HR Irony (1): A tale of “small” people…

I just got back from my visit to my client site at Tanjungenim, Palembang. On the way back to airport, I had a conversation with the driver. This driver, just said his name is Pak Harry, talked to me passionately about his concerns on working condition in the company. He has been working with the company since 1998, around the same time with the beginning of this company. He heard some information about my consulting assignment in the company, and thought that the current organization restructuring has been suggested by consultant. He said that most of the drivers in the transportation section are happy with the management decision to change the manager and section head.

Pak Harry’s main reason on his happiness with the change in the structure is that they do not have to be under the bad manager now. He said that previously this manager did not put enough concerns to “small people” like driver, especially long service driver like him. Manager only care to subordinates that do “lick ass” to him or to people that are his close friends or even relatives. This manager was playing favorites during his leadership in the department. Even worst, according to Pak Harry, this kind of “lick ass” people or close friends receive higher salary and monthly production bonus than people like him, where he knew that they do not even have higher qualification or performance compared to him. As an example, he said that some employees in the housekeeping section (cleaning service clerk or housekeeper), which is under the same department but different section to transportation, receive higher salary than driver, where according to his own analysis, job as driver required higher skill and posed bigger risk than cleaning service clerk.

He then told me other ironies of his working life in the transportation department under this lousy manager. Lesson that I can take from this story is that there are many managers like this lousy manager that do not even care to build communication and empathy to small people like Pak Harry, because they tend to think that these small folks are not strategic and dispensable. They tend to be more focus on the “managing up” things, rather than “managing down”. Mostly this kind of manager is also lousy in “managing side”, where they do not have good relationship with their peers.

This “small” story also told me a lesson that there are still many companies like this company that do not have a better system to manage their remuneration system, where they can minimize or even eradicate disparity or unfairness in the employee’s salary. Companies need to be aware that this kind of talks in lower people can go around so fast and can easily influence people’s motivation to work and perform. Will you let this kind of irony be in your company?