Deal with Disaffected Employees Directly

When our son was a pre-schooler, he was plagued by repeated ear infections and persistent colds. Each case meant a trip to the pediatrician for diagnosis and appropriate medication and treatment. After several instances, his doctor recommended a permanent fix: a tonsillectomy.

            So that’s what we did. The effect was almost immediate. The ear infections ceased and the frequency of colds dropped to nearly zero.

            Sure, we could have continued treating the symptoms rather than the cause, but our son wouldn’t have been the happy, playful boy he became, nor would he have thrived.

            The same case is often true in business. Recurring problems can point to deeper issues that are not being addressed. And in the case of recurring efforts by employees to organize a union shop, the deeper problem often can be traced to poor communications and an insufficient effort to engage employees in the business.

            A few years ago, a midwestern manufacturer asked for our advice and counsel in nipping in the bud a surging effort to unionize its assembly line workers. I paid a visit to their headquarters offices along with a colleague who specialized in labor union communications.

            We had been provided preliminary background information and insights into the issues and the current situation beforehand, and brought with us a two-part presentation proposing both an immediate solution and a longer-term strategy to stop this situation from recurring.

A Recurring Challenge

As we learned, this union organizing effort seemed to pop up every few years. To date, the company had successfully defeated it each time. This time, it seemed more serious and threatening than in the past.

            The two of us sat down with the operations management team, the head of human resources, and director of corporate communications to hash out the challenge, and to offer our solutions.

            The managers listened intently to my colleague’s recommendations for dissuading the workforce from voting for union representation. I’d worked with him before and knew his ideas were sound, and had previously proven effective.

            My part of the presentation came next and centered on a strategic approach to employee communications to gain the trust and understanding of the workforce in the future, something that was currently missing in this case.

            In essence, my proposal called for more frequent contact by senior managers with the hourly workers through a variety of means, including occasional walks through the shop to engage individual employees in conversations, and town hall type meetings where they could share relevant information about the state of the business and listen to ideas from the employees.

            I also recommended an on-going flow of information, through a variety of means, about the external marketplace and its impact on the company to help employees better understand the larger picture.

            Though the company team seemed to like our ideas, we left without a commitment and went back home to await their response. They never called back. They somehow headed off the union threat on their own. But I later learned that the effort to unionize the shop resurfaced again a couple years later.

Avoiding Their Medicine

Why didn’t the company management team opt for the medicine of more effective long-term employee engagement? Let me guess.

            Like a lot of long-term commitments, it demands that you make changes in the way you operate day-to-day. And in the current business climate, that is not a choice a lot of managers like to make. The kind of choices they do like to make are often those that have a short-term pay-off: cost cuts that improve margins; changing suppliers for higher quality or greater reliability; adding staff and production throughput to address increased demand for their products, and the like.

            But the kinds of changes I was urging were behavioral, asking managers and company leadership to operate outside their comfort zones and spend more of their limited time on the job engaging employees more than they were accustomed to. It would also have meant they’d have to think more about the connections between the employees’ world and where the business needed to go.

            I’m afraid to say that some managers and leaders seem to take their workforces for granted. The individual employee is brought into the company to perform a specific set of tasks and, in return, is paid a fair wage and benefits. Shouldn’t that be enough?

            No. It’s not enough.

            Union organizers find disgruntled employees in dysfunctional organizations and promise them more formal, rigidly controlled engagement with company management on their behalf – albeit with union representatives serving as intermediaries – to level what is perceived as an uneven playing field.

            This appeals to employees who feel cut off from the business anyway and, frankly, have ceased really caring about much beyond the paycheck, and a fair and safe work environment.

            The frustrations that shop floor employees sense when they feel detached from the company’s purpose and when their ideas and insights are not sought are the kinds of aggravations that build up over time, festering to the point where a union organizer finds fertile soil in which to sow his seeds of dissent.

The Futile Pursuit of "Perfect" in Job Postings and Its Impact on the Workplace

In the midst of a persistently high unemployment rate, the job market continues to be a buyer’s market. Because of that, people who may be unhappy or feel frustrated with their current jobs are stuck, reluctant to leave for fear that they won’t find another position elsewhere.

      This double-edged sword is changing the nature of many workplaces and the inter-relations there, while stifling the vital organizational renewal that the natural attrition of normal times brings companies, with new employees coming and established employees leaving.

      With little movement of people out of organizations (except in cases of lay-offs), postings for the rare openings these days have become pursuits of perfection. Requirements are often absurdly detailed and lengthy, virtual shopping lists of specific talents, skills and experience.

      That’s fine for highly technical jobs where familiarity and facility with various equipment and/or computer software is necessary. But for those positions that require intellectual curiosity, agility, and creativity, as well as an ability to work well with a variety of people, there is no ideal job description.

      Still, the employers advertising for many such positions apparently operate under that delusion that “perfect” is attainable.

      An article in The Wall Street Journal reported that a study found that 31 percent of the 811 small businesses surveyed had unfilled job openings in July because they couldn’t identify applicants “with the right skills or experience.”

      In an opinion piece, “Mind The Gap,” in the July 9 & 16 issue of The New Yorker, author James Surowiecki cited the “dearth of qualified workers… and the gap between the skills that American workers have and the ones that businesses need.”

The “Right” Candidate

That’s recruiters talking. I say that in the pursuit of the perfect, employers may be overlooking the right candidate. Working from that notion, that there is the perfect candidate out there, creates an insurmountable barrier to the applicant who, in the light of day, could be the best fit for the team and contribute the most to the greater good of the organization.

      Unfortunately, the resume screening software in wide use today seeks the perfect candidate, but makes no accommodation for anything except for the candidates that match nearly the entire shopping list. So, as the Journal article notes, positions go unfilled.

      On the other hand, the right candidate is going to be the one that comes with his/her own unique skills, talents, abilities and intelligence that may or may not meet all the specificity outlined in the job posting.

      While the job certainly has its roles and responsibilities, in addition to fulfilling those, the right candidate will also ultimately make the position distinctively his or her own, reflecting his/her unique personality, approach, and talent mix. In the long term, the team and the organization will be stronger for it.

      This paradox is compounded by businesses’ own reluctance to prepare new people fully and properly for the job. Both the Journal and New Yorker articles note that, to an increasing degree, businesses are loath to invest in training, on the assumption that the perfect candidate is ready to go full speed on Day 1.

      As Surowiecki notes, the ultimate irony of this weak economy is that “most companies worry less about getting every possible dollar of new business than they do about keeping costs down. That makes them slow to hire, which keeps unemployment high, which keeps the economy weak, which in turn makes employers more reluctant to hire,” adding that they are similarly disinclined to hire anyone who needs the least bit of training because of the attendant time and money investments.

      With unemployment stuck above eight percent for the past 41 months, employers can afford to be choosey, willing to wait to find that one special needle in the haystack of resumes and cover letters.

      While they make little accommodation for training, they also likely don’t provide chances for the new hire to gain an understanding of and appreciation for the company's culture, how things work, or anything much more than learning where the washrooms and parking lots are. “Just do your job. Oh, and by the way, do it at a salary far less than your last job.” And yet, they still get thousands upon thousands of applications.

A Changing Workplace

What does this do to the workplace? What kinds of employees begin to populate an organization like this? How do the older, more established employees – those who may consider themselves “stuck” – feel toward and about the newbies who are working for less money? Are there still time and opportunities for camaraderie, for personal moments and friendliness anymore?

      What's increasingly missing today is the notion that new people come into a company, feel their way around a bit, find their niche, and establish their own style and unique contribution to the larger whole in their own unique way. They grow into the job. They learn and understand their role, the nature and heritage of the company, how the business works, its customers, and the idiosyncrasies of their new boss. Given that opportunity, they feel encouraged to bring fresh insights to old challenges.

      Instead, we have an expectation that new hires will attain the necessary insights and understanding to do the job – through osmosis or ESP, I suppose – and do so quickly because there’s no time to waste.

      Is it an anachronism to believe that people can grow into the job? Is it wrong to support the notion that every job is unique to the person who holds it, that people can mold the job to their unique skills and style and thus contribute to the strength of the team and the advancement of the organization?