Tuesday, 2 June 2009

You are the boss... eh?

In the Work section of last weekend's Saturday Guardian was one of Karren Brady and Paul Trevillion's "You are the Boss" cartoons.

These describe (and illustrate) a workplace problem and then give three possible solutions.

Here's last week's problem:
One of your staff prides herself on her punctuality, arriving 5 minutes early. However, she is in the habit of eating breakfast when she gets in, then finishes her makeup, and by the time she has checked her social networking, she is the last to start work. What do you do?
And the suggested solutions:
a) Enforce strict adherence to contractual start times - for all staff.
b) Reschedule meetings to breakfast time and get the team starting work with the most important meal of the day.
c) Clear the kitchen before she arrives.
The given correct answer was a).

But I disagree. My correct answer would have been "none of the above".

I'd have said that the manager should have taken the errant member of staff aside for a quiet word with her alone.

a) would create a bad atmosphere in the office for two reasons. The punctual team members get upset because they feel they're being picked on even though they've done nothing wrong, and the lady in question would probably think "this doesn't apply to me" and carry on exactly as she has been doing.

What do other people think?

1 comment:

  1. Emily

    I'm with you on that one. The others all seem to be trying to avoind confronting the individual with the problem. Sounds like a public sector kind of approach!

    ReplyDelete

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