Following instructions to slash costs in my department, I recently put out a memo detailing cuts, which include axing free biscuits and coffee at weekly bonding sessions. This has prompted complaints that morale is being destroyed and that the tea and biscuits were a vital part of the culture. It makes me angry that staff are being so petty about biscuits when people may lose their jobs. Yet this seems to have hit a nerve. What can be done to rectify it?
Manager, male, 42
LUCY'S ANSWER
Oh dear. It sounds as if you got it the wrong way round. You axed the biscuits but kept the weekly bonding sessions, whereas what you should have done was keep the biscuits but axe the bonding. To insist that people bond at a particular time each week is a mad idea, especially as now your underlings are so aggrieved that any bonding will be an opportunity to make effigies of you and stick pins in them.