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Payback Time

20 April, 2013 by James Lawther 6 Comments

revenge

Maz Iqbal told me a great story this week…. Imagine you were an employee of a large business.  You worked in a factory, or a shop, or a warehouse or maybe you were an agent in a call centre. A big call centre where they measured your every move: how long your calls were how long […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: average handle time, call centre, compliance, employee performance measures, monitoring, motivation, targets

How to Become a World Class Cheat

12 December, 2012 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Cheat

I have had it with working in a call centre I am under-valued, over-worked and my boss is an idiot (I do hope he isn’t reading this).  I need to make some fast, easy money instead.  I am going to turn to a life of crime, to become a liar, cheat and first class swindler. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: cheating, employee performance measures, incentives, targets

What Can Your Mother Teach You About Incentives?

13 November, 2012 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Dirty Dishes

In 2003 the economist Anton Suvorov developed the “principal agent theory”.  He investigated the way agents (think employees or children) react to the interventions of principals (think bosses or parents).  He looked at the way rewards and bonuses act.  All very clever and insightful stuff. I was discussing it with my mother.  She smiled at […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: Daniel Pink, employee performance measures, incentives, key performance indicators, performance management, targets

Management Targets Result in the World’s Largest Stag Party

30 April, 2011 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Impact of One Child Policy

The target Since 1978 China has had a One Child Policy.  The aim of the policy is to reduce population growth in the country.  The theory is that this will curtail demand for natural resources and so enable economic development.  Adherence to the target is managed by stringent financial penalties for those parents who’d like […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: compliance, reinforcing behaviour, silo management, tampering, targets

Help Desk

22 August, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Please could somebody tell me how this resolved my issue?  Would my reply make any difference?  Is the help desk setting out to help me, or tidy up its internal targets?     From: Gary ***** Sent: 21 May 2010 09:35 To: James Lawther Subject: Fault Call [Scanned] Hi James We are currently changing our […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: poor service, targets

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