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There is a curious parallel between the present situation faced by the world’s oil industry and the way many companies use their people.
The oil industry dreads ever having to pay the full costs of its drilling activities. These are mainly ignored where there are weak governments. If the industry was forced to clean up its mess around the world, the price of oil would probably rise to over $200 dollars a barrel. Suddenly we would literally be facing a true green revolution.
Similarly, the true cost of wasting human potential is conveniently avoided in so many organisations. If polluters should be made to pay, then what about human polluters, those companies whose levels of engagement of their staff are disgracefully low?
We see countless companies with such extraordinarily low levels of trust in their management that one wonders how anything really gets done at all. Too many organisations get away with treating human beings as mere “assets” rather than the heart and soul of what makes a successful enterprise.
Take the issue of meaningful work. Most of the evidence about what people want from their work is doing something worthwhile, something with meaning. Yet again numerous research findings confirm that in too many work environments the work is boring, repetitive and even degrading.
While it is true that people differ in their perception of what is dull or soul destroying, it is not hard to find organisations where people are required to undertake unrewarding and routine activity that is tolerated only through sheer economic necessity—ie the need for a job, any job.
But what would happen if for example, well being became a major metric that could, like the cost of oil pollution, no longer be pushed under the carpet? What if all companies had to justify their low levels of engagement, trust and use of people?
While the market may ultimately penalise those who waste talent, the reliability of this mechanism to produce rational solutions is now being increasingly questioned. Sometimes even markets need help in playing their role in society.
The disgraceful under use of women for instance is having to be addressed by tough legislation in countries like Norway and France.We happily talk about gross national product and few would argue that it is wrong for governments to know what this is from year to year.
Why would it be wrong to adopt a national metric for say engagement? It is perfectly possible and to some extent already exists in the regular reports from survey companies, consultancies and employers themselves.
“The Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and … the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl… Yet [it] does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play… the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages… it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert Kennedy, 1968
Attempts to move towards a local metric for well being are already happening. For example South Tyneside’s 2008 report on Local Well Being: Can we measure It, recognises “ the impact that promoting culture and well being can have on people’s lives, whether it is to improve health, help people into jobs or help them achieve their full potential.”
At the national level there are attempts to bring well being into focus, for example the Office of National Statistics Measuring Societal Wellbeing is one of the ONS’s key analysis programmes. It aims to provide a single repository of links, information and plans, to bring understanding and clarity to this subject area.
Realising that well being has a key relevance to people’s lives whether in the local government sense or within a company is an important first step in moving towards the equivalent of a polluter pays society.
There are attempts to produce more robust measures of what this well being means in practice and how to collect the metric data. The issue is not whether you can measure well being but how best to do it locally.
However as with pollution, you can probably measure it but that is not much use unless there are identified costs which are passed on to those who create them.
For talent managers well being is particularly relevant and leaving the whole complicated subject to national bodies is not really an option. However currently, a company with a low level of engagement for example may only suffer indirect costs through high attrition rates and loss of top talent.
The true cost to the bottom line may remain out of sight and out of mind, just as the true costs of oil pollution may never really surface.
When jobs are abundant and talent in all its forms can readily move around, the real costs of low levels of engagement become more obvious. But in many organisations low levels of staff engagement remains a cost they readily absorb.
Call centres for example, have notoriously accepted absurd attrition rates and when these have become excessive the entire service has been exported to far off places where talent is more constrained in how it expresses its unhappiness with the work.
The Office of National Statistics produces a fascinating chart showing well being rates across a number of intangibles such as trust and belonging, vitality, and supportive relationships. (see chart at the top of this blog). This is truly “unlocking people’s potential” territory and talent managers would do well to review its implications for their own working environment.
Despite the low levels of engagement found in many companies, across the UK as a whole country job satisfaction is higher than one might expect. For example, in 2007 more people were satisfied than dissatisfied with many aspects of their job. However this may change if unemployment rises steeply.
There has been no agreement on how best to measure wellbeing. It is multidimensional and our understanding of it is still evolving. However, longer term the aim must be to include measures such as engagement and to ensure that the true costs of adverse results are properly passed on to those causing them.
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