small AXE

Why boasteth thyself, Oh, evil men
Playing smart , And not being clever?
I said, you're working iniquity, To achieve vanity (if a-so a-so)
But the goodness of Jah, Jah… I-dureth for-I-ver
So if you are the big tree, We are the small axe
Ready to cut you down (well sharp), To cut you down

(courtesy of Small Axe, Burnin’ album - Bob Marley & The Wailers)

~This post is dedicated to all my brothers and sisters who have been victimised by corporations who seek to use human capital as mere machines to realise their huge profits~

 

It is fair to say, almost all big local entities have already paid or are in the process of paying out their yearly bonus, share allotment and other staff benefits by now. This remuneration is rightfully paid out based on the staffs’ annual appraisal. The benchmark says if you achieve your KPI then you should be receiving your dues. In the real world there is another thing called office politics aka kiss your bosses butt among other things. If you can carry this last act with perfection, then your name in the company's hall of fame is assured. The sky is the limit then.

I had grown up in the give your utmost loyalty to the management as they put the bread on the table cliche. That is technically very wrong as it is your customer who does that. The bosses are just there to help you along to your early death or dismissal, whichever comes first. Take my boss for instance, one of us could probably collapse at our work place and the dude might just glance that way and think to himself why is that person creating so much of commotion and scurry along as if nothing happened. That's cold and inhumane any which way you look at it. The b*sta#d? pure evil if you ask me… a bloody Hitler personality with the looks to boot. A person like that ought to die alone in the gutter when they're old. Okay I'm not going to wash my dirty laundry in public...but I'm pissed man.

If the employee's have done their job well why do we have to look for scapegoats just to give meaning to the “bell curve” .The bell curve was not created by Alexander Graham Bell but the guy who cooked it up was Carl Friedrich Gauss . The Wikipedia says the graph of a Gaussian is a characteristic symmetric "bell curve" shape that quickly falls off towards plus/minus infinity. The parameter a is the height of the curve's peak, b is the position of the centre of the peak, and c controls the width of the "bell". Wiki goes on to say that, “If there are three grades, A, B and C, where A is reserved for the top 10% , B for the next 20%, and C for the remaining 70%, then scores in the percentile interval from 0% to 70% get grade C, scores from 71% to 90% get grade B, and scores from 91% to 100% get grade A”.

The whole exercise is to weed out the worst score card holders. This is alright with me provided you practice it professionally and ethically without being biased against creed or colour. That is easily said than done.
Let me tell you a story. I have a non-management friend (these things do not happen at management level), he did not receive any sort of bonus or whatever else for two consecutive years. The guy had a heart attack after the second year. Thank God he survived after forking out about 25K of his own money to fight the dreaded disease. The following year he got his bonus via divine intervention but was dropped again this year… the wrong place to score a hattrick and my prayers are with him. We are talking about a loyal senior staff who has sacrificed 16 years of his life for the company. That's morally wrong because you would assume the company will take care of you when you are battling with precious life.

In trying to maintain a level of sanity in this outrageous exercise, the productive way of doing it is the superiors should advise the staff what is expected of them during the beginning of the appraisal year.  The expectations are clearly spelled out in this one to one session and any uncertainties are cleared out in this briefing. The score card should be re-visited at the first quarter end (or mid-yearly) to ensure the employee has been performing according to the pre-determined goals. Any shortcomings in performance at the end of the year can thus be accepted by the under achiever as they know why and where they have slackened. The next obvious step to be taken is to rectify the mistakes by coaching them based on their inadequacies and monitoring their improvement within an agreed time-line. Should the outcome from this post mortem be negative then the results must be discussed with The Human Resource department to reassign the individual to other units based on their positive qualities. This is never practiced in reality as the judgment is passed at the twelfth hour based on a need to submit the evaluation results. The person who got fried will never see the imminent, it will be a wicked roller-coaster ride from there. There will not be any bonus, share allocation, salary increment etc. that year, on top of which the underdog must try to shake off that non-performer tag before the next annual session. Unfortunately for us, there is no Union to ensure fair-play. The dictatorial ways will remain very relevant under these conditions. This harsh malpractise must be uprooted from the employment environment at all cost. We need to strive to be a caring society.

Well, guess what? Down with the blood sucking employers, it’s time for me to fight back and fight I shall with the help of The Almighty and my friends. I shall sharpen my axe (well sharp). This is one revolutionary that you should not have messed with…your extermination is dawning upon thee. As brother Jules Winnfield put it so coolly in Pulp Fiction… “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.”