Saturday, October 14, 2006 Batuhan: Winning teams (3) Allan S. B. Batuhan Foreign Exchange
One of my bosses when I was a young man working in financial services in the Philippines had a few favorite sayings. His mantra used to be something like “I am not in management to win popularity contests.”
He also used to say “I am not here to entertain you” to his people. “If you want to be happy, go see a movie.”
His words obviously described his whole approach to management. To him, work was serious, and his staff ought to approach it that way. Happiness and contentment were not at the top of the agenda. In fact, workers should not even expect them to be there.
True enough, he managed according to these principles. He worked long hours and expected his staff to put in the same. He was not interested in individuals’ personal circumstances and their impact on work performance. In fact, he used to openly show his dislike when his single employees married as this often meant sacrificing hours at work for family reasons.
He rewarded people the same way — those who worked the hardest got the farthest. Clearly, output meant longer hours on the road and in the office.
To this day, I can still remember how much time I actually spent at work compared to not being there. There were times I was too exhausted to rest, it seemed like a better idea to just keep on working still.
The problem is that people are not machines. In fact, even machinery need downtime on a regular basis, so they could be cleaned and maintained. Otherwise, their performance will suffer and productivity drops.
With humans, it is even more complex. Different people have varying motivations, and what makes one tick may not necessarily be what keeps another motivated.
In many ways, management practices have moved on a bit from what they were during my former boss’ time. Work-life balance has gained prominence as a corporate objective and, in fact, some organizations make this a cornerstone of their human resources strategy.
It seems only natural that a happy workplace should be more productive than one which isn’t. This is consistent with our nature — we like doing things that give us a sense of personal satisfaction. Whoever it was who said “find a job that you enjoy, and you will never have to work a single day in your life” has got the concept of work-life balance spot on.
Yet, for all the advancement in management thinking that has taken place around the subject of employee motivation, not many organizations seem to be taking heed.
In the United Kingdom, different studies on the subject of employee job satisfaction have shown that somewhere from a third to half of all employees across all companies and industry sectors are dissatisfied with their current jobs.
Clearly, this shows that at least 50 percent of the country’s entire workforce must at least not be working at full productivity, following our earlier assumption that satisfaction has a direct correlation with output.
In the developing world, the proportion of the workforce not entirely content with what they are doing must be even higher. The saving grace seems to be that labor costs are still low compared to those in the West, and therefore any losses in productive output are not that costly yet to most organizations. (Continued next week)
