I got my year-end bonus today. I really hadn’t given it any thought, how it was calculated, where it maxed out, because any company I’ve ever worked with where I was eligible for a bonus, I never got it. And my experience has been that nobody else ever gets the bonus either, with the exception of people in sales and people in the highest echelons of the company. Rank-and-file people don’t get bonuses. If the company wanted to pay you the bonus, they’d make it part of your salary. Anyway . . . I do training classes for software engineers, and it turns out my bonus is calculated based on graduation rate and student surveys, where students respond to statements like “I receive actionable feedback on my performance” on a 5-point scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. I had no idea. As it turns out, I did get the… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Surveys
I Love Freedom More Than Most People and Now I Know Why
This is from a new survey of American adults by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Also: 37 percent couldn’t name a single right protected by the First Amendment. While 48 percent of those surveyed were able to name freedom of speech, far fewer could identify other rights accorded, including freedom of religion (15 percent), freedom of the press (14 percent), right of peaceful assembly (10 percent), and right to petition the government (3 percent). I’m a freedom-loving guy. I find that my love of freedom exceeds that of most of my countrymen and now I know why . . . because cherishing the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution presupposes that we know what they are, and most people don’t know what they are. P.S. I learned to remember the First Amendment rights with the GRASP acronym: freedom to petition the Government, freedom of Religion, freedom of Assembly, freedom… Read more →
American Workplace: Grueling, Stressful and Surprisingly Hostile?
Washington (AP) — The American workplace is grueling, stressful and surprisingly hostile. So concludes an in-depth study of 3,066 U.S. workers by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles. Among the findings: — Nearly one in five workers — a share the study calls “disturbingly high” — say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work . . . — “One-Fifth of Americans Find Workplace Hostile or Threatening” If nearly one in five US workers finds their workplace hostile or threatening, that means more than 4 in 5 workers do not find their workplace hostile or threatening. Assuming these two groups are not in completely separate workplaces, does this finding say something about the workplace or about the people who perceive a hostility that a large majority of their colleagues do not perceive? Another finding: — Telecommuting is rare: 78 percent say they… Read more →
God in America
Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion. — Atheists Outdo Some Believers in Survey on Religion – NYTimes.com The article describes a study in which researchers phoned up 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about religion. On average, respondents got half the questions wrong. Breaking down the results by faith (or lack thereof), the highest scores were registered by atheists and agnostics, closely followed by Jews and Mormons. Some of the knowledge gaps are amazing: Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation. Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ. As Nietzsche used to say: If you want happiness and peace of mind, believe.… Read more →
Stat of the Day
Nearly 60% of the teenage readers of an online men’s magazine say they would punch a coworker in the face if they could get away with it, and nearly 40% would do the same to their bosses. The magazine, AskMen.com, says the number of positive responses to those statements declines steadily with respondents’ age, dropping to about 20% for readers 50 and older. — Male Teens Ready to Punch Coworkers – The Daily Stat – August 6, 2010 – Harvard Business Review Read more →
Employee Surveys
It’s Employee Survey Day! The surveys are completely anonymous. Don’t write your name on them and please seal them in the envelope in front of you. Oh and — solely for statistical purposes — please indicate the department you work in, your job title, age and how long you’ve worked here. (Ha ha, I’m sure everything’s on the up and up but I wrote everything left-handed anyway . . . to maintain some deniability . . .) Read more →