Employer is tight and won’t spend a penny
Discussion
I’ve recently started a new job at a company which on the outside looks like a great place to work.
They don’t seem to have a cash flow problem yet won’t invest in anything and give the bare minimum in expenses.
Some examples are paying 25 p a mile business mileage, using equipment which is 10 years out of date and refusing to upgrade, won’t spend £20 on accessories for the equipment that would make things significantly better, they keep all the air miles for any business flights we do, insist that any staff training must be done in your own time and paid for by yourself.
I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult.
Is this level of penny pinching common, or is my workplace particularly tight? I’ve came from a smaller company who had no issue with spending on equipment & training where required.
They don’t seem to have a cash flow problem yet won’t invest in anything and give the bare minimum in expenses.
Some examples are paying 25 p a mile business mileage, using equipment which is 10 years out of date and refusing to upgrade, won’t spend £20 on accessories for the equipment that would make things significantly better, they keep all the air miles for any business flights we do, insist that any staff training must be done in your own time and paid for by yourself.
I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult.
Is this level of penny pinching common, or is my workplace particularly tight? I’ve came from a smaller company who had no issue with spending on equipment & training where required.
Phunk said:
They don’t seem to have a cash flow problem yet won’t invest in anything and give the bare minimum in expenses.
I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult.
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Do they not realise that this could contribute to the lack of morale?I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult.
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Maybe they do realise but dont care? Which would be odd, considering they brought you in with the intention of boosting morale and productivity.
That being said, giving everyone a shiney new Mac wont suddenly cure all ills. It would probably cheer the team up for a week or two, until they realise their new toys didnt solve any core issues.
It sounds like a culture change is needed, which depending on the higher ups, could be a struggle.
Phunk said:
I’ve recently started a new job at a company which on the outside looks like a great place to work.
They don’t seem to have a cash flow problem yet won’t invest in anything and give the bare minimum in expenses.
Some examples are paying 25 p a mile business mileage, using equipment which is 10 years out of date and refusing to upgrade, won’t spend £20 on accessories for the equipment that would make things significantly better, they keep all the air miles for any business flights we do, insist that any staff training must be done in your own time and paid for by yourself.
I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult.
Is this level of penny pinching common, or is my workplace particularly tight? I’ve came from a smaller company who had no issue with spending on equipment & training where required.
They don't have a cashflow problem because they keep a tight control over spending They don’t seem to have a cash flow problem yet won’t invest in anything and give the bare minimum in expenses.
Some examples are paying 25 p a mile business mileage, using equipment which is 10 years out of date and refusing to upgrade, won’t spend £20 on accessories for the equipment that would make things significantly better, they keep all the air miles for any business flights we do, insist that any staff training must be done in your own time and paid for by yourself.
I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult.
Is this level of penny pinching common, or is my workplace particularly tight? I’ve came from a smaller company who had no issue with spending on equipment & training where required.
Playing devil's advocate;
why pay more than 25p per mile if staff are willing to accept that. Let's be honest, if you're running an old banger and not suffering £000s in depreciation it doesn't cost 25ppm to run it?
Why upgrade machinery unless there is very clear ROI?
Why shouldn't they keep the free air miles? They paid for them....
Staff training - when people were appointed to X job it was on the basis that they already had the skills and experience to do X job. Why do they now need additional training?
All of the above are "devil's advocate". However the fact of the matter is that Employers don't change unless they can see the need to. Some don't change at all and end up closing down. However if they're making a comfortable profit what's the incentive for them to change?
The simple and unpalatable fact is that you've started working somewhere that doesn't value their employees. They don't see that investing in people is worthwhile; they see you as resources to be used until you are no longer useful.
You can either accept this and in return treat them as a source of income and nothing more, or you can try to change the culture, which is likely to be a difficult, long-term endeavour at best. Or you can leave. Given that you have the remit of increasing morale, I would be tempted to be disruptive and lay out in very clear terms why morale is low, and what the organisation (specifically them: this is a problem of their making, not yours) needs to do to improve it. Their response will tell you which option is going to be best.
You can either accept this and in return treat them as a source of income and nothing more, or you can try to change the culture, which is likely to be a difficult, long-term endeavour at best. Or you can leave. Given that you have the remit of increasing morale, I would be tempted to be disruptive and lay out in very clear terms why morale is low, and what the organisation (specifically them: this is a problem of their making, not yours) needs to do to improve it. Their response will tell you which option is going to be best.
Many companies have an imbedded culture of penny pinching; its a very British disease, perhaps rooted in the baby boomers running everything having grown up in post war scarcity.
Company I first worked and served my apprentiship for were terrible for it, cheapest and minimal of everything vans, tools etc, they actually acted like giving you a tool to do the job they asked of you was like a personal favour. Many times you'd have guys wasting hours for the sake of inexpensive tools.
Companies gone from employing hundreds maybe thousands charging top money to a guaranteed customer base to non existent now so go figure
Company I first worked and served my apprentiship for were terrible for it, cheapest and minimal of everything vans, tools etc, they actually acted like giving you a tool to do the job they asked of you was like a personal favour. Many times you'd have guys wasting hours for the sake of inexpensive tools.
Companies gone from employing hundreds maybe thousands charging top money to a guaranteed customer base to non existent now so go figure
deckster said:
The simple and unpalatable fact is that you've started working somewhere that doesn't value their employees. They don't see that investing in people is worthwhile; they see you as resources to be used until you are no longer useful.
You can either accept this and in return treat them as a source of income and nothing more, or you can try to change the culture, which is likely to be a difficult, long-term endeavour at best. Or you can leave. Given that you have the remit of increasing morale, I would be tempted to be disruptive and lay out in very clear terms why morale is low, and what the organisation (specifically them: this is a problem of their making, not yours) needs to do to improve it. Their response will tell you which option is going to be best.
^^You can either accept this and in return treat them as a source of income and nothing more, or you can try to change the culture, which is likely to be a difficult, long-term endeavour at best. Or you can leave. Given that you have the remit of increasing morale, I would be tempted to be disruptive and lay out in very clear terms why morale is low, and what the organisation (specifically them: this is a problem of their making, not yours) needs to do to improve it. Their response will tell you which option is going to be best.
This is pretty much how I would see it.
They've brought you in with part of your remit being specifically to increase morale.
You'd imagine as part of that remit they shouldn't be averse to you spelling out some of the reasons that morale is low and how you intend to improve it.
Phunk said:
I’ve been brought in to lead a creative team with a goal of boosting morale and increasing quality of work. However with the refusal to spend any money or invest in staff training I’m finding this pretty difficult..
Are you sure that the measures you want the company to take though will increase morale... IME you can sort the expenses out, upgrade kit, provide training etc and these things dont get me wrong do make a difference, but if those areas arent at the root cause of the low morale its just a temporary sticking plaster. If you really want to boost morale find out what the real reason is that its low in the first place...( apologies if thats already been done )
Maybe you just need to write a clear business case for why you want to spend money on something?
E.g this costs 20 quid. It will allow brian to save 30 minutes a week. Brian gets paid 10 pounds an hour. Therefore it pays for itself in a month as long as we can keep brian productive for the extra 2 hours a month. I have sufficient work in the pipeline to do that.
BR
OP
E.g this costs 20 quid. It will allow brian to save 30 minutes a week. Brian gets paid 10 pounds an hour. Therefore it pays for itself in a month as long as we can keep brian productive for the extra 2 hours a month. I have sufficient work in the pipeline to do that.
BR
OP
What you need to consider when calculating the cost benefit of investing in new equipment and the like is the amount of additional businesses that would need to be done to recover that investment. For example, if your shopping list totalled, say, £30k, how much turnover would need to be generated to deliver an additional £30k of profit.
Working that out may reveal why there's a reluctance to invest,
There could be any viable other reason too. Perhaps the owners are working through an exit strategy that will be done over the next year or two. Any investment made no wouldn't likely have any impact on what they sell the business for so let the new owners invest.
Working that out may reveal why there's a reluctance to invest,
There could be any viable other reason too. Perhaps the owners are working through an exit strategy that will be done over the next year or two. Any investment made no wouldn't likely have any impact on what they sell the business for so let the new owners invest.
StevieBee said:
What you need to consider when calculating the cost benefit of investing in new equipment and the like is the amount of additional businesses that would need to be done to recover that investment. For example, if your shopping list totalled, say, £30k, how much turnover would need to be generated to deliver an additional £30k of profit.
Working that out may reveal why there's a reluctance to invest,
There could be any viable other reason too. Perhaps the owners are working through an exit strategy that will be done over the next year or two. Any investment made no wouldn't likely have any impact on what they sell the business for so let the new owners invest.
Of course, this is likely the case. In which case the cause of the low morale is obvious and the OP really is on a hiding to nothing.Working that out may reveal why there's a reluctance to invest,
There could be any viable other reason too. Perhaps the owners are working through an exit strategy that will be done over the next year or two. Any investment made no wouldn't likely have any impact on what they sell the business for so let the new owners invest.
The bigger picture is that ROI is only part of the equation and if you regard people as a valuable asset then you really need to take a more nuanced view.
Culture change comes from the top and reflects in the bottom line.
Are the staff sick a lot with stress etc? Find articles online that show how much money the business is losing a year due to illness through low morale. There is very often a link between how happy the staff are, their performance and how many sick days they have. Happy to discuss more if you want. It's an area I specialise in - but presumably the business can't afford me.
Are the staff sick a lot with stress etc? Find articles online that show how much money the business is losing a year due to illness through low morale. There is very often a link between how happy the staff are, their performance and how many sick days they have. Happy to discuss more if you want. It's an area I specialise in - but presumably the business can't afford me.
Sounds like the sort of place where the problems are always put down people, the staff.
In my current role it's very much like this. The attitude is that people just need to work harder, as if working harder is going to fix a broken screwdriver or a crimping tool. "A good workman never blames his tools", gets rolled out a lot, forgetting that this old phrase actually means something closer to "A good workman wouldn't buy or use crap tools".
It usually creeps in with a poor manager, someone who is utterly incompetent and blames the staff for everything that goes wrong.
Experienced this numerous ties in manufacturing, to a greater and lesser degree.
using 20 years old PC's to power stuff, made up tools, tools that are scratch made by people instead of buying something proper and long lasting, forced to use out of cal tooling, or out of date solvents or glues.
it is rife really. Some places it is reasonable, small businesses etc or companies on a tight budget. But, occasionally you see something in a large multinational, they will overlook, make excuses and you jst have to sit and watch them do it
using 20 years old PC's to power stuff, made up tools, tools that are scratch made by people instead of buying something proper and long lasting, forced to use out of cal tooling, or out of date solvents or glues.
it is rife really. Some places it is reasonable, small businesses etc or companies on a tight budget. But, occasionally you see something in a large multinational, they will overlook, make excuses and you jst have to sit and watch them do it
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