There was a meeting this morning at 11 a.m., with 10 minutes of the usual office-management and achievement-recognition announcements, followed by literally an hour of discussion of workplace satisfaction surveys we took a few months ago. I've come to the conclusion that my department's head is a nice guy, and well-meaning - not a ladder-climbing schemer, not a petty feudal fiefdom type - but just plain kind of dumb. Part of the issue was feedback on harassment and discrimination issues. 9 out of 49 people, 18 percent, reported something. Now, I seem to remember that the survey questions were badly designed, but that's not the point of this post. The well meaning but dumb (WMBD) boss mentioned in passing that roughly 20 percent of people reporting discrimination problems was considered the target or something like that, according to the polling organization, but he said that even the current level of reported problems was unacceptable. He also seemed to be genuinely confused about the fact that he had personally heard of fewer problems than the survey indicated.
As for pursuing perfection, I think he misunderstood the meaning of the 20 percent figure. I very much doubt that the surveying organization is saying that that amount of discrimination is good, just that that's the amount beyond which improvement is impractical, unfeasible, more trouble than it's worth, the consequence of people being imperfect. So, sure, it's inspiring pablum to say "I'm never going to tolerate intolerance" or "We can always do better", but I'd actually be reassured if someone who says that kind of thing doesn't mean it. And as for whether he would have heard about problems before the survey, I may as well admit that I'm a straight white male so I have little or no personal experience with being on the receiving end of discrimination, but I find it easy to imagine reasons why a person might not want to deal with discrimination through official channels. The big, obvious, easy one is if the discrimination is less trouble than dealing with it would be. One sexist joke from one guy in one meeting, or even one regularly sexist guy you work with occasionally, would probably not be as much stress and frustration and trouble as reporting the guy and going through an adjudication process and worrying about how it looks in the long run. And the zero tolerance policy espoused in reaction to the first point actually seems counterproductive here. I'd have to really hate my harasser indeed, and/or really, really trust the WMBD guy, if every slightest allegation was going to result in a full investigation and all that. But WMBD apparently never thought of that, or if he did, apparently came up with no way to deal with the problem.
Other than that, though, most measures of workplace satisfaction were good. Less for contractors like me, of course, and WMBD went out of his way to say that we're all a team, a family, etc., and fair enough, I'm sure he means it, but there's only so much you can do when you're way down the totem pole.
That being said, there was one ironic thing about it. Guess what it was. Here's a hint: notice the timeline. Started at 11, 10 minutes of housekeeping, an hour of workplace satisfaction discussion. That's right, the workplace satisfaction discussion cut into lunchtime for most people. I know that impacted my workplace satisfaction, and not in a good way.
Sure, of course, maybe WMBD knows what's attainable and meant what he said as platitudes, like I'd prefer. Maybe he realizes the issues with reporting harassment and is still working on how to address them, or believes that what he said today helps, and maybe he's even right about that. It's just that (as I've said before), the best thing my supervisors high in the department can do for me is stop acting in ways that come across as stupid, and this morning's meeting was yet another example of that.
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