Cyber Venting: Healthy Therapy?

What is it about the Internet that lets us think we have the world as our therapist? It used to be the half-hour breakfast griping sessions or the huddle at the office pantry. Now workers are finding new ways to vent their frustrations or air their opinions about their employers and careers.

Cyber venting has arisen. Akin to a Catholic confessional booth, simple message boards on Yahoo to more dedicated wailing walls in the likes of www.workingwounded.com represent the forum for this catharsis. Here employees find a safe haven amongst the other like-minded disgruntled to vent and share their anonymous emotional upheavals and professional disappointments to sympathetic listeners.
"I have been passed up for my due promotion for the 3rd time at work. Is my boss just blind or plain discriminatory to my gender?!""Management is useless, poor and simple. Why don't they pay me USD100,000 to collect information? No, instead they would rather hire a vulture of a consultant. Great job, guys."

The messages range from discontent with management to more serious instances of flagrant rage. Whatever the message may be, it is raising public relations headaches and managerial nightmares for employers. Because such messages are hard to be accounted for or traced, employers can never be sure if the post is being authored by an employee or if the source is a saboteur wanting to bring the competition down. The impact can be great on the company, particularly if it is sending the message of impending layoffs or poor financial performance. Whilst some companies have gone to the extent of suing for libel, cyber laws in the region are still in their infancy, and the question of who's to blame and who has the right-to-say-what are still hanging in the air.

But perhaps, management should take a more proactive approach. There is much that management can do to quell dissent and address the issue. Companies have begun to set up their own anonymous intranets that allow their employees to vent within corporate walls, without fear or favour. Further, certain strains of management have begun skulking public message boards such as www.icered.com to listen in on what their employees are saying. On www.vault.com, CEOs and senior management have been known to break silence and come forth with statements of their own.

Senior management are beginning to take the initiative to use such focus groups to gain a better understanding of the people on the ground. Rather than trying to spin-doctor their way through the negative vibes, employers need to take advantage of the information culture and use the medium to tell the truth, to clear misstatements and to be honest. The savvy workforce today can smell a lie a byte away. Advice to managers is to hide nothing and gain respect from employees through upfront honesty. They may not like you, but they will at least respect you. And that is a rarity in this corporate day. Who knows how else the corporate grapevine will “metamorphosise” in the coming years? Perhaps I'll pop in on www.icered.com and find out for myself? See you there!

How to Prepare for Involuntary Separation

Nobody wants to be laid off, but who’s to say if you’re not going to be next. You might as well be ready when the axe falls on you. Here’s how to prepare for this eventuality. Over the years, I have separated hundreds of employees involuntarily. It is a very difficult task to do as an HR professional. And no matter how many times you have done it, you will never get used to it. For it always leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Invariably, one can’t avoid talking to these employees just before, or even long after, their employment ends. My formal and informal talks with them always lead to any one of these questions: a) What could I have done differently to prevent me from getting laid off? b) What should I have done to ensure that I could easily find another job after being laid off? c) What could I have done that would have allowed me to survive involuntary separation?

Once, we had to force into retirement a junior manager of our company. He was in his late 40s and had been with the firm for almost 20 years. He was not a bad performer, but neither was he outstanding. He had been merely happy to coast along. When the company was doing well, his contribution was considered adequate. However, when crunch time hit and jobs had to be cut, his performance was deemed way below that of his peers. Thus, the axe fell on him.

During the exit interview, he admitted to me that there was no one to blame but himself. He had been content just to coast along-getting his assignments done on time, but never going the extra mile. He had seldom, if ever, taken the initiative. He also never exerted much effort to develop himself professionally. Many of the managers who were hired at about the same time as he had overtaken him - they were already senior managers or executives while he was still a junior executive.

I remember another organisation I worked for, which, when acquired by another company, had to let go many of the executives and managers. Only three of us were retained. More than a year later, the former president of the company invited all of us to a get-together at her place. After exchanging the normal greetings, everyone gave updates on how they were doing. From the contributions, I was able to draw a few conclusions.

Those who landed good jobs immediately had a great deal of exposure outside the company. They networked in their chosen profession a lot and were active in their professional organizations. They also knew many people, some of whom served as impressive references. A few of them got their jobs through friends and contacts, others through headhunting agencies. Those who were forced to take “undesirable” jobs, or who were still jobless at the time, had limited or no social contacts outside the company. They were very good performers, mind you. Some were even better than those who immediately landed new jobs. During their employment with the company, however, they were either too focused on their job or did not develop outside contacts. Thus, they were virtually unknown outside the company. Early on in my career, I joined a textile company that eventually folded up. While working in that company, I was with a group known as the Poker Club. We were all senior managers who would meet twice a month to play poker. When the company closed, we also went our separate ways.

I moved down south to work in a start-up company. After three years, I moved back to work for another company. I visited the members of the Poker Club one by one and found out that different fates had befallen them. One of them had moved to another company and was doing all right. Two others went into business and were doing badly. One was into construction subcontracting and could barely meet his payroll needs. The other was into the poultry business and was hardly making both ends meet. However, two others became very rich. One had a large auto parts and accessories store, an auto repair shop, a bakery, and a restaurant. The other had a prestigious elementary school in the village where he and his family lived.

What was the difference between those who were doing well and those who were not? The latter only started their business ventures after they left the company. The one who went into subcontracting did not have enough contacts to land big contracts (which he could have cultivated even while he was still gainfully employed, since he already knew the business then). The one who went into poultry farming thought it was easy running this kind of business even if he knew nothing about it. The successful ones, on the other hand, already had ongoing concerns when they went full-time into their businesses. The guy who eventually ventured into the auto supply business started with a repair shop. When he got unemployed, he used his separation pay to start up the auto parts and accessories store. His customers in the repair shop were already a captive market, who would benefit from a one-stop shop and his very competitive prices. It wasn’t long before his clientele grew. His wife was already operating the bakery when he was laid off. She soon branched out into the restaurant business after her husband was terminated, using his separation pay as capital. The one who had an elementary school already had a preschool, which was being run by his wife, when he lost his job. He used his separation pay to extend the school facilities and expand the preschool to include elementary. When I visited him again a couple of years back, he had just graduated his first batch of high school students and had started expanding to include college courses. These real-life stories teach us valuable lessons which, when applied, would minimise our chances of being involuntarily separated or, assuming the inevitable happens, help ensure that we would easily find another job or succeed in other ventures outside of employment. First, do not be complacent in your job. Strive to excel so that the company will find it difficult to let you go. Second, open yourself to the world. Do not just limit your life to your work-join professional organisations, develop external contacts and make yourself known in your chosen field. Third, do not depend completely on your job. If possible, start a business even while you’re still employed. It does not have to be a large one. You can start small. If you are too busy in your work, have your spouse or someone else you can trust run it. If it succeeds, you may even leave your job so you can make it grow further. As a saying goes, “Wise is he who learns from his own experience. But wiser is he who learns from other people’s experience.” In other words, do not wait for something to happen before you act. Do it now!

Journey To self-Discovery

I commute by LRT to my workplace five days a week. I meet people everywhere, jostling to catch the train to reach their destination for the day’s work. Imagine spending almost half your life working an average of 40 hours a week to earn a living to provide sustenance to yourself and family.

Have you ever felt your working life is stifled at some point and you are confined to the routines? At times, you sense a small voice calling you toward something unknown and risky, yet more congruent with your own truth. Have you ever embarked on a journey of self-discovery? So many of us listen to what others tell us to do when we were growing up. Be a doctor. Law is good. Or why don’t you be an engineer. Such recommendations are given with all good intentions because these vocations are respected and pay well. We may compromise and even grow to accept it and thrive to make a living out of it. But deep inside, if you do not have the passion for the work, there would seem to be a hollow feeling of unfulfilled dreams and aspirations.

A famous quote ‘Let Your Life Speak’ holds such profound meaning to me because it’s important to know that I am living my life as I am meant to be in my lifetime. Anything which falls out of this purpose just isn’t good enough.

How Long Is Too long In One Job?

This question was posed in an international survey by global recruitment firm Robert Walters to 6,000 people from 14 countries. In Australia, 40 per cent said that more than five years was too long to stay in a job, 32 per cent said more than 10 years was too long, 20 per cent more than three years, six per cent believed more than two years, and two per cent more than one year. This compared to the global average of 30 per cent for over 10 years, 42 per cent for over five years, 20 per cent for over three years, six per cent for more than 2 years, and two per cent for more than one year.

Robert Walters Melbourne director David Chancellor said organisations should realise that people like to move around: "Organisations that allow their employees to move on a regular basis internally and prefer to promote from within are the ones where people will stay for a long time. No time is too long in a company if you are constantly being presented with new challenges."