I've Only Ever Worked for Idiots!

After a couple of beers, an articulate and well-educated teacher, with years of experience, great relationship skills, and a reliably positive attitude, lamented that, throughout his career, he had "only ever worked for idiots!" As examples he gave:

• One administrator awarded managers a 14% pay increase, then, citing poor economic conditions, was shocked when the teachers' union balked at a 4% raise for them.
• Another bureacrat required weekly reports that took up to three hours a week to prepare, when the teachers already didn't have enough time to prepare for their classroom lectures.
• Another manager allocated half a million dollars a year for research stipends, and then created such a large administration staff for the program that less than $25,000 / year was ever available for research.
• At another job, the boss would request that skilled and professional workers wash the manager's shoes when they got muddy in the construction around the facility, because "his time was too valuable."

These kind of power-abusing experiences are shockingly common. These kind of experiences seriously compromise morale and create a toxic environment that damages the effectiveness of even the most positive of employees.

So much of our Human Resources effort seems to be focused on fixing problem employees. This isn't surprising when you realize that management hires HR people to help with the people issues, and HR reports to management. But maybe the focus on employees is a little misguided, a little too much on symptom bandaids and not enough on root cause analysis. Perhaps the Human Resources Department needs to set itself apart a little, and direct a little more energy at finding and fixing managers whose behaviours are destroying the morale of the company's precious human resources.