While the company, as a whole, promotes a healthy work-life balance, the Services department is slowly losing that push. Instead we now have things like a contest to see who can work the most hours, which is really a contest to see who can burn out the fastest and grow resentful the soonest. I understand that as a consulting department, we need to make money and hit revenue goals, but don't do that at the expense of your employees' happiness. There will of course be the occasional emergency sprint that needs longer hours, but the exception is slowly turning into the norm. And when that is the case, we need to re-evaluate how we're selling and planning out projects. As mentioned, a constant push to work longer and more hours without compensation (pay, extra time off, etc) is just asking for us to get grow resentful. Sorry, "winning" a $200 gift card to a restaurant for being the drone who worked the most unpaid, extra hours isn't compensation. This is the number one complain among fellow employees in the Services.
There are some mixed messages about billable hours. Project managers often ask that we don't bill more than 40 hours per week, even though most of us are working more than 40. And over the last year, the message from department heads have been inconsistent and blurry about how we should bill out our time. Everyone I talk to has a different idea, and this inconsistency seems pretty stressful for everyone.
I'm not a fan of mandatory programs that are "for your own good." We recently started a mandatory mentorship program where everyone was a assigned a mentor and required to meet with them on a regular basis. Now, if I wanted a mentor, I would choose someone higher up, either in the company or in my profession, and someone that I admired. Someone that I looked up to and thought "five or ten years from now, I want to be that person in that position." Instead I've been assigned someone who has been here 6 months longer than me and has the same title as I do. And I'm required to meet with this person once a month to do what? Keep asking on a monthly basis "what should I do this month to achieve the level of success that you and I have both already achieved?" I say, make the program available to those who want it and offer real mentor choices.
