Kloppers’ demise due to setting standards
News.com seem to think Kloppers’ demise is due to an authourative set of rules that the company issued 2 years ago.
Staff at BHP were outraged when the company under Mr Kloppers issued an incredible 11-page missive banning office staff from eating smelly lunches at their desks, sticking post-it notes on their monitors and keyboards and placing jackets on chairs.
Many employees were outraged by the elaborate dossier, which stated:
- Food must not be eaten at workstations
- No food emitting strong odours are allowed
- Mobile phone ring tones must be kept at low volumes
- Post-it notes are to be removed from monitors and keyboards at the end of the day
- Workers are warned to watch the tone and volume of their voices
- In meeting rooms, all whiteboards are to be cleaned, equipment turned off, cables put away, chairs pushed in and cups and bottles thrown away
- iPods and MP3 players must not be brought into work
- Small bags must be stored under work stations during the day
- Clothes must be put in “designated storage areas”
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I watched the ABC interview two night ago on the ABC, Marius Kloppers sure didn’t look like he was going under a bus, the incoming CEO had taken a year off work, the reason given that he owed RIO some kind of IP thing on their corporate planning. He has since worked in BHP getting his head around it. It just looks like successful succession planniong to me. Actually like most of the business stuff on the ABC this was courteous and asking hard question and inofrmative.
Kloppers is not being parachuted out and leaves pretty much in August after a decade, his corporate strategy in place.
If he believes in a tidy workplace as CEO that is his right and all of the above seems pretty minor to me and I have worked in plenty of workstations, actually designed a few too, people always forget how crowded they are, so, in my opinion for what it’s worth just common sense to cut down interpersonal irritants is not a bad thing.
Normally this kind of thing is driven by the office manager but if its driven from the CEO then obviously he has encountered staffing issues on it at some time.