Cuttin' costs in all the wrong places

[birdman2003]

So my employer is "cutting costs" and decided that my pay grade didn't need a company issued iPhone.  It was costing the company about $30 a month, with a cost of $50 every two years for a new phone.  I now have a flip phone (just like I did in 1999) which costs $5 a month and $40 every two years to upgrade.  So a monthly cost savings of $25, with another $10 every two years.

Then today they are making me work OT for which I will receive about $500.  They are incapable of controlling their operations but very good at pinching pennies on their mobile plans.  If they had their act together and didn't need me today, I could have had my iPhone for almost two years and broke even....so frustrating.

[justajane]

Why is this an either/or proposition? I agree that the OT sounds like a bad deal for them, but I just can't get outraged about them trying to save money on their employees' phones. My husband works for a major financial institution and still has a company issued flip phone. FWIW, his boss also has only a flip phone, and she probably makes 150K or more in her management position, so I don't imagine it's a pay grade issue in that case. I.e. everyone who doesn't travel a lot just has a flip phone.

What is the reason for the phone? Do they need to reach you out of hours? Is a flip phone all that is needed? In my husband's case he also has a company lap top from which he can check his e-mail at home, though. Do they expect you to check your e-mail on your own computer? If so, I would call bullshit, but if you already have a laptop from them....

Having said that, my husband's company nixed free company during the recession to save money and I thought that was kinda silly.

[Rezdent]

Some decisions at large companies look really weird to me.

These companies have "budgets" where everything is allocated to "buckets".  These allocations are made in advance by a year or more. Different managers control different buckets, and they don't always coordinate well.

I remember one company that had allocated much-needed money to replace worn tile in their lobby in their maintenance bucket.  They also had unavoidable cost overruns in their labor bucket and needed to pull back.

Result?  Staff were laid off three days before the tile was replaced.  Surviving staff were furious that they had to work harder with less help and their perception was that the company apparently valued the lobby more than the people.  Predictably, next year their were overruns in the recruitment/retention costs.

The bigger the company, the more of this I see.

If everyone at a pay grade has lower phone costs, it's going to lower the recurring expenses in the "phone" bucket.
The "overtime" bucket may be at or under budget at the moment, or may be deemed more critical, or maybe they don't categorize it as recurring...

My favorite memory of a boss cutting costs is the one who managed 25 staff, and was told to shave X% off the labor budget (code for "lay off your staff").  He eliminated some  vacancies plus his own position, and they didn't catch it until after it had been approved.  Staff saved, parachute deployed.  One of my heroes.

[birdman2003]

Why is this an either/or proposition?

It's not, but I would gladly work 1 Saturday for "free" if it meant I got to keep my smartphone for 20 months.  But as was mentioned in a previous post, the cell phone bucket and OT bucket are different so it doesn't directly translate.

I pressed my boss for more details on this new policy of "no smartphones for your pay grade" after I talked with dozens of coworkers on other teams in my pay grade who still possessed their smartphones.  Boss said it was more of a "team decision" which is weak.  A coworker left our team this week and transferred to another team at our same business unit.  His new boss instantly approved a smartphone request.

My smartphone was mainly used for keeping track of where my next meeting was at, recording notes, taking pictures for future troubleshooting, and working email during meetings where a laptop would be conspicuous.  I also used my smartphone to Facetime with technicians and show them the machine malfunction which allowed them to remotely troubleshoot the problem without coming to my part of campus.

I have a company laptop and WiFi at home, so I don't need a smartphone for that reason, but when I go on vacation or am traveling it is nice to have access to email without WiFi.  I guess next week when I'm on vacation in an area without WiFi I will just have to let those emails wait until I get back home.

My favorite memory of a boss cutting costs is the one who managed 25 staff, and was told to shave X% off the labor budget (code for "lay off your staff").  He eliminated some  vacancies plus his own position, and they didn't catch it until after it had been approved.  Staff saved, parachute deployed.  One of my heroes.

Excellent! Definitely a hero for all of us.

[Chris22]

Some decisions at large companies look really weird to me.

These companies have "budgets" where everything is allocated to "buckets".  These allocations are made in advance by a year or more. Different managers control different buckets, and they don't always coordinate well.

I remember one company that had allocated much-needed money to replace worn tile in their lobby in their maintenance bucket.  They also had unavoidable cost overruns in their labor bucket and needed to pull back.

Result?  Staff were laid off three days before the tile was replaced.  Surviving staff were furious that they had to work harder with less help and their perception was that the company apparently valued the lobby more than the people.  Predictably, next year their were overruns in the recruitment/retention costs.

The bigger the company, the more of this I see.

Not really the way my company works (and they don't get a lot bigger than my employer).  We have different cost buckets, yes, but I own the entire budget and all of the buckets for various groups.  For each, all that matters is that you are under budget, and no one gives you too much crap about how.  You can run at 500% of your cell phone budget, but if you're 1% under your OT budget and the dollar amounts cancel each other out, you're golden.  It's once you go over budget overall, THEN you are beaten down to start cutting costs, and again, as long as I get under the total budget, I can wildly overspend in one area if I can make it up somewhere else. 

[cerebus]

Cutting cellphones before overtime seems fiscally responsible to me, maybe I'm missing something.

[mrpercentage]

Ha. I love it. Government is like this. Here is how it works.

Our costs are outrageous.
Well its because you have too many employees.
Okay get rid of some positions.
Okay.
How are we now?
Our overtime is horrendous.
Well stop giving overtime.
We just made the news five time in a row for incidents that were caused by being short staffed.
For god sakes just allow more overtime.
It worked.
So we reduce our cost
No we increase them by 50% but the incidents have stopped and we have less employees.