When leaving means living
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2019 16:21:25 +0000
It was a low time for me. I would wake up and drag myself to work, hoping that each new day would be better. I was not in good terms with my manager; and despite the efforts I put into my work, I was solely valued for my numbers. Unfortunately, my numbers were not at their best. I was then put under a performance improvement plan (PIP) for one and a half months – five months after they noticed a gradual decline in the key performance indices (KPI) for our team that management had set.
Having access to the source of our performance reports, I tried to run the numbers and found that I was not the only one showing the same pattern of performance metrics. There were two or three outliers but most of us, in a team of 12 people, showed a decline on the KPIs identified. I was not even the person with the lowest numbers, yet, I was singled out for the PIP.
The company merged with another corporation. That brought organizational changes and implementation of various corporate actions. Some changes had major effects on the business unit which I was a part of, including a shift from one data provider to another with a corresponding change in methodologies. Aside from the change in data providers and the flood of client queries, there were also organizational movements that modified our team’s structure and upper management’s roles and positions.
To make matters worse, one member of our team had to leave due to mental health concerns, and a couple of tenured team members decided to move to different departments. This left us short-staffed with relatively new hirees and a few senior teammates to cope with all the challenges.
Despite these challenges, my managers were firm in their stand of looking solely at the numbers as a definition of my performance. I remember being told that, “at the end of the day, you are rated based on those figures.”
In the end, I decided to leave the company. I was no longer happy and I felt the better option was to resign and move on.
In my new company, people are given value not only in terms of numbers, but also as feeling, living human beings. People are not mere “resources” to be discarded or eliminated when no longer valuable.
Now, I am more excited to fulfill my duties. I am always ecstatic to go to work because my colleagues have now become my friends. My company offers competitive compensation and benefits, a fact I proudly share with my outside friends and acquaintances. I gladly offer to refer anyone who’s interested.
The company’s culture, the people, and the security of compensation make me very proud of my current company. Employees are taken cared of because we are looked at as the most valuable resource of the company and protected against exploitation and depletion.
The author is an MBA student at De La Salle University’s Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business. This article was written as part of the Strategic Human Resource Management course.
Email: alvin_badong@dlsu.edu.ph
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