If staff are burnt out it's the business's fault.
I kid you not I have a friend who has been working on a big work project recently, who's been routinely getting home at 3am, 4am, 6am, only to take a quick nap, shower and head back to work. On one occasion he worked for 44 hours straight. I am not making this up.
This person, let's call him Jack, isn't a shareholder in the business, which is a relatively small one. He's just a staff member, albeit an incredibly dedicated one.
It doesn't sit well with me. Sure, they'll probably sling a bottle of fizz his way to say thank you. They may even give him a day off in lieu – which is unlikely to make up for all the overtime – unpaid – he has done. But they won't compensate him properly.
It's exploitation, pure and simple. And it points to a massive resourcing problem. It shouldn't be up to staff to pick up the slack when a business isn't properly resourced. That's a management issue.
I accept it's possible Jack didn't put up his hand to say he needed more support. But he should not have had to. There's no doubt management knew exactly how much work Jack was putting in. And if he was prepared to put in these hours, it's not in their interest to offer him more support. This would have cost them money and reduced the owners' profits.
Another friend, let's call her Jill, recently experienced a similar situation. After pointing out to a client the workload on a fixed-price project had doubled since the start of the year, the client feigned surprise and claimed to have had no idea that was the case. Yeah right, ignorance has never been a plausible defence.
When Jill suggested she should be fairly compensated for her efforts, the client stopped returning emails. It was only when Jill threatened breach of copyright if the client published her work without paying her for it the client tersely asked her to send through an invoice. Then she was surprised when Jill declined to continue working for her. Really? No-one likes being ripped off.
The common denominator in these stories? The businesses were both advertising agencies. I've written before about the diseased culture in many of these outfits and from these stories, it appears nothing has changed.
In Jill's case she suspects the Peter principle may have been at work and the client had been promoted to a point of incompetence. That's still no excuse for exploiting suppliers.
In defence of some agencies, I do know of one in which the managing director had an epiphany and realised that expecting people to regularly work through the night was never going to produce a workforce operating at its full potential. Today, staff go home on time and no-one's expected to regularly burn the midnight oil.
I know of another agency that prides itself on ensuring the wellbeing of its staff, even rewarding contractors that have gone above and beyond by giving them days off when they have finished a big project or giving them little incentives like massages along the way to reward a job well done. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule.
When are some businesses going to realise that if they treat suppliers and staff poorly, the best ones won't want to work for them?
If a business cannot manage its resources properly it will simply not be sustainable long-term. If owners treat the people in the business properly they will create a motivated and loyal workforce. If they don't, they will see a revolving door of people through the company, which will cost them money in recruitment costs, damage moral and in the end, dent profits.
It's not rocket science, but all too often greed gets in the way of good management, to the detriment of the business and everyone in it.
What do you think? Are businesses too focused on short-term profits at the expense of everything else? Post a comment below.
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