photo by dt0111

Are you inconvenienced when employees or co-workers call out sick? Want to try and put an end to it? Here is one thing you can do, see if there is any pattern to when your employees use sick time. I’m not talking about something as simple as a Monday morning or on Friday. If you have an employee who is obsessed with football and there is a Monday night game for his favorite team and you notice he called in sick on Tuesday, make a note. It happens a second time, give them a warning that if this happens again they will have to use a vacation day and will not be able to take sick time. Your employee will then tell all of his co-workers and overall sick time usage will decrease.  This works great for holidays, concerts, children’s extracurricular activities, etc. Once people have to start giving up vacation days, they will go ahead and schedule them in advance or get their lazy butts into work.  (Author’s note: I am currently out on medical leave from my job.)

But like mathematics and women’s gymnastics, system building is a youngster’s game. Although the truly hardcore might stick with this hobby for decades, the typical geek burns out around their 30th birthday. All of a sudden, debugging overheating problems and scouring the internet for updated drivers becomes… less fun. You’ve reached the magical age where time begins to > money. Maybe it’s because you’re making more money, or maybe it’s because you feel the icy hand of death approaching. Either way, you sell out. You buy a Name Brand Computer, possibly a shiny silver one with a fruity logo. At first you feel guilty, dirty even. Then you get over it.

The end result is closets full of old, decaying systems, plus scads of individual components: Pentium II motherboards, PCI sound cards, and cables. Lots and lots of cables.

Thanks to Mighty Mur for the heads up.

Yesterday the Dow closed down over 700 points and today it was up over 400 points. Banks are being purchased and jobs will be eliminated. In the coming year unemployment will like increase. So how do you use this to your advantage? First, you need to admit your job is likely on the chopping block just like everyone’s job. Second, you must step-up your productivity and quality to decrease your chance of getting the pink slip. The easiest way to do this is to make your boss look awesome. He or she will realize their job is more secure because of your efforts. With this knowledge you can now motivate your staff by telling them in their next staff meeting, if you want to keep your jobs we have to make my boss look great and that means you guys have to make me look good.

If your team is not generating your desired output then you need to motivate them. One way to do this is to create a nice plain manila folder labeled with whatever title your company calls “writing up staff so we can terminate them with cause later.” I also suggest filling the folder with copies of all related policies and blank forms. Then leave it on top of your inbox so your staff see it often. If this begins to lose its effectiveness move to to step two and pre-print all of your employees names on the forms and leave the folder open during one-on-one meetings. If you play your cards right, your team’s performance will be awesome and you will be able to work less.

Until next time, start them early, keep them late, and keep them scared.