Neurodiversity Celebration Week

In recent years, my employer has been progressively promoting more “woke” issues, as well as some health-related content. Our recent internal blogs on Viva Engage have been about Neurodiversity Celebration Week.

“This week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week; a worldwide initiative that aims to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about neurological differences. We want to use this opportunity to raise awareness of the experiences of neurodivergent employees, highlight the value of neurodiversity in the workplace, and provide tools and guidance to help all our people create an inclusive environment where diverse minds can thrive.”

I think it is a good idea to remind people that some people think differently. I’m unaware if I have anything like autism but I do often struggle when posed questions that are phrased in certain ways. When we first learned about Agile development, and started doing “Retrospectives”, some of the initial ones had obscure questions like “if the last 2 weeks were a chocolate bar, what would it be?”. My mind is just like “wut”, whereas everyone else on the team came up with an answer, even if they just chose their favourite chocolate bar and forced certain elements into it. “There were some really smart solutions to problems so I chose Smarties”. When I failed to answer many questions over the months, some people moaned that I wasn’t participating, but I just got frustrated with that line of questioning.

“These blogs perfectly highlight the fact that everybody, and how we each experience the world, is different. Depending on how our brains are wired, we think, move, process information and communicate in different ways. We all have a responsibility to create an inclusive working environment where diverse minds can thrive. Everybody should feel safe, supported, and able to perform at their best. Therefore, it is important that we firstly recognise an individual’s differences, and work to harness their strengths and talents whilst minimising the challenges they may experience”

I think some conditions do have strengths and weaknesses. As far as I know, certain types of autism can lead to some great ideas since they have a different way of thinking, but then can be awkward in different social situations. One person wrote a blog on their life and observations with autism.

Here are some key takeaways from their blog:

Autism is a spectrum, which means that everyone who is autistic can have a wide variety of signs and symptoms, and how it impacts individuals can differ greatly.
Everyone uses phrases that have subtle implied meanings. For people with Autism, the implied elements simply disappear, and everything can be taken at face value. So an example they gave was if they put a jumper on, and someone asks “Are you cold?” they would answer “no” because they are now warmer.
Their responses to questions can often seem rude or abrasive, yet they were only literally answering the question they were presented.
If you ask many questions quickly, they will then present an answer to each in the order you gave them. They are insistent in processing all information sequentially, and will want to answer all of them.
Sensory overload: They despise being touched, they feel overloaded by background sounds, and will need to be alone to recharge after a long period of social interaction.
They often talk over people

I was looking on our Sharepoint for the additional neurodivergent resources. I came across some strange statements:

“Most neurodiverse conditions are classified as disabilities, but it is important to note that not every neurodivergent person identifies with a disability, to avoid stigma and isolation.”

Is it really possible to “identify” with a disability? Like the autism blog described, they didn’t want people to treat them differently but they acknowledge their social awkwardness, and understand others need to be aware of their traits in order to not be offended, or to try and adapt their line of questioning. I assume that is the point the statement was trying to make.

“Diversity is important for any organisation to develop, and understanding neurodiversity comes with huge benefits.”

That’s another one that needs more explanation. I think some people can come up with interesting ideas if they have something similar to autism, but a lot of other neurodiverse conditions are only negative. The way you “benefit” is to try to reduce the impact of the negatives. The statement by itself sounds like it is only positive to hire neurodiverse people, when that is not the case.

I saw a recent BBC article where the caption claimed that Down’s Syndrome is “an ability not a disability”. I get the sentiment, and that people often misunderstand the condition, but I don’t think anyone really believes it is an ability. I’ve seen a lot of this reframing in recent years: Things that were considered “mental health” conditions are now framed as normalised/part of someone’s identity, so is a positive thing that should be celebrated. Then not only is this mentality being pushed by mainstream media, it’s now being pushed from inside company culture under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Quiet Quitting

Early on during lockdown, a new term seemed to be trending in articles. I don’t even think it was lockdown-specific, so the timing was probably a coincidence. The term was “Quiet Quitting”.

One interpretation of this buzzword is when an employee deliberately gives the minimum effort in order to avoid being fired. Another interpretation is when an employee is more focussed on avoiding burnout (balancing their work with other interests).

The Coasting Definition

Doing the minimum is not a new concept since there’s always people looking to get out of work – be it: casually browsing the internet, taking breaks away from the desk, talking to colleagues, dragging out tasks for longer than expected, and more. Terms get thrown around like “slacking”, “goofing off”, “coasting”, “cruising”, “staying under the radar”.

Avoiding Burnout Definition

For the second definition, you could interpret that to mean they still care about their job, but are more focussed on consistent performance over time; therefore Quiet Quitting doesn’t really apply.

Quitting at 5pm

I never know what is real or fake on the internet these days . I saw a post apparently from a CEO saying they have a group of colleagues that are good but refuse to do, or think about work after 5pm – so he was asking what can be done about it. It seems ridiculous to have the expectation that employees should want to work outside the terms you pay them for, but it does happen. I’ve had a manager say to me I was overlooked for a promotion because I never did overtime. Yet the reason was that I did my work during work hours, and it was others that were basically “quiet quitting”, then asking for more money to complete the tasks they were already paid to do.

Thinking about work 24/7 probably ain’t healthy, and I find you can be more productive by having free time. Working long hours one day, then being productive for the very next 9-5 day seems impossible to me. So what’s the point working longer to make up time, when you lose time the next day?

There’s been times I have worked hard and didn’t even get a rise to match inflation which is basically a paycut. I’ve then proceeded to do the bare minimum, even cut corners because I’m just doing the job they are paying me to do at the current rate. There’s no point maintaining performance “above and beyond” when they aren’t paying for that level.

Even though you could say your effort is an investment and you will be rewarded in future; in reality – it doesn’t always work that way. I wrote plenty of blogs about Derek who was clearly incompetent and was constantly slacking, often only working half the day – and he got promoted a couple of years before I did.

Creating Healthy Engagement

In recent years, the executives would use terms and phrases like “caring about employees”, “work life balance”, “mental health awareness”. But then when it comes down to it, it might not be reflected in all manager’s opinions.

Where I work, I don’t think it is actually bad – just the occasional moment, or occasional comment from certain managers, and often hints of payrises in the next quarter that never materialise.

I think some people just see the job as a means to earn money, and I’m not sure you can do that much to change their attitude.

Removing stressful elements, overtime culture, and trusting employees to do their jobs could create a culture of “healthy engagement”. If employees see a consistent approach in payrises and promotions, then that can also motivate people to engage and improve. If there’s not much incentive to grow your career from the job you have, then it’s more beneficial to “Quiet Quit” rather than perform high.

There’s going to be times where overtime is required when deadlines loom, or there is “Red Flag” and an urgent fix is required. But regardless of why the overtime is needed, it’s probably better just rewarding the employee with an extra day holiday. As discussed earlier, offering additional money rewards people that create the need for overtime.

References:

Spotify – https://hrblog.spotify.com/2022/09/22/how-to-fight-quiet-quitting-by-creating-healthy-engagement/

Joshua Fluke –

The Transparent Placation of the Employee Forum

A few years ago, the directors announced they were starting a Programme to improve the company culture, and act upon feedback we had recently given them via an “Employee Forum“.

I do think due to working at home, there isn’t the same togetherness there used to be. Years ago, we seemed a close-knit bunch, but these days, I get the impression people just want to do their work and go home…although they are already home.

We were asked to give initial feedback from the scheme, and one colleague made a somewhat epically-written post, which ended up being his last.

“This “programme” is an exercise in indulging in the same old political rhetoric and transparent placation many of us have grown all too familiar with. Perhaps I have simply grown jaded and cynical, but we have corporate correspondence envisioning a future where all feel valued, and yet casual communication engenders entirely the opposite. To, on the one hand, read statements such as the above and then be told such things as “if you want better pay, get another job”, is insulting to the intelligence and dedication of employees. This, “programme”, is in fact a desperate response to the abysmal employer image the company has cultivated for years; to this day exhibiting a callous disregard for even its most dedicated employees – you reap what you sow.

In short, this isn’t a question of “focus”; rather, it’s a question of chasing each of these lofty goals with equal levels of tenacity, integrity, and humility. This “programme” is years too late and, despite a ledger demonstrating the contrary, the company has only ever proven itself to be more than “a dollar short”.

The goals outlined as part of this programme infer/suppose a complete lack of humanism in company culture and are a tacit admission of gross negligence when it comes to employees; the shoulders upon which the company stands.”
Rodger

The directors responded with predictable responses:

“this does not reflect everyone’s view of our business”

“this isn’t the right platform to raise these issues”

“we value colleagues feedback and encourage great constructive conversations”

“I can assure you that the people on the programme are thoroughly committed to making a positive difference in our dedicated areas.”

“judge at the end and not at the start”
Various Managers

I understand both sides here, they did ask for feedback and they got it. However, they don’t want something so scathing to be publicly aired. It’s a tough one though because such statements could cause people to be more confident in airing their views (which is what they claim to want), but firing him like they did will suppress people from giving true feedback.

The usual process is probably to go to your line manager, but they don’t always raise it with their line manager. Then since it has to go up a few levels of the hierarchy; the message is probably going to get lost. If you suspect that happening, do you bypass them and go higher up the chain?

It was also written a bit too poetically which meant it was hard to understand some of the points. I think there is a specific and recent issue which he was referring to, and in the following days, I did learn that an employee that had been around for 20 years or so and been forced out. I didn’t learn the reason, but that was being referenced with “exhibiting a callous disregard for even its most dedicated employees“. So I think it was coming from a place of witnessing instances of toxic behaviour and calling it out, and it wasn’t even a personal grievance; he is sticking up for fellow employees.

The obvious (or maybe I should say “predictable”) response was to sack him, which they did. But you could have actually gone the opposite way and actually let him participate in making the changes to improve the culture. I only interacted with him a few times, but he always came across as knowledgeable and dedicated.

He goes on to say others keep quiet because they need their job, although it is low paid compared to industry standards. Many roles are overworked due to restructuring and merging roles together. Managers were ignoring the problems when raised. Proposed changes in Support were predicted by many to end in failure, but managers dismissed their concerns. I have seen similar comments on Glassdoor, which is where you don’t want the feedback, since that is on a public forum, and posted after an employee has left the business.

On a quest to get some juicy content for my blog, I managed to contact him before he got deactivated:

[Yesterday 15:07] Me
have you resigned. That post is epic

[Yesterday 15:07] Rodger
No. But don't plan on sticking around long haha

[Yesterday 15:08] Me
haven't you just started in development though? or did they do the classic "we will give you half pay until you prove yourself"

[Yesterday 15:14] Rodger
Sad but true

[Yesterday 15:20] Me
They are putting my notice period up from 1 month to 3. I made the point that this is contrary to the Employee of Choice which is supposed to be improving our conditions!

[Yesterday 15:20] Rodger
Good lord, that's rough...
And yeah, certainly feels that way

[Yesterday 15:21] Me
can't remember who was in charge at the time, but he put it down from 3 to 1, stating they wanted to improve things, and now we are undoing it. Apparently Experts and Managers are on like 6 months which just seems insane.

[Yesterday 15:22] Rodger
6 months. That's ridiculous, what company would be willing to wait that long for a new employee...

[Yesterday 15:23] Me
I don't see the point of changing the notice periods. Don't people just hand over their work in 1-2 weeks, take annual leave, then mess about for the rest of it
paying an unproductive employee who doesn't want to work there is just crazy. Even if they are moving for other reasons like leaving the country, it seems like you have to then leave on bad terms. Just let them go. 1 month is enough to deal with

[Yesterday 15:25] Rodger
Indeed. Don't get the mentality at all

[Yesterday 15:26] Me
anyway, I asked Jeannette to raise it in the Employee Forum. I reckon they will just say something like "its inline with industry standards" or some corporate statement

[Yesterday 15:27] Rodger
Oh aye, wasn't expecting a response.
Just wanted the catharsis of saying it all
Thanks regardless, though

[Yesterday 15:28] Me
they will probably delete your post and not try and address it. Reminds me of the negative glassdoor reviews then Jacqui says "this doesn't reflect my experience at all"
and I think, "how do you know what those jobs are like? you are on the big bucks, probably in your own office by yourself"

[12:05] Me
I couldn't resist responding [my post was about lines of communication, and trying to start a discussion with others around Rodger’s points to try and diffuse the argument]

[12:05] Rodger
Thanks haha

[12:07] Me
have they actually said anything to you directly? It's good that they didn't delete your post but then I was worried they would just sack you for these outbursts. I do think you might be a bit too (passive?) aggressive, but then I reckon you do have some good underlying points that they should listen to

[12:08] Rodger
Any aggressiveness, passive or otherwise, is only because the responses to my post have demonstrated a lack of understanding and contempt.
My initial post is nowhere near anything combative...
And, no. No one has spoken to me directly. People have spoken to my Manager and others around me though...

You've raised the right questions here.
Where can one speak about these things

[12:11] Me
I think someone did say (via a question) on our Departmental Meetings that the whole "we will take it offline" response just causes these problems. If there is an official response to it, everyone doesn't hear it because it was addressed one-on-one. Then I think that's what you are also calling out, because these Senior Managers are basically implying to contact them directly, rather than post in an open forum.

[12:12] Rodger
Aye

[12:13] Me
in my standup, one guy said he had to get a dictionary out to try and understand your points. It is super poetic. It makes it funnier but I do think it probably detracts from your points

[12:15] Rodger
Fair, but it's genuinely the way I speak and I thought it best to be as erudite as possible when articulating it all; in an effort to not just be dismissed as a dribbling idiot or fool, etc.

[12:27] Me
This does sound a bit extreme to me. Then that would be perceived to be an attack on the SLT
"The goals outlined as part of this programme infer/suppose a complete lack of humanism in company culture and are a tacit admission of gross negligence when it comes to employees; the shoulders upon which the company stands."

[12:31] Rodger
It certainly is a criticism.
The company admits that its staff don't feel; rewarded, included, valued, etc. (as inferred by the programme itself).
Is that not gross negligence?
I am perhaps opining there, but it doesn't seem to me to be an unreasonable statement and I would be happy to discuss the matter if literally anyone else was...

[12:35] Me
It can be a tough one because I think most people will complain about pay regardless of how much they actually get. Then if they don't get an inflation rise, they will moan about that but they might have been overpaid. So when people do complain, it might not be a valid point. but then I have been a victim of being underpaid

I think a common problem we have is that managers see us all as interchangeable. I have only been on this project a few months but we are gonna get our 3rd PO, and we have switched architects, and there was talk about moving one of our testers to another team. How can you be productive when that happens? can't build up knowledge or team chemistry. They still see us as "resources" they can move about. Probably doesn't help if a department is called Human Resources.

[12:38] Rodger
Indeed

[12:38] Me
I find it interesting how people like me moan, but yet stay here years so we must secretly like it

[12:39] Rodger
haha

[12:40] Me
I think it is actually a low stress job, and when I've known so many people leave and then come back, it does make you think it's not always greener on the other side. I also think other jobs will give you more responsibility. So I think it is comfortable here

do you find development stressful, or were your comments about your previous role?

[12:46] Rodger
I guess I'm in something of a unique position.
My comments were about my previous role, how things are now for me (which ain't "bad", just insanely busy), and everything I've heard and seen from elsewhere in the business

Conclusion

I think the lesson here is that if you really want to make changes to culture, then you need to be open to listening to “hard truths”. So if there was a problematic manager – if an employee openly reports the problem, it shouldn’t be the case that managers stick together. The claims should be investigated and if the manager is problematic, then they should be fired and not the employee.

I think we lost a couple of good and very dedicated employees here, and yet managers were pretending everything was perfectly fine.

Pride At Work

During Pride month, there were a few Yammer (now known as Viva Engage) posts about LGBT issues. One guy made a blog post about how gay people were denied the opportunity of blood transfusions until recently. It was informative but I did think it was a weird thing to post at work – given the word-count of the word “sex” reached double figures and contained the phrase “anal sex” along with other sexual references.

If you take that out of the context of “pride”, wouldn’t discussing or writing about sex at work result in you being on a call with a member of HR?

I discussed it with a few of my colleagues. One guy said he thought he “had crossed the line with his phrasing and could have easily worded it in a less explicit way”. Another colleague stated that “although I support Pride, I don’t feel I should be reading about it at work“. That is actually a good point. Although there can be important social issues in the world, if it has nothing to do with work, then why are we reading or talking about it when we should be working? I’m sure there was even some policy we had to agree to – that said you couldn’t discuss religion and politics because if someone had different beliefs to you, then they may feel excluded.

It made me think that – because LGBT is the current hot-topic, then it trumps all existing work policies, and you aren’t allowed to say anything against it. This is even more contentious when this particular topic could be against someone’s religious beliefs (we do employ a significant number of Muslims, and a certain number of colleagues could have opposing views regardless of religion).

To conclude Pride month, a member of HR posted the following:

“Lots of events take place throughout June every year to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and all the progress that has been made across legislation, attitudes and behaviours.
Personally, one reason I find these events so wonderful is because they bring together people of all ages and I see so many families attending together with children – what better way to encourage change than to teach children about positive attitudes and behaviours and set a great example for them.”
HR staff member

I laughed out loud when I read that. I really wanted to respond, but thought I’d end up being unfairly sacked. So I wrote this blog instead.

Maybe the average person hasn’t heard about all the controversies this year, but recently, I’ve spent a lot of time on Twitter and been watching a lot of Daily Wire content. I suppose the more stuff you view on Twitter, the more it recommends the content, and so if you have any hint of an opinion, then it becomes stronger with “confirmation bias”. I’ve generally been interested in conspiracy theories and hot debates, so Twitter has pushed a lot of this content to my feed.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not against LGBT in general, but am opposed to it being directed at kids (which a lot of people from the likes against Daily Wire are making content about), and Twitter seemed to like showing me everything that Gays Against Groomers were Tweeting, and that’s their purpose.

oh, won't somebody please think of the children - The Simpson's meme

So let’s go through some examples of what I am referring to here. If I remember correctly, the first controversy was a “family-friendly” Pride event where gay people in fetish gear were being whipped on top of an open-car. The next was a photograph of a curious girl about 6 years old who had approached 2 guys who were wearing that dog-themed leather bondage gear. A point here is – this content should only be known about if you go out of your way on an 18-rated website. Instead, people are in a public event where they knew that kids would be at, dressing up and even simulating these acts.

I actually only came across that particular fetish due to a colleague mentioning that a former male colleague had an OnlyFans with his boyfriend, and it was the company’s discovery of this fact that had forced him to leave the business. Given that the colleague that was telling me this had a reputation for exaggerating and lying, I asked him to prove it, and he linked me to his pages. He was telling the truth 😱😳

If my employer really is fine with this gay fetish aspect, then why was our former colleague sacked? Probably some hypocrisy there.

So I only learned about this fetish attire by going out of my way of the dark side of the internet, and here we have the likes of members of our HR department stating “I find these events so wonderful is because they bring together people of all ages and I see so many families attending together with children – what better way to encourage change than to teach children“. I find this sentiment being echoed among many that are presumably scared to be labelled a bigot for speaking out about it.

Some YouTubers stated that when they made content using such Pride footage, they were labelled as “adult content”. How can a “Family-friendly” event be adult content? Oh because it is adult content!

It’s considered a faux-pas to criticise Pride, but yet, if this same thing happened outside the context of Pride, people would call these people a “nonce”/”sex offender” and demand they be locked up for public indecency. This is what the group Gays Against Groomers stands for. They are against grooming kids. They are against exposing children to 18-rated content. Yet, they posted videos of their van parked at a Pride event and people were coming up to it and spitting on it. That’s right, people are openly fine with grooming kids these days. We used to want to protect kids at all costs, and we seem to have lost that over the last few years in pursuit of wokeness.

There was even the controversy with the Twitch Streamer NickMercs who Tweeted “They should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue” (it was in the context of a vote to celebrate Pride at a school), then Activision removed his character “skin” from the game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II | Warzone”. This then resulted in a minor boycott/review bomb, and people mocked Activision with the phrase “Call of Groomers“. How far has society fallen if stating “leave little children alone” is considered a controversial statement?

To go back to the first thing the HR staff member said “Lots of events take place throughout June every year to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and all the progress that has been made across legislation, attitudes and behaviours.“. Progress made? So in addition to the examples of Pride becoming fetishized, you also had the transwoman that exposed their breasts at the White House, Puberty blockers banned in the UK , the boycott of Bud Light in the US due to the promotion with Dylan Mulvaney, the boycott of Target due to stocking chest binders which tanked their share price, the banning of Drag Queen events, men identifying as women to avoid Men’s prison, and more people speaking out against Transwomen in sports. So the Trans community has taken hits in their PR in this Pride month.

There was also the incident with Billboard Chris, where he was speaking to someone about how it is wrong to give puberty blockers to children, when a transwoman began screaming obscenities repeatedly in his face. Chris did his best to ignore her, until he got punched in the face. Despite having several police as witnesses, and having the event caught on camera, the police refused to prosecute the assault, and blamed Chris for being antagonistic. Pride Month ain’t it – Commit all the crimes you like.

So I’d say the LGBT movement had gained more and more support over time, but this year, it took a massive step back. I wouldn’t be surprised if further controversies were more widely publicised in future.

I think issues should be raised and discussed with logic, and not dealt with whilst being blinded by wokeness and hypocrisy. People need to take a step back, clear their minds and really decide what they actually believe in.

Assault is wrong. Grooming kids is wrong. Sex shouldn’t be discussed at work. I hope we can agree with that.

Managers visiting India

In recent times, our HR Director reiterated that for UK workers, there are no plans to return to the office and we will continue to work at home. However, our Indian workforce will be. It sounded like it was some government-mandated thing.

I suppose it is great news for managers and directors because they love making any excuse to go over there for a week for “work” then post about the sights and local cuisine.

Days after the HR Director had spoken about how “home-working was the way forward for the company”:

“Caroline and I had a long chat when we were back at the hotel and talked about what we had learnt so far this week. We both concluded we need to have more fun at work, see people face-to-face more often and continue to have new experiences as that helps with personal growth.”
HR Director

How does she not realise the hypocrisy of her statement? It wouldn’t surprise me if she u-turned and told us to go back to the office.

Meanwhile the CTO finally realises developers are actually important (whilst sampling the local cuisine, of course):

“One of the highlights of my trip was getting to know the team on a more personal level, through lunches, dinners, and working sessions. I have come away from the trip with a newfound appreciation for the vital role that our developers play in our company’s success, and for the amazing work that they do every day.”
CTO

How can you be one of the leads for the Development department and not realise that software developers are the key part of a company that sells software?

I’m sure they mean well, but the more you think about it, the worse it seems. It also seems like he appreciates the Indian workforce more than the English ones.

Colin: How was their visit?
Jeeva: "They are very busy, we got 6 minutes of their time”.

Why so specific? I wonder if that is a cultural thing. Indian’s seem to do it with job experience. Us English just round up or down to the nearest half-year, but they like saying they have “2.2 years of C# experience”.

Employee of Choice: Culture

Intro

Last year, my employer announced an “Employee of Choice” scheme. It wasn’t clear if this was an official award or a self-awarded title. Essentially, they want to improve a few key aspects so that current employees would recommend working here.

I had previously written about the survey and the results.

There were a few key pillars: Culture, Leadership, Employee Rewards and Terms, Work Environment, Processes, and Branding. Many people were sceptical that there would be any meaningful improvements.

Discussion

I discussed the topic of Culture with a few colleagues. The discussion was triggered by me saying that: I was intrigued what they would come up with to improve culture – since the term is a vague concept. Is “culture” just a naturally-occurring subconscious thing that happens? Or is it something you consciously try to create?

One colleague said he perceived it to be more about the working environment. People always loved the job despite the lower comparative wages because of the perceived positive culture. He said most people worked closely, and that meant people went from colleagues to friends. The “breakout” room, where people can go have a break or have lunch, encourages people to talk as friends. The addition of the canteen had similar benefits and gave a great option to purchase good food. The office was located near a park which was also great to go for a lunchtime walk. So it seems his perception is about how you perceive your colleagues and your ability to relax.

However, he said now we work at home “All those have gone. All that’s left is the work friends but it is diluted.” (many have since left and you don’t get to see the remaining people without a lot of effort.)

Another colleague said “it’s hard to change the culture because it’s so ingrained“, which sounds like it’s more like emergent behaviour.

Culture Manager

After a few months, we heard from the manager who is leading the “Culture pillar”. He admitted that he has actually been thinking of what “culture” actually means. I think it might have been helpful for him to question that on Day 1, rather than after a few months. Better late than never, I suppose.

You hear about “toxic” cultures, and sometimes about inspiring cultures (sometimes you just hear of positive aspects of the big tech companies, like Google having a slide for a bit of fun). Culture is not a tangible thing like an employee benefit – culture is something that only lives in our heads.
Culture Manager

He goes on to say that what people perceive to be “culture” is “hard to quantify, evidence and even explain“. Some people may write it off as “corporate jargon“, yet others deem it as important. Since it can mean different things to different people, how can he even begin to improve it?

I guess another point is: if we did a survey scoring the culture, and people have wildly different interpretations – then how do you even interpret a rating out of 5, and can you trust it at all?

He then ends the post by asking us what we interpret as culture? but also shifts the perceived poor culture onto the general staff by saying

a positive and progressive culture is on us as individuals – our culture is what we make it and believe it to be.
Culture Manager

We were told that the managers of each of these key pillars of the “Employee of Choice” have been busy making meaningful changes, but this post really sounds like: after months of work, the Culture Manager has decided he has nothing to do; and if there is a poor culture – it is our fault.

Employee Responses

A few employees responded to his post.

“Culture is the sum of a number of things which are driven by actions and good decisions, both individually and also from managers. Individuals have to all travel in the same, right direction and leaders and managers have to set the direction clearly and drive everyone towards it.”
Employee

Another employee stated that managers put the onus on individuals by reiterating the company’s “values”, but culture is mainly driven from the managers showing those values:

“The company’s values represent its ambition to have a positive culture, but don’t do much to enable it on their own. Even if individual employees want to behave in ways that represent those values, corporate culture has a lot of momentum which is almost impossible for individuals to affect much unless they’re in a position of power.”
Employee 2

I liked those 2 responses, because they are basically telling the Culture Manager “YOU ARE WRONG!”

Another gave a more modern, woke response:

“To me, a good, progressive and welcoming culture should be inclusive and celebrate diversity (of individuals, ideas and ways of working)”.
Employee 3

Jessie Marsch’s Spieler Rat

I came across the following quote from ex-Leeds United manager Jessie Marsch.

Note: The “fine system” he mentions is when players have to pay a monetary fine for breaking some rule. Some of the rules can be humorous (wearing flip-flops in the shower) but others are important aspects like not being late to training. The fine system can set the standard for professionalism but also allow for a bit of fun too.

“I have a leadership council everywhere I go. In Germany it’s called the Spieler Rat, the leader group. I ask them things like, how do we want to travel? What do we want to wear? Have them make the fine system, you know. But then I go deeper. What do they think of our tactics? You know, I ask them about match plans. I’ll ask them about training, about video, about everything. And I want them to be fully engaged at all moments. And typically, if a player comes to me and has something important that he believes in, then I will almost always include it in what we do, almost always. Because if I really am asking them to commit themselves, and give of themselves, then I have to give room for that to take place. I mean, I could give you a lot of different examples of that.”

He is talking about his leadership style which I think sets the scene to what the culture is under his management. You could manage as an authoritarian or be more open like a democracy. It sounds like the greater vision is provided by Jessie, but instead of micro-managing, he delegates that to his leadership group. I think his approach will make the players feel valued and more open to contribute ideas.

Conclusion

I still think Culture is quite hard to define, but it does seem like it’s the collective mood; driven by managerial decisions, and the physical environment employees are in.

Software Support Call Centre

We used to have a very large support team in our own call centre. As a software developer, we were occasionally sent to go talk to them from time to time, and I was amazed at how busy they were. Usually, as soon as they had put the phone down, they had another user call up.

Sometimes it was that the user just didn’t know how to use the system, and other times it was to complain about a software bug or slow performance. The call centre staff were rapid at entering the information into the system, and were brilliant in asking the user the right questions to really understand their problem. They could often tell the user if the issue was logged or not, and also give them some relevant work-arounds.

After speaking to some of the staff, they explained how strict the culture was there – they were monitored on how fast they picked up the phone, how long the call was, and how many breaks they had. They said how annoying it was to be warned about being late when it was due to bad traffic.

It surprised me because it seemed a completely different culture to how the development department is run. We are flexible when we start; so you can just turn up late and no one cares. We were never challenged on how long our work took to complete. I guess if our work is poor quality, it’s the call centre staff that took the complaints!

At some point, some manager decided to use a 3rd party company for Support, and most of our Support staff either left or (presumably) got redundancy.

The amount of complaints seemed to go up on various social media platforms, and I got the impression this 3rd party company didn’t know our software so were just providing users generic statements from a script “can you try turning it off and on again?”. Maybe if they got past the initial questions, they then got put through to our smaller 2nd-line Support team.

A few years later, I think a new manager came in and decided to try to reverse the decision, but it’s going to take a bit of time to get the new staff as good as the old ones.

“As part of our drive to strengthen our customer satisfaction and experience along with simplifying our ways of working for both our customers and the service desk, the decision has been made to insource the call centre. All calls will now come directly into the service desk.

We have already run a couple of trial switch offs over the last fortnight and the initial feedback has been unanimously positive with customers preferring to be directly connected to the service desk; just in this small sample there has been an increase in both the quality of cases and first-time fixes. We will continue to invest in developing a world class service desk.”
Company Announcement

It seems obvious to me if you make the support more generic, then it’s going to decrease customer satisfaction.

The only problems I had with Support is:

A) when they would link completely different issues to the same bug report. Sometimes you see that a bug that you thought should be super rare – has had 100’s of reports from the users. Then when you look into the cases, you see that 90%+ of them are unrelated. We could have probably put some advice on how to decide if issues are the same root cause or not, in order to try to help remedy this.

B) Sometimes there’s other data entry errors that end up being misleading, like this:

Support (in the free-text description): 
"however we have been able to re-create this on the test system by"...

also support (in the mandatory fields):

"Recreated in-house: No
Reason not recreated: Unable to recreate"

Employee of Choice Update – Claimed Changes

Intro

Recently, my employer announced an “Employee of Choice” scheme. It wasn’t clear if this was an official award or a self-awarded title. Essentially, they want to improve a few key aspects so that current employees would recommend working here.

There were a few key pillars: Culture, Leadership, Employee Rewards and Terms, Work Environment, Processes, and Branding.

Many people were sceptical that there would be any meaningful improvements.

A post was recently published, detailing the current and upcoming improvements. I feel many aspects are just “clutching at straws”; it just feels like they are blagging aspects. Although some points are nice sentiments, they don’t offer real value or a long-term change.

Claimed Improvements

CULTURE

1. For the Employee Of The Month/Quarter awards, we shared video testimonies from nominators.

2. Webinars, and suggested further reading.

Coming Soon:

Comprehensive induction for new starters, and a “New Starter Pack” of company branded items (drinks bottle, pen and paper etc).
Improve support/recognition for long term employees (7+ years).
Provide examples of ‘collaboration’ (which was one of the lowest scoring attributes on the survey)

Verdict: I’ll probably write a blog on Employee of The Month, but I think they often get unfairly awarded. Making someone (who nominated the winner) record a video could just discourage people actually providing nominations. The webinars could be appreciated by some people but it’s basically a motivational talk which not everyone will care about.

GREAT LEADERSHIP

1. Webinars.

Coming Soon:

Comprehensive induction for new managers.
Consolidate materials from across departments to increase consistency.
Calendar of events.
Improve training resources

Verdict: Basically everything is just “coming soon”, so no changes here.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

1. Delivered DSE (Display Screen) Assessment presentations to all departments.

2. We’ve analysed employees’ postcodes to see if they are in reasonable travelling distance to an office.

Coming Soon:

Promotional videos for our offices
Presentations for hints/tips on the O365 software suite.
Review of office usage
Exploring different approaches to support more social interactions
Exploring options to support colleagues wellbeing

Verdict: We used to get asked about our equipment on a regular basis, and you could request a new monitor, ergonomic keyboard/mouse, chair etc if you stated your current equipment wasn’t suitable. Weirdly, I don’t think our department was asked this year despite their claim (I hadn’t heard of it and asked several colleagues too); so that is a step backwards. After claiming the majority of colleagues were in traveling distance to an office, they announced the closure of a couple of offices. How can you say “we’ve analysed employees’ postcodes” is a delivered thing – it’s just analysis for a potential improvement, and they removed an office option for a group of employees.

EMPLOYEE REWARDS AND TERMS

1. Amazon vouchers for employee rewards

Coming Soon:

Maternity Returners’ workshop
Improved “Benefits Portal”
Flexibility in the Working Week
Maternity and paternity leave are being reviewed

Verdict: Managers can award prizes that you can redeem for vouchers. There’s plenty of options already, and I suppose Amazon is gonna be a popular choice.

PROCESSES

1. Successful completion of Security training

Coming Soon:

Process Improvement Framework
Considering the blockers

Verdict: How do you determine if training was successful or a failure? Surely you need to test people on their knowledge, or ask for feedback. I actually thought one (of two) of the presentations was abysmal and I couldn’t believe these guys were security experts and charging for these presentations. He was supposed to show the basic steps that hackers would take to hack a website he had created himself (and therefore had basic security flaws), but many of the attacks he tried didn’t actually work.

I asked some colleagues if they turned up to the session:

“We didn’t even book a place on it. we never have to consider security stuff. Everything’s done in the safety of our framework. I’ll let someone else worry about it”
colleague

With that attitude, that shows that we do need training!

BRANDING

1. Updated main website

2. Booked into a few careers fairs

Coming Soon:

Guides on how employees can promote the company on their own social media.
Reviewing our recruitment practices and processes.
Enhance the Careers section of the website.
Blog posts/testimonials from employees to share across social media.

Verdict: Basically just “coming soon”. Booking careers fair is an upcoming thing with an unknown benefit.

Conclusion:

When you look through what has been delivered of actual value; I would say very little change has happened so far.

Glint Survey: Findings

In the last blog, I discussed a survey my employer sent out to all employees. If they use the results, then they should address highlighted issues (if any), and aim to keep positive aspects unchanged. This blog is about the results.

The findings were presented to us by some of the Directors. It was full of hype as expected.

“We will provide an update on our journey to become an Employer of Choice and outline the key work-streams that underpin this business-wide programme; many of which will be supported and informed by the feedback captured as part of the Glint survey.”
Director

Firstly was a sales pitch of why Glint is good (some good business jargon and hype here):

“Strategic approach to measuring engagement”,
“ownership for engagement is enabled”,
“Improved effectiveness and efficiency of surveying”,
“Improved understanding of how we compare externally”,
“Employer of Choice programme enabler.”

87% participation, standard participation for Glint is in the 70-80% range. Our Group-wide Engagement Index score is 70 (100-point rating).

The score is calculated from the first 2 questions of the survey, which were:

I would recommend The Company as a great place to work
How happy are you working at The Company?

The other questions in the survey are basically to drill-down deeper. Or in their words:

“to improve engagement, we need to focus on improving the more tactical areas included in the survey”

The questions were responded to on a 1-5 scale. The Rating breakdown was as follows:

67% positive (4,5)
23% neutral (3)
10% negative (1,2)

As a side-note, one department leader discussed his department’s score:

“our department engagement index is 55 which is a little bit lower than the company at 70”.
Departmental Manager

That kinda looks significant to me. 55 sounds very poor in isolation, and lagging behind the 70 as a whole.

There were around 2,000 total comments, left by 37% of respondents. They determined 58% of the comments were negative, 34% positive, 8% neutral. I assume this was judged by an AI, categorising the sentiment. Unclear if Glint provides this but it is a great feature if they do.

“It’s in the comments where the richest data is available to us”
Director

Why wasn’t it mandatory then? I felt it was way too easy to not think about the question and just give a random score without justification. I discussed this in the previous blog.

We were shown a tag cloud which is quite meaningless in isolation. Included words like:

Development
Action
Knowledge
Pressure
Raise
Barrier
Manage
Team member
Deliver
Workload
Responsibility
Request
Software
update
Remote working

We seemed to score particularly high on “Camaraderie” (Question: I have a good working relationship with members of my team); and “Work-life Balance“: (Question: I am able to successfully balance my work and personal life). I personally scored these high.

“These particular results show that The Company, on a personal level, is a welcoming, fulfilling and supportive place to work where colleagues feel safe and cared for, in particular by their immediate teams, and can enjoy a role which does not infringe on their personal lives. This is a reassuring picture, reflecting the nature of our business, the quality of our people, and the importance of our values.”
Director

We were really bad at “Barriers to Execution“: (Question: We do a good job removing barriers that slow down our work); “Collaboration“: (Question: Teams collaborate effectively to get things done); and “Culture“: (Question: has a great culture). Personally I was unsure about Barriers To Execution and Collaboration, and I feel Culture is too vague without examples of what it actually means. I would have thought Barriers and Collaboration would vary drastically between departments, so amalgamating the score as a whole seems a bit random to me.

“Our opportunities reflect a picture that shows colleagues are most frustrated when it comes to being able to effectively do their job to a high standard, especially when this involves working with wider teams or departments – either due to internal processes and tools or a lack of effective cross-departmental collaboration, communication, appreciation or awareness.”
Director

The HR director was appalled that we also scored low in “I believe meaningful action will be taken as a result of this survey.”. Despite hyping up our focus for this Employee of Choice thing, our employees don’t believe the Senior Management will improve things! 😀

“We know from the survey that many colleagues are sceptical as to whether this new approach to measuring employee engagement and responding to employee feedback will result in any meaningful action being taken.”
HR Director

One comment they picked out suggested that people complain about things but don’t actually raise these issues with management, so suggested we need more “Director Q&A” Sessions, or an “Employee Forum” where we can ask questions or raise issues. Maybe we really do need a culture change.

The thing is, we once created a Slack channel where we could contact the Software Development department managers (so that was specific to my department only). The Managers did respond to some concerns and one issue I remember we complained about was communication, where the Head of Development sends an email to 3 managers below him, and then those 3 managers forward the email on to their line reports, who then have to forward the email on to their line reports; but someone will be on leave, or just didn’t forward it on – then people miss out on info. After promising they would put an end to the madness, I think 6 months later it just started again. Then after a few more months, the Slack channel was completely dead. I think another issue is that it seems so obvious when there are issues, it seems crazy to think that managers don’t know about them. I mean, that communication example is an obvious problem! So then people may feel like they don’t need to raise it, or think managers won’t change their ways. It also doesn’t help that the HR Director keeps dismissing people’s rants on Glassdoor. She is always like “this doesn’t reflect my experience“. Well yeah, you are on a high paid job sat in a fancy office, of course you don’t know what it’s like on the ground.

“I want to reassure you that we are committed to learning from these results and will dedicate time to identify what actions are needed or where further exploration is required, at a Group-wide level. By providing line managers with rich and actionable data via personalised dashboards, we are empowering you all to drive change within your areas too. This is not a top-down approach but a collective one where we all have a role to play.”
Director

Group-wide Objectives

Improve cross-team collaboration
Improve understanding of cross-team priorities including wider strategic clarity
Ensure better communications between teams and business areas
Equip colleagues to have honest conversations
Create a mind-set change

Personally, I have no idea how you implement these. Surely some departments have these problems and others don’t. Only the individual departments would know if they can be fixed.

Q&A

Then in the Q&A section at the end, there was one complaint from Development, highlighting the increase in attrition and the general problem of us replacing Seniors with Juniors which was affecting the ability to complete projects on time.

Another complaint was how we posted record profits, boasted about the generous pay rises they dished out…but was still below the rate of inflation.

Another staff member challenged how someone had a correction to their pay due to the “gender pay gap”, but then excluded from the pay review because they already had a pay-rise that year. A similar thing happened to me actually where I was underpaid for my role and level of experience. It shouldn’t matter why you had a pay-rise before, you should get it adjusted for inflation as standard, and not be told you’ve already had a rise. All the current mindset does is re-introduce the pay disparity they were trying to address.

Another person made the point that sometimes Directors respond to questions on these Q&A sessions by saying they will “take it offline” and answer the person one-on-one. This means others in the company never see the answer to these tough questions – which then breeds a bad culture and then the feedback is only given via channels such as this Glint survey.

Closing Thoughts

You can easily understand why people doubt meaningful action will be taken from the results of the survey. We often highlight problems and then they just get shrugged off. I understand people always seem to moan about pay, so it is easy to shrug that off as “not an issue”.

I’ll be intrigued what they actually do to meet these objectives, and to become this “Employer of Choice” they keep stating.

Glint Survey

Introduction

In this blog, I discuss a survey my employer sent out to all employees. If they use the results, then they should address highlighted issues (if any), and aim to keep positive aspects unchanged.

“We are on a journey to become an employer of choice. This survey, and your feedback, will enable us to identify what to prioritise and focus on. We want to be guided by your experiences. Help us to help you.”

We have done surveys like this before, but then I don’t think anything really changes based on the feedback. I also find them quite vague and open to interpretation. If I was creating a survey, I think I would add examples to clarify the questions, and would also force people to justify their answers with comments. If you simply score 1-5, then when it’s a 5, what makes it so good? If it is a 4, what change would perfect it? If it is a 3, why so mediocre? or is it simply you just don’t have an opinion on it/don’t find it relevant etc.

I ended up clicking 3 for most of the answers, and didn’t feel it was worth spending time writing the optional comments as I felt it wouldn’t make a difference. Some questions were ambiguous, or unclear what they meant so I didn’t feel like I could score accurately. I think they will just look at the average scores and not really drill down into the details. Although that does go against their ambition of being an “Employer of Choice“. If they really want to be this (is this some kind of award/vote thing, or self declared? What does that really mean anyway?), then they need clear guidance so should ask for justifications.

Employer of Choice Programme

”This is a business critical programme with a number of SLT-sponsored work-streams that are focused on making us an employer of choice; where we attract, recruit and retain the people we need, enabling everyone to be their best self and deliver high performance.”

The Survey

So here are the questions, and my thoughts on each.

How happy are you working here?

Quite a tough one to answer really. I find it is very comfortable as weeks can go by without much progress and managers don’t seem to care. I like the low-pressure environment but then I just think it’s becoming a bit stale in recent times.

I would recommend here as a great place to work.

Is it really possible to be really happy but not recommend it, or be really unhappy but recommend it? Surely these 2 answers will go hand-in-hand. Maybe there’s some edge cases, as I think if you like chilling, then it is perfect to work here. So some people could be unhappy but recommend it to others in that case! The last batch of people we have hired have basically done nothing for 2-3 years so I am sure they are happy in the short term.

If you want a job where you are learning a lot, I think maybe it’s best looking elsewhere. There is a big push to create new features “in the cloud” but then these projects sometimes seem a bit forced and end up being scrapped.

I think over time, long-term employees have been moving on. I think that’s a general problem seen across the industry now many software developers work at home. It’s easy to switch jobs without having the hassle of moving or large commutes. I do think this is a big reason. So with an increasing number of cancelled projects and more jobs moving to India (although recruitment over there seems to be struggling as well), maybe it’s not so great for people to start working here.

I understand how my work contributes to our success.

People got quite excited when starting working on a successor to our ageing, flagship software. But it’s been 3 years, the projects have been restarted or changed direction/vision. There’s general disillusionment when developers say “none of my code has reached production in 3 years”. Even people that are working on the flagship software have seen projects being delayed from release by 3 months sometimes. So it’s quite hard to see how your work contributes to success when many features just don’t seem to get released!

I feel a sense of belonging.

A few years ago, I think most people you could ask would say the people are brilliant. Unless you were the sort of person that came in, kept quiet and did your work, I think people would cite having several close friends. This has definitely dwindled over the years, especially since switching to home-working. Then like I stated before, long-term employees have been leaving recently which has eroded the “classic” culture.

I am able to successfully balance my work and personal life.

I think we score highly here because we are never pressured. Even if you miss deadlines, managers often seem happy just to delay things. One colleague recently stated he “has never known a deadline that couldn’t be extended”.

I have a good working relationship with members of my team.

My team is actually composed of long-term employees so I think we have a good mix of knowledge of the company and determination for the software to be of good quality. I think in general, small teams do work well together.

I feel satisfied with the recognition or praise I receive for my work.

To be honest, I am always ranting about how managers just hype up everything. It seems really disingenuous. Then there have been instances where projects are a mess but you get praised for getting them over the line. It’s gonna get done if you extend the deadline long enough!

People then get praised for dealing with a tough project even though it was clearly bad decisions from the team that caused the delay/bad quality. It means when you do get praised for doing something good, it’s hard to know if it is actually sincere.

I feel comfortable being myself at work.

I’m not really sure how to interpret this. In today’s woke culture, it sounds like it’s asking if you are comfortable stating your sexuality or something. I don’t think I have to pretend to be someone else, so I guess this scores highly.

I feel empowered to make decisions regarding my work.

Not sure about this one either. I do question requirements, but ultimately it’s the Product Owner’s decision, and they are taking orders from above.

I have good opportunities to learn and grow.

I think each day is the same really, so no new challenges.

My working environment allows me to work at my best.

I did wonder how people interpret this question. If we work at home, is it a critique of our own space? Do people just consider their work equipment (computer, mouse, keyboard, monitors)? Would people interpret this to be about software? People they work with? Managers?

I have the resources I need to do my job well.

Now this sounds more like hardware and software, but is it?

I am excited about The Company’s future.

With our ageing flagship software and our upcoming software keeps changing direction/restarting/delayed – the future seems grim in my opinion. I was discussing this with a colleague recently. If a competitor releases new software before we do, then we could be screwed if ours still needs years to be suitable for release. We announced it early too which means other companies could be provoked into making a similar product in order to be competitive, especially since we hyped up key features that weren’t even being developed at the time.

The Company has a great culture.

“Culture” is a very vague term really. I think this is more of a culmination of aspects. Your peers, managers, processes/rules, unwritten rules (e.g. expected amount of overtime). It’s a bit mixed really. I generally like the people, but there’s a few people who definitely chill out, recent recruitment has been poor, and some processes are just box ticking…

We do a good job removing barriers that slow down our work.

Not sure again. I think we have been increasing focus on security and that slows you down, like losing Administrator rights to our computers. Want to install something? Have to go through IT. Sometimes we seem to add more “box-ticking” exercises for things and there doesn’t seem to be much rationale/benefit for these.

There is a good flow of communication between leadership, departments, and teams.

We like to organise “Town Hall” meetings, or Directors may make little blog posts on Yammer etc. But then we do the weird thing where managers send an email to their line reports who have to send the email on to their linereports who have to send the mail on to theirs. Then someone in the chain doesn’t then people don’t know about key information.

Teams collaborate effectively to get things done.

I think the projects are often self-isolated so I haven’t had much experience of this recently. But when I did work on our upcoming product, the teams were duplicating work or doing work that would be useless – like making an API that no other team wanted.

Regardless of background, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.

Never noticed any classism, racism, sexism. I think sometimes the promotions can be quite cliquey and women seem to be allowed extended maternity then come back into a promotion. So I think some evidence of positive sexism, if anything.

Employees are held accountable for their work.

Disagree with this one. The most delayed project I have ever been on resulted in a one-off bonus of £1500 on completion. Others cashed in on overtime. Yet, if they were held accountable, then they should have been criticised for their decisions which led to such delays.

I have confidence in the leadership team.

I don’t know who is accountable for what, but since our new software has overrun by years, and obvious mistakes have been made, I’m not sure what they are doing about it or why it took so long to respond to it.

My manager keeps our team focused on clear priorities.

Hard to answer again. Sometimes people moan that they get asked to fix a bug instead of carrying on with their projects. But obviously high priority bugs will always take priority. Managers in charge of several teams love moving team members around as if staff are purely interchangeable. This has been a problem for a while, but particularly in recent years.

My manager provides me with feedback that helps me improve my performance.

Well, we often come up with some super new appraisal framework then never really use it: we come up with objectives but then don’t review them and change the process again next year because it was deemed the current one didn’t work.

I am satisfied with the benefits offered.

We hype up generic stuff like “cycle to work scheme” which makes no sense when you work at home. Sometimes we promote voucher schemes and stuff but you often just save 2-5% here and there.

We are committed to protecting the environment, promoting social equality and diversity, and supporting our communities.

Sometimes we promote initiatives like tree-planting and some charity fundraisers, but aside from that; no idea.

I believe meaningful action will be taken as a result of this survey.

Since we have done these surveys before, I think little action will be taken. I think because the questions were a bit vague and open to interpretation, it’s probably hard to glean much information from it. If a question scores an average of 3, what does it really mean? You would have to analyse the comments. But then if people have interpreted the question differently, then the score becomes meaningless anyway.

What else is on your mind?

I generally don’t like surveys 😀

Conclusion

I probably could provide good insight to the senior management, but A) the questions werent that clear and B) comments weren’t mandatory. Even though I didn’t write comments, it still took me 20 minutes or so to complete the survey. I discussed it with a colleague and he said it was easy to fill in and took 5 minutes. Then when I asked him how he interpreted certain questions like the “work environment”, then he admitted that he never considered all that detail. So the results of a question like that isn’t going to be useful.