Another year on and the company tradition is still alive!

TBagpuss

Forced giving is not appropriate, particularly in a situation like these where there is a power imbalance.

And in my experience, the norm is that gift s go down, not up. So the directors giving gifts/bonuses to staff? Absolutely fine

Directors getting gifts from staff - unusual, but not automatically wrong if you want to and it doesn't go against company policy.

Staff being pressured to donate to directors? Really dodgy and not OK at all.

I'm not a company director (we aren't a company_ but I am one of the owners of the business)

I personally buy gifts for the people who work directly for my (e.g. my secretary), and other partners and senior staff do the same for their secretaries/assistants

I also buy something like chocolates or fancy biscuits for the staff members in the building I work in.

As partners, we as a group pay for the office party which includes paying for booze and taxis

Staff do not buy gifts for us. I would be concerned if a member of staff gave me a gift, I'd be concerned that they felt they had to.

Small gifts, such as staff bringing in a tin of quality street or a box of chocolate biscuits for the office to share are fine, and quite common but (other than one or two people who like to bake and bring homemade cake or biscuits) even those tend to be from the more senior and mid-rank employees, not the ones who are in the most junior / lower paid role.


OP, do you think many people in the company dislike this as much as you do? I can totally understand if you don't want to stick you have over the parapet, but if there are a lot of you, maybe a joint letter to the MD saying you all feel very uncomfortable to be pressured in this way, and that you find it hard to say no, due to the the fact that this is your bosses wife soliciting a gift for the boss, and that you feel that the directors should be made aware that people are being pressured and that this is not appropriate.

misterzim

We get a Christmas bonus, which is around £700, so not to be sniffed at - although it annoys many staff that the staff members who do naff all throughout the year receive the same share!

The Directors, as far as I'm aware, don't ask for a gift, it's something the MDs wife organised many moons ago and it's just stuck.

My whole office and plenty of other staff, including a new manager, think its ridiculous. Some of these same people feel that they have to pay up so as not to look tight or made to feel guilty by the MDs wife!

Callie22

I commented last year and I still feel the same - I would be mightily annoyed at being 'required' to contribute to gifts for more senior members of staff who are on higher salaries than me. Your MD's wife must have the thickest skin on the planet to be able to wander around the office asking for 'contributions' and not realise that they aren't being given very enthusiastically.

tealady

Hi
Anyone got any worthless banknotes, putting those in the collection should get the message across.

agrinnall

tealady wrote: »

Hi
Anyone got any worthless banknotes, putting those in the collection should get the message across.

Or a rasher of bacon, claiming that you're out of fivers .

steampowered

That sounds like a mickey-take to me.

If the business is doing well, surely that is reflect in the amount of money made by the owners of the business?

It is in effect paying the directors twice for the business doing well. Surely the directors should be thanking the staff, after all I doubt the staff receive much of the extra profits!

[Deleted User]

No way would I donate to the directors like that, more so if no staff in the company get a christmas bonus or gift or anything.

We get vouchers and money towards for christmas party/staff night out but never asked to donate to the top brass.

27cool

Fireflyaway wrote: »

Weird. I wouldn't contribute either. Perhaps they have done a good job but what about everyone else who works hard and probably gets paid a lot less. I'm actually surprised anyone contributes.

The success or otherwise does not just depend on the efforts of the directors. Everyone working there has helped. But I still think this is a wind-up. If it's not,then they should be ashamed of themselves.

Smodlet

This has just reminded me of a very unpleasant time I had done my best to forget. I had been in a new job for only a few weeks when the MD's birthday rolled around. I was asked to contribute to his collection and felt I could not refuse but thought a couple of quid would be OK as I scarcely knew who he was. Oh, no! It transpired this MD raced Ferraris as a hobby, owned at least five sports cars (that I saw, he never showed up to work in the same car two days running) and nothing less than a tenner would do so, lacking the courage required to say no and having been offered a sub on my wages after attempting to plead poverty, I gave in; talk about pressure! Chalked it up.

A few months later, Christmas reared its ugly head and I was informed the directors were so very generously going to take the 40 or 50 staff to dinner in a hotel twenty miles away and pay for rooms for us all to stay overnight (tax deductible, much?)... Provided we women went out and spent £300+ on a ball gown as that was required dress! (And last year's model would not do, it seemed, for those who had been there longer than I) Give me strength! Don't even talk to me about hiring them as, even if you can, that would not be cheap either, plus OH would have had to hire a DJ and all the rest; I'm guessing £100 minimum: Who spends that on a works Christmas meal out from choice, unless they are a fat cat director? (I do know not all directors are fat cats)

I declined the invitation and was called into the MD's secretary's office to account for my trespass. She put me through the mill! I was made to feel like a traitor! How is that acceptable?

We did not go, needless to say. More months pass and there are grumblings about the complete absence of any pay rise for anyone. Turned out there was no money for pay rises as the MD and his wife, one of the directors, were having some fancy mansion built on the shore of some lake or something. Am I glad I left that place!

I do not think misterzim is winding us up; I know I am telling the truth; this excrement does happen.

paddyrg

Just to say as a small business owner, and occasional employer of upto 70-odd short term employees, this is utter rowlocks. If I found any similar enforced generosity or similar I'd order it to stop. If be utterly embarrassed to take money from the pockets of people whose deals I did and whose pay rates I'm very aware of! The imbalance is just perverse!