It only does 9 months at a time, but A that's better than nothing B I often run two months together as trips often start in one month and end in another C sorting out between two months is a lot easier than sorting out between 18 months, only 12 of which are in the tax year I'm working on (Oct-Sep, file in January and July) and D it feels easier to bundle up all the receipts in a month and put them in an envelope and double that up with the previous month when I need the next month's pigeonhole than to start a new envelope for every fifth receipt because I can't remember if I already have a September 08 envelope and pulling all the envelopes out and putting all the receipts into them is fiddly, dammit... If the month-moving gets tedious, I will make a 4x3 or a 4x4 unit somehow - and I make practice on one for himself...
Do I need to order receipts by month at all? Yes. I thought I didn't because Excel has this handy date sort function, but if I have all the May receipts together it's easier to see that this is the restaurant bill and this is the credit card receipt for the same meal. And once I have given myself sufficient time to find any other receipts that are lurking in piles and pockets, I can very easily say "these are the 07-08 receipts" when I want to work on accounts. I can even pull out one month at a time, put them in the spreadsheet and put them back with a rubber band round them so I know they're done, thus dividing the work across the year; this isn't likely, but if I were ever to want or need to be VAT registered this would be critical. And it's nice to feel more organised!
I like working for myself. The boss may be pushy and demanding but I've found she can be really reasonable when push comes to shove and we rarely disagree on the direction work should be taking. For my wage slave friends, if this is annual review time, I've got some statistics to make you feel - if not less fed up, then less alone.
84% of managers think they are fair, while only 69% of their colleagues agree with them. Only 39% of managers think they're good at setting objectives though 56% of the colleagues think they do well - so we've got a lot of unfair, insecure people here. And plenty of workers think it's endemic: if you ask if the company treats everyone fairly only 54% agree and 49% feel that change is something that they're on the wrong end of. 46% of workers don't think much of their manager's skills - again, it's that pungent blend of incompetence and lack of confidence as the reasons. 61% said poor decision-making leaves them frustrated and results in a loss of respect for their manager, while 83% said it damages morale (and I guess the other 17% don't care enough to respond any more). More than half believe it reduces productivity. But looking down from above, 82% of bosses consider managers in their organisation to be effective decision-makers.
And the top ten 'you'd have thought it was obvious' complaints about managers:
- not being fair
- not telling people what they need to know to get the job done
- not getting people involved in changes at work
- not having a good promotion path
- not telling people what the company wants to achieve
- flexible working, no thanks
- pretending the promotion path really is fair, because denying it's raining keeps you ever so dry
- what's the motivation for my character? what, *just* money?
- you can't go on a training day to get more efficient, there's too much work to do
- I may be a wage slave, but I'm a wage slave who expects to have a career path here
Actually I count several variants on not being fair, being seen to not be fair, being an idiot and expecting your staff to be psychic. BTW, a good manager makes a huge difference and they can transform a department, acting as an umbrella against all those drips from senior management; but they won't have the power to turn around a toxic company and company culture is self-sustaining - it's only natural to hire people we think we'll work well with. With some managers and some companies, taking the time to say 'this makes my job harder, can we fix it' is enough to improve things. If not, you have the choice of hating your job, hoping for a new manager, finding a way of coping or finding a new job. Personally I think it's a bad thing to stay in a bad job - I know people often don't have an easy or obvious choice, and I'm sure there are plenty of terrible employees driving their managers berserk in return, but if it's this bad no wonder everyone in offices spends the day reading Facebook...
The deluge of statistics in my mailbox today comes from a site asking you to pay £20 to have your management skills evaluated based on confidential feedback from your team. 360-degree reviews are excellent if they really are confidential, but I don't know how professional I believe a site is when it gives you a £5 Amazon voucher for everyone you persuade to go get evaluated as well. The management skills test is a bit odd too; I keep getting "hmmm. You’re probably a very nice person. But it looks as if you could do with some tips on all your management skills." Hmmmmm.
For a journalist who deals with a lot of PR people, this one is fascinating. "The industry sector most likely to play host to identity-stressed workers is media and marketing, where ten percent of respondents say they completely change their personality at work."
This makes sense for people in PR who are always representing a client as well as their own company so they're at two removes from being themselves. I know PR folk who let their hair down after hours, but I don't think I know anyone who completely changes their personality. But then maybe their work face would be so different that you'd never get to know someone enough to see their off-duty real face.
In general, people think sales, marketing and finance workers are most likely to change their persona; finance workers agree we've got them bang to rights but only 41% of media and marketing folk expect marketing people to have a false persona. So are the people changing their persona so good we don't even know?
A third of managers (in all fields) have seen someone take credit for another employee's work. 34% have seen an employee shift the blame for their mistakes. I wonder if it's the same third or if we're 66% back-stabbing glory-grabbers? Employees who have changed their personality for work are more likely to see that in action, but not much more; 65% of them have seen colleagues or managers let others take the blame for their mistakes as opposed to 46% overall.
Technology can give you a different personality to some extent. It's easy to be terse in email or cute in IM. Software can remind you not to cut people off the CC list or make it look like you're at the airport when you're down the pub. It's your own habits that make you a workaholic and technology can help you escape or mire you in it further depending on how you approach it. It looks like we change ourselves far more than our (non-medical) technology does.
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marypcb- Mary Branscombe
- Simon & Mary
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