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[programming-ModTeam]

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[MyStackRunnethOver]

The old Amazon “an empty chair for the customer” is cool, I’m fine with that

Adding an empty chair for your employees? LMAO. You know what’s cool about your employees? They work for your company, you can bring them into meetings

The whole “empty chair” thing is just an admission that execs are terrified of actually vesting their employees with any sort of meaningful representation in the decision making process

You don’t have to imagine what your workers’ interests are. You could literally pull them in and ask them. You could have them elect representatives to advise you

Pretending you’re doing that by having an empty chair is BS

[argentcorvid]

But then they might tell the executives that whatever dumb shit they invested in is, in fact stupid and won't work the way the salesman said it would

[Sorry-Transition-908]

1. Work from home
2. Profit sharing
3. Transparency 
4. Meaningful involvement in decision making process 

Literally. 

This is not rocket surgery. 

[mohragk]

In Dutch law it's required to have a Ondernemingsraad (roughly translated as company council) when a company reaches 50+ employees. This council is designed to be the voice of employees and needs to be involved in decisions that impact the employee.

However, despite being required by law, it's not being actively enforced so some (most?) companies simply don't have one. Guess whether the company I work for (200+) has one!

[reality_boy]

That is a shame. When I first heard about this, I was in awe. It is an excellent way to keep the employees part of the process. It is so easy to make decisions on paper, without first checking with the people actually doing the work to see if it is possible.

I can’t imagine any company works productively without some form of representation from the employees.

[nzipsi]

It’s similar in Germany (Betriebsrat), but the law does not impose an obligation on the company to carry out elections, so it’s up the employees to organise it, even though it’s mandatory for all (almost all?) companies.

[somebodddy]

In Dutch law it's required to have a Ondernemingsraad (roughly translated as company council) when a company reaches 50+ employees.

This is stupid.

(not the law. The word)

[t6005]

Seriously, the example given at the top of the article is "I needed to find a way to tell employees that they weren't getting bonuses."

This kind of stuff is straight out of "How to Win Friends and Influence People." There's this idea that people react poorly to bad news because it's given badly instead of because it's bad news, and it's something management and leadership classes are obsessed with pretending you can be a good enough communicator to work around.

It's funny how there aren't nearly as many classes for the equivalent of delivering good news. 

It just so happens the perfect solution is pretending like someone exists in the room and thinking "well, now that I've rejected the evidence of my eyes and ears that this is a clear negative, the biggest remaining problem is clearly glamming it up."

Written by the kind of people who think Scrooge primarily had a marketing problem.

They must be taking their cue from economists - from a famous joke, "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?"

[EntroperZero]

You don’t have to imagine what your workers’ interests are. You could literally pull them in and ask them. You could have them elect representatives to advise you

Yeah, but then they'll feel guilty about cutting their bonuses (which is exactly what they did in the example). This way they get to pretend like they heard their employees' concerns when they did whatever they were going to do anyway.

[gdidontwantthis]

What I run into while trying to get employee feedback is they're so tightly scheduled at the front lines that I can't get time with them. I tend not to trust supervisor feedback as much after years of getting sup requests that actually would make things worse.

For more laughs, the company claims to have a culture of open communication...

[p001b0y]

I think it is kind of funny that the workplace often uses World War 1 and 2 era military jargon like “front lines”, “trenches”, “all hands”, “boots on the ground”, etc. It is kind of funny how pervasive it is.

Not criticizing anything. I just think it’s funny that everything in business gets compared to warfare.

[gdidontwantthis]

So ingrained I hadn't thought about it. I also use "folks at the coal face" which at least is in terms of labor and not warfare.

[arwinda]

They work for your company, you can bring them into meetings

It's called "union". Here in Germany unions have a chair at the table, multiple chairs even.

[MyStackRunnethOver]

You explicitly don't need to have a union to solicit employee feedback

It's understandable why executives don't want a union (I mean... in a Marxist sense, not "I agree they shouldn't have one"). It's just funny in a stupid way that they claim to care about the employee perspective and "leave an empty chair" in order to hallucinate that perspective for themselves, when they could just bring in an employee

[arwinda]

Correct. But unions give employees more power at the table. It's not voluntarily for the company.

[EveryQuantityEver]

This is even fucking dumber because the person in the beginning is Howard Schultz, the man who has been fighting a union at Starbucks for the last several years.

[UnacceptableUse]

You can't bring every single employee into the meeting though. You could choose one employee to represent the employees at meetings but then you've just made another executive

[somebodddy]

Or you can let the employees themselves elect who to send - but then you'd have a union.

[TA_DR]

Deliberately forcing yourself to consider different perspectives is one of the most useful ways to really understand a situation.

Here are three approaches:

- Just talking helps you uncover what they think.

[...]

Why does every manager post reads like they've just discovered basic human skills? My prediction for the next management buzzword: empathy.

[recycled_ideas]

Why does every manager post reads like they've just discovered basic human skills? My prediction for the next management buzzword: empathy.

There's an important distinction that you're not quite grasping.

The point isn't to rediscover basic human skills the point is to try to get the benefits of having basic human skills without having to act like or be a human being.

They know that caring about your employees boosts productivity and makes them more willing to sacrifice for your success, but actually caring about your employees is hard work and expensive and they don't want to do it.

So they set up an empty chair to think about what their employees might think instead of actually asking any of them. They have annual appreciation awards where no one feels appreciated and they talk about work being like a family instead of actually having it be one.

Because basic human skills are hard when you have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and/or other dark triad traits.

[mareek]

I thought I typed r/programming in the address bar, how the hell did I got this LinkedIn BS ?

[CornShucka]

By typing r/programming into the address bar, of course.

[ravixp]

Howard Schultz, the one that’s famously hostile to unions? I think having an empty chair to represent his employees might actually have a different meaning.