|
 Just today I read of the sacking of two security officers who put an electronic tag on an offender’s prosthetic limb leaving him able to remove the limb every time he fancied breaking curfew or just going out to break the law! It’s a failure to engage brain that infuriates me in business – there is no point in doing a job unless you do it with your brain engaged.
Many years ago when I was a real rookie of a manager I spoke with a member of the admin team pointing out the error she had made in producing a poor performance warning letter when in fact the employee had been drunk and as a result was committing an act of misconduct. I asked her if in future she could think about which letter was required (i.e. performance or misconduct) before producing it. But the member of staff just looked at me blankly and said ‘I’m not paid to think’. I was so flabbergasted I just walked away! I have always remembered that comment though…
At the weekend I browsed an East store looking for some new clothes. There were two employees working. One, heavily pregnant, sat on a stool to one side of the payment counter. The other hovered nearby, scanning the shop checking on customers but unable to go and serve or engage with any customers while her heavily pregnant colleague was telling her in a very loud voice some lengthy saga involving her children. I’m not really sure why that heavily pregnant lady should have been paid on Saturday as not only did she not do her job, she also prevented her colleague from doing hers. Is that what she intended, or is this just another example of an employee failing to engage brain? Either way I left without trying on or buying anything.
I’m curious though, did the security officers fail to engage brain because when you carry out 70000 taggings a year, you start to get really complacent at some point? Did the admin lady fail to engage brain because she had convinced herself she was too low in the pecking order to need to engage brain? Did the pregnant lady at East fail to engage brain because she felt that being given permission to sit on a stool while the store was open meant that she no longer had to seek to engage with customers?
But at the end of the day its all just laziness and excuses isn’t it? The impact of such laziness and excuses on the organisation can be huge in terms of wasted time, effort, poor quality output, lost sales etc.
So what are you going to do with your hamsters who tread the wheel without engaging brain?
 |
