Tuesday, August 21, 2007

When in Doubt, Be Nice

I manage a cross section of employees: nurses, claim adjusters, clerks, IT, and producers. The most challenging aspect of my job is to get these folks to respect each other.

All of these positions are critical to servicing our clients. All believe they work "harder" than the person in the next cube.

None of them have figured out that we exist purely to make the shareholders a boatload of money, while they will be lucky to get a 3% raise.

Amazing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just finished university and started a new job in the government. I swear this sort of attitude (ie. "I'm better than thou") is so heavily entrenched that if you do not pick it up, you are to be generally ostracized from gossip and treated as an outsider regardless of skill or team work.

The worst part is, in order for one group (ie. the strategic planners) to overcome the real or perceived onslaught of another (ie. HR) they tend to spend more time griping, and not working.

It's a downward spiral from there.

Terrible.

Sally Hemings in Paris said...

My heart aches for you. You probably have at least 40 years of work ahead of you.

Take all the vacation available to you and take none of it personally.