Workplace Autonomy Quotes

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

My hope is that flexible working and varying shift patterns will give workers a taste for idling and that they will gradually demand greater reductions in the length of the working week.

To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the "sole prerogative" to determine the products.

I've had jobs that allow me the flexibility to achieve work-life balance, to be there when one of the kids sinks a jump shot or for the parent-teacher meetings. I can move tasks around. If I don't get something done at the office at 4:30 in the afternoon, I can go back to it at 10:00 in the evening.

I don't propose to let either the NAM [National Association of Manufacturers] or labor unions hand me a bill and say: "Take it or leave it.

Don't tell me how to do my job. I don't come to your workplace and tell you how to sweep up.

The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.

A lot of the reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur and avoid working for others is that you get to create the world you want to live in and the company you want to work for, and I've loved that. It's a part of entrepreneurship that women should really embrace.

Employers should not be able to impose their religious beliefs on female employees, ignoring their individual health decisions and denying their right to reproductive care. Bosses belong in the boardroom, not in the bedroom.

Hire great people and give them freedom to be awesome.

For me, going home at 5:30 is as much about my own choices, but also giving my team those choices, too.

The problem when someone feels burned out, bored, unchallenged, or stifled by their work is not the job itself but rather the environment and playground rules given to them to do the job at hand.

To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.

If other managers are going to say things I can't legislate for that, that's their opinions.

I just want my career to be ran a certain way. When you get the sense it's not, that your voice is not being heard, then, unfortunately, you have to do certain things to make a stand to fight what you believe in, even if you do have to sacrifice time.

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.

I believe if an individual wants to join organized labor and work under a union contract, they should have the legal right to do so. At the same token, a person who does not want to work under organized labor and wants to work should have the ability to do so without the threat of having to join and having to pay dues to organized labor.

Americans cling tenaciously to the belief that they have the right to entire freedom of opinion and freedom of action so long as they do the work for which they are employed. The man who happens to be working in a factory has just as much right to his personal likes and dislikes as his employer; and the employee might as well resent any effort on the part of the man who happens to be at the time his superior in authority to tell him how he must regulate his personal private affairs.

I don't know if it's unique to women or not, but I do know that women think that they join a company, and the company will take care of them, as opposed to taking charge.

Companies can't offer every employee a vertical rise through the ranks, and some employees' careers will level off. Without the prospects of further advancement, how do you keep these people satisfied throughout what might now be a longer working life? By providing them with an increased level of autonomy.

Managers don't have as much leverage as they used to have. We can't really be the boss.

I mean just like the police don't tell me how to do the interviews, you know, we don't tell them how to do their business.

Women are trying to have it all but are trying to regain control over their time. That's why many women are busting out of the traditional workforce and starting their own businesses.