainly vanishes - and projects are better resourced at the outset.
To loop back to the "Wellness" you could implement it with commitment to resources, metrics, stated goals and I think it would work fine.
Why are we promoting wellness? How are we going to measure it? What resources are you providing I didn't already have? etc.
This wellness spam is virtue signaling. Whether it is truly based on values becomes only visible when the boundaries are tested.
Because of how well they have treated us, I see the occasional advertisement for yoga classes or meditation sessions as a perk I’m not interested in, instead of as a symptom of a poor workplace environment. However, if I felt constantly overworked, under appreciated, and under-equipped, each one of those emails would definitely feel like a slap in the face.
The motivation behind not providing these things is so that employees are too burned out to look for another job: https://issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html
They also constantly promote walking as a real form of exercise---which is a joke. You have to workout to be healthy: working out, in case you don't know, is painful and it makes you smell bad; but there is No substitute.
I'm sure the response will come something about the company do not care about you, however now I've started to see people here regard anyone just one "level" above them as part of the global capitalist elite.[4] All seems a bit unsustainable to me.
[1] https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1359940513621827592 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27114714 [3] https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1381474017773641731 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116464
1) fed up with useless benefits 2) get no possibilities for developing their skills while on the job 3) are expected to work unpaid overtime for wages that won't pay the rent in the larger cities
I've no idea how it will end to be honest, but I suspect there'll be a lot of buzz about it once post-COVID hiring starts.
same where i live, tons of headlines saying there's shortage, but in our case, the salaries are just horrible. not only that but when you have a job that pays well, they basically demand your life for the company.
it's much better to work as a contractor for foreign companies than working at local ones.
It is a business, moving at will is how resources get allocated and how it is supposed to play out.
>As conditions at work deteriorate,
How so?
What you're describing are more like team building. Enforced lunches or dinners with coworkers are not just about directly rewarding you with free food, but also enforcing some informal time with team members that you might not choose to spend time with outside of work (or even those you might but maybe wouldn't normally make time for). In many cases it's not even disguised that this is the goal. Although I might not always be a fan of spending time with some of those people, I see the benefit to the business and even myself and it's quite orthogonal from compensation.
Regarding optional programs, sure these exist - unfortunately you are unable to get a cash equivalent if you don't want to use it.
No, and there are many companies that serve as counterexamples. Companies can offer both high compensation and small office perks, food and other gimmicks.
It is actually possible to have a well paying job, at a company that also try to care about your well-being.