Paying for education if I agree to then work for them (with that degree) for x years. Win/win.

This is an easy one…more time off.

Logical thought.

Enough hours. Or a work from home consultant job.

I just wish that I could go back to school… my employer offers education reimbursement when they wont adjust my schedule so I can attend the classes I want… and I live in a small town so when a class is offered it’s offered ONCE… its not like I have more then one option.

I’ve seen reports of studies that showed there’s really nothing that most people would rather have than more time off, away from the workplace.

But these days not too many employers are competing for workers by offering more and better perks and bennies, as they used to do a decade or two ago. Instead people are looking for work that isn’t there or trying to hold onto what they’ve got.

So it might be nice if employers would simply fund their projects and departments enough to hire the right number of workers to do the job—making life just that much easier for all the others who are on the same team or operation. Understaffing is a killer. Instead of taking more time off, people are pressured to work extra to make up for short crews, and not doing so makes you a liability—all the more likely to get laid off in your turn.

Happy endings

flexible work schedule (ie come in late one day, stay that much later another day)

ability to work from home, maybe not all the time, but sometimes

cafeteria in the building

@Jeruba, GA. My project needed 8 resources, but I got 2.5. Then, because it took longer than projected (timeline submitted with 8 resources) my budget got cut by 10% because it went over the projected end date. I’m working 60 hour weeks because of it, with no overtime pay, because I’m salaried, and no bonus, because my department head doesn’t believe in it.

I just wish my company would hire enough staff, so we’re not always working against an ever-increasing mountain of backlog. The upside is that overtime is permanently available, but I don’t necessarily want to spend more time at my desk.

Exactly, @BarnacleBill. Exactly.

Even when times were good, I saw any number of projects go this route:

• Project lead quotes time and resource needs for specified deliverable.
• Senior management says shorten time, cut resources, add features. (They don’t have to do this. It’s a predictable kneejerk response.)
• Team gets into trouble on committed deliverable, and management begins to pressure and punish, maybe even diverting resources to other projects.
• Team brings project in on original quoted schedule (of course with short resources, half killing themselves) and is called late.

When it comes bonus time, this performance will be thought of as a failure and not rewarded.

My first-line manager used to say (apostrophically, addressing the wall as if speaking to the executives): “Just ask them what they need, give it to them, and get out of the way.” Ever seen senior managers who were wise enough to do that?

Direct Deposit of paychecks.
Christmas Eve, off.
New Year’s Eve, off.
4th of July, off.
Thanksgiving Day, off.

@Jeruba That sounds nightmarish.

I just read this very pertinent passage of Tana French’s The Likeness last night. (If a specific page doesn’t come up with the link, go to “Look Inside” and search on the phrase “multinational corporation.”) The country referred to here is Ireland, but the same could be said of the U.S.

I like that passage. Have you seen “The Corporation”? It’s an excellent documentary, and good portion of it builds the case that the “personality” of a corporation is like that of a psychopath. Very well done movie. My wife watched it in a political science class as well.

I loved “The Corporation”, and I think I now need to see if one of the local library systems has the book @Jeruba linked to.

@incendiary_dan, this book is a mystery-thriller, and if you’re interested, I’d suggest first reading its predecessor, In the Woods. This rant about corporations is in character for the speaker, and it does have a bearing on the scene in progress, but it’s far from the main focus of the book.

Commitment to ethical and transparent business practices.

#1 An assistant to help with the grunt work
#2 Respect and recognition not just lip service for a job well done
#3 Educational reimbursements
#4 More cold hard cash!

A vice-president in the company I used to work for conducted a survey with 40,0000 non-salaried team members as to why they might leave their job. The results were generally shocking to the managers. My apologies for not having the actual results on hand; I am going off of memory.

#1: Lack of Recognition In general, employees want to do their best, and they want to be recognized for their efforts. It doesn’t necessarily mean money.
#2: Lack of Training It’s pretty much the same thing. They want to be able to do their job well, and throwing them out to the sharks without knowing how to do the job or how the company works, is structured, etc., sets them up for failure.
#3: Lack of Tools to Do The Job As several on this thread have mentioned, it could be the time, the financial support, or something more tangible, like an operative computer or vacuum cleaner.

I don’t remember the exact orders of the others. One had to do with scheduling, which surprisingly meant that there wasn’t enough staff in order to serve the business/customers properly; two had to do with management (unfairness/favoritism being one); one addressed working with a co-worker that didn’t cover their workload; and I don’t recall two of them, but the last stands out.

#10: Salary/Benefits Managers are always shocked to find this in tenth place. I used to use these statistics out in a training class, and it quickly became clear why this caught them off-guard. When an employee turns in their notice, the manager will ask, “Why are you leaving?” The response is almost always, “I got a job down the road that pays X more an hour. The manager assumes it has to do with pay, when in fact, it doesn’t always. I’ve met many employees that stay in their position or with their company because the work environment is healthy and supportive. They just use the opportunity to be paid more as an explanation.

@Qingu If you would like a list of the benefits the company I worked for offers, I’d be more than happy to put it together for you (it’s based in the US, if that makes any difference).

A former manager of mine came back from a management training workshop and told me this: in exit interviews, most departing employees cite as their primary reason for leaving either their manager or their manager’s manager.

(Presumably this was only among employees departing voluntarily.)

This was in a high-tech environment of white-collar employees. I don’t know whether that finding holds across the job spectrum.

Not long afterward, a new policy went into effect: we were given a template for our biweekly 1:1’s that specified how many minutes out of thirty we were to spend talking about each major aspect of the job—including the relationship itself: what each employee did and did not like about working with that manager and vice versa.

My guess is that the truth quotient in 1:1’s plummeted after that plan was implemented.

Nevertheless, one answer to the OP’s question might be “better-qualified and better-trained managers.”