Getting Company Owners To Follow Their Own Rules? 387
techmage writes "Recently we had an issue at our small company that resulted in the loss of a lot of important data. To prevent it from happening again, we created a company-wide policy that all computers would return to IT to have their contents backed up, and the computers would be formatted and reloaded for the next user. Consistently the owners of the company break this and other policies we set up to prevent data loss, theft, etc. How do I get through to the bosses that when they break with the policies, they are potentially shooting the company in the foot?"
You don't (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Pretty much the best way (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is it true tat you can't make the owners do anything, but it's even very possible that doing the right thing isn't necessarily going to protect you. You could follow very sensible procedures and CYA with all kinds of documentation, and if the owners are petty and childish enough, they might still fire you or at least make your life a living hell.
That said, I think it's important that you find a way to be very very clear with the owners about what you believe the consequences to their actions will be. Do it in writing if possible. Be polite and respectful, but don't be subtle. The more vague you are, the more likely it is that they'll hear what they want to hear and ignore what they don't want to hear. Be as clear as possible without incurring their wrath. If you have to, be repetitive and say the same exact thing 5 different ways, but make sure that they understand how their bad actions put the future of your company in jeopardy.
Also understand that they might not like you afterwards. I've known a number of small business owners who were manipulative and petty and they couldn't tolerate anyone pointing out their flaws or telling them they're wrong. If they were willing to let someone else tell them what to do, they would have gotten a job working for someone else instead of running their own business. Even though you're trying to do the right thing, you might be burning bridges. Make sure it's worth it.
Not necessiarly (Score:4, Informative)
I mean ya, if the owners are major assholes they could fire you anyhow, however such a thing can be useful. First, it may make them change their behaviour and if it doesn't it can help protect you. Reason is they are then presented with evidence that they were informed and indicated that fact. If not, it is easy for ego to interfere with memory and them to say "You never told me this would be a problem!" However with a document they are more likely to say "Ya, I screwed up, now what do we do to make sure this isn't a problem in the future?"
In any company, there is no 100% protection from being fired no matter what. However having good documentation can go a long way. People do not have perfect memories and often we remember things the way we wish they had been, not how they really were. Documentation can help prevent that.
Also you don't present it as a "This is just for you because you are assholes" document. Rather, it is a policy exception document. If someone wants to not need to back up their data, you have them sign a doc that says they know the risks, and perhaps have it countersigned and ok'd by a boss. In the case of the bosses, they just sign it themselves.
Re:Pretty much the best way (Score:1, Informative)
Even in an at-will employment state, you get unemployment insurance benefits if you are "laid off" from a salaried job while you are not supposed to get unemployment if you were fired for cause.
I'm not sure how much companies manage to fight back when fired employees lie and say they were laid off, but it wouldn't hurt to have a document or two on your side if it came up.
Re:sociopaths (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Explain what can happen (Score:4, Informative)
I believe the US has slightly less employee protections than this
Interesting definition of that word. In the US it depends on which state and whether or not unions are involved. If you live in a "work at will" state and are not unionized, you can lose your job for any reason at all, including "we just don't want to pay you any more". This is justified by the claim that you are free to leave whenever you'd like as well.
Even when I was a contract worker, the company reserved the right to terminate the contract with 1 week paid notice. My options were limited to take it (with no modifications to the contract) or leave it (we have other candidates who want the job).
Re:Explain what can happen (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, dear, yes. The "unemployment ballet" is nasty. A professional bureaucrat that wants to fire you will record every misstep, collect them into a file, give you a "warning" and a "recovery plan", then do everything bureaucratically possible to poison your work. Simple shock and disbelief at how ridiculous the recorded "violations" are will not save you. You need a thick folder with documented mis-steps, preferably by the bureaucrat trying to fire you, with it all documented. Sign _nothing_ that admits wrong-doing if you can avoid it: make sure that you have counterletters recorded, and get copies of everything.
And start looking for new work if this is going on. I've had this happen, where a senior supervisor blamed the engineers for his laptop problems when he absolutely refused to swap it or surrender it for recovery, always had his disk overflowing, refused to patch, etc. He just wanted us to "fix it!" when it broke.
Re:Explain what can happen (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't realise the US job market was quite that "flexible".
I should add that contract workers here have less rights too, I was referring to the rights of permanent staff. Here contractors can indeed have their contract terminated at the drop of a hat also.
Very few employers win unemployment appeals (Score:5, Informative)
I fully agree. Employers don't generally win unemployment compensation hearings, even when they are correct. In many cases, the employer has a policy to appeal ANY unemployment claim, just to set up a few additional hoops for the employee to jump through. Most of the time, the employers don't even show up for the hearing. As a result, the state labor department deals with a LOT of junk appeals. Even when the employer shows up, the burden of proof is upon THEM and most of the time, they aren't up to the task.
I know of a guy who was thrown out during some kind of bizarre purge. The company had a change in management and this guy was clearly not part of the plan. So the company tried to cobble together some sort of justification. However, their schedule for firing him did not allow for collecting enough excuses. The purge worked in such a way that the guy's boss had already been let go, so actual facts of the employee's performance were in short supply. What little they had was wrong.
So of course, the employer appeals the unemployment claim. The hearing is held and the employer is absent. After losing by default, THEN the employer appeals to re-open the case. The employee's witnesses are subpoenaed and the day of the second hearing arrives. By this time, the employer has engaged some kind of unemployment compensation management firm to try and win the case. Upon seeing the employee's counter claim and witness list, the consultant tells the judge, "Upon review, this case does not rise to the standard necessary to establish termination for cause. We withdraw our appeal."
Considering how routine these shenanigans are, is it any wonder the employers usually lose?
The Dilbert Ethics Challenge (Score:4, Informative)
So I was working at a large defense company, and they had been dinged by the gov't for high-level management fraud. So part of the penalty was all employees that weren't managers had to take a mandatory Ethics class, run by... the managers.
Add in that the class included a Dilbert Ethics Game-- an actual, licensed Dilbert[TM] board game with little Dilbert characters and cartoons in it, where you had to move around and then answer ethics questions.
Oh, and it turns out you could win the game without correctly answering the questions, as my team figured out victory was based on position on the board, not score. And the only team that could have beat us took the high road, and when faced with one ethic question said "We know you want to hear answer A, but really, we would do answer B, as would any reasonable person."
I'm still not sure what lessons we learned.
Re:Reassess your place in the universe, techmage. (Score:2, Informative)
In this instance, it is not an owner's computer. They took a sales machine with client data and just gave it to a new hire. No log in changes, no information scouring, etc. When we backup the owners machines, it is done to external drive and they are given the drive. However, we don't get the opportunity to those backups very much.
Re:Explain what can happen (Score:2, Informative)
I should add that a "work at will" state allows you to be fired for no reason.
That is not the same as being fired for any reason.
The catch there for employers is, if you want to fire an employee and prevent them from collecting unemployment, you have to give a reason and back it up.
The key difference is what being 'sacked unfairly' means.
- Sacking a competent worker just means that guy will find work elsewhere as your competitor.
- Sacking someone and denying him unemployment benefits (especially if you are out to get him and intend to fire him at the time it would do the most harm) may ruin his life.
In the US we have more mean people than lazy people, so we have to compensate.
Re:Assign it a cost (Score:3, Informative)
It turned out just fine. Our "VCS" was a magnetic white board with a grid on it (remember, this was 32 years ago). Every filename had a box. When you checked out a file you put a little colored magnet (we each had our own color) on it. If you wanted a file that was already checked out you put your magnet upside down over the current one and when the person checked it in they would flip yours over, poke their head through the door and say 'foo.h is yours.'
Charles would sometimes want to make a 'quick fix' and wouldn't bother with the board. You know where this goes ... Person A would have it checked out and be making changes, Charles would grab a copy from the master directory, Person A would check in his changes, and Charles would check his copy in on top of that. Sometimes we wouldn't know about this until we did our Weekly Build and things just didn't work right.
After this happened about 5 or 6 times the team voted to change the password on the master source directory and Charles always had to have someone else do the checkout/checkin for him. He bitched a little, but he knew he was guilty. I didn't always agree with him (ha! that's an understatement), but if you gave him a strong enough argument he would eventually come around.