I thought of beginning this blog with an aspect of Human Resource Development which I consider core to any organization: Employee Satisfaction. Since the beginning of the Agricultural Age and civilized living and even through the advent of Industrial Age, humans have always felt the need to organize themselves and pool resources to form teams with a common goal.
And with the delegation of work began the endless trouble of matching the right person to the right job. Understanding talent and identifying potential became key qualities in managers and with every passing day this need has only increased in intensity. No employee ever seems satisfied with the work at hand and no employer has a clue of what makes his employees happy. It all seems like a lost cause. It did to many thinkers like Karl Marx as well who found that business concerns and private landlords were exploiting the workers in London and felt the need to raise a voice by solving the capitalism problem. But not even socialism could really resolve the issue of lack of satisfaction among employees.
I believe the problem could be in the fact that an employee's job is not looked at as an experience he has during his life in the organization. Marketing Gurus speak of giving customers an experience through their product or service and they say that the consumer will buy the product. Why not apply the same principle to the human beings on other side of the product and service life-cycle: the employee. And the need for every employee is just the need of every consumer that is to have a unique experience at the workplace with the work they do.
A high value and expectation level is set with a job that can provide such en experience to the employee. A manager's job has a higher level of uniqueness than a worker's and a company head's job has a higher level of uniqueness than the manager's. Thus as we move up the corporate ladder and get higher responsibilities added to our job, we invariably end up having a greater level of uniqueness at our job. But this need not be the only way in which one can find uniqueness at the workplace.
The workplace has long been looked at in the image of the famous industrialist Henry Ford: the Conveyor Belt. This was where things moved in as raw material and after a million melting, moulding, hammering and polishing the final product moved out of the workshop. And in this image of the moving product, somewhere the employee lost his power of being moved by the virtue of the work he puts into his creation. And as days go by the hammering only gets more monotonous, the moulding only get more mechanical and the melting only gets slower. The conveyor belt may be automated now, robots may have replaced man at the workplace, but in many jobs the feeling of monotonicity has not moved out.
As you read this blog, go back to your workplace and try and recall the most mundane part of the job and you find that it is that part of it which is most monotonous as well. It may not be the part that frustrates us but it certainly is the catalyst in your losing interest in your work. Managers need to look at these areas and understand how can they change this about the job. Many times this may not be possible as the activity is most critical to your work. In such situations, the best recourse is to making the office environment one where the employee has a Unique & Pleasant Experience.
Many offices look at In-Office fun hours during the work week, Office Picnics, Lounge Areas and Meditation Spaces, Sprawling campuses and Activity Center. But we need to think of a lot more such unique experiences from which the employee can choose. Why not a Wallpaper Service that an employee can subscribe to in Office which will load a new image and quotation for him on his desktop when he logs in. Or a forum which the employee can join and participate in. Or a new language, dance form, musical instrument he can learn from an expert. Or just providing a box of doughnuts to the employees at the coffee machine one evening.
Most employees in our organizations today fail to see the beauty in anything. Bringing uniqueness to their work would enable them to see that beauty once again: in their work and in themselves!
And with the delegation of work began the endless trouble of matching the right person to the right job. Understanding talent and identifying potential became key qualities in managers and with every passing day this need has only increased in intensity. No employee ever seems satisfied with the work at hand and no employer has a clue of what makes his employees happy. It all seems like a lost cause. It did to many thinkers like Karl Marx as well who found that business concerns and private landlords were exploiting the workers in London and felt the need to raise a voice by solving the capitalism problem. But not even socialism could really resolve the issue of lack of satisfaction among employees.
I believe the problem could be in the fact that an employee's job is not looked at as an experience he has during his life in the organization. Marketing Gurus speak of giving customers an experience through their product or service and they say that the consumer will buy the product. Why not apply the same principle to the human beings on other side of the product and service life-cycle: the employee. And the need for every employee is just the need of every consumer that is to have a unique experience at the workplace with the work they do.
A high value and expectation level is set with a job that can provide such en experience to the employee. A manager's job has a higher level of uniqueness than a worker's and a company head's job has a higher level of uniqueness than the manager's. Thus as we move up the corporate ladder and get higher responsibilities added to our job, we invariably end up having a greater level of uniqueness at our job. But this need not be the only way in which one can find uniqueness at the workplace.
The workplace has long been looked at in the image of the famous industrialist Henry Ford: the Conveyor Belt. This was where things moved in as raw material and after a million melting, moulding, hammering and polishing the final product moved out of the workshop. And in this image of the moving product, somewhere the employee lost his power of being moved by the virtue of the work he puts into his creation. And as days go by the hammering only gets more monotonous, the moulding only get more mechanical and the melting only gets slower. The conveyor belt may be automated now, robots may have replaced man at the workplace, but in many jobs the feeling of monotonicity has not moved out.
As you read this blog, go back to your workplace and try and recall the most mundane part of the job and you find that it is that part of it which is most monotonous as well. It may not be the part that frustrates us but it certainly is the catalyst in your losing interest in your work. Managers need to look at these areas and understand how can they change this about the job. Many times this may not be possible as the activity is most critical to your work. In such situations, the best recourse is to making the office environment one where the employee has a Unique & Pleasant Experience.
Many offices look at In-Office fun hours during the work week, Office Picnics, Lounge Areas and Meditation Spaces, Sprawling campuses and Activity Center. But we need to think of a lot more such unique experiences from which the employee can choose. Why not a Wallpaper Service that an employee can subscribe to in Office which will load a new image and quotation for him on his desktop when he logs in. Or a forum which the employee can join and participate in. Or a new language, dance form, musical instrument he can learn from an expert. Or just providing a box of doughnuts to the employees at the coffee machine one evening.
Most employees in our organizations today fail to see the beauty in anything. Bringing uniqueness to their work would enable them to see that beauty once again: in their work and in themselves!
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