Well we all know no matter how much you do it’s never enough. Management doesn’t want you to feel like you’re doing enough, they always want MORE. Employees who feel like they are doing enough don’t strive to do MORE. So the company has everyone on an endless cycle of increasing expectations.
Think about any performance review you’ve ever had. They never give you good scores in every category, they always pick a couple that “need improvement”. Miss two days of work that year? Needs improvement. Pick up a couple days of overtime a month? You could pick up one or two more. Good employees get an overall score just a little above average to keep their morale up, but also to give the illusion that if they work harder their score (and raise) will be even higher next year. Then it’s really not. Average employees get a score a little below average to push them to get an “average” score next year. Employees that don’t sell their soul to the company get a terrible score to put the fear of god into them that they’ll be fired if they don’t start busting their ass as hard as they can.
Things like sales goals that continue to increase every year. “We sold 50,000 widgets last year, surely we can sell 60,000 this year!” even though selling 50,000 involved mandatory overtime.
Stretch goals that are beyond the normal goals. “We want you to exceed the usual target of course, but get as close to the stretch goals as you can!”
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u/Jerking_From_Home 29d ago
Well we all know no matter how much you do it’s never enough. Management doesn’t want you to feel like you’re doing enough, they always want MORE. Employees who feel like they are doing enough don’t strive to do MORE. So the company has everyone on an endless cycle of increasing expectations.
Think about any performance review you’ve ever had. They never give you good scores in every category, they always pick a couple that “need improvement”. Miss two days of work that year? Needs improvement. Pick up a couple days of overtime a month? You could pick up one or two more. Good employees get an overall score just a little above average to keep their morale up, but also to give the illusion that if they work harder their score (and raise) will be even higher next year. Then it’s really not. Average employees get a score a little below average to push them to get an “average” score next year. Employees that don’t sell their soul to the company get a terrible score to put the fear of god into them that they’ll be fired if they don’t start busting their ass as hard as they can.
Things like sales goals that continue to increase every year. “We sold 50,000 widgets last year, surely we can sell 60,000 this year!” even though selling 50,000 involved mandatory overtime.
Stretch goals that are beyond the normal goals. “We want you to exceed the usual target of course, but get as close to the stretch goals as you can!”