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The 'Psychological Recession'
The change and uncertainty created by the global economy has led to a growing gap between workers and their employers. In an exclusive Q&A, one expert suggests ways HR can help bridge that gap.
Your organization's employees are scared, passive and cynical. They're not engaged with their work and they don't respect their managers. They're frightened by the global economy and lack faith in the nation's political and business leaders to do anything to help them. Judith M. Bardwick, a management consultant, former professor at the University of Michigan and the University of California-San Diego, and author of the bestselling Danger in the Comfort Zone, says this unfortunate state of affairs describes too many companies today, here in the United States and abroad. In her latest book, One Foot Out the Door, she labels it a "psychological recession," brought about not only by the end of the economic security that existed for so long in the wake of World War II, but by the response from businesses to the end of that security: downsizings, restructuring and outsourcing. In place of the social contract that long existed between companies and employees in the post-war years (that so long as they did their jobs, the company would take care of them), workers today feel as if they're disposable and replaceable. What's to be done? Bardwick says HR can start by trying to close the gap she says exists in so many organizations between employees and managers, a gap that exists in part because too many managers simply aren't suited for their jobs. She discussed her thoughts in an interview with Senior Editor Andrew R. McIlvaine.
Describe the "psychological recession" and how it manifests itself in the workplace. It's a feeling of chronic vulnerability. We probably find such vulnerability almost always accompanies the loss of any economic security. Interestingly, in the 1870s, we had a period of time in which the population was rioting, and unrest and uncertainty were everywhere. Until very recently, economists have thought there must have been a helluva recession going on then. It turns out not to be true -- what was going on was one of the biggest economic boom periods in our history, but it included a massive amount of change that was hugely unsettling. There was increased global trade: Farms in the Midwest had grown huge, but if the Russian farmers out on the steppes had a great year, our farmers were wiped out financially. It was that kind of thing -- people were moving in terms of status and geography, so the anchors that defined who you were and where you belonged, that made life somewhat predictable, were gone. Today, people are worried about globalization. Job security is a thing of the past. As everything seemingly starts to erode, notably security, people feel they have significantly less control over what happens to them, and that's really scary. So that's the psychological recession -- a feeling of economic and psychological vulnerability and there's no sense that the government or your employer gives a damn about you. And this isn't just confined to the United States?
It's the same in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. A couple of weeks ago I got an inquiry from a company in Madras, India, saying, "People here feel the same way." So this is a global perception -- the sense of security disappearing or already gone. The world's economies have been growing, the pie is growing larger, but the vulnerability of industries and individuals to change has increased hugely, and there's no going back. All of this has had a huge impact on employee engagement. In my new book, I refer to my favorite numbers from the latest Gallup Employee Engagement Survey: 20 60 20 -- these are the results from the questionnaires. Twenty percent of employees are engaged and committed, 60 percent are not and 20 percent are actively disengaged. In other words, 80 percent of the labor force is not performing at its peak. It means you do not get discretionary performance. So most people are uncommitted -- only their bodies show up at work.
What can employers do about it? The only way to succeed long-term, in a fundamental way, is to see people, the ones you want to keep, as key assets. You can't see them as costs. If you do, you'll not only downsize as the first line of defense in an economic downturn, but you will never treat your people with respect and trust, and those are key variables. If you don't respect them, they won't respect you. That's a negative situation, which is self-fulfilling. So the key has to be a labor force that feels good enough about the mission of the work, and the mission and values of the organization, that it becomes very important to each individual to do his or her best. It's common sense: What goes around comes around. If your employer doesn't treat you as an asset, someone they trust and respect and invest in and expect more of, as an individual, then it's reciprocal. Nobody joins an organization not wanting to be there. So I interpret these low-engagement numbers to mean that the majority of people are being treated by their employer as not significant -- not respected, not important, not trusted -- and how do you think they feel? They do not really care -- they have one foot out the door; they're actively or passively looking for other opportunities. You note in the book this is aggravated by bad managers, and that their negative effect on employees translates directly to the bottom line. Given that, why is bad management, or bad managers, still so widely tolerated? We have too many people promoted into management who have no business handling other people. We hire on the basis of knowledge, skills and experience; we promote on that basis; and we have only one career ladder, which is the management ladder. There needs to be a dual "professional ladder" for the experienced people with terrible management skills. There are many people who are excellent professionals but who are interpersonally non-adept, and they get promoted because of their skills. But since management involves motivating people, if you don't have that capacity -- if your emotional I.Q. is zero -- then you will never be a good manager. Not long ago, I read an interesting article about "empathy nuclei" -- neurons on the brain that activate in interpersonal situations, and the paper noted that some people actually don't have them. Now, one study does not a fact make. But it was very interesting, because I do think there are people who, on the "empathy scale," are way down at zero, and you don't put people who have no empathy or emotional awareness in charge of managing people.
You write that there's a growing gap between college-educated and non-college-educated workers and managers. Why is that? In today's world, a college degree is equivalent to a high school degree. So there's an unwitting assumption that education equals "smart" and lack of education equals "dumb." Well, things just don't calibrate that way. What's happened is that the circumstances that traditionally enabled an educated person to work with non-college educated but experienced people to solve significant problems no longer exist, in many cases. The decline of manufacturing, the end of the military draft and so on means there are many fewer chances for college-educated people to work on projects with people who are not college-educated. And in many cases, the college-educated people tend to have less respect for the ones who may lack what society tells us is valuable -- a college degree -- even though they may be very experienced and knowledgeable. How you feel about your organization is heavily influenced by the people you deal with, which is hardly revelatory. If you don't feel respected and trusted, then the relationship stinks and you'll be very motivated to move on. So organizations should try and create tasks in which college-educated and non-college-educated employees work together on problems that really matter. In the book, I write about how the University of Michigan decided that every committee had to include non-faculty members and a student, and it was initially unnerving to everyone who wasn't a faculty member, because they were "brilliant faculty" and were just put out about having to listen to students and secretaries. Well, you know what, it was a huge revelation for them about how smart and how much wisdom these "students and secretaries" turned out to have. I think everyone needs to have personal revelations about this stuff.
June 2, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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