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I worked for a company that would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their annual report. Every year it was a big deal. There were meetings, interviews,
by WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
I worked for a company that would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their annual report. Every year it was a big deal. There were meetings, interviews, photo shoots and a lot of late nights to make sure it was just perfect and on time. It was beautiful every year.
Then one year a new Chief of operations was hired. She reviewed costs and saw that the creative department was too expensive. She closed it and outsourced the work.
One thing that happened was that the annual report was turned into a plain accounting report which reported the needed information. Tada, no one really complained, people that needed the information got what they needed and a few hundred thousand dollars was saved every year. It never came back.
- breput 6y agoLike everything, the fancy designed reports (annual or otherwise) come and go out of fashion. Yesterday it was a requirement. Today it is too expensive and the COO got credit for cutting expenses. Tomorrow the CFO is jealous of Company X's report and it's back.
- umbrellaguy 6y agoSounds like the newest buzz in biz - "Business Intelligence".
- ativzzz 6y agoNot new anymore, that started with the "Big Data" craze back around ~2012/2013. But at the core it makes sense - it's just businesses making better use of the tons of data their systems are generating.
- conductr 6y agoI was about to dispute this because of my experience using the term widely in late 2008-2010 range but Google Trends shows you are probably more accurate on timing. I work in corp finance and BI was pushed on us early.
- Moxdi 6y agoSound like it was fun, and now it's boring, was it worth it?
- apsurd 6y agoalways
- WheelsAtLarge 6y agoYes it was fun to be part of it. The cuts were not worth it to me but it was for the company. It's been many years and the company is still around. It happens to all companies. New executives get hired and they make their points by cost cutting and increasing productivity. Employee morale is not really part of the equation.
- Aeolun 6y ago> Employee morale is not really part of the equation If that’s the case they cannot claim to care about productivity.
- ekianjo 6y ago> It never came back. Just like any kind of fun left in the company?
- WheelsAtLarge 6y agoTrue, once cost cutting started it became a drag to work for the company.
- m463 6y ago1) computer, generic 2) microsoft keyboard 3) microsoft mouse 4) visual studio red staplers now need VP signature
- LiberatedLlama 6y agoIf you want fun on the company's dime, convince your boss to take your team to a go-kart track. That would provide a much better fun:money ratio.
- Game_Ender 6y agoOnce the cutting has started the company is unlikely to have set the morale/team/event budget large enough to support go kart outings. That or the entire years budget would be gone at once.
- newsclues 6y agoIf you want a motivated, enthusiastic workforce, don’t try to crush fun for profit.
- LiberatedLlama 6y agoSee, go karts seem like much more fun than pencil pushers making fancy word documents. But for each their own I suppose.
- Traster 6y agoThere's a difference between having fun at work, and having fun allocated by work. What most companies have is enforced fun - once or twice a year you'll go to an offsite location with free booze and try some ridiculous forced activity, and the desperate hope from corporate that that can take the place of actually enjoying your job. What most companies want is an atmosphere where people have fun and are passionate actually doing their job. That's what you see in these early annual reports from Netflix - people enjoying what they do. Now, in reality in business sometimes the imperatives change, but that doesn't make those two things the same.
- johnnyfived 6y agoSeems like an interesting thesis to test. Does internal brand recognition (annual reports that consumers probably won't see) carry any weight? Because consumer brand recognition sure does.