The incessant requirement to "further" yourself at work

The desire to further oneself is what makes most people perform well. If they cater to that what's the problem, if they encourage it even better.

In your post you come across a bit moany and anti-establishment which is fine once you don't display it in work. Remember all people's attitudes reflect on others around them. If the company wants it culture to be a certain way then the employees need to deliver on that. Buying into the culture is as much part of the job as the actual work you do so you should embrace it.

yoke wrote: »

I disagree with this sentiment totally. Having a false sense of “happy culture”/establishment results in a toxic place to work where no one trusts each other and will actually result in higher turnover among staff. At least this has been my experience.

It’s far better to encourage better and open rapport with management, which gives management a chance to fix problems. The only companies this doesn’t work for, is companies with **** management who don’t want to fix the problems to begin with, either way it results in high staff turnover.

Worked for a small family run company whose management had "notions", went to one too many management workshops, brought in the trappings of what they thought worked for multinationals, but on the cheap and without fixing problems that were already there.
People left in droves.

One guy, newly taken on, had a look around on his first day and never came back for a second.

By all accounts, they still haven't figured out why they have a high staff turnover. It was a petty, toxic environment to work in.

Something that's even worse than filling out these forms,
Once you become a manager and have reporting agents under you, you've to work through these forms with them and review their content.

You really start to see behind the curtain at that stage.

Where I worked it was all just done to create a bell curve to work out bonus percentages.

Thing is, the forms people filled out had nothing to do with it, management would sit down and work out who was getting what based on our anecdotal experience with each person.

Those forms were all just busy work and to motivate the employees.

Looking back, they're such bloody awful places to work. The faux enthusiasm and utter lack of any kind of sincerity in these processes is awful.

o1s1n wrote: »

Something that's even worse than filling out these forms,
Once you become a manager and have reporting agents under you, you've to work through these forms with them and review their content.

You really start to see behind the curtain at that stage.

Where I worked it was all just done to create a bell curve to work out bonus percentages.

Thing is, the forms people filled out had nothing to do with it, management would sit down and work out who was getting what based on our anecdotal experience with each person.

Those forms were all just busy work and to motivate the employees.

Looking back, they're such bloody awful places to work. The faux enthusiasm and utter lack of any kind of sincerity in these processes is awful.

I always hated the calibration meetings, managers just pushing for their favourites to be moved up a grade with no bearing on how those people had performed.

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Just let me do what you hired me to do, tell me if I'm doing anything wrong or could do something better, and leave it at that. Companies need to realise that a lot of employees know they're just a number, but are happy to be just a number and left to it.

It really should be that simple. They are only paying you a salary after all. They haven't bought your mind/soul.

o1s1n wrote: »

Something that's even worse than filling out these forms,
Once you become a manager and have reporting agents under you, you've to work through these forms with them and review their content.

Yeah I'd sympathise with that. Probably even more of a victim of the stupidity if anything. Not much a line worker or line manager can do to buck it though.

These reviews are just a way for the boss to justify promoting his buddies (cheer leaders).

I worked for an Irish subsidiary of an American company, once upon a time, and four of us were sent to their Texan factory to assist with production and learn a few things about the product. First day we get there, a Friday, they hold a mass meeting of all the shop floor employees and we are introduced to them and they applaud us and before long we get the ritual "hey, you guys are Irish? So am I...." and it goes downhill from there. We have to tour the entire factory and are introduced almost as if we'd just beamed down from a starship.
Now, Texans are very friendly, welcoming people but it got to cringeworthy levels and we practically ran out of the place when the time came to knock off. Over the next few days, we all settled down and got stuck in and had a good time but we were excused having to do some of the "courses" that were standard for the locals, such as team-building days or basically being bullied to attend Company barbeques on a Saturday or a Company softball day on a Sunday. All of management turned up at these events and they considered it part of the job, even when they privately admitted that they hated it. We just refused to go to these events, as we regarded our weekends as sacred and not for wasting on bull**** like that.
The Friday meeting turned out to be a normal event in the week and they liked it, as the managers would announce birthdays or promotions or special deals in the local shops, as well as talk about production stats and the wider Company. We were exempted from attending as most of it was unrelated to us. This was a time when topics such as race relations, sexuality, and religion were really only beginning to enter the workplace. Texas was quite non-PC in the 90s. On the shopfloor, they were all quite careful to mind their speech but some of the comments we got, once clear of work, made it clear that race was quite the hot potato. There were quite a few gay women in the plant and the back story was that gay women who were considered a "problem" were exiled to that plant from other plants, if they wanted to stay working and as the wages there were good, they ended up in that particular place. Being a gay woman in Texas wasn't that easy back then
in terms of training, diversity training was just coming in then but it was treated with derision but the Company was starting to make it clear that it had to be done. they also had compulsory random drug and drink testing and there were no exceptions to that allowed. This was long before such testing ever arrived in Ireland. As for technical training, the Americans were all for it and encouraged as much as possible for any staff member. The Irish side of the Company skimped on it, did it only as a last resort unless they could blag it off the host Company and constantly refused requests for it. The American company, which still exists today and is still a big player in it's field, always encouraged employee progression, especially the taking of a degree and genuinely encouraged employees to submit time and money saving ideas. A lot of their employee relations were cheesy but their mentality was in the right place.

The requirement to further ‘yourself’ is often nothing aside from the want of your employer that you upskill, do courses etc... marketed that YOU benefit but mostly its only the company who does...

I used to do a few in house courses in a job, they had a company university portal with loads of in-house courses which were decent in fairness but because of the nature of the business, negligible growth, automation taking jobs and making less opportunities for progression upwards or sideways, you were being encouraged to do these courses, only allowable in your own off the clock time with absolutely zero chance they’d benefit anybody aside from your employer, you’d get zilch apart from the cert on your file...

I gave up doing them as did everybody, one meeting the manager lost the head because he was under pressure from upstairs...the general reply....” well you can go tell upstairs, they don’t get to decide what we do in our spare time, do these courses ? Ok provide the time, on the clock... “