Why You Can’t Wait
February 18th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
The other day we ran across some interesting numbers from a Watson Wyatt survey. It seems that a percentage of the companies surveyed are aware that certain aspects of their work cultures cause stress, and that employee stress is having a negative impact on the company’s bottom line. Unfortunately, in each category, the percentage of employers who are actually responding to this problem is always lower than the overall awareness level. (One wonders if they would call the fire department if their office park were engulfed in flames.)
It’s galling that an organization could acknowledge that their company is a stressful, counterproductive place to work and yet not do anything about it. But that’s not the part of the survey that got us all riled up. Instead, we’re wondering about the companies that DON’T EVEN KNOW they have a problem.
Only 32% can see how a lack of work-life balance is hurting their people and their business? Are you kidding? Less than half can see that working longer hours, and doing more work with fewer resources, is a problem? Pardon our French, but WTF?
It’s this kind of incredible blindness that motivates us to continue to speak out on these issues. It’s this kind of blindness that has us calling for a revolution in how we work. We can’t expect the leaders at the top to wake up to the realities of working in the 21st Century. It’s up to us to make the workplace a more sane and humane place for everyone. No one is going to give it to us.
I’d be interested in more data regarding the demographics of the responders. It would be telling, for example, to see industry breakdowns, who within the organization is responding, size of company, etc. I’m betting the decision-makers (meaning those who’d be in a position to implement change) weren’t the ones responding. The real issue here is to get this issue on their radar. In a company like Northwest Airlines, for example, do you really think management is vested in work-life balance? Not when they’re concentrating on a merger and ways to evade financial obligations to the state of Minnesota, which has subsidized their folly for over twenty years, they’re not. Catalyzing change of this nature involves creating an incentive in the decision-maker. It’s not just gonna happen because they could feel good about it.
The probability is that you need to couch it national economic security terms — and make certain some kind of corporate tax break is involved. It’s ironic that even with all the climate change/green politics talk from the various parties and candidates, nobody is seriously proposing that petro addiction is truly cause enough to implement a change to the status quo work|life arrangement. Jim Ware makes good arguments though and when we form a PAC and figure out where to send the kickbacks we can wrap it all up nicely with his logic
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http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/l_comments/10023849?context_id=10051145#2997
Very interesting article. It think that you are right that “It’s up to us to make the workplace a more sane and humane place for everyone.”
But I think the place to start is with the “immediate supervisor.” A supervisor can cause more havoc and stress than anyone else. Of course supervisors themselves can be abusive or they can tolerate abuse from others in the workplace.
I believe there is hope on the horizon. Soon there will be a shortage or workers and more people will have more choice.
Dale Paulson, Ph.D.
http://www.workplaceattitudes.blogspot.com
It’s not surprising that most company management is “blind” to the lack of balance in their workers — they are working all of these hours already and it is the norm. If, for them, it is the norm, why would there be a problem with the rest of the workforce?