throwthatham

dewme said:

I know it doesn't serve as an excuse, but the vast majority of publicly held companies completely cheap-out on all employee related discretionary expenses. I remember a time when companies held all-employee holiday parties, bosses took employees out to dinner (with their partners) for major service anniversaries, companies held periodic all-employee meetings with food and drinks, summer picnics, profit sharing, gift cards at Christmas, etc. All companies like to brag about "our people are our greatest asset." But this is really just a PR facade, total load of BS, and inside the boardroom it literally translates to "our human capital is our largest expense" and they take every measure to minimize this expense. They nip and prune benefits with the slightest little provocation, occasionally slash and burn, move job functions to lower cost locations, and do whatever they can to keep the human capital outlay as low as possible. Then they wonder why 70% of employees are not highly engaged in their job functions. Really!? From a directly observable perspective times have never been worse for employees and the 2008 crash took away any last little semblance of humanity and compassion for far too many companies. Everything that could be cut was cut and for the most part it never came back even when the market recovered. It's just like taxes, once the beneficiary gets used to the increased cash inflow from the tax or employee benefit reduction the tax/policy will never be rescinded. 

I would have loved to get the t-shirt. It beats the hell out of nothing, not even a "Happy Holidays to Our Human Capital Units" email.