Yes, there are still a lot of those delusional, happy-talk types out there—and here’s a good example of what I’m talking about—but these head-in-the-sand observers are grasping at straws and overreacting to what is, at best, data that indicate a very, very slight and moderate economic uptick.
My view is formed more by what I’m reading in places like The New York Times, where a story just today said, “The nation’s fiscal outlook is even bleaker than the government forecast earlier this year because the recession turned out to be deeper than widely expected, the budget offices of the White House and Congress agreed in separate updates.”
And, it looks like I’m not alone in my pessimistic view. A new survey just released by the Workforce Institute at Kronos Inc. and conducted by Harris Interactive suggests that a lot of employees may not be feeling particularly optimistic and workplace productivity has been a casualty of the Big, Bad Recession.
Here are some of the survey highlights:
• Some 38 percent of respondents employed full or part time said there had been layoffs in the past year at their primary place of employment.
• Of those respondents who said that productivity had been negatively affected by layoffs:
—66 percent said that morale has suffered and that workers are less motivated;
—64 percent said that there is just too much work and not enough people left to do it;
—37 percent said the wrong people or departments were laid off, leaving inefficient systems and workflows; and
—36 percent said they are concerned that as the economy picks up, they won’t have the right resources to meet demand.
One surprising finding that jumped out at me: Despite the general feeling of being overworked, a majority of respondents—53 percent—said they felt the right number of people were laid off at their organization (32 percent said they felt too many were laid off, while 7 percent said not enough were let go).
“In the midst of a downturn like the one we are experiencing, the time is right for employers to re-examine existing [workforce] practices: from how work is distributed among the organization; to whether or not new hires need to be made; to what kinds of technology might enable the workforce to become more productive,” said Joyce Maroney, the director of the Workforce Institute at Kronos, in a press release about the study. “In this survey, we hear loud and clear from employees that these issues need to be addressed now, so that businesses are positioned for success when the economy kicks back into high gear.”
She makes a good point; organizations should be making changes now that will help them and their workforces rapidly recover whenever the economy starts to show some sustained improvement—even if that improvement still seems a long ways away.
But this survey also points out something else, especially from those who say that productivity has been negatively affected by so many recession-fueled layoffs: Workers everywhere are feeling disgruntled, down and maybe even depressed by all that has been going on around them. It has affected their productivity as well as their outlook on life and work, and organizations need to do something about it and do it now.
In other words, American workers have lost their mojo, as Austin Powers would say, and businesses everywhere need to be thinking about how they are going to get it back.
Not that we needed it, but here’s some more fuel for the health care debate: An Aon survey of 60 health insurers “found that, on average, insurers expect to pay out 10.5 percent more in claims costs in the next year—slightly less than the 10.6 percent increase forecast last year,” according to a story in the Indianapolis Star.
I doubt that anyone at this stage is surprised by double-digit increases in health care costs, so you also shouldn’t be surprised by this: “The Indianapolis Star last week reported that according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute, 42 percent of employers surveyed said they would increase the share of the premium their workers pay in 2010. That’s up from 38 percent last year.”
One silver lining (if you could call it that) in the Aon report is the notion that “some employers also might swallow the higher costs because workers this year already have had to contend with salary freezes, reductions and layoffs,” according to Tom Lerche, Aon Consulting’s health care practice leader. “There’s one school of thought that says, ‘Our employees have borne enough, let’s minimize or not pass any costs along to the employee,’ he said.”
This unrelenting increase in health care costs is what is driving the Obama administration’s puush for health care reform, but as you probably know, that effort seems to have run into a brick wall. Remember the health care bill that Congress was going to get before the August recess that one benefits industry publication kept predicting in spite of all evidence to the contrary? Well, given the partisan bickering that never seems to end, don’t expect any health care legislation coming up for a vote anytime soon.
But as someone who remembers the Clintons’ ill-fated attempt to change America’s health care system back in 1993, this summer’s contentious debate sounds vaguely familiar. Yes, double-digit increases in health care costs should get our attention. As a nation, we desperately need to get a handle on unsustainable increases in health care as our population ages and needs more of it, but this feels like a replay of another battle from another time when another administration in Washington bungled the issue and any chance for meaningful change.
We’re into the dog days of summer and I’m just back from vacation, so here are some interesting workforce odds and ends worth catching up on:
• Should the government mandate diversity in the boardroom? Yes, it may sound like the latest from the Obama administration, but it’s actually happening in Scandinavia, according to NPR.org. “In Norway, gender diversity in the boardroom isn’t just a nice idea, it’s the law,” the story says. “The boards of all publicly traded and public limited companies in Norway must have at least 40 percent female representation.”
The law has teeth in it too.
“Companies that fail to comply can, in theory, be shut down,” NPR notes. “So far, all are complying and none has been closed. But there is sharp disagreement in Norway over whether quotas have really changed the status quo.” And, many are skeptical that the mandate has actually had much impact. “While few in Norway want to go back to the status quo, many are questioning whether the state can really mandate corporate diversity,” the story adds.
Of course, there is a lot of back and forth in Norway from experts who think this is a good thing to those who don’t believe the mandate has had much of an impact. But here’s my view having worked in a corporate culture that made diversity a priority: Without a big push from leadership at the top, diversity in the workforce just doesn’t happen.
• Everyone knows that it’s a tough time for workers in the Big, Bad Recession, but who knew that porn workers would also be struggling? According to the Los Angeles Times, “the adult entertainment business, centered in [Southern California’s] San Fernando Valley, has weathered several recessions since it took off with the advent of home video in the 1980s. But this time the industry is not dealing with just a weakened economy. A growing abundance of free content on the Internet is undercutting consumers’ willingness to pay for porn, and with it the ability of many workers to earn a living in the business.”
The story quotes one porn actress who has seen her annual income drop from $150,000 to $50,000 annually, but as the Times notes, “the effects of the downturn have been felt most severely by the thousands of [behind-the-scenes] people who work in the adult entertainment business. Kelly Labanco doesn’t need industry estimates to know what’s happening. The makeup artist, who has worked in porn for five years, is landing half as many jobs as she did a year ago and has seen her pay drop from a high of $250 an hour to less than $100.”
I know; it’s hard to feel sorry for someone making around $100 per hour, but it just goes to show you that when it comes to the Big, Bad Recession, no industry or group of workers is immune.
• Here’s another recession-driven workforce trend: Desperate people are willing to take previously unpleasant and unacceptable jobs, according to an Associated Press story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “People who have been out of work for months are lining up for jobs at places they once considered unthinkable: slaughterhouses, sewage plants, prisons,” the story says.
“I have to just shut my mouth because I can’t do anything about it,” said Nichole McRoberts of Sedalia, Missouri, who says she pictured more for herself at age 30 than working in a poultry plant, cutting diseased or damaged flesh off chicken carcasses that speed by on an assembly line.
Here’s a managerial role no one really wants to get assigned to—Designated Punching Bag.
You know what I’m talking about: It’s the person on the management team that seems to be the one who always gets handed all the bad stuff, the really horrible assignments, or, is the bearer of bad news. This often means this person is also the one who is forced to take a disproportionate share of verbal abuse—from clients, vendors, the staff and sometimes even from other executives up to and including the CEO.
“For the past six months,” the Post story said, “Kashkari has been a face of the government’s financial rescue and a sponge for congressional anger over the program. Although he scrambled to get the rescue’s operations running, often sleeping in his office and working seven days a week, during hearings lawmakers questioned his competence. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Maryland, once called him ‘a chump.’ ”
The Post recounts the first time Kashkari was called to testify before a congressional oversight committee and how he coped with getting raked over the coals repeatedly for four hours by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, D-Ohio. Kashkari’s answer was to place “an index card on the table in front of him with the words: ‘The louder he yells at me, the calmer I will be.’ ”
As the Post story indicates, it’s not always bad to be a Designated Punching Bag. Sometimes, an organization needs someone to be the lightning rod for criticism.
Organizations will frequently designate someone with good diplomatic skills to work with angry and hard-to-deal-with clients, or with prickly vendors, or with all manner of difficult people that you just can’t ignore or get rid of. This is a role that a lot of labor mediators frequently play when a union and management are squabbling over a new contract.
But sometimes, managers become involuntary punching bags for their bosses. This can be a role they eventually accept as part of their portfolio, or, it can simply deteriorate into an abusive, one-way relationship. I’ve served in both capacities, although not by choice.
In the first case, I was the editor of a moderately sized newspaper and worked for a publisher who was fairly new to her job. She was desperate for the paper to improve and frequently got frustrated with the pace of change. When that happened, she would sometimes come into my office yelling and would proceed to ball up the newspaper and then throw it at my head before stomping off.
I know this sounds bad, but the silver lining to it was that my publisher would come back about an hour after her temper tantrum and would apologize for being out of line and reacting the way she did. Although I hated her reacting the way she did, I always respected my boss for being adult enough to come back and offer up a sincere act of contrition. To this day, I admire her for the willingness to apologize and admit her mistake.
That’s one way to be a punching bag. Another way, as I found out, is to deal with a superior who is just flat-out abusive and mean. I dealt with a guy like that at another newspaper where I was called on the carpet just about every day by a glowering thug who had no discernable skills except his ability to bust a union. He was threatened by me because I was popular with the staff and, frankly, could manage rings around him.
No one deserves to be a Designated Punching Bag, and it speaks to the incivility in our modern society that people still are forced into this role. My guess is that Neel Kashkari will be happy to get away from the Treasury Department’s bailout operations and back into a position where he gets treated with a little less abuse and a bit more respect.
There’s “no question” his job was a trial, Kashkari said of his time at the Treasury Department. “But … I also learned about myself, how to bring a team together and to get the team to perform under unbelievably trying circumstance,” he said. That’s the tough part for all managers, and the trick is to do it without being mean or abusive and hopefully, without the need for a Designated Punching Bag.
One question kept going through my mind when I heard of President Barack Obama’s decision to abruptly demand the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner as part of government efforts to prop up the company.
It’s this: When was the last time a CEO was unceremoniously canned as if he were just another floor worker?
In most cases, CEOs (and just about any resigning senior manager, for that matter) get to walk away on their own terms, in their own way. There is usually a carefully crafted statement, with a little PR spin about “leaving to pursue new challenges” or some other nonsense, and perhaps there is some laudatory BS from the board. And, of course, there’s a big payday in the form of a giant golden parachute.
“The first order of business,” the story reported, was whether or not to oust GM’s Wagoner. “It ‘wasn’t the hardest decision,’ ” according to one unnamed government official who spoke to the Journal.
Detroit News columnist Daniel Howes is even more pointed, asking: “What does it say that on the same day President Obama made nice at the White House with the nation’s leading bank CEOs—none of whom have lost their jobs despite sitting on vastly larger sums of taxpayer dough—the head of the president’s auto task force was urging Wagoner to ‘step aside?’”
These are all good questions, but I keep coming back to the abrupt way Wagoner was given his walking papers. It’s true that if you look at his track record, Wagoner should probably have been bounced long before now. He “has presided over the virtual wipeout of GM shareholders,” according to the Los Angeles Times, with the stock “down 95 percent since June 2000.”
Yes, there was clearly good reason for firing Wagoner, but did we need the very public walking of the plank?
Many people are appalled by how the Obama administration treated the former GM chief, but really, is this any different from the way most rank-and-file workers get shown the door? Yes, Wagoner is leaving with millions, but besides that, there’s not much difference between how he got dumped and how any other working stiff is let go.
I’m not a fan of handling layoffs and firings this way, but I certainly know why the drill goes like this. And that’s the one little hopeful sign I take away from how big-time CEO Rick Wagoner got the ax: Maybe we finally will start to see some leveling of the playing field in how executives and CEOs get treated compared with the rest of the workforce.
In my book, a lot more big-time executives should get terminated publicly when they fail—unceremoniously and with extreme prejudice. And while we’re at it, we should deflate the golden parachute payouts as well.
If that happened a little more often—as perhaps it should have when Phillip Schoonover was running Circuit City into the ground—we not only would get smarter people running organizations, but we’d also have CEOS who would act with lot more sensitivity and compassion when cutbacks are being contemplated for the rest of the workforce.
And although President Obama didn’t do it for Rick Wagoner, perhaps this public episode will make a CEO or two ponder how it might feel for them if the termination shoe were on the other foot.
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