Making Work Worthy

The COVID-19 pandemic has a lot of people thinking about their jobs, and work in general, in ways we never thought possible.

In my forthcoming book, Being Worthy, there’s a segment in which I talk about worthiness and work. This is a bit of what I was thinking when I wrote that chapter.

Way back in 1975, when I was a 23- year old graduate student at Columbia University, I took a course with Donald Super who was an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist.  He was into the nature of work and its impact on career development.

Of course, students would have to buy the professor’s textbook (In academia, it’s published or persist) and Super had one entitled The Psychology of Careers, written 64 years ago.

I took it off my bookshelf recently and did some eye-rolls regarding its language and theory of how a man advances through his life through work.

But one of Super’s questions that he would ask in the musty, venerable Dodge Hall classroom is relevant today.

“WHY DO PEOPLE WORK?”

You might come up with the “duh” answers such as making money, putting food on the table, being with co-workers, or seeking advancement in a career.

All true and valid responses.

But Super also asked the contrapositive question

“MUST EVERYONE WORK?”

The professor was having us think in terms of people with disabilities/physical/emotional challenges in which the workforce and/or environmental barriers would not make working feasible and the societal backlash.

Fast forward 46 years to now, people are not racing back to their jobs so quickly for many reasons across the political spectrum. Face mask/vaccine mandates are one reason while not wanting to deal with the rudeness and hostility of under-socialized customers is another.

You might be hearing terms like “The Great Resignation” and the Reddit forum /antiwork. People are reassessing their priorities, values, and personal choices regarding working in unimaginable ways compared to 2018.

In a recent New York Times article, Farhad Manjoo challenged us to think about our work. Even with a dream job, you can be antiwork.

Manjoo wrote:

“The pandemic has shown that we are way too obsessed with our jobs…. America’s relentless hustle culture has turned our jobs into prisons for our minds and souls.  It’s time to break free.”

I don’t think this is just in the case of “take this job and shove it,” but maybe a continental plate shift of how work fits in our lives. I have seen my share of absolutely miserable people working 70-80 hours a week for tons of money living in their own Awful-land of soul-destroying jobs.

So, are you thinking, “WHY DO I WORK?”

It would seem that so much of our self-worth is tied to what we do for a living. You get a knowing-nod of the head when you state your role in the work world. You get a disapproving “oh” if you say you are not employed, engaged, or worse, “taking my time to figure out my next move.”

If we were to apply a social paradigm change using the concept of worthiness, where the basic dignity of a worker is upheld, I think businesses can be more profitable and far more dignified. If we rework it towards 21st-century humanistic neo-capitalism, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Here’s how it can be done:

1.  Make workers feel genuinely worth to their organization. Many companies state in their HR onboarding that their company is a great place to work. But is it really? If managers don’t get the memo to treat their team with respect, people will pick up and leave. The value of respect is top-down throughout an organization. You better actively listen. Make sure their well-being is supported and that they matter.

2.  Don’t burn out workers!  If workers are not considered worthy to the organization and pushed beyond their limits, they become physically and mentally ill. They will leave through absenteeism, workman’s compensation, short-term disability, or resignation.  Work needs to be structured and allocated to manageable levels. Health care workers,     drivers, and educators are leaving in droves despite adequate compensation. Who can spend money if they’re too tired to do so? If surveys are given to employees asking them how to make their jobs better with no actionable change, expect them to be resentful and turn into toxic liabilities. Hire enough people to do the job. Also, consider four-day workweeks. A sustainable state and federal minimum wage is necessary as worthy public policy.

3.  Worthy warriors deserve a sustainable living wage. We have been getting away with suppressed wages in the service of fear of inflation and maximizing profit. It’s time to pay people better as, according to Forbes, 37% of people who resign, leave for more money. But it’s not all about the money. Childcare services are very expensive as well as the cost of commuting. Large corporations can establish more daycare centers near the workplace.

4.  Give worthy workers the flexibility of working at home. This saves on commuting costs and gives people 15-20 hours a week for whatever their needs dictate. It also lowers stress. There are savings in commercial real estate that can be used for these purposes.

5.  Flatten out the organizational structure to give worthy workers the ability to do their best work. There’s an appropriate balance between accountability and autonomy. The theory of micromanagement has pretty much been disproven in trying to increase productivity. Worthy Warriors want to belong to organizations that define the goals, objectives, and tasks needed to produce excellent goods, services, or outcomes. Tell them what you want within a reasonable time frame and these folks will exceed expectations more often than not.

6.  Make worthy Warriors feel safe in their jobs. Increasingly, people have been abused by the general public. It’s time to enforce the idea of “be nice or leave.” This also needs to be done internally where abusive language and attitudes are not tolerated. Discrimination is intolerable as is sexism and non-inclusivity. Diverse worker populations create mosaics of creative ideas and dynamic processes.

7.  Ensure a Worthy Worker’s health. This means sufficient health benefits to include wellness, fitness, mental health care, dental, and vision. Ideally, there should be a single payor system and a Medicare expansion. But this federal initiative will not occur any time soon. Healthcare should be a basic right and ideally not the responsibility of an organization.

That brings us back to the original question, “Why do we work?”

Why, indeed?

I hope that you will think about your job and work differently, keeping in mind both your worth as well as our collective worth as a community.  It will take a very mindful and large paradigm shift to improve working. Ultimately, we and the economy will profit.

It is apparent that this change has already begun.