YOU care so much about your employees, you even call them at home at weekends. A management expert explains how to make your business your family:
Use jargon obsessively
Phrases like ‘having the bandwidth for a task’ and ‘paradigm shift’ bind staff together in a world only they understand, pushing away friends and family. It doesn’t matter if the phrases are meaningless. Invent new ones like ‘let’s pop a sombrero on that one’ or ‘we need to do a wheelie with the ideas bike’.
Keep everyone in the dark
Withholding information encourages inter-staff communication. Launching a new product? Boring companies send an email. Dynamic companies let their staff find out from Trevor in accounts, who found a product launch pack in the photocopier and told Maureen, who was made redundant a year ago, who sent Andy in the postroom a text.
Leave everything to the last minute
If you give employees big assignments with plenty of notice and a month until the deadline, they’ll just worry. Asking them for a 200-page report 48 hours before it’s needed means they do the same work, but spend only two days at Flapcon Five. You’ve spared them days of stress.
Never give praise
Nobody likes being told when they’ve gone above and beyond and done exceptionally well. They’re embarrassed to be singled out and it makes other workers jealous. Their pay is reward enough. And, as modesty is a virtue, always take full credit for any of their ideas.
Keep pay low
The cost-of-living crisis doesn’t only affect families. Businesses are hurting too. Paying accountants to to find tax loopholes isn’t cheap. By not handing out pay rises, you’re protecting your employees by putting shareholder profits first.
Give unpaid overtime
The kindest thing you can do is ask for overtime. The less time workers spend in their tiny one-bed flat the lower their heating bill, and if they’re always at work they may as well cancel Netflix. No socialising means no expensive drinking in bars and no costly weddings or children. You’re saving them so much they should be paying you.
