I know I have already posted today but I need to get this off my chest. I have been a Workplace Support chaplain since February 1994. I have now got four workplaces that I visit regularly. I think it was in my second year of chaplaincy that they decided we should tick boxes and send in statistics. Now we do them on-line and to fit in with national practices. I am struggling to get used to the new system.
I have spent a large part of this morning doing statistics. They do not measure what I do in chaplaincy! They do not measure the ongoing friendship and relationship I have with so many people. The sense of companionship and unspoken support my visits give to people is not measured by boxes and statistics! It is bull shit... crap... or to use the apostle Paul's term, "mere refuse". (Though I understand my aforementioned words would be a more correct translation of the greek) I blame bean counters and computers! They think that life can be measured by these sorts of things. One manager said to me once, "There's so many HR people that know programs and systems, but don't know people!" Another manager said, "I don't need your bloody statistics! I can see how the people under me relate to you. Any manager worth his salt can see that!"
My frustration is that just now with an impending funeral, actual chaplaincy hours to complete, a church coffee area with people gathering who I should be relating too, a radio service to record tomorrow, preparation to do for the weekend, a community Christmas day dinner looming, heaps of incoming phone calls and heaps of parishioners I should be visiting... In God's economy I have more important things to spend my time on!
I HATE statistics! I bet you when I finally resign as chaplain it will be statistics that drive me to do it. I once got a formal warning from the then CEO about my lack of correct reporting. I nearly resigned then. I remember I walked up my mountain fuming. I decided I liked the job too much, but I did resign from his Critical Incident Response group. My added angst then was that I had been in the office chatting with him and he didn't raise the issue. He must have already posted the letter, why not have the guts to talk face to face? Anyway, I hate statistics, they don't do justice to what I do and waste my valuable time!
1 comment:
Employment stats as you describe them are a blight on modern man. But remember that your immediate supervisor is also judged on stats, as fed into his performance reviews from your assessments... and so on up the chain and into the office of a man you may have never met. And you know what's strange? - the number of mediocre people who do well in such a system... Their numbers all add up this way and that, and look great on a clipboard -- but they're not flash otherwise. I don't pretend to know how it all works. I predict it's an idea whose time will pass. In the meantime, to be hassled because your "stats" are dodgy..... take it as a compliment!
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