The nature and meaning of work in a contemporary organisation has undergone a weighty evolution due to the change of business owners’ standards, perspectives and employees’ fear. The fear is about the possibility of losing their job or having to do more with less. People desire for work to be a place in which they both experience and express their deep self and spirit.
There are several factors causing an increase of this emotion in the workplace. The first is massive corporate downsizing. The benefit of downsizing is that it does increase profits. Moreover, it cuts the fat and the excess while streamlining the organisation. But downsizing also has a downside. It causes pain and suffering. In addition to the pain felt by those people who have been let go, those who are still left are asked to increase production with fewer resources, in the same amount of time and for the same pay.
They feel stressed out and bone-tired. They are anxious about the security of their job and often are resentful. Most painful of all, they don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. Downsizing works in the short term, but in the long term, what’s lost is loyalty, engagement, experience, creativity and the full expression of spirit.
When you put these factors together, you’re taking the work contract, the implicit agreement that an employee would come to work for you for life, the belief in the security of employment and thy company smashes it. The message is crystal clear: “You don’t have a secure job anymore.” And that causes insecurity, it causes anxiety and it causes fear.
What would a more desired workplace mean for people? It would mean that work would move from merely being a place to get enough money to survive, to being a place of livelihood. By livelihood, I mean a place where employees both survive and are fully alive. They are alive in that their spirit fully expresses itself. Through their contribution, they allow other people’s spirits to be nourished and to flourish.
One of the primary benefits is that people are more in touch with a source of creativity. Creativity is a cornerstone of business. It allows employees to come out with new products and services that really are of service. It allows them to do more with less. In essence, creativity leads to more efficient contribution.
As we move more into a service and technological economy, we want to continually expand innovation and creativity. But you can’t demand that of people. Human capital has to be treated differently than financial capital.
Organisations have to create an atmosphere in which creativity and innovation flourish. That is accomplished through the bountiful expression of spirit, a “safe space” in which people feel permission to talk and act as their true self without fear.
— The reader is a human resource development lecturer based in Manama, Bahrain.
