This is a very interesting phenomenon in the World of Work I think.
I worked my first years as a Junior employee at a huge logistics company and learned a lot about employee-Management and work-relationships. I'm 20 now and kind trying to find out what kind of an Employee I want to be in the future. Now, I can mainly speak about Office-Workspaces since I'm in the IT field.
Question is… What is Good work-Ethics?
I've had some colleagues who used to stay hours longer to finish up their work and sometimes even finish the work of others just to look good in front of management. I always thought these people are Machines and had respect for them. Over the time I noticed they were always stressed and kinda rude saying “don't have time for this now, come later” even if the Support-Ticket was from them…
I was in the internal IT department and knew a lot of the people for years, supporting them. Over the time people told me more and more stuff and the “hard working” people always seemed to have issues not only with being stressed all the time but also with their team-leads, management and colleagues.
One day, I happened to support one of the Managers and saw how organized their PC was. How they handled Files and how their Desk looked. I noticed that he is not an Office Rambo, never stressed. So I asked why they, management, always had these issues with these office Rambo's and why they're always so unhappy with their salary or position.
(In case anyone is wondering how I could ask about salary and stuff, I started working as a student/employee at the age of 16. Where I live we finish 9th grade and either go to a college-equivalent school or we apply at companies for a student-contract. We work there for around 700 bucks/month the first year and around 1100Bucks the third/fourth year. Expectations are low for the students and they have a very protective contract that makes it almost impossible to take advantage of them without consequences. Good system, really. So asking people all kinds of stuff was always okay since they knew you still have to learn all about “work life”. Only thing I couldn't/didn't ask is their salary, everything else was always answered.)
And he told me this:
The problem with x is that I never know if the person is gonna be in the Office until 6, until 7 or until 9. If they stay longer today, they might come in later tomorrow and we are short in staff for a couple hours. They also finish work of others which can get very confusing when the customers want to make changes in their order or something like that.
Those are the “Rambo's” of the Office, kind of like those anti-heroes. But just like the movies Rambo was not a good “soldier” and not reliable. The work is good and they finish a great volume of work but we can't rely on it. Those people are prone to burnouts that just makes the life of their team worse.
An Ideal employee comes in at the same time every morning, doesn't matter if its 6 am or 9 am. And Leaves at around the same time, again, doesn't matter when exactly. And ideally finishes the same amount of work every day.
This way I don't need to talk to the employee much since I can already anticipate when they're gonna be in the office and how their work-load is currently, Those people are much easier to work with and assign projects to. Even the process of promoting them is much easier.
Since I got that explanation I started working more like a Soldier(disciplined and calculable) and less like a Rambo(fast but incalculable). But I'm not sure if that really is good work-ethics? Maybe it was just a good way to work in that particular Company?
I later left the company because they didn't appreciate their employees regardless if they were good or not good. Also the IT Dep. Was neglected and costs kept to a minimum. Company was trash but that one manager was cool, liked the guy.
Since there are a Lot of people here from different Ages, Positions and fields, please feel free to share what you do and how the Ideal work-Ethics in your field would be in your opinion.
Also, If someone could give me some further tips on how to survive working for the next decades that would be much appreciated.