I can’t figure it, myself. By way of driftglass, we come across this report indicating massive employee dissatisfaction:
Workers can’t wait to dump their employers: 84 percent of respondents to a survey say they plan to actively look for a new job this year.
That’s up from 60 percent who said they planned to do so last year. Only 5 percent said they intend to stay in their current position.
The survey was done by Manpower subsidiary Right Management. “It’s staggering,” said Joanne Stroud of Right Management.
Senior leadership within organizations is largely to blame, Stroud said. While many workers have gone without salary increases for two to three years and are now doing the job of one to two people, they see and hear less from senior leadership about the vision for the future and how they see the company evolving and reshaping themselves, she explained.
“Workers see the world is changing and see creativity going on in the world,” but inside their own organizations, “all they see is cost cutting and retrenchment,” Stroud said.
Let’s see: no salary increases, extra workload, boredom, and fear of being laid off. Hmm. How could an employer possibly fix this? Let’s see:
In hard times, senior management’s reaction is often to tighten controls with increased reporting requirements that require more work and micromanaging, in addition to cost cutting, she added. But things fall through the cracks. Because people are being asked to do too much, that results in their doing a poorer job, and consequently workers don’t feel good about their performance, also causing discontent and hurting morale, she said.
That probably won’t work. Let’s try this:
To keep employees engaged and committed, Stroud said organizations must, among other things, eliminate nonessential work, pay workers fairly, and give them the resources to do their jobs.
Winning Workplaces Director of Consulting and Training Diane Stoneman advises employers to:*Solicit employee feedback in a variety of ways including employee surveys, exit interviews, small and large group meetings and take appropriate action in response to the feedback.
*Clearly and honestly communicate the vision of the organization, its priorities, values challenges and how employees’ work fits into the larger picture.
*Provide competitive wages and benefits.
You mean pay people well, and let them do what they were hired to do? TEH SOCIALISMZ!!! AAIIEEE!!! What trends in the last three decades make anyone think most U.S. business will actually do this? They’ve spent the last thirty years buying up government to do the exact opposite. OK, then…
And driftglass also tells us what this means for the concept of ‘running government like a business’:
Wouldn’t it be just awesome if we could run our governments more like businesses?
I’d bet they’d run a lot better if only they had the Invisible Fist of the Marketplace jammed to the elbow up their collective asses.
I’m sure our Galtian Overlords would love that–in so many ways…
randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1176-serves-em-right.html
At least we’re on the same page…
Serves Em Right, eh, Randi….
Just for you, little traitors…
youtube.com/watch?v=6YgdmtkTwO8&feature=related
WHAT IS WRONG WITH HENRY?
we’re this far from nuking all of you….
the X-MAS vacuum cleaner for the atheists….
shermer, randi, myers, pz, dawkins, harris
thecoolgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/henry-desktop-vacuum1.jpg
youtube.com/watch?v=lz4R0GHfM-Y&
why does everyone always want to PUNCH you, shermer?
skepticalcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=29968&p=567498#p567498
It’s all part of the larger strategy of neoliberalism. How many of the people who hate their jobs are actually likely to find new ones in this market? Not many. And the more alienated workers are, the less likely they are to cause “problems” in the workplace. It’s a double-whammy. Yay, capitalism!
Funny how the same things apply regardless of the type of job. I’m a science teacher, and I am so, so glad I don’t teach biology.
I love biology. I wish I could teach they whole curriculum with micro-organisms. What fun that would be! Authentic science, real experiments, fascinating new worlds to open up for even the most jaded of students.
But no. In Md., biology is the “assessed” class for No Child’s Behind Left Untested. So we get scripts (or are headed that way). Teachers are so busy gathering data on the kids who fail to give a damn, that there’s no time or motivation for imagination and inspiration. Teachers yell at kids who don’t care to recite answers to test questions they don’t understand. (If the question says “Blah-blah” the answer is “so-and-so.” “Ribosomes make protein” is a concept that somehow manages to make it’s way into an inordinate number of questions.)
And the beatings will continue until morale improves.
If employers show now loyalty to their staff, is it any surprise that their employees reciprocate?
All my employers have made a lot of noise about how people are their most valuable resource. Precious few actually act on that, even when times are good.
Employee satisfaction comes down to pay so much it’s crazy. And employers just don’t get that. They aren’t good at valuing employees, paying people too much to do easy management jobs many people would do for less pay and then they don’t pay people enough to do the actual “work” in the trenches.
I beleive that as long as the mission of the private company is just to make profit and as long as it is the only thing that Wall st values, disregarding of any community responsability or any responsability towards its employees, job satisfaction will remain low. Unfortunately, for some people in our society making money is an end in itself and represents their value, power and status in society. Unless we redifine the mission of private companies and establish that it is not OK to make money hurting people, the enviroment and the community as a whole, employee satisfaction as well as many other issues will remain unsolved.
Frau, money helps, but here are other issues I think cause more trouble:
Work place bullying. Even a whiff of power brings out the worst in far too many people, and if they are insecure about their position, they get even worse. Have an abusive boss and it’s hard to see how any amount of money can give you the satisfaction of making them equally miserable one day.
The Peter Principle is real and demoralizing.
Health and safety. Workers are asked to key so fast they get hand injuries. Buildings have ventilation issues. Stretch breaks are both ‘mandatory’ and impossible to actually get, because you don’t have the time to do them. People see their co-workers getting disabled around them if they aren’t suffering themselves.
Yeah, on top of all the issues in the OP and the lack of raises.
Another insidious change has been the control of job occupation hiring/application access by ‘headhunter’ HR outsourcing agencies that position themselves between potential workers for permanent benefits employment positions and the many qualified looking for work. One of the streamlining and downsizing in companies has been to cut and gut their internal HR hiring and get ‘slave owner’/servant agencies to feed them desperate filtered employees that can be used and tossed without EEOC worries. This has been a boon in states with ‘Right to Work’ laws as it has made employment for workers worse than the oft blamed ‘unions’ restricting job access and harming businesses.
Atleast, once a person got a job their rights and labor value were compensated and respected. Not in this day and age of corporate controlled gov’t and economy. Small business owners have been duped into thinking undercutting unions helps them but they help dissolve the economic fabric and security of our nation by gutting the working/middleclass as much as Wall Street, IMHO.
I messed up and duplicated my point in this sentence. Point being HR agencies filter out qualified people from a chance to apply for occupational positions by setting up false qualification, biased selection on worthwhile/profitable temps to even get the chance to be looked at or interviewed. No EEOC investigations are conducted on their selection pool of farmed out temps.
Only a few temps get regularly sent out for work and immediately removed when they are capable for full-time hired status. Major highly paid administrative and technical jobs apart from moves into blue collar warehouse, repair, factory positions is happening to undercut unions or prevent unionizing in service occupations.
Another insidious change has been the control of job occupation hiring/application access by ‘headhunter’ HR outsourcing agencies that position themselves between potential workers for permanent benefits employment positions and the many qualified looking for work.