This selection comes from Bob Rosner of ABC News.
I once ran an online contest asking a very simple question — what is your biggest complaint about work? The responses flooded into the Web site and were not at all what I’d expected.
I was totally prepared for a ton of responses about low pay, disrespect, poor working conditions, etc. But actually, more than half of the responses all touched on the same topic — people who steal food from the company refrigerator. I couldn’t make this up. At first I thought that they’d all come from the same company. But as I read through them I realized they all had different details.
Don’t believe me? There was another study that asked what about the biggest complaint at work … The No. 1 response? It’s too cold. Wanna guess the second most common complaint? Yep, it’s too hot.
Granted, this study was done by the International Facility Management Association, but it does point out the power of the little annoyances at work.
What is the moral of this story? Management tends to focus on the big stuff in those rare times when it focuses on employee morale. Issues like bullies, food thieves and temperature are not the kind of stuff that most managers think of when they focus on employee satisfaction. Yet these are the very issues that are wearing down your people.
To read the rest of this post and to participate in the related survey, click this link.
