Questions about management style

Recently, our team of managers have been cracking down on us. I understand why this is, but sometimes I question the legality/morality of their actions. I wanted to run a few things by people here to see if they're allowed, and to what extent.
1) Scoreboarding. This is causing a lot of stress among us. Basically, 3-4 times a day, our scores are being updated for all to see. A lot of us have likened this to public shaming, and actually believe it affects our performance for the worse. So far, exceptions have not been made for those of us attending meetings, or otherwise absent for legitimate reasons.
2) Telling people they can't talk. I understand asking us to keep it down, as we work in an open space. But individuals have actually been singled out and told they can't talk at their desks. Period. This sounds a lot like bullying to me.
3) Changing schedules. My breaks have been changed 3 times in the past month. Further to this, management have split up entire social groups in their rescheduling, and then complain when we swap to be with our friends. We actually had to argue with them not to make our breaks LATER, as the canteen would be closed.

OMM 0000

This all sounds legal.

But maybe a bit extreme.

If I had to guess I'd say the office is full of people underperforming, with way too much socialising. They are using a heavy hand to crack down on things.

It's a sales office?

There are loads of sales jobs. Leave if unhappy...

OMM 0000

OMM 0000 wrote: »

This all sounds legal.

But maybe a bit extreme.

If I had to guess I'd say the office is full of people underperforming, with way too much socialising. They are using a heavy hand to crack down on things.

It's a sales office?

There are loads of sales jobs. Leave if unhappy...

See this is the problem... I think the whole team is being disciplined just because one or two is underperforming. Which is very frustrating because we all know who those people are. We'd rather a mass weeding to the conditions we now have.
We're all very social and friendly as a group, but tbh I actually think it leads to better performance across the board, as we're constantly throwing ideas back and forth and helping each other.
All of this was only Implemented when a new manager came about - an individual who actually has no idea what they're doing, as they've never worked on a projecy like our before. I genuinely feel like all of this is pure posturing on their part, and theyre jusy trying to maintain some semblance of control. I say this because I have actually had to train this individual into our work and tbh they seemed overwhelmed.

_Brian

The only potential issue I see is singling out people and telling them they can’t talk to others.

I can understand an overall push to reduce idle chat and increase productivity. But after that dealing with individuals needs to be a performance base or your on thin ice regarding pulling people up on subjective measures. It’s a foolish manager that starts down that slope as on appeal or complaint it can make them look petty and vindictive.

The other stuff seems fine.

In the last we would have rostered breaks to split folk who pulled the piss if they were together.

Breaks change too, people move from early to late breaks all the time.

troyzer

I had a similar issue in my previous job. It wasn't office based, I work in an unusual industry which normally doesn't have targets and such.

We were a company that at the time was not cash positive and there was a large backlog of work that needed to be done by a certain date. The backlog was actually growing due to ineffective management procedures. My manager at the time spent most of the time in her office and not where we were working so was oblivious to the issues even though we kept telling her.

The board kept giving her a bollocking over this backlog and **** rolls down hill so she'd just give us a bollocking without listening to our ideas on how to fix it. She basically put it down to us being lazy and openly said it.

She left for another job, one of us got promoted and the problem was sorted out in less than a month.

Moral of the story: a ****ty manager doesn't get less ****ty so either hope they get replaced or leave. Life's too short and those arsehole managers are just too stressful.

beauf

Stick to the rules and show high points in the scoring. Like refuse meeting etc. We used to refuse complex jobs so we could score higher. Eventually a stupid system breaks. Especially one that doesn't measure productivity properly. But it can take a long time.

Or just leave. As they'll be keep doing stuff like this over and over as they lack common sense. Life is too short to waste it being miserable.