A diversion

I'm currently talking to other businesses about outsourcing a great deal of business to them, and have been surprised at several who have turned away the prospect of very simple profitable repeat business without even considering what's required. It's led me to reflect on my earlier experiences in manufacturing, and the constant struggle to get the staff to follow the laid-down procedures to the letter, without gradually omitting the bits they have difficulty with. Even the managers were complicit, and it was a constant battle to prevent them doing their own thing. I'm sure McDonalds don't have this problem (or do they?)

It strikes me that part of the problem was (and still is) the fact that employees generally are no longer terrified of losing their job, these days. Not that they should be expected to lie awake at night with their eyes sticking out like chapel hat-pegs (as many small business-owners do, as they wonder how they are going to pay the wages at the end of the month), but they ought surely to be concerned that if they don't do their job properly they might be shown the door. It's so time-consuming getting rid of unsatisfactory staff these days - difficult and fraught with danger - that quality and output may suffer to the detriment of the whole business. Call me old-fashioned, but hungry staff are going to be very much more diligent than those with a couldn't-care-less attitude. It's why I avoid employing anyone at all these days.

In my first week as a trainee metallurgist with the Heat Treatment Service of the then nationalised West Midlands Gas Board in 1961 I was told " Don't worry, lad. They can't sack you whatever you do." It shocked me even then, that such attitudes could prevail.
It got better under Maggie for a while, but we lost a lot of ground under New Labour. I suspect that our dire economic position with the lean and hungry Indians biting at our heels might require a change of heart, again.