MOTD (Meme of the Day)

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Ron said:
Man I wish I ran your style business.
I have 32 direct reports. When I took over the additional dept in July/August we had zero redundancy. Similar to how Kaiser described above. Ive made huge strides so far. But there will always be an inherent amount of talent owned process in our business. No one is irreplaceable and the company is bigger than anyone, but we are a team of rock stars each doing their own thing. There is only so much overlap.
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Agreed…there are some roles tougher to cross train on…ie R&D scientists with 42 PhD’s…but I’m not going to be held hostage either, so I have 3 of them, plus a team of bench scientists and product liaisons. They don’t do eachothers jobs on a day to day basis, but if one wants to take a sabbatical (happened)…I’m not gonna be hurt either. I have a maintenance guy, one of the few in the country that can make one of my 75yo pieces of equipment run…2 years ago, I hired him an apprentice…didn’t need it, but I knew there’d be a day this guy wouldn’t be around…that day starts in a few weeks when he goes on FMLA. There’s always a reason why your top guy is your top guy…but a simple risk assessment will always help mitigate the pain when Murphy decides to come strolling in.
 
UTfball68 said:
Agreed…there are some roles tougher to cross train on…ie R&D scientists with 42 PhD’s…
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Only 42? Lame. And I'd bet one of those is from Doctoral Clown College.
 
RatLabGuy said:
Only 42? Lame. And I'd bet one of those is from Doctoral Clown College.
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Ha…maybe not 42, but I have one guy that just finished his 3rd and has 2 masters unrelated to bio/chem. When he talks to me I have to tell him to dumb it down to 10 words or less. The director of the dept only has 2 though.
 
UTfball68 said:
Agreed…there are some roles tougher to cross train on…ie R&D scientists with 42 PhD’s…but I’m not going to be held hostage either, so I have 3 of them, plus a team of bench scientists and product liaisons. They don’t do eachothers jobs on a day to day basis, but if one wants to take a sabbatical (happened)…I’m not gonna be hurt either. I have a maintenance guy, one of the few in the country that can make one of my 75yo pieces of equipment run…2 years ago, I hired him an apprentice…didn’t need it, but I knew there’d be a day this guy wouldn’t be around…that day starts in a few weeks when he goes on FMLA. There’s always a reason why your top guy is your top guy…but a simple risk assessment will always help mitigate the pain when Murphy decides to come strolling in.
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I break away from my job in HR/Manpower analysis to look at Memes and pretend I know something about Jeeps... And I find THIS stuff?!?

BTW, spot on about planning employee numbers to include employees taking leave/sick leave/training days/etc.
 
UTfball68 said:
Even as an employer of 200 people, I never really get on board with PTO requests/approvals. Even on my sheets to charge proper accounts, it says 'PTO Notification'. I always try to take the approach of treat people like adults and they might surprise you. If I'm going to give them a PTO balance in the first place, I can't gripe about how and when they're going to use it. It's my responsibility to staff accordingly, that's what I get paid to do, not them. Now, if they're out of time, that's a different story, but I'm not going to fault an employee for a benefit I gave them. That said...what does bug me is that tone. If an employee wants to take that tone with me on any subject matter, I'll walk them out the door, right then and there.
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What do you think about Branson's Unlimited PTO concept? I feel like it would work in a salaried workforce, but possibly not in a production style environment.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
What do you think about Branson's Unlimited PTO concept? I feel like it would work in a salaried workforce, but possibly not in a production style environment.
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Most salaried employees I know, don't use their entire 2-6wk PTO balance as is...so I think it's a gimmick to generate goodwill. I think the same folks that abuse the system now, would abuse the system regardless of what's in place. That said, with hourly folks, the great motivator is always cold hard cash, I incentivize attendance with a quarterly attendance bonus, and 75-80% of my hourly staff get it...when I started offering that bonus 3 years ago, it was only 30%. Overall, I'm not a time and attendance nazi, I'm trusting that I made the right hire, I'm trusting they'll make the right decisions, and if they don't...I have no problems terminating. Take care of your bidness, and I'll take care of you.
 
UTfball68 said:
Most salaried employees I know, don't use their entire 2-6wk PTO balance as is...so I think it's a gimmick to generate goodwill. I think the same folks that abuse the system now, would abuse the system regardless of what's in place. That said, with hourly folks, the great motivator is always cold hard cash, I incentivize attendance with a quarterly attendance bonus, and 75-80% of my hourly staff get it...when I started offering that bonus 3 years ago, it was only 30%. Overall, I'm not a time and attendance nazi, I'm trusting that I made the right hire, I'm trusting they'll make the right decisions, and if they don't...I have no problems terminating. Take care of your bidness, and I'll take care of you.
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I have 4 weeks and I usually end up taking a bunch of extra time off around Christmas because I don't use it throughout the year. I also find myself working a few hours here and there when I'm off. Directors and above do not have a pto limit and same deal, can't really take too much.
 
UTfball68 said:
Not so much when you consider I just loaded everyone’s annual PTO balance on Jan 1 and I have 30% usage the first quarter, and I’ve sent out 50 heads for Covid over the last 2 weeks. Plus I also give 8 ‘points’ for unpaid days as well.

Edit…you also have to remember, what costs more and is more detrimental, disgruntled employees that quit because they can’t take off or just leave you high and dry when you’re trying to schedule. Oooor, having a few too many heads? What’s the cost of retraining? What’s the cost of a line being down? What’s the penalty and fees for missing that deadline? Most businesses I’ve been in have a ‘no more than 10% of the department can take off at a given time’ policy anyway…so there’s inherent absenteeism anyway…staff accordingly. I might have 5 heads too many on each shift…so that’s $400k annually, good insurance to have that when not having them could cost me $100k/day.
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Holy crap I wish I've worked under this sanity? I have lots of questions on your opinions on maintenance, scheduling, and staffing.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
What do you think about Branson's Unlimited PTO concept? I feel like it would work in a salaried workforce, but possibly not in a production style environment.
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My employer just granted me unlimited PTO this past year. It’s only offered to a certain grade level and up. The basis is that you know what you have to do to accomplish your job. Don’t accomplish your job and you’re fired.

I dig it for the shear fact that I don’t have to track or submit for PTO. Just let my line manger know what days I want to take.
 
jeepin' jen said:
Yep, my available leave balance is over 1400 hrs 😬
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Ours is use it or lose it. Is there a limit to what they'll pay out if you leave? My previous company you could roll over I think 840 hours. They changed the rules on payouts to you could still roll over the 840 but only paid out like 120. People who had been there for years took every Friday off the year they changed the rules.
 
UTfball68 said:
Agreed…there are some roles tougher to cross train on…ie R&D scientists with 42 PhD’s…but I’m not going to be held hostage either, so I have 3 of them, plus a team of bench scientists and product liaisons. They don’t do eachothers jobs on a day to day basis, but if one wants to take a sabbatical (happened)…I’m not gonna be hurt either. I have a maintenance guy, one of the few in the country that can make one of my 75yo pieces of equipment run…2 years ago, I hired him an apprentice…didn’t need it, but I knew there’d be a day this guy wouldn’t be around…that day starts in a few weeks when he goes on FMLA. There’s always a reason why your top guy is your top guy…but a simple risk assessment will always help mitigate the pain when Murphy decides to come strolling in.
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I wish the people I worked for thought like you......

I'm just a "trainee", been hired on with the company less than 90 days, and I'm pulling 12hr night shifts, as the lone mechanic, working on machines I know very little about. The shift mechanic is out for knee surgery, and likely to retire after he recovers, and we have 0 redundancy.
 
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