About 18 months ago, my company got bought by ‘capital investors’ (AKA quick buck profit drainers). You can all guess what happened. ‘Streamlining’ – AKA 3 rounds of redundancies that totally decimated the workforce and our motivation. I survived this, probably because I’ve worked there so long that there are product lines we still support that only myself and a couple of other colleagues understand how they work (software).
This started a waterfall of panic leaving and suddenly we were understaffed, overworked and the whole workforce had zero morale and zero trust in our new owners.
In an attempt to counter this mass exodus and angry mob (company Town Hall meetings were getting more and more heated) they introduced ‘Flex Holidays’. No longer was there a limit to how much holiday you could take. You can have as much holiday as you like, as long as your boss approves. Immediately we smelt a scam and me and another long serving colleague decided to put this to the test.
A couple of weeks ago I submitted my holiday requests for Xmas / New Year. My boss turned them down. I was told I could have 3 of the 8 days I’d requested because that added up to 27 days this year, which is what my entitlement was before they started the scheme. Now I know to many of you 27 days is more than plenty – I had accrued this amount through 23 years of service. I expected it, I set out to prove that the scheme was a crock of shit and when I clicked submit I knew it would be rejected. Have any of you guys had run-ins with similar ‘carrot’ incentive schemes that just don’t hold water and turn out to be a corporate scam?