DOES MANAGEMENT LACK THE HUMAN TOUCH?

I have found that I have been asking myself that question lately. We had an All-Hands staff meeting last week and the guest speaker was our new functional manager. In other words, one of the big bosses. I came away from that meeting with a bad feeling. She was very negative in general, and didn't have many good things to say about our operation here. One of her top priorities is to get a valid EVM (Earned Value Management) system into place because of some problems that occurred during an audit. When an employee asked her why it was allowed to get this way, she replied that she didn't know and it wasn't on her watch anyway (nuff said)

My unpleasant feeling only intensified as the meeting progressed. During the course of an hour, he did alot of posturing. "I" set this up, "I" came up with the idea and impletemented it, etc. When a manager exhibits this type of behavior, it really bothers me. You know very well she had a team of people doing the work and backing her up. I am fortunate that the lower level managers, supervisors and leads (the one's I work for at least) are not like that. For me personnally, it makes me feel as if we are part of a whole team when credit is given where it is deserved. It helps employees feel as though they are significantly contributing and are valued.

We are moving towards a "One Company" approach, and the road has been very rocky. The morale of the employees is at an all time low, due to past lay-offs and rumors of future one's. Add that to the increasing workload and it is the recipe for stress and unhappiness on the job. What excaberates it is that management has copped the attitude that "change happens, there's going to be more of it, and it's only going to get worse." What happened to the human touch? What happened to showing (or at least acting) like you really understood and cared about the impact all of this was going to have on your employees. I ask you management types out there. Does becoming a Manager automatically obliterate all "human" feeling so that you become detatched from the very workforce that supports you? Do you make all of your decisions based soley on what is for the good of the company and not worry about your employees? If so, I'm not so sure I'd want to be a part of that. Don't get me wrong. These changes being implemented are, for the most part, likely valid and will enable us to improve the way we do business. What I'm questioning is how the ideas are presented to the population, as well as the fact that no one goes to the worker in order to measure the impact that these changes will have.

So it goes......

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