Britain needs bosses to put the Big Society to work
by John Philpott
Work isn’t working. The British economy is obviously struggling to provide enough work at present. But that’s only part of the story. Our way of work is dysfunctional too. Only a small minority of employees say they are prepared to go the extra mile for their employer, while trust in senior management is generally very low. This hits the bottom line performance of private sector organisations and prevents public sector organisations from providing quality services.
As we argue in a new Demos publication, it’s imperative in straitened economic times to rethink the British way of work in terms of what we call the ‘productive workplace’. This requires policy-makers to hammer home to employers the abundant weight of evidence that people are happiest and most productive when they feel they are working for organisations with a clear purpose, that seek to fully engage the discretionary effort of staff, recognise and fairly reward that effort, give regular, clear and honest information about what’s going on, and listen to and take account of what staff have to say.
The purposeful and collaborative nature of the productive workplace has many obvious parallels with the present government’s Big Society vision but these are seldom drawn by policy-makers. As ever with debates about civil society, community and social capital, there is a bizarre assumption that these are phenomena that only exist outside the realms of markets, business and workplaces. Yet much of what people bring to and gain from voluntary association – enthusiasm, ideas, commitment, friends and psychological wellbeing – they could potentially facilitate through work if organisational cultures were reconfigured in the way both evidence and logic suggests.
It’s tragic therefore that so many workers are disengaged by the daily grind of toxic organisational cultures which reflect a flawed business ideology that continues to dominate British boardrooms, even though it is well past its sell by date.
This is an ideology that crudely emphasises the role of the individual over the collective and seeks to maintain an imbalance of power to buttress management authority. It results in far too many senior private sector bosses couching organisational strategy in the ‘you’re fired’ language of insecurity, which can hamper workplace trust and employee engagement, especially when linked to frequent calls for fewer legal restrictions on employers’ ability to hire and fire staff.
It reinforces a lack of meaningful information-sharing and communication across and within organisations, with the increasing vogue for messaging and consulting staff often a cosmetic exercise in which senior managers are happier to broadcast than receive. It means that despite ever louder management rhetoric about giving staff greater discretion in doing their jobs, employees have experienced a marked fall in how much autonomy they have over their work and a large proportion reckon they are overqualified for the jobs they do. And it supports the opaque individual performance related pay systems that enable top bosses to trouser millions while those they call ‘their people’ feel the squeeze.
The technocrat’s response to such obvious dysfunction is better trained leaders and managers and the spread of various state of the art management practices, including transparent pay setting. But while necessary in a country with the least skilled management cadre amongst the developed economies, this doesn’t get to the ideological root of Britain’s work problem.
What we really need is a political agenda for work that recognises the usefulness of decent employment rights, rather than falsely demonise these as a burden on business, and confronts head on power imbalance in the workplace. In particular we must finally fill the void in collective forms of engagement between bosses and workers that opened up in Britain when trade union membership went into freefall thirty years ago. This has left individual employees with a sense of powerlessness and prevents organisations from developing a genuine sense of shared purpose of the kind we as a nation so desperately need in what looks like being the toughest of decades for the British economy.
This isn’t a call for the restoration of mid-20th century style union power of the kind most mainstream political parties let alone British business leaders resist. But unless and until employers come to acknowledge the damage being done by adherence to a ‘me first’ rather than ‘we together’ workplace culture it’s difficult to see UK plc achieving the gear change needed to meet our mounting economic and social challenges. Government must do more to encourage Britain’s bosses to maximise genuine collaboration with their staff along the lines of our vision of the productive workplace, which would in effect be putting the Big Society to work.
Reality
Total wonk-think. What planet do these Demos wonk-thinkers inhabit? Instead of pontificating about what the rest of us - employers and employees - should do John Philpott and his wonky buddies should go out and get a proper productive job. This would better help the British economy.
Are they incapable of going out and inventing a company themselves? If they are so sure of their platitudes why do they not put them into practice themselves and build their own companies. Probably cannot. Probably they think they are uniquely gifted to preach to the rest of us what we should do. Cretinous nonsense. Best ignore their fairy-tale like vision of business. Talk about total inanity. Ignore them folks. They are spongers on the body politic and their silly ideas above are of absolutely no use or consequence to the rest of humanity
Diogenes
The idea that British bosses will put the Big Society to work is very funny. Most bosses are intelligent and wise enough to see the Big Society is pure PR hype with no substance whatsoever; watching this governments actions one should surely call their motives: The Small Society. Indeed the very notion that anybody of intelligence outside the political class and their lapdog media friends thinks the Big Society is anything other than a meaningless platitude is truly delusional and worthy for the funny farm.
David Vinter
Though now retired I used to employ 5 workers, I never asked anyone to do anything that I was not prepared to do myself. I fear that those condemning employers only read about the very large firms. They only employ the minority of workers. To blame the UK is bad, things are far worse in other countries eg Spain.
I think over the last 30 years there have been huge changes in the labour market, as mechanisation has taken over in the office as well as the shopfloor. Employers find machines are far easier to control, they don't get tired, will carry on 20 hours per day, never complain and rather than want redundancy, have a second hand value!
On top of this like it or not, large flows of foreign labour have moved around europe, often highly educated, young , willing and footloose. Fings just aint what they used to be! The customer always wants ever cheaper goods-----how are they to be made, and from where will they come?
Lara Hawkins
I work in a large (16000 employees) international consultancy company. The fundamental issue in relation to employee engagement is for employees to be able to 'make a difference'. Most people enjoy work and perform better when they feel that they are able to make a positive contribution. In share owned companies the workers are working towards shareholder value. If organisations can turn this fundamental business objective into something more meaningful, we may have a more enagaged workforce. Pushing responsibility and accountability right through the organisation is key. The 'bosses' should be facilitators to decision making - allowing those best placed in the organisation (wherever they sit) to make the decisions needed for a healthy business and their customers/Clients. The seed for innovation and adaption does not happen from the top.
Malcolm Rasala
'The seed for innovation and adaption does not happen from the top' Lara Hawkins pronounces above. Tell that to Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or the late Steve Jobs or Henry Ford or those who led the British industrial revolution or any of those transforming business today across the world. Where is her evidence for this wonk-think? If this is the consultancy advice Lara is giving her clients no wonder Britain is falling from 4th to 9th place in the economic league of nations. Heaven help us if anyone listens to such deeply unintelligent nonsense. We need innovators and thought leaders and great science and technology discoveries and thought processes. The world speaks English. We are uniquely placed to lead the world as Greek thought led the ancient world. But we need political leaders and business leaders to grasp this opportunity. We do not need daft nostrums from sideline consultants like Ms Hawkins who probably has never run a company in her life or invented anything or if the above is anything to go by ever had an original idea. Happy 2012 folks. Lets go for it.......
PS
We do NOT need the Big Society nonsense. It is PR wonk-think
Little Society
Are these the FT100 bosses that last year on average upped their salaries etc by 43% when their companies income grew on avarage 3%?
Are these the bosses who have just ended final salary pension schemes for all their employees while boosting their own company provided pension provision by millions of pounds?
Do these two platitudinizers above think anybody with a brain will listen to Big Society platitudes from such bosses who act with this hypocrisy?
Will Davies
"Only a small minority of employees say they are prepared to go the extra mile for their employer, while trust in senior management is generally very low. This hits the bottom line performance of private sector organisations..."
Maybe there's a hint of the problem in this style of reasoning.