Conference 7.286::digital

    Excellent memo!
    
    	We would do well to listen and take actions. Saying the right
    things are no longer enough.

Morale is local because we are, individually, all local. At the top
of the food chain or at the bottom; individuals, at the local
level, will be more apt to spread around whatever they are feeling. 
At a certain point whatever was spread around becomes the norm. When 
done by management, this creates the environment in which we must work.
When done by workers its noise-level, dissention, whatever.

To me, morale is proportionate to wellbeing. If my wellbeing is good,
my morale is high, if my wellbeing is threatened, my morale is low.
If, locally, each individual tries to stay healthy, then the spread of 
sickness is greatly diminished. The folks at the top seem to be trying
to tell the ones at the bottom, that they are healthy, have what they 
need to retain good health (high morale) - while we at the bottom are
forced to equate good health (high morale) with not being dead (canned).


/Bob

    The following reply has been contributed by a member of our community
    who wishes to remain anonymous.  If you wish to contact the author by
    mail, please send your message to ROWLET::AINSLEY, specifying the
    conference name and note number. Your message will be forwarded with
    your name attached  unless you request otherwise.

    Bob - Co-moderator DIGITAL



	Call me a coward but I have a family to raise and I am convinced 
	that retaliation occurs frequently in this company, thus the
	anonymity.

	In my opinion, senior management in this company no longer has
	any concern about employee morale. They no longer care whether
	an employee is loyal to the company through hard times; indeed,
	they would rather hire cheaper or maybe temporary help to replace
	employees that leave. 

	Take for example Bob Palmer's DVN yesterday. He totally missed the
	point in the brou-ha-ha over his recent raise. Whether it was
	intentional or otherwise, he did not address the central issue that
	was being raised there...morale. People were trying to say "Hey...
	you didn't make your goals, yet you got a 20% raise. Many of us
	haven't had a raise in 3 or more years. Our colleagues are being
	ushered out the doors in droves..many of whom have devoted many years
	of service to this company. WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE NICE IF YOU
	ACKNOWLEDGED THIS, MR. PALMER, AND TO SHOW THAT *ALL* EMPLOYEES
	SHOULD SHARE EQUALLY IN THE PAIN, MAYBE YOU COULD AT LEAST DEFER
	YOUR RAISE TILL WE ARE PROFITABLE AGAIN??!!"

	Nope. he said, in so many words "Some people were asking 'Why does
	this guy make so much money'? And here are the facts, folks...I
	don't make as much as Joe Blow from Company XYZ, so that's the
	reason I got a big raise". And when he said "I'm happy with my
	renumeration (he said renumeration twice, not remuneration), hope
	you're happy with yours!", I took that as the total blow-off. Face it..
	they just don't give a damn about employee morale. Funny he didn't
	point to any surveys that showed the average Digital engineer salary
	to be lower than the industry average...that wouldn't be wise, even
	though it would be true.

	I just try not to think about it anymore.

    re: .3
    
    	1. You can not be termed a coward. Followers of this notesfile
    other than you have expressed concern about retaliation.
    
    	2. You're right on about employee morale, and that was the real
    problem with Bob Palmer's pay raise and I suppose with his explanation.
    
    	But blast it all, the strength of this notesfile is open
    communication and your comments are extremely important. Somewhere in
    all of these discussions are( or will be) the solutions. 
                                                             

    The following reply has been contributed by a member of our community
    who wishes to remain anonymous.  If you wish to contact the author by
    mail, please send your message to ROWLET::AINSLEY, specifying the
    conference name and note number. Your message will be forwarded with
    your name attached  unless you request otherwise.

    Bob - Co-moderator DIGITAL

	One of the things, it seems to me, that the SLT doesn't seem to
	be factoring in is the morale of the employees. I've been here
	going on 25 years, been through the cut-backs/redeployments of the
	'70s, wage-freezes etc. and I've never seen or felt morale to be
	lower than it is today. The actions of the SLT lead me to feel
	that there's "us" and then there's "them" - one set of rules for
	each and each set different. The SLT acts as though they don't 
	realize that without "us" and our hard work "they" cannot be 
	successful, nor do they seem to care - given some of the things 	
	being done recently. 

	I watched the DVN broadcast yesterday and it is all to clear to 
	me that Palmer just doesn't get it. By defering his "raise" until 
	the company was again consistently profitable, Bob Palmer could 
	have shown that	he had more than his own best interests at heart. 
	In one bold stroke, such an action would have made him a leader 
	that people would willingly follow and more importantly it would 
	have sent a message througout the entire organization. A message 
	that says that management is in this with the rest of us for the 
	long haul and willing to endure the same hardships. An entirely 
	different message was sent and continues to be sent.

	There are plenty of bosses, but few true leaders......
	

    
    	There is a song by the Spyro Gyra group that goes 
    
    		"Send me one line....."
    
    
    	So here's mine.....
    
    		"ONE ACTION IS WORTH 1,000 WORDS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
    
    					Hope you like it.
    

    The following reply has been contributed by a member of our community
    who wishes to remain anonymous.  If you wish to contact the author by
    mail, please send your message to ROWLET::AINSLEY, specifying the
    conference name and note number. Your message will be forwarded with
    your name attached  unless you request otherwise.

    Bob - Co-moderator DIGITAL





Yes, I, too, have suffered retaliation for speaking out in our atmosphere of
"valuing the [quiet] employee," so I'm posting this anonymously.

I don't know about your site, but when Bob Palmer showed the chart on which he 
was the lowest paid CEO of a selected sample, and then used that as 
justification for his recent 20% raise, the entire cafeteria at my site 
broke into a huge "A-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W!", followed by cat-calls and laughter. 
This is indicative of neither good morale nor a productive workforce. Someone
then wondered aloud "what planet his spaceship is circling."

Digital will not recover to be profitable, let alone prosper, as long as 
accountability remains separated from reward. Of the companies Bob Palmer 
compared to DEC on his slide, I wonder how many have lost money for the past 
4 1/2 years. I am one of a large number of people who have taken 20-30% pay 
cuts in recent years, despite only good reviews. I am now working at a job 
at the same level as the one I took when I first joined Digital 16 years ago.
My morale is non-existant. I come to work in order to collect my meager pay 
and then leave promptly at 5:00. I used to stay late in order to get the job 
done right; none of that nonsense any longer. I can name at least three 
high-level managers whose jobs, apparently, consist entirely of staying in 
their offices all day, writing memos that no one sees, and egrandizing their 
personal empires. I can name several vice-presidents who enjoy huge 
salaries for invisible, or worse, counterproductive, work. These managers 
and VPs have been here since the Pleistocene and apparently will be here 
until after the Sun cools. They show a complete disconnect between what they do 
and the large rewards they receive from Digital. They are indicative of why 
DEC is not profitable.

I just looked for a pen and don't have one because of the freeze on office 
supplies. Or perhaps they were inadvertently taken to Hawaii with COE, along 
with a number of managers (and their families) who are neither in sales nor 
have anything to do with revenue production. How about a public list of 
Hawaiian trip attendees? After all, if they deserved to go, they have 
nothing to hide.

Does Bob realize -- or care -- that the average Digital employee makes 
about 5% of what he made _before_ his 20% raise? Is he that far out of 
touch?

Recently, the company held a big meeting in Maynard to introduce the new 
information architecture, called the "Aquifer Repository," or something 
similarly confusing. When questions were asked by the audience, it was 
revealed that the new system relies upon every user having a PC, but no one 
knows where these PCs are going to come from. The new system accepts 
information, but there is, so far, no way to get the information back _out_ 
again. And the new system is incompatible with VTX, so everything in VTX will 
have to be loaded into the new system. The problem here is that there is no 
system ("yet") for loading any of this information. So, we have a bunch of 
high-level people who have designed a system that: requires hardware we don't 
have, to input information for which there is no means of loading, for a 
final database we can't access, to be organized in a way so confusing that 
people attending this meeting weren't even sure what it's called. Where is 
the accountability? Why haven't the people responsible for this mess been 
sent packing instead of being promoted? What do I do when I need to access 
information for a sale I'm trying to put together? And, in the final 
analysis, why should I even care? I'm currently more worried trying to 
figure-out how to pay for my increased health care premium.

Now we hear talk of deleting dial-in (that will REALLY help the Repository 
Aquifer, or whatever it's called) and even locking-out long-distance capability 
from office phones. Who's the genius behind these ideas?

Bob talked a lot about "moving in the right direction," "cutting our losses to 
a fraction of what they were," "putting the right people in place," and 
"compensating people competitively." Unfortunately, events indicate it's 
just not true.

    I'd like to add a positive note to this string.  I work for a manager
    that is very much aware of the morale issues of those who contribute
    for him.  He pays attention to business and is, IMO, very good at
    identifying and addressing the issues that are most important.  I know
    that he has earned the loyalty of the people that work for him.  They
    have told me so.  I feel the same.  Joining his group may be the single
    explanation for why I am still at Digital.  
    
    Amen, Alfred!  Loyalty certainly is a local thing, here anyway.  
    Fortunately, I work in a group that focuses on business as well as 
    what's best for Digital.
    
    Steve

    re: - .7 Well, at least we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the
    "aquafer" is apparently far from implementation! No water, no wells, no
    pipes & no drills but apparently a divining rod waveing in the wind!
    Every cloud has a silver lining it seems....