Knowing how to effectively communicate with your peers, subordinates—and especially your managers—is (unfortunately) one of the greatest determining factors not only in the success of projects but in how you're regarded within the company, too. Work too hard and say too little, and you'll still find yourself first on the chopping block when it comes time to lighten up the load of payroll, while saying too much and not doing much at all will usually keep you moving up the chain of command. Yes,…

If you've ever worked a job that relies on timesheets, you know how this goes… Management (usually of the upper variety) wants to keep better track of how and where staff are spending their time, they pressure staff to charge out more hours to jobs, trying to keep them from posting “unproductive” uncharged hours. Suddenly, clients are getting charged more hours, and therefor paying more, for services implement The really interesting thing about management wanting to better track

Strict adherence to policy is a double-edged sword; if you demand unquestioning obedience to the rules when it benefits you, then you need to hold that same zealous ideal when things aren't stacked to go your way. Unfortunately, we humans seem to really struggle with this and love nothing more than changing rules, or our interpretation of them, to suit us best—sometimes without realizing we're doing so. After all, we're all the heroes of our own stories, and we have the uncanny ability to hold…

Contracting is a tough gig, yet it is becoming increasingly common as companies seek to shift further towards a low-cost, low-obligation workforce. The thing is, as a contractor, you have fewer benefits and less guarantee of income, but while that uncertainty can be hard to manage, it makes up for that in flexibility. See, when you're a contractor, your “employer” (clients) really can't make you do anything outside of the contracted production they're paying you for. They can't set when or how…

Getting denied a raise stinks, but at least you've left your thoughts and intentions on the table for consideration, hopefully setting yourself up for a pay bump in the near future when the next round of budgeting is finalized. Of course, this isn't always the case, and your employer may go the route of stonewalling you indefinitely—or gaslighting you by dangling the potential of a raise in front of you like a carrot on a stick in order to get you to do more work. Still, in most cases, it's alm…

There's this thing that happens every now and again in organizations where someone, usually high up on the food chain, decides that everything—every decision, order, expense, or report—needs to pass across their desk. They do so severely underestimating the gravitas of what they've just requested, with little comprehension of just how many things they're going to be handling, dependent on their pen stroke to proceed. Of course, maybe not right away, but at some point, things are going to begin…

Being fired from a job has a certain finality to it… Never again will you have to step foot in that place or have boring conversations with your droning boss. Still, despite your employer giving you complete decisiveness that they no longer want to pay you to hang around, there's no guarantee that they won't contact you out of the blue months or years later asking for your help with something that no one was able to handle after you left. It's almost as if your role actually was important and t…

Trying to keep up with an increasing workload on an understaffed team is a lot like trying to drive a car that only has three wheels. It's difficult to keep things moving forward without veering off course; things operate extremely inefficiently, and there's probably a lot of noise and scraping going on. Of course, managing these situations is no easy task—not impossible for a talented manager, but only through a great deal of effort. For this reason, managers who manage to protect their alread…

If you're in a line of work that frequently deals with emergency break-fix scenarios where you're effectively permanently on call and might be expected (or required) to spring into action at a moment's notice at any time, having an expectation set that you'll never work overtime doesn't really work. Yet, that doesn't stop petty managers from setting petty rules for their frontline staff who are handling these types of situations. But, to be fair, it's not as if they really understand the indust…

No one really wants to work overtime—if you say otherwise, you're lying… or have something else at home that you're avoiding. Who on earth would want to spend a moment longer at work than they had to? Of course, there are exceptions to this—that sweet time and a half pay can be pretty sweet. Still, you'll be rolling your eyes when your boss asks you and weighing up whether or not it's actually worth a better paycheck when you're sacrificing all that time doing things you'd rather be doing. This…

Getting fired stinks, but tricking your new manager into firing you so that you can walk away to your new job with a generous redundancy payout has to be the best way to get let go from a position. That's what this employee managed to do, playing along with their new boss's apparent plot to get rid of them and ensuring that they qualified for a cushy redundancy payout that would see them well compensated. When their new boss started, this IT Manager found themself the target, quickly realizing…

It's only natural for your employer to be interested in what you spend your time doing while you're at work; after all, they're paying you for your time. Even then, there are reasonable limits to this, and some employers get carried away and happily track any and every bit of data possible to help them prove you're wasting time. It started with mouse trackers, which track the activity of the mouse and keyboard on your laptop; now, programs are even able to track where your eyes are on the scree…

Agency is important in the workplace; people typically need to feel as if they have responsibility over a task in order to derive satisfaction from doing it. This is one of the most basic facts that someone managing a team should be aware of. Sure, it's important that you know what's going on with your team, but that doesn't extend to the level of having comprehensive direct access to every last bit of their personal workplace communications. The point is that you have a certain level of trust…

Usually, it's wise to have multiple persons capable of maintaining the continuity of the important areas of your organization. This means not having a single employee who knows essential company processes, secrets, codes, and passwords that can't otherwise be found, learned, or replicated by someone else. If you happen to have one of these workers in your organization or someone who is otherwise essential to the operation of your business, you will do well to treat them well. It would certainly…

It's difficult to picture your life any different than it is in this exact moment… and that's not talking simple wishful-thinking. It's easy to say “I wish things were better” or “I'm grateful and lucky for what I have” or “I'm glad things aren't worse." But that's not the same as being able to actually see yourself—

Managing is something that is best done in a careful and calculated manner with lots of planning and moving pieces over a measured period of time; not with emotionally fueled outbursts and snap decisions intended to assert your authority or to beat your subordinates into submission. Yet, still, there are plenty of people (and plenty of managers) out there who have something to prove, a chip on their shoulder, or just lack emotional maturity. This creates even more situations where workers are t…