Odd Job
It is the job of outside efficiency experts to measure productivity in the workplace, and employers are increasingly turning to them to gauge employee competency, in the form of increased or decreased productivity, with a subsequent eye to improvement. In these times of increased technology and computer literacy, and with the transformation of the majority of American workers into providers of services rather than skilled laborers and manufacturers, employers have witnessed a tendency for worker productivity to decline, because of both the sedentary nature of most jobs and the hours spent before computer monitors emailing, surfing the World Wide Web, playing online games, and interacting remotely with distant friends and colleagues via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and a host of other Internet web sites and portals. While outside efficiency experts have been summoned in many cases to determine why employee efficiency has declined, it has sometimes been difficult for them to put a finger on the reasons for decreased employee productivity. The reasons behind increased productivity have also been difficult to measure in some cases, when the experts called in have not been familiar with the service or industry being examined. Landmark legal cases brought by disgruntled employees against industry giants, and immortalized by popular news media anchors, the press, and the tabloids, for consumption by the public to the tune of higher ratings, bear this out.
While outside efficiency experts continue to believe, in no uncertain terms, that employee work-related behaviors and productivity improve when the workers themselves knowingly come under direct observation and scrutiny, and while that may contain an element of some truth, it in no way illustrates the entire picture. Improvement in employee productivity may be due to any number of reasons in the workplace. To assume that worker conscientiousness is directly related to a Big Brother mentality is not only nearsighted, but also counterproductive to open-mindedness and a sense of fair play. It places the workforce in the position of spoiled little children, not only ill-equipped and reluctant to perform the job-related duties for which they were hired, but also requiring a mother, a mother superior, a mother hen, or some such other disciplinarian to guarantee compliance with the stated goals, duties, performance tasks, and productivity stated implicitly and mandated by individual job descriptions.
Rather, outside efficiency experts would better spend their time understanding the workers themselves, their needs, the specific company and what it requires of its employees, the points of view of management, union, and employees on the reasons for the decline or failed improvement in productivity, the mental status of the workers, the work environment, and a plethora of other motivators for and detractors from healthy increases in productivity over time. Now, granted, human nature being what it is, employees will tend to stray a bit if they are not held to account for their performance. No one argues that. A Big Brother in the workplace, however, can only serve to have a detrimental effect on productivity, leading to employee resentment of management and a further decline in company productivity and profit margins. Passive aggression between employees and between employees and management is a terrible thing in the workplace, and “spying” by management and/or outside efficiency experts can only make an already tense situation unbearable, to say the least, leading to frayed nerves, absenteeism, lack of motivation, and a host of occupational-related maladies that put money in the pockets of labor attorneys, occupational medicine physicians, and those psychologists and counselors that no company would be complete without.
On the other hand, a vested interest in the company demonstrated and sincerely felt by employees who sense fair and equitable treatment by management, makes for a healthy symbiosis that can only be beneficial to the company. Diverse corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Starbucks, Samuel Adams Brewing, Humana, and numerous others have successfully instituted and obtained outstanding results with employee-management models in which workers are treated more as partners than as servants. They have found that workers are not lazy, and that they will, indeed, increase their efforts and productivity when they feel that they are being treated honestly, being cared for by upper management, believe in the product or service they represent, and have open lines of communication, and perhaps even an open-door policy, with their supervisors, managers, and upper level management. Outside efficiency experts, who should know better and who are privy to the company success stories mentioned above, need to examine all the possibilities mentioned earlier for possible employee malcontent and decreased productivity. Playing the “easy” surveillance card, for whatever reason, and attributing past, suboptimal performance to a lack of observation, surveillance, and disciplinary control begs the question and misses the mark entirely.
In this age of new cultural awareness and social correctness, outside efficiency experts would find their time better spent examining the actual, multifaceted causes for employee and management malcontent, instead of hiding behind past stereotyped generalities for declining motivation and subsequent productivity shortfalls.
© 2010, Albert M. Balesh, M.D. All rights reserved.
posted by Dr. Al at
10/31/2010 10:05:00 AM
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