On 09/02/2012 22:58, geoff wrote:
In message , Nightjar
writes
On 09/02/2012 22:34, ARWadsworth wrote:
Nightjar wrote:
On 09/02/2012 22:02, Road_Hog wrote:
wrote in message
...
I told the three apprentices to grit the car park at work this
morning. One of them has "told on me to his Mum". Apparently shouting
"spread the ****ing grit around you stupid ****s, don't just dump
it in a ****ing pile" is not acceptable behaviour.

--
Adam

Okay, I'm going to go against the stream here.

No it ****ing isn't you ****.

If you have a problem, you speak to people in a civil but direct
manner. If you'd spoken to me like that, you'd have found my fist
in your face. If people don't perform, put them through the
disciplinary
procedure. These people have not signed up to be in the army and
whilst as a teenager, it wouldn't have bothered me one bit (water
off a duck's back), if you said it to me now, we'd be toe to toe.
Times have changed. Learn some manners and man management skills, you
shouldn't be in
the job if you can't cope.

I quite agree with you. The reason they didn't grit the car park the
previous evening was almost certainly a lack of motivation, which
won't come from bullying, combined with inadequate supervision.

The reason they did not grit the car park is because they ****ed off
early
from work without gritting the car park.

Which they would not have wanted to do if they had felt motivated and
not been able to do had they been properly supervised.


Easier said than done when they don't give a toss, have no self
discipline, and don't see why they aren't paid as much as a professional
footballer

That is a fairly good description of a badly motivated employee.

We're not talking big companies here with human resources and training
schemes, it's a one man band whose work ethic is getting on with the job

Large companies need those things to compensate for the fact that it is
almost impossible to get people to feel personally involved in the
business once it gets above about 200 employees.

With a small business, such as I have always run, it is much easier to
get people to feel that they are part of a team, all working towards a
common goal of success for the business, rather than that they are
simply employees of some faceless company. The result is low
absenteeism, low staff turnover and high productivity. Other management
approaches may fail to achieve one or more of those aims.

If you paid someone to mow your lawn for example, you wouldn't be best
pleased if they did half then buggered off down the pub, would you?

What would you do, give then a stern motivational talking to and blame
yourself for them not completing the work because you had other things
to do other than watch them throughout the job?

It would be my fault for not identifying the fact that it might happen
with that particular person. OTOH, if they wanted to go down the pub
and, to do so, completed the job properly in half the time, I would have
no problem in paying them for the full time they should have worked.

Colin Bignell