Burnout & the Great Recession

My company has become obsessed with efficiency. This is not a bad thing in itself - every company should be looking to cut waste and build on their strengths. But I have noticed we have passed the point of cutting fat, and have begun running our best people harder and harder in order to meet deadlines. This is "efficient" - fewer people doing more work - but the stresses and strains are starting to show. And people are starting to ask the deadly question, "Is this really worth it?" And the obvious answer is "No."

Turns out, the same problem is all over in the Great Recession. As employers are forced to do more with less, and then realize they can exploit employers because there are no other jobs to go do, eventually employers are asking the impossible. And burning out their most valuable resources.

Of course, in the long run this strategy is horrible for business. Losing the expertise of one top-performer means hiring someone new, training them from scratch, and perhaps requiring 5 to 10 years to reach the level of productivity that the lost employee had. But in an economic time when companies are living quarter-to-quarter, there is little incentive to think even a year in advance. Burnout is mortgaging the next decade to pay for luxury in the next month. Sounds a lot like the thinking that got us in the Great Recession in the first place.

The Waitress Index

I struggled with whether this fit the "family-friendly" nature of Mod-Blog, but finally decided it was permissible and too funny not to post. One reporter has a theory about a way to track the health of the economy - the beauty of waitresses.

The indicator I prefer is the Hot Waitress Index: The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy. In flush times, there is a robust market for hotness. Selling everything from condos to premium vodka is enhanced by proximity to pretty young people (of both sexes) who get paid for providing this service. That leaves more-punishing work, like waiting tables, to those with less striking genetic gifts. But not anymore.

A waitress at one Lower East Side club described to me what happened there: “They slowly let the boys go, then the less attractive girls, and then these hot girls appeared out of nowhere. All in the hope of bringing in more business. The managers even admitted it.

We had an alternate "index" while down in Wildwood - the "local employment indicator". Normally, shore towns can not get enough locals to fill open positions, so they recruit from overseas - Russians, Irish, Australians, etc. looking for a fun summer in America. But this year, there were very few accents to be heard on the boardwalk, indicating Americans were looking for even the long, hot hours of hawking water gun races on the boardwalk.

Keeping Employees Happy

Another older, but still pertinent article. Personally, I typically leave a job due to a life situation change (job ended, one time temporary opportunity presented itself, etc.) One would think that the number one reason people leave a company is due to money, but looking at top employees, this appears to not be the case.