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WebMD forcing employees back to office. "We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point. We’re informing" (ody.sh)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This leaked today from inside webmd, the most bullshit corpo HR video I think I've ever seen.

To break down the obvious ones:

Employees who are obviously either drinking wayyy too much company koolaid or who know that their jobs will end if they aren't in this video
An extremely out of touch CEO who wants things back the old way without giving any concrete data proving that it's better beyond conjecture
A company with "internet" in the name who literally doesn't understand the concept of the internet
Threatening and bullying language to force people back in office.
and just a nice touch, the office is of course not near mass transit or anything and requires driving in
Did anyone notice they were all on green screen, kinda proving that there was no need for them to be in person?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think you're headed in the right direction, and it sounds like you understand what I was trying to say. I'm sorry you have so many duds on your team, but you know the game, and sounds like you're acting on it.

You're absolutely right, remote workers - especially those in customer service or any on-demand platform must be available at all times. The nice thing of being at home is that you can be a bit more relaxed, but that doesn't mean shutting your computer and walking away, it means you can hear the call coming in while you're getting a cup of coffee.

Good managers aren't micromanagers like I said, but you're seeing the other side, but they will be if forced. I agree with your bosses, your specific employee you have in mind has lost work from home privileges, it's how you carry that out in your head now. Personally, I would start keeping a record of missed calls and if you have it in your company, start building a PIP. Missed calls is absolutely a metric for a customer service agent. I'm not saying anyone is a perfect 0 missed calls, but you can take the average that everyone else has (double it to be generous maybe), and then you have this person's target level. If they're consistently above that, well, there you go. PIP and then if no improvement out the door.

For the flus, well, for that one since it's health I would inform your HR team of what you suspect is happening along with the proof of the pattern and ask for guidance. They'll probably guide you on how you should proceed there so that the company doesn't come off as "not caring about health" - but they're definitely not going to be happy with an employee faking illness.

As for the rest of the team, motivation may come from that. Not saying from fear, but they probably know Kevin is over there dicking around and offline most of the time, and so it makes them think that he's just getting away with it, and demoralizes them because they probably do care about the job. I know I've been in that position before, nothing kills morale like a teammate who doesn't care at all.

I really do wish you good luck. Management isn't easy when you have a team of duds, but I've seen great managers come in and turn a team around - and a large part of that is cutting the chaff so to speak. Sounds like you know what sort of boss you like and who you want to be, and that's the boss I strive to be too, but for some people they just don't want a boss at all. And for them we have to become the bosses we hate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Yes, I absolutely got where you were coming from. That's why I felt the need to elaborate. It sounds like you have more managerial experience than me, but we're on the same page.

I have a team of 11 including 1 supervisor under me. They're all mostly ok besides the 3 troublemakers. We're not in turnaround territory and it definitely could be worse.

I no longer have remote workers. Only by exception (home repair, sick kid, etc.) And not to play semantics, but back when I had most of the problems with remote workers, working from home wasn't a privilege. It was a health & safety mandate from global hq to allow for proper social distancing. I would take a different approach today if I were put in that situation again.

HR does know about my chronic friday/Monday call off gal. I was able to write her up once, but then she got wise. She'll pay a co-pay to go to some random immediate care place and get a one sentence doctor's note saying "she was seen here today." HR says those absences have to be excused. She's killed off a few relatives too. It's a shame because she has the best attitude on the team when she's there.

For us, PIPs are the last step to getting someone out the door. By then you should have had a couple verbal warnings and a write up or two.

Once I finally get my KPIs finalized, documented and trained, then I can really start auditing and enforcing more aggressively. I'm already getting a lot of pushback, but they were underperforming quite a bit when I joined. We have capacity.

I don't think they realize how close I was to having to lay off 2 or 3 of them due to falling customer demand. I agreed to take on more business from the region to keep everyone busy. We're actually growing now, but my RVP won't have infinite patience if I can't get results. If he pulls the plug then I'm overstaffed by about 6. I just hired 3 to handle this new business.

Now I'm motivated to write up some SOPs!