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I’d be happy to see changes within large company cultures, that make them more likely to hire more workers (particularly if they’re relying heavily on unpaid overtime), or at the very least come to some kind of accommodation with existing workers so that if they are regularly pulling double shifts to the company’s benefit, they at least get a day back here and there by way of compensation.

But, and here’s the big but, I don’t see any need for government to get involved in that; these changes should be driven by the shareholders and investors, who aren’t always aware of just how INSANE and SHORT-TERMIST some company spending priorities invariably turn out to be.

Two examples:

The last American company I worked for, a multinational corporationm, paid me for 35 hours a week but I worked far more than that, without any concessions on their part. I was in the office at 8am, never left before 6:30pm, was regularly asked to work late (i.e. till midnight), and was frequently called at the weekends. Never got a bonus, never got TOIL, never got promoted. Saw three line managers come and go, in three years - two were brought in from the outside, and the third was a classic example of the Peter Principle in action.

(Over in England it’s sometimes easier to promote an ineffective employee with 5+ years’ service to management and then fire them if they are still ineffective, than just fire them, so “promote the prat and see what happens” is a common tactic).

After a few years of this, I got poached and in a panic, the company hired two graduates for me to train up and offered me a promotion to occupy the (again vacant) management role.

It got me thinking - what would a shareholder make of this? Put it in monetary terms.

To keep me on, AND grow the team, AND get an experienced competent manager who knows the company, would’ve cost the company, what? £30k? I’m including the cost of hiring two graduate placement students (£12k apiece) for me to train up, so they could share the workload and learn from an expert, freeing me up to transition into the management role.

They chose instead to spend: £10k in wages and management recruitment fees on hiring managers from outside who had NO internal knowledge of the company or department, £10k in wages on promoting an internal hire who didn’t have the commitment and turned out to be a duffer, £30k at least on wages and recruitment fees on two complete new hires at my level (with all the risks that entailed)...

In other words they didn’t save any money at all... in fact they wasted £20k AND lost an asset to the company into the bargain.

Another example:

One of my biggest contacts in the USA is a venture capital effort. The VCs have taken their eyes off the ball as regards customer services, after-sales support and product development and thrown money into cold-calling to sign up new customers. This is because they’re planning to sell the company by 2012 and move onto something else.

Of course, whoever buys that company is going to have to spend millions of dollars addressing the fact that the product hasn’t advanced in any way, shape or form, for 18 months - and its reputation for poor customer service has been undermined by underinvestment.

Meanwhile, one of their competitors has tripled the headcount in their R&D division, built up a worldwide customer services division, and implemented a “wish list” so that existing customers will define what goes into the next release.

Out of the two companies, long term, which one would you rather invest in? The one that’s spending a few million bucks that it should make back, or the one that’ll need a few million bucks spent on it just to get it back to where it was 18 months ago?