4 ms·

thats like saying soap causes dirtiness- the plants show up because there is already a problem

• IvyMike 12y ago
  They have been a way to try to raise morale without making any meaningful change, addressing root causes, or spending a significant amount of money. If management does address the actual problems and they add plants, that would probably be a good sign--but that's never been my experience.
  • the_cat_kittles 12y ago
    i see what your saying- management that uses plants as a solution is probably shitty, so presence of plants increases the likelihood of shitty management. thats a weird thing that should have a name, seems like people in statistics would run into that more than once. so some variable is positively correlated with satisfaction, but also positively correlated with a variable that is negatively correlated with satisfaction, and the negative variable has a stronger magnitude of effect
    • eru 12y ago
      There's some saying that using a metric for control causes it to lose all useful correlations. (Ie you can only optimize what you measure, but once you optimize, you can no longer trust the measurement.)
  • cjlew23 12y ago
    Couldn't agree more. The best way to increase employee morale is to act on the feedback that employees give you. Benefits, perks, plants – these things don't address the underlying reason of why employees are unhappy to begin with! In fact, not acting on feedback is also the #1 reason why employees choose not to give feedback in the first place. I wrote a bit about it here & what CEOs + managers can do to actually act on feedback: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3760-why-we-dont-speak-up-at-work https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3760-why-we-dont-speak-up-at-... Hope it's helpful!