One of the greatest failings of management pretty much anywhere is the inability to congratulate staff on a job well done. It doesn’t take much to give your underlings a nice warm glow inside – moreover, it’s a very cheap employment benefit, which is why Guru offers it to staff instead of a pension fund.
In fact, it was his chief recommendation to Lord Turner and the Pension Commission.
Sadly, the idea of solving the pensions crisis by “making people feel fuzzy inside so they won’t notice their gas has been cut off” seems to have got lost in the final report. Having said that, the report does run to almost 1,000 pages, so the idea might be in there somewhere…
Anyway, before this tale turns into something akin to Turner’s odyssey, let’s get back to staff recognition.
Workers can get very angry if they don’t get the kudos they deserve. Take the hard-working burglar who broke into a school in Chile and yelled “this is a robbery!”, only to be met by the laughter of the school children.
The kids at the school in Providencia had just been rehearsing a play which opened with the words: “This is a robbery”.
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A police spokesman told a local paper: “The robber had difficulty in making people believe he was serious, so he had to throw a fit.”
However, it’s worth noting that you should only give credit where credit’s due. The burglar eventually got cash and made his getaway. Sadly for him, the route went straight past the local police station, where he was promptly arrested.