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Predatory Employees

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On February 12, 2008

In Business

Although this topic has been troubling me for some time, I wasn’t going to blog it until I was prompted by an article on my favourite (and only) management blog. It references a another very
interesting article regarding predatory employees. Basically these are the toxic employees in your workplace; the ones who portray themselves as highly competent, yet this perception is the result of fear and intimidation rather than any genuine ‘respect’.

The article also provides a list of bullet points which help you to identify these people. I would like to reaffirm some of them and add a few of my own:
  • Seriously and personally insulted if their competency was ever questioned
  • The creation of friendships in order to gain information and ‘votes’
  • An expectation that supervisors and co-workers understand and tolerate performance
    lapses, combined with an inability to give others the benefit of the doubt
  • Regular threats against other employees to prevent them speaking out, combined with
    an aggressive fear campaign if performance complaints ever reach management

There are plenty of explanations for this kind of behaviour in my opinion, for example:

  • A highly insecure personality
  • Poisoned from previous company culture experiences, especially where the companies
    were declining into liquidation/annihilation
  • Personal social issues, a fear and aggressive dismissal of rejection

Should other employees be exposed to this kind of poisoned attitude? No. What are the results if it is allowed to continue:

  • Other staff will be poisoned, no matter how thick skinned they are
  • Managers fear that action will generate larger consequences and are afraid of looking
    unsympathetic
  • Employers overlook misconduct and keep people on the job who are highly destructive
    to efficiency and morale, undermining their authority and effectiveness

So what are the solutions? Well I will again combine their points with some of my own:

  • Get them and the office to read a book like this one on Fish! It
    sounds stupid, but my employer got everyone to read it when the company attitude was terrible and it worked a treat
  • The problem needs to be SURFACED and DISCUSSED as early as possible with all parties
  • Team values need to be set forth and reinforced

Any comments would be great. I suspect that there are a lot of people out there with similar problem people.

Office 2007 Compatibility Pack

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On March 23, 2007

In Business, Microsoft

Now that Office 2007 is upon us with a new file format, how is everyone else going to cope? Well Microsoft has freely released a file format converter which can be downloaded here. Esteemed authorities such as Gartner have warned companies to deploy Office 2007 file converters NOW, but how can you do that on a corporate network? Microsoft only distribute the converters in an executable, how can I deploy that using Group Policy?

Well Mr M Keadle provided the solution for me. When you run the exe it extracts an MSI (as well as a bunch of other files) into the C:\Program Files\MSECache\O2007Cnv\1033 directory. If you copy these files to a network deployment location you can then use Group
Policy! What I don’t understand is why Microsoft themselves wouldn’t publish such a solution (or even a single MSI)?

Multi-tasking and Productivity

By

On February 27, 2007

In Business, CRM

Today I read a very interesting article that was powerful enough to knock me out of my blogging slumber. It is essentially a summary of a paper that was recently published at the International Conference on Information Systems. It can be found at the following URL (and was slashdotted here):

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=14&articleId=281734&intsrc=hm_topic

man with two phones

So why was this article particularly interesting to myself? Well for starters it was based on a study of executive recruiters, who are my current employers. It was also particularly interesting as the theories presented back up the beliefs at the foundation of my new CRM system (my thesis). The article provides empirical evidence that multi-taskers are more productive due to their increased ability to handle parallel tasks. This is one of the key features of the CRM package, however it is also the thing that is taking the longest time to train staff to use.

I am even noticing a difference between Generation X and Y staff in this area. As this related article states; Generation X may have introduced multitasking to the work place, but Generation Y has perfected it. I am certainly finding that to be the case. This is also extremely important for the retention of staff. As multi-tasking becomes more embraced by the Generations, they begin to expect it to be supported and become frustrated quickly if it is not available. Some of my other favourite articles on Gen Y employees reinforce this message. Empower your staff with flexible, multi-tasking IT tools and they will be highly productive and highly profitable.

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