well, my job officially sucks....

[Kristie]

of course, it was great being on vacation.. had a ton of fun... only to come back and fine out that 1 more person is leaving the firm...

in the last 2 weeks, we've had 5 more people jump out and hit the ground running - away... we're down from 30 to 19 and we've probably lost a good 40-45 just in the last year alone.

so we had this big meeting today with the president of the company (who used to be our office manager) about retaining new employees and keeping the employees we have.. so far, the conversation was all about who he's meeting up with and what contacts he's got for bringing 11 new people on site...he's hoping to take us from our 19 people that we have left up to 76 by the end of 2006 (just too high of a number for me to believe it could actually be achieved!). but really, not much was said about retaining the people we still have...and then on top of that, we found out our office manager resigned, so we have to find a new office manager....

i've been with the company for 3 years, they're a good company, i think.. enough to stick it out.. but morale is so low and the talk of retention is just: stay positive...and if you want to give out a spot reward, nominate someone...but nothing more than that - at all...these spot rewards are just a way of nominating someone that's been doing a good job and having the company get them a $25-$100 gift certificate for some store, restaurante or what not... but to me, that really doesn't do much. Most of our employees need cash to keep the lights on and all that - how is a spot reward going to be any type of retention? we lost our yearly bonus already (haven't had one for 3 years now), there's no talk of a christmas party yet or anything from the company for working our asses off to even keep this office open and going and everything has turned into numbers.. it's all about staying 100% utilized, billable and it seems like the only thanks we get is "gee thanks, just be glad you've got a job"....

so i'm wondering -> what do your companies do for bonus's, as a "thank you" for jobs well done and to keep up morale when morale is essentially at it's lowest point?

big boss (president) says he won't let anyone else leave.. but we hear nothing from him as to how he's going to keep us from leaving and/or what his retention ideas are...he's pretty much offered us nothing except *stay positive*, isn't that kinda weird?

seems like we're losing almost a person a day now with the office manager resigning and bringing in a new office manager always has people on their toes because they don't know what to expect. granted, the old office manager really wasn't that great.. more of an engineer than a business man and not really a people person, so it'll probably be good to get someone new in office...but it really sucks working in such a low environment....makes me wanna say my 0.02 cents and see if i don't get fired for it!
I figure, hell, what do i have to lose?

the only reason i'm staying is because i like the team i'm in.. we all work well together and we've bonded as inside co-workers, outside friends and it's essentially my team that's keeping this office alive. I figure once my project manager decides to leave, where ever she goes, we'll all probably follow. she could easily take her whole team and leave, if she wanted to. I don't think she will.. but i'd hate to see my team break up because the big boss brings in new guys and gives them all sorts of lovely fluff (vacation, signing bonus etc) but does nothing except offer words (no action) to his only saving grace - his current employees.

[Kristie]

to compound this "my job officially sucks" thread, i found out yesterday that one of the employees (been with the company for 9 years) was written up because of something she said in an email to the president of the company (saying her opinion) about our current office manager. apparently, her side of the story is that one of the employees leaving the company somehow either found the email or went thru her computer, printed it out and handed it to our office manager (who wasn't even copied on the email, should have never even seen it). the office manager brought her in, told her that she was being written up for saying such things and for spouting her opinion....even the HR girl in the office was there to preside over the meeting, which is guess is protocol.

now, in my world, that just isn't right. an opinion is an opinion and the office manager was never supposed to see the email in the first place - it was to the president of the company who is trying to put our office back together again....i figure if the office wants to keep employees with the company, they shouldn't be doing things like writting people up and so forth. i mean, give some respect to the people who have been with the company longest and let them speak up if need be....i'm thinking the guy that gave the email to the office manager should be let go asap (even tho he's leaving) & written up for doing such a thing as going thru someone else's computer.

We no longer have the ability to lock our computers when away from our desk, we have to logout each time... so i'm thinking I may ask for the lock back...that ability has been gone for about a year now...


oh and she said that the office manager verified where/how he obtained the email too.. so she knows who did it but can't figure out why and/or how since the email wasn't addressed to him.

so the question is - is there anything she can do? do you think that by talking to the president that he can get the write up cleared and out of her record? isn't being written up for somehting like this against all regulations???

i'm really concerned that she might now leave the company for somehting that should have never taken place... much less if anyone else was to have something like this happen to them...IMO, it should be ok to state your opinion and help get the office back on track vs being scared into not talking about how to fix the office.

Roz - any idea since your an HR person?