Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon about this, but I don’t have much use for April Fools’ Day in the workplace.
Don’t get me wrong; I think a work environment with laughter and humor improves employee morale and overall productivity. My firsthand experience in managing people for more than 20 years is that they just do a better job and accomplish more in a lighthearted workplace culture than they do in an overly serious one.
The survey asked the following question: “How appropriate do you think it is to play April Fools’ Day jokes in the office?” While only 29 percent of marketing executives found such jokes to be very or somewhat appropriate, 51 percent of advertising executives thought April Fools’ Day high jinks are OK.
A similar survey by Careerbuilder.com found that 32 percent of workers say that they have been involved with April Fools’ Day pranks at work, either on the giving or receiving end. It even went so far as to list the top 10 most memorable pranks. These included:
• Sending a fake love note to a co-worker from another co-worker.
• Calling electric company and using a co-worker’s name (and personal information) and saying he was moving, so the electricity got turned off at the co-worker’s house.
• Adjusting the sprayer in the kitchen sink to squirt co-workers when they turned on the water.
• Putting a for-sale ad for a co-worker’s home in the newspaper.
Am I the only one who thinks these “pranks” are not only stupid, but could result in legal action from the unsuspecting workers on the receiving end? An open workplace that allows people to joke and have a little fun is generally a good thing, but “pranks” that are directed at specific employees or groups hold up people to unwarranted ridicule and sap morale and esprit de corps.
Megan Slabinski, executive director of the Creative Group, probably said it best: “A distasteful or mean-spirited joke can easily damage someone’s professional reputation, co-worker relationships and career prospects. … What is viewed as lighthearted fun in one environment may be frowned upon in another.”
In other words, what qualifies as April Fools’ Day “fun” depends on your definition of the word (or maybe on whether it was your house that was listed as being for sale). Since everyone views such things very differently, my advice is to avoid pranks like these at all costs. There’s little upside, and a whole lot of downside, when you engage in such workplace “fun.”
Leave it to The New York Times to come up with a silly new workforce trend that sounds environmentally friendly but is really just marketing gibberish for politicians and overpaid consultants to tout: green-collar jobs.
And just what is a green-collar job, you rightly ask? “A green-collar job is in essence a blue-collar job that has been upgraded to address the environmental challenges of our country,” according to Lucy Blake, chief executive of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, labor unions and politicians, who talked to the Times. Her coalition is “seeking to transform the [U.S.] economy into one based on renewable energy.”
Blake and other advocates of green-collar jobs see “an economy with millions of workers installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, brewing biofuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change.”
Don’t get me wrong—I have nothing against new jobs of any sort, especially ones that help us break free of our dependence on foreign oil. But I wonder: Why do we need to apply some new, politically loaded term to these positions? Is it because some view the use of the term “blue collar” as a pejorative?
“Some skeptics argue that the phrase ‘green jobs’ is little more than a trendy term for politicians and others to bandy about,” the Times story says. “Some say they are not sure that these jobs will have the staying power to help solve the problems of the nation’s job market, and others note that green jobs often pay less than the old manufacturing jobs they are replacing. Indeed, such is the novelty of the green-job concept that no one is certain how many such jobs there are, and even advocates don’t always agree on what makes a job green.”
The reason politicians are getting caught up in the green-collar job frenzy is simple: Not only does it sound good to be “for” green-collar jobs, but green jobs “cannot be easily outsourced, say, to Asia,” according to Van Jones, president of Green for All, an organization based in Oakland, California, whose goal is promoting renewable energy and lifting workers out of poverty. As he told the Times, “If we are going to weatherize buildings, they have to be weatherized here. If you put up solar panels, you can’t ship a building to Asia and have them put the solar panels on and ship it back. These jobs have to be done in the United States.”
I like the idea of green-collar jobs, but I am leery of the hype and political baggage that seems to permeate The New York Times story. This may be a great new workforce trend, but I am not convinced. Green-collar jobs sound like something from a Dr. Seuss story.
And besides, my skeptical/cynical nature tells me that something is amiss when a solid-but-boring old term like blue collar gets pushed aside by politicians, activists and consultants for something that sounds cool, hip and friendly (and maybe even recyclable). Blue-collar jobs have stood the test of time. Green-collar jobs? Well, let’s wait and see.
Jensen was convicted in December on one count of falsifying company books and one count of conspiracy. Last week, the other shoe dropped for her. She was sentenced to “four months in prison … [as well as] one year of supervised release after serving her prison term and fined the maximum of $1.25 million,” according to a report on ZDNet News. She must also spend the first three months after her release from prison in a halfway house.
Although Judge Charles Breyer of U.S. District Court in San Francisco allowed Jensen to remain free pending an appeal, he had some strong words for the former HR vice president, saying that her sentence should send “a message to individuals who may be confronted with a situation very similar to the one you were confronted with, and that if they don’t say ‘no,’ they are going to spend a lifetime regretting the decision they have made.”
Jensen isn’t the only HR person to get caught up in backdating stock options, but she is the first one to get prison time. Jensen wasn’t an innocent in this backdating scheme. Prosecutors made the case in court that “the facts, and her own admissions, demonstrate that [Jensen] was selfish and knowledgeable, not naive and inexperienced,” as her defense contended.
Most interesting to me is what Jensen’s attorney told the judge before sentencing. Jensen’s “principal wrong,” her attorney wrote, “was not one of design, but rather of inaction, in not questioning more forcefully the direction she received from her superiors.”
In other words, Jensen simply needed to do the right thing. She needed to question the orders from her superiors that she knew were wrong, rather than just go along with what she was asked to do.
“Do the right thing” is one of those catchphrases that sounds good in the abstract but sometimes gets more difficult in the real world. Jensen needed to do what she knew was right, but somehow, her ethical compass led her down the wrong path.
Prison time is a bad way for it to end, but perhaps others who seek that elusive seat at the table will learn from her example and see that being a yes man is not the way to get there.
There seems to be a group of topics that get consultants and PR people fired up—topics that are built around a perceived but overblown workforce problem that gives them a chance to offer up their “expertise” every year. You know the issues I’m talking about:
Office romance at Valentine’s Day;
The perils of the office Christmas party in December; and,
March Madness—the NCAA men’s basketball tournament—as a workplace time-waster.
As I wrote here last year, “It’s Madness to Worry About March Madness.” As I wrote then, “All of this talk about lost productivity because of March Madness is nonsense. I haven’t seen any credible research that supports the premise, and the ‘data’ that is used to make the point is soft and suspect.”
Well, March Madness is here again, and so are the consultants, experts and surveys that claim it is a huge problem. CareerBuilder released a survey this week saying 19 percent of workers are involved in March Madness pools (a surprisingly low number, in my view). It implied, without citing any evidence or research, that “productivity in the office may suffer a potential slowdown.” And global outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray and Christmas offered up its nutty annual “cost” of March Madness in the workplace, claiming that the “annual distraction could cost employers as much as $1.7 billion in wasted work time over the 16 business days of the [basketball] tournament.”
Crain’s Detroit Business, a sister publication of Workforce Management, had an interesting story this week that took the position that fantasy sports in the workplace—and by extension, things like March Madness or Super Bowl pools—can really be a good thing for workers and their employers. The headline said it all: “Are Fantasy Sports at Work Bad? Some Executives Bet Not.”
In short, the notion that there is time wasted by employees due to March Madness is just another urban legend. There is no more evidence of workplace productivity losses because of March Madness than there is evidence of alligators in the sewers, Elvis living with aliens, or the Loch Ness Monster. I like fairy tales, but March Madness as a workplace problem is ridiculous.
I’m not a big fan of Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, and there is a simple reason why: I’ve always thought he lacked any real touch in managing people. From my perspective, he was an overcompensated tough-guy caught up in his own self-importance.
When the most senior person in an organization sets the right tone, it can motivate and focus the company, but when the message from the top comes down like an edict from God, well, most workers don’t respond to that very well.
Bob Nardelli has never been about setting the right tone.
Operating an American automaker is very different from running Home Depot, but Nardelli’s tactics are the same. His latest employee-friendly edict: telling all workers they would “be required to use two weeks of their vacation time in July, in a companywide shutdown intended to improve the automaker’s efficiency and boost productivity,” according to a story in The Detroit Free Press.
Chrysler lost some $2.9 billion last year, so clearly, management needs to take some bold steps. And, according to a company spokesperson, the average Chrysler nonunion worker is allowed to take a total of four weeks of vacation a year. So is it a big problem to require people to take some of their time in the summer when it would help the company?
It’s probably not, but given that most people plan for vacations on a regular calendar year basis, why didn’t Chrysler management roll out this new requirement in the last quarter of 2007—in time for employees to plan for this year?
According to the Free Press, “Workers were surprised by the announcement. One told the Free Press that people were puzzled and unhappy that the new policy was not put into place at the beginning of the year or the start of next year, and pointed out that people are concerned that if they’ve used their vacation time already they’ll be forced to take unpaid time off in July.”
A company spokesperson, in a masterful use of management speak, seemed to confirm this.
The Free Press reported: “ ‘We’re not taking vacation away from people. We’re requiring them to realign their schedules to this time frame,’ said Chrysler spokeswoman Mary Beth Halprin. Employees who don’t have enough remaining vacation may be able to work in critical areas of the company that must continue to operate, she said, but acknowledged that ‘one option might be unpaid vacation.’ ”
I’d love to see Chrysler, and all the American automakers, turn their bleak financial situations around. It’s a tough job and it takes tough decisions, and maybe it takes a tough guy like Bob Nardelli to make them. But still I wonder: How much more buy-in would you get from workers if you instituted a policy like “forced vacation” in a way that made it easy for them get on board instead of cramming it down their throats?
That’s too bad, because I think it is what a company like Chrysler needs to get workers on board and behind the tough management decisions that surely lie ahead. It takes a deft and subtle management touch at the top to pull that off. Unfortunately, deft and subtle are decidedly not Bob Nardelli’s strong suit.
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