sangi39 wrote: ↑21 Oct 2023 02:01
Thanks muchly, peoples
![[:D]](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin2.png ":D")
Only a minor update: So, sort of one above new TL (who's taken on some of the more complicated stuff, like all this noise) had a meeting with us on Wednesday morning. We were in there for about 80 minutes going over everything. Mostly just catching them up to speed with everything
Well, about 3 hours later they come back through saying "oh, well head of HR* and Managing Director** are ready to have a meeting with you all now if you want to head through". Bit of a surprise after 7 months of nothing, but I think they basically decided "time to be proactive, go above HR and drag Managing Director into this directly"
*who's the most useless person on the planet
**who is honestly great, as far as MDs go. I think he just made a bit of a mistake taking a step back
That meeting lasted about 75 minutes and honestly... I'm kind of mad about it. We aired the issues, worked towards a solution, have a timescale for a follow up meeting, and came up with a brief outline for a resolution. In just over an hour. After a team meeting earlier that day. Why did this need take seven months to get to?
Managing Director honestly seemed like he wanted to work towards something that everyone was happy with. Also understanding that they're a business person, we might not get everything we're after, and they might be very good at putting on a performance that merely
suggests that, but they seemed to respond well to material that we provided (which, again, fair, they're a business person, and apparently a very visual learner)
Head of HR? Oh my god, I've never seen someone try to dig themselves out of a hole so much for so long. "Banding hasn't been abandoned". Okay, so what is the current banding structure? "Oh, I'll have to research that over the weekend". Yeah, you've been here for two years now, and you knew you were coming into a meeting about banding. Why did you not prep for this? If it's not been abandoned, why is it going to take you four days to find out what the bandings are? Why did you ask one of the people on our team what band they were in?
I mentioned that the previous TL didn't know what our pay was, and HR person replied "no, that's not true, we're very transparent about pay with managers", to which "sort of one above new TL" replied "no, sometimes we have been kept in the dark over the past few years". While I admit I did (accidentally) throw old TL under the bus (I'm sorry, I assume everyone tells everyone the same thing about everything and that "lying"
isn't the default), but hearing that come out afterwards, in front of the MD was just golden. From talks with the team about what was said in one-on-one meetings last week, it was very "well, I was told this", "oh? I was told this", "but I was told this though". Apparently that was because head of HR had come to the conclusion that "well, some people don't really speak up in a group meeting, so I thought one-on-ones would be better for everyone"... despite this being raised as an issue by the whole team... and no-one actually asking any of us whether we wanted a group meeting or individual ones. For some in human resources, this person is terrible at resourcing humans. Either that or it's actual sneakiness and not incompetence. But never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, you know?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, we're effectively building the old pay structure back up from the ashes of the old one (you know, the one that was never abandoned?), but trying to be robust about it. I spent about half of Thursday going through job descriptions, task lists, old banding documents, trying to make something that seemed reasonable, working with my brother for feedback, getting some back-and-forth on it, until we landed on structure that was, more or less, the same as the old one, but a little bit more robust. One of the flaws with the old structure was, for example, a £2,000 range in one the second of the four bands, but beyond "increasing familiarity with processes" there was no defined metric for what "increasing" meant, which even we argued could potentially lead to situations of "well, I'm really chummy with the TL, and they're going to give me an extra grand a year" and there'd be no reasonable way to figure out if that was fair or not
So we passed on the proposal/brief for a new structure, and got a meeting in two or three ways to follow up on it (and we're not waiting on HR person to figure out what the current bands are, we've just said "this is what we think they are. You agree or not?") and hopefully we'll get some more progress
Honestly, biggest thing for me is that
one person gets a significant pay rise. He started two years ago, and turns out he's on literally like 3p an hour more than someone who just started 3 months ago (absolutely no offense meant to new starter, they're getting screwed over right now too under the current system, and we want them dragged up with us. We value the work and the effort), despite the fact he can do literally every single job everyone else on the team can do. Sure, he has areas where he falls behind, but also areas where he excels (pun intended, he's damn handy with a spreadsheet, and has streamlined a good half-dozen processes, including ones that help with training), but we recognise that that's what happens when you work as a team. But, nah, he's on "new starter" wages. If
anyone deserves a positive outcome from this, it's him
Upside, MD wants a new banding structure in place by end of November, with performance reviews in January/February to work out where everyone fits in that, but has said that if anyone's completely out of line with it, he wants pay adjusted as soon as
Big upside, it was nice to see HR being told to pull their finger out
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Śād Warḫallun (Vrkhazhian) [ ![[:)]](./images/smilies/icon_smile2.png ":)"){kind=icon}
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Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics 