Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Boob Tube

Did you know the average American watches 153 hours of TV every month? That's about 5.1 hours a day, for those of you who are too lazy to use a calculator. That's absolutely insane. I don't see how anyone can waste that much time watching television when there's so much work to be done. If all my employees stopped watching TV and stayed at work during that time, they just might get the tasks I assign them done. 153 hours in a month is just about one full "regular" work week. Why no one has cut the cord to the TV to keep working is beyond me. That's 5.1 hours a day of non-productive time.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Cash Incentives

It turns out that handling cash, even it's not yours to keep, makes people better able to cope with pain. According to a recent university research study, subjects who handled money were more resilient to pain. I wouldn't say that this is ground-breaking research, but it does verify what I've known all along. People are motivated by money. This includes corporate employees. None of my lazy employees likes working, but the paycheck blunts their pain. Allowing them to occasionally handle a paycheck seems to keep them working long enough to get some small amount of work done. The trick is figuring out how long you can keep them going before you need to infuse some monetary damage control to prevent mass defection.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Myth of the 8-hour workday

The typical workday (which I was never a fan of to begin with) starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. Eight hours, five days a week seems like so little to ask when there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. Forty hours per week out of an available 168 total hours per week comes out to less than 25 percent! This is already an abysmally low percentage of time spent working, but it's only part of another insidious issue.

The mythical 8-hour day is just that: a myth. Most workers come nowhere close to working that many hours. Consider that there is an hour lunch break. Why you have to eat on company time and get paid for it is beyond me. Then, employees typically waste time with trips to the bathroom, water cooler, chatting with other employees, etc. That just takes away even more work time. If you're not keeping a vigilant eye on your workers, they could be doing as little as 2 hours of actual work a day, but you're still paying them for 8! That's just outrageous.

It's imperative for the PHB to keep his workers actually working and coming close to earning their pay. The best way to do this is to keep close tabs on what everyone is doing. If you can swing it, cut out the lunch break. Your workers can eat on their own time, before and after work. Finally, since you can't actually squeeze 8 hours of work in the allotted time, find ways to extend the workday as long as possible. If you can keep everyone in the office for 12 (better yet 16) hours a day, you might get your full 8 hours worth out of them.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Life overtaking work

According to recent survey results, parents are spending more time with their children than in past years. It's hard to believe. I can't believe parents are wasting time at home when they should be at work being productive. As I have noted before, children are a huge financial drain for both parents and the companies they work for. Spending more time with children just drains more productivity from the company. This whole work-life balance nonsense has swung much too far in the wrong direction.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Permanent Temporary

One of the good things that has come out of the recession is the increase is the number of "permanent temporary" workers. Some 20% of the workforce now is in this category. These workers have all the responsibilities of a full-time, permanent employee, but are actually only contract workers in their official capacity with a company. This is great for the company since they don't have to pay employment tax, pay into pensions, contribute to retirement funds, provide healthcare, or provide basically any job perks.

This is the only way I hire. Contract workers don't have the same rights as regular employees. You can pay them on an irregular schedule and start playing with their billable hours when it does come time to pay. And the decreased paperwork from not having to deal with any of the tax crap is great. They have to take care of all that nonsense. The only thing that could possibly be better is free interns working for you.

Joseph M. Scandura, incompetent moron, idiot, pompous, stupid, failure, asshole, arrogant, bullshit, micromanager of the year, technologically clueless, ignorant, condescending, senile, dementia

scandura@scandura.com
mailto:joescandura@comcast.net