You could sack 25% of people in most large companies with no ill effect

[sasguru]

That's my conclusion after 20 years of working. There is not much difference in productivity between the worst 25% of a blue-chip company and the worst public sector employees.
It kind of works like this at every large company I have worked for both as a contractor and permie:

25% - Efficent and able (effectively carrying the rest)
50% - Marginally useful
25% - Complete waste of space

Problem is management cannot always see who belongs to which group as some of the useless ones have good political skills (and no other).

[JamieMoles]

Problem is management cannot always see who belongs to which group as they don't have mirrors in their office.

[Troll]

25% - Complete waste of space

Problem is management cannot always see who belongs to which group as some of the useless ones have good political skills (and no other).

I know which group you belong to

[suityou01]

That's my conclusion after 20 years of working. There is not much difference in productivity between the worst 25% of a blue-chip company and the worst public sector employees.
It kind of works like this at every large company I have worked for both as a contractor and permie:

25% - Efficent and able (effectively carrying the rest)
50% - Marginally useful
25% - Complete waste of space

Problem is management cannot always see who belongs to which group as some of the useless ones have good political skills (and no other).

It took you 20 years to figure this out?

[gingerjedi]

I couldn't give a toss about large companies, I'd rather they carry the burden than the taxpayer which is what would happen should 25% be sacked.

[TheRefactornator]

..sounds like a venn diagram. The problem with sacking the slackers is that it creates a vacuum into which the other two groups will merge by osmosis..this would then trigger a terminal slacker sacking process akin to a black hole that swallows itself up it's own ass. In short organisations need slackers.

[BrilloPad]

I have seen a few who start of useless then become useful. You have to give people time to get into their role.

I know far more who are terminally stupid though......

[Beefy198]

More than 25% in public sector organisations......

Mind you, the remaining lot would moan the **** about it, despite them STILL not really having a proper workload.

"How are we meant to cope with all this work?!?!?!?" etc. they say on their tenth break of the day.

[Mich the Tester]

Here´s a worthwhile read.


I agree with what you’re saying, but what I’d like to know is how many people are useless when they start at a large organisation and how many become useless during their years of corporate existence. I’m sure that many people who now appear useless actually started out with ambitions and skills that they hoped would give them a great ‘career’ but became disillusioned with the organisation around them and started to settle for just getting the monthly pay cheque and accepting their lot. How many others started out with skills and ideals but learnt that the way to achieve promotion was to play political games instead of doing a good job?

Do large corporations attract airheads or do they turn good people into airheads? Maybe both.

[Hawkeye]

Having useless staff is something that I have seen very few deal with. I have watched managers despite me raising issues with useless workers just ignore it.

I have learnt that it will be always something I have to ignore. Unless it is within my team then having a good clearout of the dead wood always has a good effect on my projects delivery but justifying if is always difficult.