When good jobs go bad

If you are in a job where there is no formal job description, no way to measure success or failure, no clear guidelines on what exactly needs to be done and your manager doesn't seem to understand what you should be doing, then you may have what is termed a "broken job".

The very phrase seems to be almost unheard of in New Zealand, but incidents of "broken jobs" abound, according to one expert.

Dr Iain McCormick, a registered psychologist and managing director of the Executive Coaching Centre, says when people are in broken jobs it causes them anxiety, depression, sleepless nights and ultimately they are seen as poor performers by their bosses.

He says his experience of fixing these situations has mainly been in the sales side of companies.

"I come across it all too often," he says. "There's a breakdown of the rules and everyone loses. There's often a general manager, a sales manager and a team of sales people and they all see themselves as sales people.

"The trouble starts when the people at the top cherry pick the best clients or sales leads leaving the sales team to fight over the scraps. Then the sales people are seen as poor performers. They don't achieve because they are not allowed to.

"What should happen in any sales organisation is that each person should have a specific job and know their boundaries. For example, the general manager should not be selling and competing with their staff, but be looking for future opportunities and taking care of wider issues. The sales manager should look after the administration and allocate territories to members of the sales team.

He says to fix a broken job is as simple as clarifying roles, having staff understand their jobs and for managers to clear away any confusion.

"Ambiguity," says McCormick, is a major cause of problems in the workplace.

But there's another side to the equation, says Christian Dahmen, a former international leading partner at Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, and Watson Wyatt. He moved to New Zealand four years ago and founded ChristianDahmen Ltd, which specialises in executive future, life and career coaching.

He says jobs become broken when the psychological contract between an employee and their manager ends. Which appears to have all the hallmarks of being "managed out" of a job. He says signs to watch out for include:

* You are no longer given interesting projects.
* Your boss reacts badly to your mistakes.
* There is no mentoring to help you make better decisions.
* You are isolated by your boss from the team.
* You sit at your desk and ask yourself: "Why am I here?"
* Your manager restricts your progress.

"No one says anything is changing," says Dahmen. "But colleagues may have been tipped off by the odd word here and there in meetings and treat you differently as a result.

"When someone can't see a way forward at work, then the job is broken. And when the psychological contract is broken, people leave their jobs - and it's mainly all because of a bad boss.

"When companies stop giving staff what they need to succeed the job is broken. And all this happens silently, without anything being written down or spoken about."

Other things to watch out for, says Dahmen, are bureaucratic structures and procedures that do not make sense, staff being treated like soldiers - being told and instructed what to do at every turn and not being allowed to think for themselves or make decisions.

Sometimes jobs are broken before a person even starts at a company. In one case a person was recruited by an office manager to replace a member of staff who had left. But in the weeks leading up to his joining the company decided to make the job redundant.

"I turned up for work, was shown to my desk and there was nothing to do," says John (not his real name). "Every day I tried to find things to do so I wouldn't get bored but I never was asked to do the job I was employed for."

While his manager never broached the subject, a colleague broke the news that, ahem, his job was not only broken, it had evaporated. He was offered a sideways move and left the firm soon after.

"One of the reasons people find themselves in broken jobs," says Don Fulford of recruitment firm HRH Consulting, "is because people do not carry out due diligence during the application and interview stages.

"Job hunters need to ask lots of questions about the company and the role they are being interviewed for," he says. "They need to check the employer is the right one for them."

He suggests applicants ask to meet the team with whom they would be working in a social setting, such as coffee outside the office environment. Ask to meet their prospective manager and see the physical space they will be expected to sit and work in.

One job hunter tells the story of being interviewed in a bright modern office only to find themselves working in a dark corner of a back room on the first day.

"It was a few years ago now, but I should have asked to see where I would work during the interview," he says. "On day one I was taken through this plush office to an undecorated back room. The 'desk' was a kitchen work top which was at the wrong height for the broken chair and the computer came out of the Dark Ages - it wasn't even connected to a printer. Had I been shown the work area during my interview I would never have accepted the job."

Colleagues told him he had followed a procession of people who had each lasted about eight weeks in the job before leaving.

Fulford says job hunters should always ask why a job is vacant.

"Especially if it is one you have seen advertised a number of times before," he says. "Ask about the history of the job and don't take anything at face value. Ask about the downsides. No job is perfect, so it is as well to find that out before accepting the job.

"Find out about the culture of the company, probe a little and research the company's history and profitability with searches at Companies' House or on the internet."

And he recommends job hunters use their network of friends and relatives to get the inside track on a potential employer.

"Speak to people who may have worked there in the past and ask what they thought about the firm and why they left," he says. "Once applicants get to know a company they can ask intelligent questions during interviews - that always comes across very well."

And it seems plenty of people make the mistake of not covering all the bases before accepting a new job. Fulford says two to three people a week approach the agency he works for saying they have made a mistake in taking their current job and asking Fulford and his colleagues to help find them a new one.

"It always surprises me that some people seem to spend more time choosing what to eat than selecting their next job - especially as people spend so much of their time at work," he says.

Dahmen agrees: "The trick is to avoid getting into a position that you regret and ending up with a bad or broken job."

Fulford says on the other side of the coin, employers need to brief agencies as fully as possible.

"Some employers will instruct three or four agencies with sketchy information and then wonder why they don't get the candidates they were hoping for. Both the employer and the job hunter need to be as clear and open, otherwise there could be a bad fit and everyone loses."