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Balance of Morale and Compensation

• Posted by Theresa on June 19th, 2006 filed in My Musings

I took a walk with my friend Danielle a week or so ago around Greenlake in Seattle. Our conversation inevitably led to our employment experience at LA Weight Loss where we met a while back.

We were talking about the hours they expected us to work and to be happy about it. I worked on average 58 hours a week at the store and brought work home, too. I was telling her that if the upper management had “cared” maybe I could have stuck it out.

What do I mean cared?

As it was we only got “condolences” like: I work more hours than you.

Right after our walk I was reading in Management by Baseball : The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field:

“People can be driven very hard, harder with the right balance of morale and compensation. But even ambitious and happy contributers will hit a point where their contributions will start failing in quantity, quality or both.

Studies I’ve done indicate that about 77 percent of people lose at least half of their effectiveness after 52 hours a week compared to what they produced over the first 52 hours. Strip-mining managers waste their group’s effectiveness, pimping quality for the joy (sometimes illusory) of instant quantity, and end up suppressing both quality and quantity over the long haul.”

I didn’t really “believe” the district manager when she told me they had a 50% turnover rate. I figured it had to do with the manager of the store. I figured I could change that. I was wrong. It was upper management: their scheduling policies, the under-staffing problem, and the lack of real concern for the employee or the client. I couldn’t act fast enough, didn’t have enough energy left over to compensate for their shortcomings.

In the end, they lost two good employees the same day. Danielle and I (unbeknownst to each other) each gave our two-week notice on the same day. A little caring could have gone a long way.

I tried to make it as easy on my staff as I could, taking the bulk of the overtime, scheduling the mandatory split shifts so it worked for us and them, handling the incessant and redundant paperwork required, making systems to ease the redundancy…but for naught. I had a good relationship with my employees but I could not be a big enough buffer.

I’d say 50% turnover was an underestimation. In my very first week on the job, one of my counselors gave her notice (too many hours). Shortly after that my assistant manager gave her notice (too much stress). So the new employees I was supposed to get to fill the need of the center went to replace those who were lost. Thus began the never-ending battle of trying to get a fully staffed center.

Often I wonder if they will ever get it right. I know the clients did not like the rapid turnover in staff - they were vociferous about that. The question is will they listen to their client base or keep on giving them platitudes like - we don’t want you to become dependent on one counselor.

I miss the client relationships I built up there and wish there could have been another way to run the company so that it would have benefited all.

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