Fighting for the cause: companies can no longer ignore activists such as the Occupy movement

People

The rapidly increasing diversity of society has filtered through to the workplace and to how businesses relate to the public, writes Sarah Neville

For generations, work – for all but a privileged elite – meant a form of servitude. Employees were supplicants without rights or protection – Bob Cratchits reliant on the goodwill of their bosses to secure a day off or a pay rise. But over the past century a revolution has taken place in the control people have over their working lives.

In the west, jobs have become part of an assumed right to self-actualisation. By this creed, a job is part of who we are and we are entitled not simply to a salary but also to satisfaction.

The notion is that employees, cosseted by incentive schemes and tax-deductible gym memberships, will be more likely to stay, and employers will have a better chance of making a return on investment in staff development.

In theory, such benign and respectful regimes also feed and breed employee creativity. But in practice it is harder to hit upon the precise recipe.

As the culture of deference evaporated after the second world war, the open-plan office became a pervasive feature of working life. It sent a fashionably democratising message. But privacy and confidentiality – valuable not only for doing business but also for managing a workforce – suffered.

The open-plan concept has also spawned “hot desking”, in which workers are denied their own space, often in the name of increasing efficiency and teamwork. Many employees, however, feel alienated and infantilised by being forbidden even to customise a work station with family pictures and pot plants.

The variety of people sitting behind those desks, however, is likely to be far greater than it was half a century ago. A more diverse workplace has been one of the most striking advances since the 1960s.

In reality, however, discrimination continues, often the more insidious for being covert or even unconscious. Managers’ tendency to appoint others in their image means many professions lack a large percentage of upper-echelon staff who are female, from ethnic minorities, gay or lesbian.

Pensions and other benefits have revolutionised our sense of our careers, offering security undreamt of by previous generations. In middle age, fear of sacrificing future pension rights can deter employees from jumping ship, aiding the retention of institutional knowledge.

But, as in so much else, the financial downturn has blurred the picture. The economic crisis has also altered the role played by environmentalism in business thinking.

It first took root in the public consciousness in the 1970s and by the turn of this century, many large enterprises felt they had to adapt products or processes to fit the new sensibility. During a recession, however, most households find it difficult to justify paying the higher retail prices of green products and worries about the environment have slipped down the hierarchy of concerns.

However, those who do care about the environment tend to do so passionately – as many companies have discovered to their cost. Most companies now grasp the importance of dealing with non-governmental organisations – in the battle for public trust the NGOs are likely to win out every time.

And ensuring you are seen to be in tune with your customers’ concerns and value systems is, after all, the oldest and most potent business idea of all.