Thursday, November 20, 2003

Annual Staff Survey

Once a year, the BBC asks its staff what they really think of them. It's always vile, but this year's survey is more candyfloss horrible than most. And backed up by ceaseless emails from Alan Yentob begging us to fill it in. I like Alan Yentob - he wears nice suits - but surely he has better things to do than email me all day?

By the end of the survey, I hit the roof, and stuck this in the additional comments box:

This survey is ridiculous and sums up everything I HATE about the BBC.

This is still the best, most exciting company in the world, but rather than accepting that and moving on and actually trying to solve the problems, we instead get surveys like this.

I LOATHE the fact that serious issues (management, pay, work between departments, the appalling LST) are cloaked under waves and waves of vacuous blather about celebrating core values.

Why can't we have a real survey written in real language? Why can't we be asked "My Manager is an insincere bastard?", "My department is desperately underfunded", or "I think far too much money's wasted"?

Why are we offered this idiotic nonsense about core values? Why not empower staff instead - give us phone lines to rat on useless internal services, give us champions to solve tough problems?

When I joined this firm I thought I would be working with clever people who all wanted to do the best possible they could for this company. Now I realise it's stuffed full of pedantic timewasters - and it's a disease even I'm catching.

The BBC is still an organisation where it's easier to find 20 reasons to say no that 1 to say yes. And I'm becoming one of those people.

No comments: