Then the morale events started becoming less frequent. The beer went from local to Bud and Bud Light. Then according to my wife, it went from Bud to Kirkland (the brand you find at Costco). Morale budget went from $WHATEVER to $40/head/year. Even the employee stock purchase plan discount went from 15% to 10%. You can look up the famous "shrimp and weenies" memo at Microsoft. I was on board with that, we didn't need shrimp. But now they don't even get the weenies.
And now Meta is recording your every keystroke and mouse movement, and I'm sure if they even get beer, it's no better than Microsoft has. Employees seem to be viewed as a liability now, or at best, code-producing cows to be milked out there in the open office feed lot. I don't care how much it pays these days, I've tasted how it could be, and no amount of money would get me back. All because companies can't spend an extra $100-$200 on their >$200K employees.
I worked at a publicly traded company worth tens of billions of dollars where I had to escalate to the VP level to get reimbursed when I paid for our team to send flowers to one of our team members after his mother was murdered. Expensing books, courses, or equipment is essentially out of the question and getting approval for team events requires a business related reason and are regularly denied.
I worked at a 50 person company where on my first day I arrived and there was a company logo'd Patagonia jacket on my desk and a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I worked at a different just allocated every team $100 per person every 6 months and said, "Do something with it. The only rules are you can't just pocket it and it has to be spent as a team."
The large company paid me triple what those other companies did, which is why I stayed for nearly 8 years, but in my head they're the cheap bastards who didn't care about their employees. I have such better memories of the companies who paid me far, far less, but set aside a few hundred bucks a year to do something special. I understand the big tech company mindset of, "If we're paying you half a million dollars a year you should be able to buy your own damn beer", but I think they forget that their employees are human and often it really is the thought that counts.
If you want actual improved working conditions, there is only one path that has proven to work and it involves organizing with other workers while resisting your bosses through whatever means you feel comfortable with.
The US has one of the most violent labor histories on the planet for a reason. The elites in this country absolutely do not like relinquishing control to an accountable public. There is a reason why the constitution was written as a document to benefit a minority of slavers, just like there is a reason why you don't get time-and-a-half when you're on-call as a tech worker; a group of undemocratic individuals want to hold dominion over your life while shaking you down for everything you're worth.
https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
That said, I have to recognize that this may be partially because of my personality. I don't "do great" at mixers like this. I'd rather go home and be with my family than drink beer—regardless of label—in a corporate setting. People describe me as charismatic and engaging one-on-one, but I'm awkward and unhappy at a big crowd event.
But there are other people whom I think get a lot of value and connections out of them! So it's kinda hard for me to say.
Downgrades in quality, though, stick out like a sore thumb. "I didn't really like going to these things before, but at least they had good beer." It can also be a real "it's the thought that counts" sort of thing. When you show me that you're willing to spend less on me, it sends a signal, sometimes stronger than if you'd never spent anything on me in the first place.
So, back to local breweries? /s
The COO had mandated no more than 30 seconds per customer so that the line kept moving.
When she went undercover, she realized that 30 seconds was barely enough time to ring up the customer, hand them their order and move on to the next customer. Great from an efficiency standpoint but terrible for customer relations as the cashier didn't even have time to say "Thank you for shopping with us!" or "How is your day going?" etc.
It's a good reminder that optimizing too much for one metric (e.g. line speed, short term profits etc) can lead to worse outcomes in the long term. On the flip side, a few extra minutes of time and effort from an employee can turn a "nice stay" into " we are customer FOR LIFE!"
Touchpoints come in three ways. Delighters as already mentioned, a popsicle delivered to your room, or a chocolate on your pillow. Then there are performance needs. In the case of a hotel this could be the quality of the view, or the case of an employee the basic wage, and then next is the basic needs. Using the hotel example this would be something like the air conditioning.
You complain if it does not work, but nobody writes a review about how perfect the aircon was.
This one is more often called a 'hygiene factor'.
"Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is about what happens when you take something that was free and you give it a price. That is a highly risky move. And the damage can be enormous."
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794592539/episode-386-the-cos...
"If you offer people $5 worth of value and charge them $6, they are going to be mad.
If you offer them $9 worth of value for $9, they are going to think you are amazing."
- Danny Meyer (founder of Shake Shack and Eleven Madison Park) has a wonderful book about customer service [0]
- Derek Sivers CD Baby customer note [1]
- Rory Sutherland talking about San Pellegrino canned soda vs Fanta [2]
Whether you do that with a popsicle or with the staff and infrastructure of a $700/night hotel room is kind of a wash.
I remember when my tenth grade English teacher put the fear of God in all of us on the first day of school, then was a totally different, nice, and wonderful person for the rest of the year (apart from an incident with the substitute, a different story for a different comment).
She knew what she was doing!
Speaking as someone on a salary. Idk.
