Opinions

[kd5145]

Just looking to see other people's thoughts on this.

The company that I work for spouts about keeping an equal balance of work and a personal life.

We have this one person that oversees three states. He does an amazing job. Intelligent, informed, hard working. Unfortunatly, he works so hard that he spends at the max, three days a month at home.

I found out today that he is resigning his position in six weeks. Do you know that when he informed his supervisor about his resignation they didn't even ask if there was anything they could do to keep him in the company?

I guess this is more of a vent than anything.

Has anyone else ever worked for a company that has such an obvious disregard for well being of their employees?

[scifi4me2004]

Yes I have and it is very sad.

People stop worrying about the people working with them and for them and worry much much more about their bottom line>>>$

Sometimes the more you give a company the more they feel entitled to ask for..whether it be verbally or in a non verbal way.

I worked 65 hrs a week for a company that was just starting out=25 hrs a week of that unpaid, I was taking one for the team. Once the company was stable or within a year whichever came first I would be paid out or could take a paid day a week off. They honestly had the opinion I didn't have a life(which I did) and were literally insulted when I began taking that one day a week off with pay.

I never was fully compensated. I started out from behind the 8ball and knew I wouldn't ever work it out to be even. They buckled the first month about my one free day and refused to pay me out and then I gladly resigned. I vowed never to waste my time like that again, and I haven't.

[simplydamon]

I think most of the companies I've worked for have tried very hard if I told them I was leaving. In some cases, an offer was made that made we want to stay. In others, the offer wasn't good enough for me. While I hate to sound shallow, there are times when money does have a tremendous influence on a decision to accept a new offer ;)


"I found out today that he is resigning his position in six weeks. Do you know that when he informed his supervisor about his resignation they didn't even ask if there was anything they could do to keep him in the company?"

Perhaps it depends on if there are people that are qualified to take the person's place? Some companies might want to bring in new talent that could be cheaper than the person that they are replacing.

[kd5145]

I suppose that there is plenty of talent out there that can "take his place". What a huge dissapointment though.

[George]

This day and age the bottom line is MONEY. MONEY dictate almost everything one does. Even if you started a business thats making less money than what u did at a job, your doing it because you know you can make more money doing it in the future.

[raincoaster]

Don't mean to play devil's advocate here, but maybe there was a cultural mismatch?

By that I mean that, no matter the quality of the work he did, nor the quantity, he was a living, breathing example of NOT having work/life balance. Maybe they felt guilty about driving him into an early grave or away from his family, and he hadn't listened to hints or instructions to ease up. I've worked with people like that, and they invariably are high performers who feel unappreciated and alone, because what they do is not appreciated or understood in a company like that. They work themselves like that in any company, but in a culture that accepts and rewards it (like stock trading) they feel accepted and rewarded. Maybe it's a loss for the company, but they planned to replace him with someone who was closer to their core values?

Or then again, they could just be foolish hypocrites shooting themselves in the foot.

[Wysiwyg101]

I know of two situations with two different friends of mine that are similar to your friends.

Situation 1:

Guy works full time for an AV company here in the DFW area. He becomes one of the most respected and competent video engineers in our area as well as nationally. Free-lancers at his level make easily $450 a day. After several years he asked for a raise from $9.12 an hr to $12 an hr. They said no, he left the company and went elsewhere immediately making $16 an hr. His old company hired a new kid with zero video experience to replace him and get this, at the rate he had asked to raised to.

Situation 2:

Guy works in for an AV company here in the DFW area (not the same company as above BTW) in one of the major hotels here. They tend to work their hotel guys 50-70 hrs a week easily in peak seasons. We free-lancers see alot of turnover due to burnout. This guy got to be so good they made him a floor superviser and speaking as one who has seen them come and go from this property over the last several years, he was a dang good one.Anyways, he asks for a raise from his company from $10 an hr to $13 an hr. They said no. About this time, another hotel property asked him to come on as a Banquet Manager. Keep in mind that and AV Tech and a Banquet Guy are two completely different areas of job types. Well, they offered him more than he was asking so he went and asked again for the raise telling them someone else was interested in him. The company again said no, so he left and went to work as a Banquet Manager. Three weeks later the AV company tried to hire him back at the rate he was asking, he turned them down saying "He** no, I make more now for doing less then I did for you with lots less stress. I would have to be a moron to even consider it."

Losing good experienced people over a few bucks? I still don't get it.

[kd5145]

Unfortunatly he has no family due to work. He comes from a background that believes in arranged marriage and he did go back home for a month last year to find a wife. I thought if he did, I felt so bad for her as she would never see him.

The funny thing is even though he was on "vacation", he still had his laptop, text pager, cell phone, etc.

The company does say they believe in that balance, but people's actions do not reflect those values.