The "sack 'em" culture

[Lady Jana Muck]

There's an old saying if it works leave it alone but they have to keep bringing in these jobs worthy's (potato heads are what we used to call them) Nothings changed there then.

[HeyWayne]

I look at it as treating the symptom rather than dealing with the cause.

[pigletwillie]

Greedy pigs alone are not the reason thousands are being sacked.

So the bank head honchos in their ever increasing desperation to wring every crumb out of folk didnt cause the credit crunch that is now threatening a global recession. They bought up those parcels of sub prime debt expecting to make a killing and came unstuck.

Banks that made billions of pounds profit every year are now having to undertake rights issues to ensure their reserves are big enough to cover their legal obligations because they lost so much money in an attempt to make much more.

Please dont try to blame it on the 1 in 146 American home owers who are now having their mortgages forclosed.

Greed, plain and simple, and its the common people who will suffer, not those with the gold plated index proof pension troughs who run banks.

[HeyWayne]

So the bank head honchos in their ever increasing desperation to wring every crumb out of folk didnt cause the credit crunch that is now threatening a global recession. They bought up those parcels of sub prime debt expecting to make a killing and came unstuck.

Banks that made billions of pounds profit every year are now having to undertake rights issues to ensure their reserves are big enough to cover their legal obligations because they lost so much money in an attempt to make much more.

Please dont try to blame it on the 1 in 146 American home owers who are now having their mortgages forclosed.

Greed, plain and simple, and its the common people who will suffer, not those with the gold plated index proof pension troughs who run banks.

Greed may have caused the current economic state of affairs, but greed is not the privelige of banking head honchos pigletwillie. The vast majority of consumers demand the lowest price for the goods they pay, yet at the same time also expect to be paid the most for the jobs they do. To blame the current world economic situation purely on banking is a little short sighted if I may be so bold.

Banks are a business that same as any other and are responsible to their stakeholders. Profit is more than often the easiest measure of success and certainly the most atttractive to any investor or shareholder - we all know that banks are not the only profit chasers in commerce...

One doesn't have to look too far back to see what effects an insolvent bank can have on the wider economy. Love or loathe banks, they provide us with a lot more than we sometimes give them credit for (forgive the pun).

I never mentioned the Americans - and I'm certainly not blaming anyone, that's just not constructive. However I do know that there is a lot that goes on in the finance market that I will never fully understand, but I appreciate their efforts when our ecomony is strong and I benefit as a result.

We can be quick to complain when things go wrong, but we rarely praise when things work in our favour.

Surely you don't believe that about wringing every last crumb piglet? Where would their business come from then?

[madderbat]

I'dlove one of those jobs where it didn't matter whether I messed up, I'd still get a �1 million payoff!

What hurts me is when these banks ask shareholders to fulfill their commitment and bail them out and the poor dears cry wolf, run for the hills and expect the govt (taxpayers) to foot the bill!

[HeyWayne]

Hearing some of the stories of the live's these people can lead, you can keep it.

I'd rather have my mediochre salary and have a decent work life balance - money doesn't always bring happiness.

[Phill]

A simple dude trying to grow veg...hmm.

you don't sound much like the simple dudes trying to grow veg that I talk to on my allotment site.

Good argument though! Keep it going, the tellies crap tonight.

[smallblueplanet]

...- money doesn't always bring happiness.

Lol! Always said so feelingly by the rich! The retort is that it makes being miserable a lot more bearable!

[quark1]

I've been holding off commenting on this thread whilst I try and construct a good 'balanced' response.

Regardless of who may or may not be at fault for a particular fiasco it goes that the buck stops at the top.

Presumably 'if' the top man has introduced and implemented strange/faulty new methods and it has not been worked then who is to blame?

Well possibly him for not training and testing his workforce ahead of time - a possible symptom of T5 - the BA top dog has apparently forgone his 700K bonus as a result.

Should failing peeps be sacked or made to clear up c**p they leave behind?

Well there are certain fields where this most definitely happen.....? Oh Yes - which ones?

Well I wouldn't want a brain surgeon who had just been brought up before the GMC on a negligence charge to try and put right what he had just fouled up on me or my nearest because he should rectify what he put wrong before getting the sack.

A fund manager who had lost zillions through incompetent investing in MY pension fund.

Dare I say - a former Chancellor - elevated to PM without challenge - who sold our gold reserves at the bottom of the cycle for heaven knows what 'pet project' and many other most 'unprudent' fiscal things?

I'm also not sure that I want whoever has 'nurtured' a culture of complete disregard for the security of my data to remain in post whilst the c**p is removed from the blanket - whilst I may well have my identity cloned by all and sundry.

The T5 fiasco is so extreme as to bring the national carrier's name into farcical disrepute and you would have thought that as part of the testing before implementation stage that a 'serious' dummy run could have been engineered to iron out the chinks.

As for bank lending - there is a certain element of greed/desire on both parts. People have been given the 'must have' dream of owing their own home - at 'any' cost it would seem. Banks are beholden to their shareholders and the stock markets to deliver uplift to the bottom line. Should they not also have a duty of care to their borrowers to ensure that the are properly capable of servicing loans?

Based on the current lending requirement to purchase even a modest home at very nearly 6x salary or more the inevitable crunch was bound to occur. The problem is that when it last happened in the mid-90's the majority of commitment was around 3-4x salary - it could be anything up to 10xsalary today (especially in my area) - for a very modest property.

If you head up an organisation with a high profile you are not paid peanuts - therefore if something goes radically wrong then heads MUST roll. And I would suggest that all operational/implementational heads of department should carry the can. A project plan starts at the top and works it way down - if proper checks and balances are not fed up and adhered to then someone has to pay the price. P45 - no pay off or bonus attracted by the severence for incompetance or corporate failure.

Just think - any of you in a far less 'responsible' position would readily be shown the door for far less ability slip-ups and far less impact to the business if you fouled up.

Big bucks 'should' equal big risks/consequences for the job holder.

Sadly so many of these high flying positions are contracted such that if you fail in post you will still get a substantial payoff - totally wrong - imho.

[beefy]

I'll give you my feelings on the matter -if you are not good enough for the job you should not be there .
If you take the big money with that comes big responsibility - it's up to you to make sure that those below you know what you want done and how you want it done. If you provide a service or goods you have to provide the customer with a service that works or the goods that work.If you can't deliver that your to long in the job.
For example the farce that was T5 could have been avoided if a "proper" runthrough had been undertaken and the staff properly trained and listened to when they said that they were not ready to go.But instead to meet a deadline and to qualify for a bonus for finishing on time and opening on a certain date this was overlooked.

[Paulottie]

The one that really got me was the fellow who got paid off millions having spent millions rebranding the Royal mail 'consignia'. Yet to provide a service to the rural communities and keep a few post offices open is a waste of money....or even a couple of telephone boxes in good working order.

I have to question whether those at the top of the corporate tree are worth the money they are paid in the first place let alone redundancies. Banking/ insurance sectors are just parasites. Supermarkets are worse. These people's renumerations are obscene in the first place let alone being paid off because they can't even manage a thin veneeer of competance while they are stuffing their pockets.

Since Thatcher We seem to completely undervalue industry in this country. Public service is an anachronism. We were sold what we already owned (and relinquished our control to foreign investors)

The basic economics of a household or a country are the same: produce nothing = no money in = no money to spend. Every fat cat with a politician in their pocket and their hand in the cookie jar have bled the country dry, We are now witnessing the country being broken up to export every bit of scrap abroad. The whole of modern society is a fa�ade of style over substance.... of perceived rights to live off credit and the fat of the land. But the cookie jar is empty. Out with the old -in with the new shiny import.

Every one is scared of bloody hard work. Doing something truly productive in an ethical way is looked down on. We have our values so completely wrong. How can a footballer or executive be paid so much and a nurse or teacher so little. A fair and decent wage for a fair days work. Maybe a bit more equality is needed.

Come the revolution Bruvvers

[HeyWayne]

Going slightly off topic, but I presume the benefit culture - which costs the UK taxpayer around �13billion has nothing to do with it?

I personally know of people who have never looked for a job because they are better off not (or so they believe).

I'd rather have a country full of fat cat capitalists than a bunch of lazy @rse no hopers like that. If there are fewer and fewer contributing to the coffers, yet more and more taking from it...

And I'm not saying that all those on benefits are lazy before I get jumped on.

[HeyWayne]

Lol! Always said so feelingly by the rich! The retort is that it makes being miserable a lot more bearable!

Lol, that'd be nice!

[JanieB]

Mmmh! Difficult topic. I don't believe in sacking someone because they have made a mistake. Who has not made a mistake in their job? I suspect that those in high office who are held to blame for major fiascos are caught in a scenario where people who have worked in those industries for years have cocked up but those at the top take the rap, and they didn't know the nitty, gritty of why.

(Janie story) (I can't believe this is twenty years ago). I was middle management in one of the biggest blue chip companies in the world. I was responsible for something in the region of $30,000 worth of credit from customers to our company every month. The buck stopped at me.

A clerk who worked for me put the wrong code into a program that credited cash to one of our customers. We could watch the program running. When it got to $20million (very soon) she asked me to look. It was before euros. It was a lira account. She'd put in the code for sterling. I knew the only way I could back this out (next week) was for the data entry clerks to re-enter all the line items (1,000's) in reverse and then put them in again.

Knowledge of your company is a wonderful thing. Bill refused to give up smoking in the office even though it was a non-smoking office. You could find him by the cloud over his pig-pen. He was the guru on the company systems worldwide. I went and had a chat. Late Friday evening. America hadn't signed in. No-one had used the system except us. He changed the system time and changed it back. The program vanished and we ran it again with the right code.

We lost about an hour of our weekend, we didn't lose our jobs.

Sacking top-dogs who haven't been in the job long enough to learn the ropes doesn't gain anything. You just get another top-dog who doesn't know the ropes. In my experience, you learn by your mistakes and you don't make the same one twice.

[Alice]

I look at it as treating the symptom rather than dealing with the cause.

Hey Wayne - the cause is the Peter Principle - everybody gets promoted to their level of incompetence. Because they were brilliant at what they were doing they get promoted to the next rung until they end in a job they just can't do. That's why incompetence reigns