Not sure what it is ATM but the mood where I work is shite to say the least…clients are a-holes and suddenly want everything for nothing. Wife’s place has a downer vibe going on too. Not many people work for the love of it but there seems to be a lot of negativity ATM…not sure if that bloody B word is making paying clients twitchy and demanding or what…what’s your workplace atmosphere like? FWIW, advertising and recruitment respectively…

Ours is on the up but it was absolutely horrendous 6 months ago. People quitting left right and centre, people breaking down in tears, and totally impossible to get the job done so you work miracles and do what you can despite it and they say “but why didn’t you do X”

Honestly things aren’t really great right now but they’re so much better, it feels like a holiday

End of holiday period isn’t it. everyones go the holiday blues. Wanting everything for nothing? that’s just normal day job.

Fine, in fact it’s the best place I’ve worked for the last fifteen years or so, as regards the relationship between the management and the workforce.
Previous place I worked for eleven years, it wasn’t too bad, but after a change of ownership the pressure on staff to continually handle more and more work, in the same amof time each day, and with zero tolerance for even the slightest mistake or error meant stress levels went skywards. Basically workplace bullying, I was only to glad to get dumped, others have left who were there for years, unable to put up with the pressure.
Where I am now, so long as you don’t take the piss, things are very much more relaxed, and the people are a great bunch, lots of middle Europeans there as well.
At 65, having to deal with workplace bullshit isn’t something I really want to deal with anymore.

On the up, petrochemicals, so things are looking up and most clients are outside the uk anyway so brexit may actually be a good thing for me* as the weak pound **** everyone over but my wages keep up with inflation.

*Objectively, im not a psychopath/tory, interest rates could go up and house prices could still crash too so on the whole still feeling fairly effed.

On the other side of the world things are pretty good, we’re coming out of hibernation and spring officially started at the weekend. The sunshine is here.

It’s nice to watch Brexit at arms length, a colleague of mine likened it to sitting on the beach with goggles on watching a mushroom cloud in the distance.

But I’m fairly sure that the slump happens at this time of year every year, as mentioned above – its the end of the holiday season, no joy till christmas now.

Not too bad. A bit upheavall as we go througy the final stages of a restructure but overall pretty good.

There are those you could half there hours and treble their pay who still wouldn’t be happy of course.

Shit

There’s an impending restructure, currently happening a couple grades above me (but will affect me directly…). There is a certain amount of flux and uncertainty at present.

There’s an element of battening down the hatches ready to weather the impending storm.

One staff member is a French national and can’t get the status thang to work. I think they’re a bit nervous.

I have consequential issues I’m dealing with.

I’m just happy go lucky, a cork, bobbing on the sea of life…. 😱

I hate my boss.
I’m self employed.

When the losses each week are more than the turnover then it is pretty obvious what the next stage is.

Shit

Never known a morale so low considering the size of the company, lost a huge amount of people earlier this year and its constantly jump higher, run faster mentality from those in power.

I work in IT and am assigned to a government agency client at the moment, it’s actually a decent contract to work on and in general morale is quite high. Some frustrations (damn tax payers not giving us enough budget :p ) and some projects on hold due to Brexit but there’s enough project work (although my team size has shrunk from 5 to 3 people over the last year). My main issue is I find most IT stuff boring these days so self-motivation is difficult, I continue to master the art of procrastination though.

Since 2016, June to be exact, all projects in the pipeline were cancelled and I lost 322 staff across 4 sites. Some found work, others have relied on spouses incomes whilst looking for work. It’s been difficult going from a vibrant vibe of continuous improvement to one of plugging holes.

It isnt shite, it’s just a paired down tick over landscape now.

Moral, well it’s affecting everyone. The buzz has gone, the professionalism is still there but it’s definitely muted.

I usually love the start of term, getting to know the new students, kidding yourself this year will be different.

Am stressed out already from complaints and being made bow down/ drop standards to peoples and companies wishes.

Have talked about walking away already, have enough money to last till christmas if i do.

I’m a cop. ‘Nuff said…

In a+e, it seems relentlessly busy just now. The unusual crazy day is now the norm, patient care suffers and good staff reluctantly moving to less stressful roles.

Pretty horrid, in a university. Due to a combination of factors (not just the B thing; not even mainly, to be honest) the uni needs to save 25 million quid in staffing over the next year. Which is obviously not conducive to great morale.

I’m doing ok – been accepted on a VES scheme and leave at the end of next week with 6 months wages tax free plus 4 weeks in lieu of leave. I’ve not found the right place to move on to yet, but I’ve got a bit of a buffer so I’m actually quite looking forward to spending time with the littlun, riding bikes and running for a bit.

Others are not so great; waiting to hear about VES (after applying months ago), inheriting lots of work from folk who have gone and restructures… It’s not super fun.

Mixed.

I work in recruitment and in 1 of my teams, wealth management, some companies are clearly holding off due to Brexit, but there’s also a growing view that in harder times people need to look after their money more and so they’re hiring. Generally, it’s looking good.

On the insurance side it’s much harder, lots of company takeovers and so lots of consolidation.

Not bad for us in IT. We’re restructuring our core business at last (well, as of a out 5 years ago) to keep up with incomers and whilst we aren’t grabbing as much market share as they are in the new areas were doing ok ish. At least it’s being worked on. And we still have a huge traditional core business that pays all our wages nicely.

Internally we have properly revamped our communication and productivity tool suite; the process was effective and the results are great. Day to day working life is significantly easier than it used to be. For example we have a decent effective video conferencing tool that everyone uses, which is sheer joy after having a crap conference call service for so long.

Crap. Low orders. (UK specialist manufacturing). Odd company dynamics. Large project ending. B word.

We’re pretty much unaffected by Brexit, but Sales have been on a downward trend for several years now, so the company is slowly dying and people are leaving as a result. I just try and ignore the big picture and just carrying on tinkering away. I’ve decided I’ll stay till the bitter end and when the place folds I’ll start thinking about what next. On the plus side, it’s still a really nice place to work, just not sure how long it has left….

We’re seeing the light at the end of a short tunnel.

3 months ago, in the space of 6 weeks we lost 3 clients, one was our largest and oldest and represented 14% of our monthly retainer income. In a lot of ways it was the worst timing, but we knew we were on borrowed time, they simply out-grew us.

But we got a call yesterday from a former senior person of that client who’d left around the same time we were sacked. She’s moved to another company in the same field, smaller, easier to manage and right up our alley.

I suppose I should thank Microsoft for making Win7 end of life in Jan, changing piles of desktops helped keep the wolf from the door in the meantime.

Working in Business Services gives you a bit of an insight of how businesses near us are doing.

By-and-large, most are still growing, although they all wish we’d put this B-word nonsense to bed. It’s funny, even the most right-wing cynical Boomer you’ve ever met, can be pretty Pro-EU when they run a business and understand how our particular version of globalisation works. We’re seeing a slight upturn in headcount, which means they’re recruiting and a lot of investment in cyber security, either from a desire to be more secure or just because they need to deal with “red tape”.

One Client is really concerned though, a decent chunk of their business involves stamping bits of metal, they make a small, almost insignificant stamped metal plate that secured part of the wing to part of the engine bay for Nissan. That’s all they do for them, 1 part, they make lots of other things for lots of other people but they make millions of these little things. The model they make it for goes end of life soon, and possibly the factory with it. They’re bidding for other work from Nissan, but it’s got to be tough.

Engineering consultancy- work is still there, lots of varied projects and no obvious B-word impact, but client standards are dropping, e.g. we’re given less time to produce designs whilst being asked to achieve more with tgem, often while being held to some spurious ‘cost plan’ developed months earlier, seemingly for some completely different project…

Oh, and don’t go expecting any sort of brief from the client either, you’re expected to interpret (e.g. mind read) what they want at the start of the project and then waste countless hours of time and fee re-designing it until it matches wwhat they actually want/can afford.

Remember reading anything recently about new hospitals being unable to open due to internal design issues? That’s the end result of all of the above. Oh and hint: it’s easier to blame the engineer than a client who had no idea what they actually wanted or signed off on cost saving measures that perhaps they shouldn’t have…

Beginning to realise the unwritten portion of my job description is “be a scapegoat – have PI insurance”…

Oh, and don’t go expecting any sort of brief from the client either,

I never have done!

Shite. After a record year last year we’re way off target for this year meaning there’s bugger all to do in Production most of the time.
Morale is lower than the Tory’s majority and doesn’t look like it’s going to improve any time soon.

Oh, and don’t go expecting any sort of brief from the client either

Actually in fairness it should be perfectly reasonable for a client to lean on us to help shape their brief, after all we design buildings for a living, but as always, there is no fee or time allowed for this, so we just do what we did last time then get hammered for not knowing that the client actually wanted a completely future-proof, unaffordable design solution that they read about in some architectural magazine…

Sacked at end of last term from my teaching role in SEMH school. I was assaulted by a pupil and used reasonable, necessary and proportionate force to protect myself, TA complained etc. etc.

Waiting for result of appeal early next week. They wanted shot of me as an experienced teacher to save money anyway, so this is their way of doing it.
Teaching is shite these days, so not bothered too much, now driving for ASDA mo stress, crap pay but much happier.

Will take the company who owns the school to court, after they uphold their decision.
NASUWT will pay for that, then hopefully receive a decent payout.

Italian parent company, French customers make up about 80% of annual orders and they’re not willing to take chances with new orders. MIGHT have some new UK customers, but nobody knows. HR director more-or-less telling me to look for another job, then making out it’ll be alright.
B-word.

At it’s lowest level ever.
Due to be Tupied again, so obviously no information is forthcoming from either the client, the new employer or the old one. Corporate somethingsuckers.

We’ve lost clients and business due to steps we put in place to manage Brexit earlier in the year.

There are cost cutting edicts from above. At the moment, it’s ok, but might be a bit more crap in the pipeline – projects are really having to justify themselves, with regulatory stuff being the only things that will definitely get funding.

Currently working almost exclusively on MoD projects.

Given the increasing likelihood of imminent civil unrest / all out civil war / martial law / globar thermonuclear conflict, we’re quite busy at the moment.

Generally good – its business as usual (we have predominantly US / UK clients) a few supply chain issues to hit us but nobody is panicking much, and some new projects in the offing. Could be better (could have them confirmed) but that stage always takes ages.

They’ve just moved desk locations around the office and I am now not directly next to a window anymore, but next to the pillar between the windows – so I am not so happy.

The girl next to me doesn’t now have a writable wall next to her desk to plan on and the DBA guy behind us is really loud when he is on the phone (I’ve let him know…), so she’s less happy but she has arranged another desk move.

Not good at the moment. Contracts are shrinking (but being retained) and new processes are being introduced that supposedly save a load of time during the shift (25% has been mentioned, just not possible) which is leading to people being obstructive, working to rule etc. Due to this workload is about to go through the roof. Doesn’t help that what the company is solely focussed on (specialist courier service) is shrinking at a decent rate I don’t see my job being really viable in 5-10 years, happily I’m planning and set to leave in 2 years or so. None of it is really blamable on the big B but if it happens it will have a big effect. My work is directly linked to how well the economy is doing so if it catches a cold, or worse, we do too. Morale is crap as a result, but seeing as I’ve worked with most of my colleagues for over 10 years and we mostly all get along fine it’s strangely a good place to work despite all the issues!

Very bad – export markets are very quiet indeed despite the weak pound.

The less likely a no deal the happier we get.

Clouds on the horizon are rent review, possible 40% brexit tax on chocolate and the worldwide helium shortage.

Sad coz some of me good colleagues have retired or left or made redundant …

Also winter is coming and my energy bill will go up …

Very bad – export markets are very quiet indeed despite the weak pound.

What do you sell?

Doing a job two people used to do, imposed employment contract changes, little to no security, shite pension/reduced perks and expected to work longer hours. Imported American workplace ideals, less holidays, restrictive and repressive rules the government wouldn’t get away with. The threat of being replaced by contractors, if not already a contracted employee. So the contractors parasitical admin team can pat each other on the back, earn a decent living at the rest of the workforce’s expense and allow employers to dump liabilities.

The trick is to do nothing about it, retire early, act like you know nothing to those stuck with it.

It’s standard now-a-days, just keep screaming at each other out of your car’s window, have a break down or GTFO. Besides there’s always new camels!