However I digress.
The results of this massive attempt to improve the bottom line by means of improved productivity has had a number of positive and negative effects.
Among the positive effects have been increasing company profits and hence dividends to shareholders or in the case of the public services that do remain, a lowering of the overall costs in the expanded services. Indeed in the Australian Commonwealth Public Service, agencies have for years had to endure an annual saving of 1% of their operational costs by improving productivity. In 2005 this will go up to 1.25%.
The reality for managers on the ground is that the Government expects the agencies and departments to undertake new business each year which is added to their existing work loads and sometimes actually gives them money for the additional services they are required to provide. They also take back 1 to now 1.25% of the total allocation, in the expectation that these organisations will be able to continually improve their productivity and so off set the imposed burden.
To some extent the governments have been wise to go down this track. It has meant that the use of technology to automate what were essentially expensive manual processes has taken place. It has enabled the wholesale removal of one of the more expensive items in the budget, for example, people, from remaining on staff. It has also increased the stress levels on the staff who remain. This outcome is a direct result of the 'doing more with less' philosophy and the introduction of technology.
Prior to the introduction of electronic messaging, for example, a letter could take about a week to produce and to send to another organisation or part of the same organisation. This was not inefficiency, but merely the technology available at the time. Someone had to hand write the letter, then it had to be sent to a typing pool, then it had to be returned for vetting and if any errors were found returned to the pool for correction and then the mail took at least a day or so to get from one part of the organisation to another and if the Postmaster General (now Australia Post) was used it took longer to get messages to other parts of Australia much less other parts of the world.
Today with email, a message can be composed as quickly as the author can type it and be in the recipient's hands within minutes of its completion. There is then the expectation that a return message will wing its way back to the original sender within a similar time frame. The volume of such interactions and the speed with which they take place can improve productivity but it also places greater stress on the individuals involved.
The stress for staff within organisations has been demonstrated in a variety of studies, it is also exemplified in recent revelations that Australians are working harder than many of their counterparts in other parts of the world some working 70 - 80 hours a week.
Combine this known stress with the fact that while wages are going up prices are outstripping the wage growth, a taxation system that leaves Australians as one of the highest taxed people in the world and a consequent need to have both of the adult members of a nuclear family working just to be able to pay the bills. Housing is said to be less and less affordable for many people, personal indebtedness has increased alarmingly enough for the Governor of the Reserve Bank to alert the government to its possible consequences and research on the levels of illness as reported to Comcare and other agencies is on the rise.
If we can accept that there are three main stressors in life, workplace stress, occupational stress and personal stress, then we see that we have been creating a society in which all three levels of such stressors have been increasing over time.
Studies in the 1970s and 1980s focused on the stress that was being experienced by personnel involved in emergency response areas, firemen, ambulance officers, policemen and so on. These studies also indicated what might have to be done to assist these people to remain in the work place and to continue to function in an adequate way. As the stress levels in the work places other than those being occupied by emergency workers have increased, I wonder if the findings of those earlier studies would now apply to other workers whose stress levels have increased to levels that are similar to what those workers were experiencing?
The level of attributed bullying in work places has, I would suggest a direct correlation with the increasing levels of stress that have become common place in many work areas and also with the lack of funding and time which is available to provide staff with the necessary training and/or supervision that they require so that they can perform their tasks at a competent and less stressed level.
As early as 1998, Rowe Trapp, writing in "The Independent", discussed bullying in the work place. He mentioned research in the USA that showed that lesser actions than shouting , threats and/or physical abuse can prove to be quite devastating and costly to the enterprise. A University of North Carolina study for example, described the following behaviours:
- accusations of lack of knowledge
- undermining credibility in front of others
- demeaning notes
- 53% of staff lost time at work worrying about the incident;
- 43% contemplated changing jobs (with 12% actually doing so);
- 37% believed that their commitment to the organisation had declined as a result of the incident;
- 28% lost time at work avoiding the instigator;
- 23% reduced their work effort;
- 10% reduced the amount of time that they spent at work
If we look to some alternate explanation then we are likely to find it in the increasingly stressful work place and the expectations that are placed on people especially through unrealistic performance appraisal contracts. Unrealistic because there are many employees who come to their new positions unprepared by either training or experience or learning on the job and so are unable to perform to the levels which have been set. Their situation is of course not improved by the fact that the requirements for ever increasing productivity gains mean that there is neither the time nor the resources available to enable them to acquire and practise the skills that they require nor is there time for adequate mentoring and/or supervision. In combination with financial and other stresses at home the situation where what appears to be bullying happens. This may, on further examination and exploration of the circumstances turn out to be nothing more than an inappropriate response to the high levels of stressors present in the work environment.
Professor Christine Pearson has suggested that there are five key response that can be used in such cases:
- clarify expectations in regard to interpersonal dealings and establish explicit codes of conduct;
- watch closely for patterns of inappropriate behaviour;
- document deviant incidents and take account of inappropriate behaviour in evaluations;
- deny instigators further influence over people;
- mandate counselling if deemed necessary.
It would be my view that until there is greater recognition that the overall stressors in and outside the workplace have risen to such an extent that it is likely that previously well balanced and moderate individuals can fall victim to the stress and experience behaviours that are less than desirable as coping mechanisms. Inappropriate coping mechanisms of course.
Once we recognise the underlying cause and factor in the overall cost of dealing with such consequences of stress, I believe that simple "protection of the bottom line" will force senior managements in organisations to seek ways of reducing the stressors for their employees.
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