More on Being Treated Well On the Job

I want to give some different examples of work, what needs to get done, and stuff you want to avoid in considering being well treated on the job.   This should give you a better sense of things and consider issues that didn't get conveyed with that little diagram of  a hierarchy I drew in class today

Relationship with Business Office/HR Department  

This is incredibly important once you are in middle to upper management.  Let me give one example about capital budgeting and then one example about hiring/promotion. They are taken from my time working at the campus IT organization, which started more than 15 years ago.  So things may be a little different now, but the general issues remain.

Every organization buys stuff - various equipment and office supplies, for example.  When I had the group that ran the smart classrooms on campus report to me, a good chunk of their expenditure was on equipment.  For example, the lcd projectors that are in the classroom need replacement periodically.  If memory serves, they were on a 5-year replacement cycle then.  If one fifth of the projectors were replaced each year, that would be easy budget-wise.  You'd have an item in the budget for projector replacement and the spending would be pretty much the same from one year to the next.  However, there are model changes with projectors and from that point of view it is more efficient to support fewer models.  In the extreme, all the projectors would be replaced at the same time, once every five years.  Then only one model would be supported.

The question is how to budget for that, given that each unit has an annual budget but the units can't carry over funds from one year to the next.  To make this work some unit, either the Business Office itself or the boss of the entire organization, must be able to serve as a bank, to keep a store of funds, to disperse those for large capital expenditures, and to replenish the store of funds by taking it out of the budgets of the other units.  There are basically two approaches.  Either my classroom unit would save some of its budget each year so that after 5 years it would have accumulated enough to purchase the next round of projectors, or the purchase money is loaned to the classroom division, which then pays off the loan over the next five years.  Being well treated means either model is accommodated, with perhaps some one time injection of funds from the top to get this cycle functional.

I should also add here, given our discussion in class today, that internal banking of the sort I just described comes at a zero interest rate.  At least, that was true when I was involved with it.

Now the HR example, really two examples.  Campus HR is primarily concerned that the hiring processes are fair and non-discriminatory.  But much hiring happens internally.  A student employee shows his/her worth (much like in an internship).  After graduation, the unit would like to hire the former student as a permanent employee.   Is it fair to hire the student without doing a search that is open to any candidate?  Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question.  But I do know that it is the efficient thing to do.  Identifying a good person is like finding a diamond in a coal mine.  (Not infrequently, you end up hiring somebody only to regret that sometime later.)  Once you've found a good person, you have no motivation to do an open search.  If the HR office can get you a search waiver, that really helps.  It is not always possible, but it it is good to know that they try.   A similar situation exists for an ongoing employee whom you'd like to promote.  Is a search necessary then?   Job duties will change somewhat.  How drastic a change is needed to justify the search?

After the fact, it actually might be better for the person to have won in an open search process, rather than to simply be promoted, because then the search will have validated the person's credentials.  But during the process, it might be nerve racking, and as with the student case, if you are quite certain ahead of time that your current employee is the one who will win the search, then it seems like a big time waste.

Support staff

The biggest single perq I had when I was doing campus IT was having a secretary, Mary.  She was a gem and made my work life bearable. Here are a few reasons why

• No voicemail.  Callers had to go through Mary. Once you have purchasing power in an organization, vendors want a chunk of your time.  It may be that the supply of such vendors is not perfectly elastic, but it sure seemed that way to me.  Mainly I didn't want to talk with them, especially the ones I had not done any prior business with.  Saying no is not easy for me.  Having a human screen is much better than having unanswered messages in your voicemail.  A similar issue exits with people who want some of your time on campus for business that you otherwise don't see as relevant.  (Meaning you haven't been informed about it before through the normal chain of connections, committees, or known contacts.)  Having a secretary who screens calls that shouldn't get through while knowing which should is a huge perq.
• Scheduling.  This is the biggest thing on campus that secretaries do, and I suspect this is likewise true in the private sector.  People in upper management have very busy schedules.  They go from one meeting to the next.  If they are needed at a certain meeting, and that is true for a few of them from different units, finding a common time is quite difficult  It is quite inefficient for somebody in upper management to do their own scheduling, though it is quite common to do that for people lower in the hierarchy.  
• Dealing with details, such as tracking incoming purchase.  Business accounting systems can be arcane.  While I talked about purchase orders in class today, there is also a need to track purchases to make sure they've been received and to see when those funds actually get spent in the accounting system.  While the official software is there, almost every unit I knew at the time had its own Excel spreadsheets that were constructed for this purpose, customized to unit function.  Keeping those up to date is critical.  This stuff isn't rocket science, but it is detail that does need to be done without errors.
• Keeping the tone in the office professional and pleasant.  The person who answers the phone is also the person who greets walk-in traffic.  Much of that is with other staff.  Everyone needs to find the environment welcoming and friendly. 

Let me switch to tech support.  I don't know if it is a big deal at most jobs.  It was a biggie for me, both for when I would make on campus presentations that would have to go without a hitch and for my home computer network, where I paid people privately for the work, since it was out of scope for campus work, but where the people were happy to provide such service for me.  Having friendly tech guys you can trust makes life so much easier.

Discretionary Funds

Even in a starting position, your professional development is important.  There may be some conferences or other events you should attend.  You shouldn't have to pay the registration fees or travel costs for these out of your own pocket, provided you can convince your manager that it is related to your work.  Likewise, sometimes you need to host business associates for a meal.  Again that shouldn't be your nickel, if it is work related.  Then there may be training materials to purchase or equipment to buy that is related to your professional development.  Having a reasonable budget for such items makes life much more bearable.  If you have to pay for this stuff yourself, maybe you should do that, but it will give you the feeling that you are not well treated.

Social Life and Work

This one is trickier to talk about along at least two dimensions.  One is where you live and how close to work that is.  The other is whether you are single or not.  So it can be either good or bad to have your social life revolve around the people you work with, or for there to be an expectation to that effect.  I don't want to describe the right answer other than to say that you feel well treated when you are comfortable with balance along this dimension.  So...

• If you feel lonely, both at work and away from work, that cuts against being well treated.
• If you have family obligations that you really want to participate in but it seems work is blocking you from doing that, it cuts against being well treated. 
• If you have friends at work but they are not close friends so you are not comfortable opening up to them, and you have nobody else (a mentor, for example) who is knowledgeable enough about the situation, but distanced enough so you wouldn't feel compromised about opening up to that person, then that cuts against being well treated.  More generally, you need to talk about work (sometimes it's venting, but not always) with somebody you like and trust.  There will be stress.  This is a way to relieve stress and manage it.  If you have that release valve, it is a really good thing. 

One More Observation

Rome wasn't built in a day.  Patience is a virtue.  If you have a sense of what you want at work you can diligently build to that, even if it isn't all there at the outset.  A first job that you have after graduation may be just that.  These things will come with time if you are good and productive at what you do.