Does upper management ever take responsibility for their actions?

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I am in a complaining mood (maybe because I am very over worked and really don't have the time to write this crap - but it makes me feel better).

Any way - we have an opportunity to question upper management anonymously and the Q&A is posted in a media type thing for the employees' eyes. One good question recently was around the fact that we receive bonus in part because of certain metrics - pretty much if we screw up, we get dinged with less of a bonus.

Well the question centered around the fact that we screwed up this past year quite a bit more than previously. The astute questioner asked since we laid off so many people and had to pick up more work resulting in an increase of errors will we be recognized for the additional time and effort all the employees put in.

Answer - agreed it was a tough year and we had to make some tough decision with the reduction of staff; however, we do not agree that the errors were a result of the reduction of staff.

Do they ever take responsibility for their actions? Or is it always the employees' fault?

Does up

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@Linkat,

It certainly sounds as if your upper management does not take responsibility for their actions.

The owner of my company has admitted mistakes to me on a number of occasions. Fortunately, he seems to be right quite a bit more often than he is wrong.

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@DrewDad,

I don't know where my does up came from - I'm losing it.

The odd thing is we have this whole new control procedure where we are suppose to record and let the whole world know whenever there is an error. We are told that it isn't to get any one into trouble but it is important to take responsibility and to fess up so we can put certain controls into place where necessary.

I can respect that, however, I can't respect the fact that those above do not hold themselves accountable in the same way. I think there would be more understanding and respect for others if they stated errors did result because there was more work for everyone although we had to financially make the tough decision to let people go to stay competitive and in business. We are not idiots here...

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@Linkat,

Maybe errors per man-hour stayed constant; errors per person went up because there are fewer employees.

Depends on how they're measuring. Unfortunately, measuring the right thing is very hard. Management often can't measure the right thing, and end up basing their decisions on what they can measure.

Example: A newly minted IT person followed all the recommendations from his classes: preventive maintenance, cleaned the machines, etc. Calls to tech support went down. Number of resolved issues per technician went down; management decided to reduce staff. Newly minted IT person gets axed.

What they should have been measuring is uptime and/or worker productivity, which went way up for a short while, but they had that handy little number....

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@Linkat,

My SIL's husband is is in the "upper middle magement" of one of Europe's biggest ensurance companies, CIO of all their companies, managing director for international affairs and some other departments in their IT company (3,000 employees in Germany), CEO of a couple of foreign companies - he's still on a level where he is responsible for faults: got the job(s) due to others' faults.

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@Linkat,

Sure management can take responsibility for their own faults. Such as, maybe, just possibly they hired or promoted the wrong person, who then proceded to screw up the managers perfectly designed and well thought out plan.

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@Linkat,

No, they do not.

That is why there are labor unions to protect the pocket of the non-management worker.

It comes under the heading of "When is a perk, not a perk".

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@Linkat,

No.

Last year about this time an employee with a fairly responsible supervisory position with the company for which I work was fired. Just before Christmas. This year their replacement was fired. Just before Christmas. What did they have in common other than their job title? Well, they are both women, and by being fired before the end of the year they are both ineligible for profit share. Are there any ramifications for the manager who trained both of them and should have caught on to their supposedly shoddy work a lot sooner? Of course not.

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@DrewDad,

Most of us are not hourly employees - and we have been putting in more hours all you need to do is walk around and see how many people are here late.

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@Linkat,

I understood that folks are salaried.

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@DrewDad,

I kinda mis-read it - the errors are total errors - not a calc of per individual so we have had more errors overall than we have had in the past. We have actually been a group with very few if any errors - also the errors depend on the severity. Missing a comma in a report is not quite the same type of error as recording earned income of $1 rather than $1 million even if both are simply typos.

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Does upper management ever take responsibility for their actions?

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