Friday, March 22, 2013

Telling My Employer What I Really Think

My seasonal part time employer has an employee survey every year.  In past years, I have been mostly constructive and politically correct.  This year, I'm going to be much more direct with a more critical tone.  I want the company to know why I am no longer satisfied with employment.

When I first joined, I thought my job would be the perfect retirement job: flexible hours, low involvement by corporate, low bureaucracy and a collegial office.  Pay was not one of my criteria, so I didn't mind that the pay was low since there were other perks.  I though the company had an excellent hiring model to get qualified seasonal part time employees to want to work at relatively low compensation.

However, with each succeeding year, the company negatively impacted the factors of my perfect retirement job.  Corporate became more involved, the bureaucracy increased, more committed hours were requested, and perks were reduced.  This year, there was a significant turnover at my office, which eliminated the previous collegial atmosphere.   

While I think the company believes it is making the right changes for the long term, I don't believe it has properly assessed the potential short term impact of a highly dissatisfied seasonal employee base. In addition, I don't believe the company values the seasonal part time employees as much as it should.  As a result, a number of good seasonal employees may choose to leave and not to continue in the job, creating a shortage of workers to interface clients.

Despite claims of full anonymity, I expect that the answers are some what trackable to me, which doesn't matter to me :-)
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This is not financial, retirement or career advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2013 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

2 comments:

KC said...

So I guess this is the continuation of your 'time to quit' post? :) Good to hear that you are able to express your dissatisfaction. If ever they traced it back to you, well, I hope for the best. ;) It's really hard when this happens. I mean, changes is inevitable and we got to adapt in order to survive but we can't sacrifice everything, our future, retirement, and our happiness because life is not all about our job.

Super Saver said...

One of my colleagues, who is a fellow retiree from my company, put it best when told by a manager that she should be able handle company politics and bureaucracy due to her previous job. She answered, "Sure, I can, but I was paid a heck of a lot more to deal with it before." That is the reality the company with seasonal part time jobs hasn't figured out :-)