Ding Dong the Witch Is Gone

So the my awful witch ex-boss just disappeared a few weeks' after I left.  She announced to the team at the end of a horrendously long team meeting that she was going.  And that she wanted her departure to be kept secret and that she would be gone in just 2 weeks. The team meal after that was a lot freer and lively, everyone was relieved.

Clearing out my flat recently I came across some of the notes that I'd compiled when I was there to make a complaint and it makes shocking reading here are just some of the best bits:

What has such and such delivered in the past 6 months?.  Oh yes that's what to ask a member of staff about a fellow colleague on day 3 in an aggressive manner.  How to not to make friends...

Withholding information.  Oh yes, the best thing to do is to cut members of the team out of meetings with other people in the business for projects they would have to deliver.  The aim being that she would then hold all the cards.  Main problem here was that she didn't have a clue and therefore couldn't brief you about what you actually had a do so pointless barriers. HHmmm since she left, lots of the projects that she said were in hand hadn't actually started at all - makes ya wonder what she did for her £70k plus per year...

Making team members do tasks way out of their job remit.  From making sure conference phones are in meeting rooms (IT or admin responsibility) to fixing video conferencing she just wanted to throw her weight around.

Damaging relationships with the business.  How she managed to piss off so many people was highly impressive.  Marketing is all about have good relationships with your internal clients as well as external ones.  Everyone couldn't stand her.  Directors had meetings where they said that they couldn't stand marketing and when asked why, all their reasons involved her. They even stopped coming to see the marketing team as the atmosphere was so dire plus she would butt into everything. When she left many of them refused to sign her leaving card, relations were that sour.


Now that she's gone they are all working together better and just getting on with it, the need to have a new boss who is a saviour has relented as the chaos that was caused by her will take a long time to forget. In my next post I'll delve more into why I think she went - was she pushed or was it her decision......

Government Welfare To Work Programme Not Working - Surprise!

Ha, this week one of the headlines that I loved reading about was the abject failure of the Government's Welfare to Work Programme.  The results that have just been reported are abysmal.

So lets set the scene the aim of the Government Work Programme is for 18 Government prime contractors who won contracts to  get the long term unemployed back to work and the aim is that they are paid based on outcomes which is placing someone and them sticking to that job for 6 months.  In principal not a bad idea but to be honest the way it's been executed has been crap.

So these 18 contractors, mainly private sector, would have gone through hoops as any company does bidding for Government contracts and therefore would do everything possibe to claw back bid costs and also to maximise the amount of profits that they can make from the contract. So far so business like.

£435m and Counting
Yes, that is really how much the Government has spent on this rubbish scheme so far.  What a waste of money. When I was unemployed many of the things that the Government provided were inadequate, they didn't understand what I did or what I wanted to do. It was all a  tick box exercise and trying to shoe me into a shite job so that I'm no longer an unemployment statistic and on the DWP's book. The type of support that would have been of value was never offered to me and I learnt all the latest skills for job hunting from a career coach paid for by an employer when I was made redundant.  Such valuable lessons and the things I've learnt I have passed onto others that I know as no one teaches people how to job hunt properly. A competitve market means you must up your game.

Only 1 in 28
Only one in 28 actually met the target of getting and keeping a job for 6 months.  Even in a recession that is woeful.  Many charities and non profits didn't win these prime contractor contracts, as usual they were bundled into large contracts that were far too big for them.  But the Government had envisaged that the prime contractors would subcontract to these organisations and draw on their localised knowledge and success in placing unemployed people.  Did the happen?  Nah of course it didn't.  Instead some of these non profits were signed up but recevied no referrals from the prime contractors - well really why would you dilute the amount of profits that you ultimately can make regardless of how woeful some of these main companies were at working with the unemployed.

Doomed to Fail
These private companies just do not care and it's telling that non profits who receive no Government funding and operate in local areas have far higher successful outcomes. These types of organisations know the locals, know the employers in the locality and give practical advice that really helps the unemployed. We need people that really care and can provide the long term unemployed with practical advice and opportunities.  Not private sector companies chasing those who can give them the quickest payback and the easy wins - although they've not even really managed that.