Affirming Employees: Moving to Us from Them
The bad news is that the problems created by human beings' ability to divide the world into we and they are worsened by their deep-seated inclination to behave in ways that boost the status of we at the expense of they.[17] The good news is that organizational arrangements do not have to enable these misbehaviors. Organizations create antidotes to bosses' we-boosting inclinations when they introduce unambiguously consistent policies and procedures that express their commitment to affirming the whole employee—as a contributor to the firm's operations, as a worker who is part of the community's job market, as a member of groups outside of the firm that make legitimate demands (e.g., families, religious institutions, and civic associations), and as an individual with physical and psychological needs. These affirming arrangements frame the perspectives of both bosses and subordinates by sending genuine messages of inclusion saying that the organization regards all of its employees as part of we. As a result, employees are invited to identify with the organization and bosses are inhibited from treating them as they.
Affirm Employees as Contributors
A new tool for organizational problem solving, whole system intervention, is also a powerful means of affirming employees as contributors. What distinguishes this approach from more traditional efforts is who gets invited to problem-solving discussions. Instead of having small, eight- or 10-person task forces secreted in some organizational cranny and concocting solutions, whole system interventions have scores of employees, from various levels and functions, as well as customers and vendors involved in analysis and action planning.[18]
In 1993, for example, Ford brought together 2,400 geographically related employees to plan the opening of a Mustang plant. And, when Boeing worked on developing the 777, meetings conducted under CEO Phil Condit's guidance included as many as 5,000 people.[19] Using some extraordinary logistical expertise, whole system interventions increase the opportunity for having the right information and ideas at the right place at the right time. They also make the transfer of agreed-upon actions back into the workplace easier because personnel involved in making the transition were also involved in developing what needs to be transferred. But, more than anything else, whole system intervention problem-solving procedures build connecting bonds of we by affirming the value of employees as contributors.
Affirm Employees as Workers
When employees believe that their employing organizations' loyalties to them depend largely on how those organizations' answer the question, “What did you do for us today,” their boundaries of we shrink until only “I” and self-serving behavior remain. The remedy is organizational effort communicating that every employee's tomorrow is on this organization's list of today's responsibilities. This does not mean that organizations are obliged to commit financial suicide by guaranteeing employment. The alternative to choosing between selfishly instrumental organizational decisions and guaranteed employment requires affirming employees as workers who have vocational lives that go beyond their immediate employment. One way to do that is by introducing efforts that result in employees' enhanced employability.
One example of these efforts is an AT&T project called Resource Link.[20] In one case, an “internal contingent workforce” staffed by displaced managers and professionals was temporarily “linked” (from three months to a year) to projects across the company. Reports indicate that Resource Link provided AT&T with greater staffing flexibility and employees with both stability and development.
A redeployment procedure used by Intel is another example of an effort at enhancing employability. This procedure has reportedly helped the firm diminish layoffs by successfully relocating between 80% and 90% of Intel employees who needed to find new jobs because their old ones disappeared. Intel employee development centers support redeployment by providing workers with opportunities for assessment, guidance, training, and Intel job listings. If all these opportunities fail to produce an internal placement, then outplacement assistance is also available.[21]
Other companies affirm employees as workers by providing them with college support, funded apprenticeships, and vouchers to use for retraining. Trustmark Insurance, for example, a Lake Forest, Illinois, company, recruited employees who volunteered to be trained as computer programmers. Trustmark then not only paid for the employees' college-level classes, but also provided them with mentors to help with material being presented in the classes. BGS Systems Inc., in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Hewlett-Packard also reportedly provide courses for software engineers who want to upgrade their skills.[22] These practices all reach for low-hanging fruit. They are nothing new but, shamefully, neither are they common practice.
In 1997, several companies (AT&T, DuPont, GTE, Johnson & Johnson, Lucent, TRW Unisys, and UPS) joined Talent Alliance, a system on the Web that provides employees with opportunities for vocational assessment, information regarding training at company expense, and job postings in the member companies.[23] Through their involvement in Talent Alliance these companies were sending a message: We accept our responsibility to work with employees to help them enhance their employability. The message says that although unwelcome decisions may have to be made, instrumentalism is out: Employees are part we; they are not commodities to be used and then uncaringly discarded because of an organization's immediate needs.
Affirm Employees as Members of Outside Groups
Events that began in a small clothing store, located in an Ohio shopping center, show how senior management's regard for employees' outside obligations can boost business success while becoming a powerful antidote to we-boosting. In only two decades, that small Ohio-based store grew into the Limited, Inc., a firm that included Express, Structure, Victoria's Secret, and Abercrombie & Fitch. But fortunes change and, by 1993, with Limited's growth stalling badly, its founder, Leslie Wexner, worked to restore its success by reconfiguring the organization's policies, procedures, and his own approach to management. His efforts were rewarded: Limited's growth resumed and its stock traded at peak values.
Leslie Wexner explained his success: In the reconfigured organization, “the nine retail brands are encouraged to work together, sharing information and holding monthly meetings of divisional heads who had been fierce sibling-rivals under the old structure.” In addition, he confessed that his managerial style shifted to one that is broadly concerned about the workplace from one that was more narrowly concerned only about work: “When I talked with Calloway (that's Wayne Calloway, former CEO of PepsiCo, Inc.), I asked how he spent his time. And he said that he probably spent…40% or 50% of his time on people. To me it was startling. I like people, but I'm busy picking sweaters, visiting stores, doing things. How do you find that much time?”
Leslie Wexner found the time. Now, when he considers people for positions, he looks for three things: First, do they know their jobs? Second, are they whole people? (Do they have balanced lives? Do they care about community?) And, in Wexner's words, the third attribute that he assesses in selecting among job candidates is a person's “true sense of responsibility for the people that they are working with. That they not only say it, but they demonstrate that they really care about the people that they work with. You can't fake that.”[24]
If these selection criteria are employed, and if they are one part of a company's consistent effort to affirm the whole employee, then they are capable of nourishing the growth of an anti-we-boosting culture by putting bosses on notice that they are not free to disregard legitimate outside obligations that employees bring into the workplace.
Affirm Employees as Individuals With Physical and Psychological Needs
Scientific evidence proves conclusively that a work area's aromas, temperature, noise levels, and air quality affect employees' feelings and behaviors.[25] When these environmental conditions are agreeable, conflicts are less frequent and positive performance appraisals are more frequent.
But simple bodily sensations are not the sole reason that these desirable work outcomes arise from favorable environmental conditions. Employees know that environmental improvements are the product of organizational decision making. It is easy to understand that employees decipher one message when they believe that their employing organization cares enough about their physical well being to provide them with pleasant aromas and sound levels, but an entirely different one when they believe that they (their employers) don't care if we work amidst noxious smells and sounds.
Deliberate efforts to improve employees' physical well being widen the boundaries of we. They say, We're in this together. If it's not good for any one of us, then it's not good for any of us. These efforts convey anti-we-boosting messages. In contrast, organizations' clear disregard of their workforces' physical experiences narrow the boundaries of we, inviting we-boosting by encouraging bosses to forget about them!
Organization attention to employees' psychological needs can have the same anti-we-boosting effects as attention to their physical needs. Offering employees free time to replenish personal batteries after a grueling patch of work provides them with opportunity for gaining mental health benefits while simultaneously sending them an anti-we-boosting message. Levi Strauss & Company can be applauded for providing employees replenishment opportunity and supporting its use. They have a Time Off with Pay Program (TOPP) that encourages employees to take time off for personal reasons. Jeff Friant, a Levi Strauss manager for staffing, explained why the time off program succeeds in this company while it so frequently fails in others: “People who thoughtfully utilize TOPP time are seen as working for balance in their professional and personal lives. People are admired for that.”[26]
Of course, free time is only one way for firms to show their concern for employees' psychological needs. By providing employees with various, genuine demonstrations of caring—counselors of any sort, time off for personal reasons, or opportunities for creative expression and self-reflection—companies benefit because they are sending their workforces anti-we-boosting messages. No elites here is what is says. No members of this organization are free to treat any other members as if their needs are not our concern.
Although sending employees inclusive, affirming messages does not guarantee firms' financial success, users can safely expect that, if their efforts are genuine and consistent, they will enjoy greater employee commitment and initiative because the psychological golden rule of organizations will be guiding their workforces' behaviors.
An even stronger guarantee can be made to organizations whose bosses send employees disaffirming messages. There is no guesswork here. Scientific evidence and common sense prove that these companies might just as well hang a sign over their entryways reading:
WE INVITE ALIENATED WORKERS, NEGATIVE PUBLIC OPINION, AND POLITICAL INTERVENTION
because that is precisely what they are going to get.
The mass media loves a target, and bosses' constant stream of disaffirming messages to employees have given them a big, fat bull's eye. If the mass media's audiences were unwilling to accept the idea that businesspeople are uncaring about their employees or society, then it would be forced to find other villains. Unfortunately for business, the idea is credible to audiences. By constructing we/they barriers in their organizations, bosses have built a cadre of employees who enroll their families, friends, and political representatives in a protest organized around disillusionment with the business community. Their placards read: They do what's good for them.
But third-party responses to employees' pleas cannot rectify the real harm created by bosses' messages of exclusion. Restrictive legislation, tax incentives for responsible behavior, and tax disincentives for irresponsible behavior amount to coercion and bribery. If successful, they will compel the desired boss behavior without remedying deficiencies in organizational identification, because employees will easily recognize that their bosses' behaviors are attributable to external constraint, not genuine intent; They are being forced to include us; therefore, why should we choose to include them?
Employee commitment cannot be legislated any more than it can be bought. The framing is wrong. No one will interpret coerced or instrumental managerial efforts as messages of inclusion. These efforts will not erect bonds of we between employees and their employers. And, if no one is watching, they will never cause employees who are leaving their company's premises late at night to make even small detours in order to help by turning out the lights.