Bad company
I work for a stupid company.
Over the past few years they've made many, many people redundant. I myself was up for redundancy at one point, but was spared at literally the last minute (although I made them give me a pay rise before I agreed to stay).
The problem is, the company doesn't make any money. Historically, this hasn't been a problem because we have a huge (and I mean huge) parent company who has billions of pounds lying around and they were happy to give quite a lot of them to us.
Now, however, the parent company has had enough and has decided we are not a core asset, nor operating in the ideal fields that they would like (i.e. we don't build missiles, planes, warships, security systems and so on all with multi-billion pound contracts).
The fact that we lost about 5 million Euros last year doesn't help (this year, well, last year technically, was a big improvement and we only lost 1 million). But I can't help thinking that without so many layers of management, we might fare better.
Our local "boss" who is in charge of us in the UK has to report to another boss based in France, who is in charge of the UK, French and South African operations. He in turn reports to another boss who is the head of this sub-division. That person reports to another boss who is the head of the division. And that one reports to another one who is the head of the "business line". That one, finally, reports to the CEO.
A lot of layers there! I'm sure I missed a couple, too. Plus there is a general corporate "UK-Head" appearing in the mess somewhere along the line. The upshot of it all is that we can't decide anything for ourselves. No bold, daring moves can be made. Every little idea has to be scrutinised and go up the chain.
But even the local boss can mess things up. We have a desperate shortage of sales people, and are trying to get more. One applicant is somebody who used to work here. He was a very good sales guy. He also knows the product and the industry very well. Recently he'd been working on his own as a consultant, and had a big list of prospects that he was going to bring with him.
Perfect! You might cry. Only the company told him that because these prospects fell outside of his geographical area, he would lose them and the commission. Quite rightly, he told them to stick their offer and has carried on by himself. They threw away a very good sales person, and a list of qualified prospects because they wouldn't let him keep those customers. Crazy. So now we have no sales guy, and no new customers. That turned out well, then.
So we're all sitting waiting to know who's going to buy us, and if we'll all have a job when they do.
Can you feel the motivation in the air? Can ya?
No. You can't.
Over the past few years they've made many, many people redundant. I myself was up for redundancy at one point, but was spared at literally the last minute (although I made them give me a pay rise before I agreed to stay).
The problem is, the company doesn't make any money. Historically, this hasn't been a problem because we have a huge (and I mean huge) parent company who has billions of pounds lying around and they were happy to give quite a lot of them to us.
Now, however, the parent company has had enough and has decided we are not a core asset, nor operating in the ideal fields that they would like (i.e. we don't build missiles, planes, warships, security systems and so on all with multi-billion pound contracts).
The fact that we lost about 5 million Euros last year doesn't help (this year, well, last year technically, was a big improvement and we only lost 1 million). But I can't help thinking that without so many layers of management, we might fare better.
Our local "boss" who is in charge of us in the UK has to report to another boss based in France, who is in charge of the UK, French and South African operations. He in turn reports to another boss who is the head of this sub-division. That person reports to another boss who is the head of the division. And that one reports to another one who is the head of the "business line". That one, finally, reports to the CEO.
A lot of layers there! I'm sure I missed a couple, too. Plus there is a general corporate "UK-Head" appearing in the mess somewhere along the line. The upshot of it all is that we can't decide anything for ourselves. No bold, daring moves can be made. Every little idea has to be scrutinised and go up the chain.
But even the local boss can mess things up. We have a desperate shortage of sales people, and are trying to get more. One applicant is somebody who used to work here. He was a very good sales guy. He also knows the product and the industry very well. Recently he'd been working on his own as a consultant, and had a big list of prospects that he was going to bring with him.
Perfect! You might cry. Only the company told him that because these prospects fell outside of his geographical area, he would lose them and the commission. Quite rightly, he told them to stick their offer and has carried on by himself. They threw away a very good sales person, and a list of qualified prospects because they wouldn't let him keep those customers. Crazy. So now we have no sales guy, and no new customers. That turned out well, then.
So we're all sitting waiting to know who's going to buy us, and if we'll all have a job when they do.
Can you feel the motivation in the air? Can ya?
No. You can't.
posted by Nej at
4:14 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home