The Walking Indifferent
A recent graduate of our program, Sue S., sent me this article about the need for better bottom-up management practices. A couple of quotes:
"Almost half of all workers say the companies they work for fail to deal effectively with problem workers. They leave them on the payroll infecting others and destroying enthusiasm and morale."
The biggest problems corporations have are with what they identified as the "walking indifferent": "They are silent killers. They have learned to expect not too much and to give not too much. Yet, these workers are normal people with reasonable human wants. Somehow, their human needs are only marginally satisfied, if at all, by the companies for which they work. In return, they give to the companies a mere fraction of what they are capable of contributing. The economic cost of this underutilization to the affected businesses is enormous."
As we enter into another holiday shopping season in which many of us will spend far too much time in stores waiting in line (realizing the entire time that we must really love those we are buying the gifts for in order to suffer thru this), the above article gives us an opportunity to reflect on the leadership that is in place (or seemingly not) in the service industry:
1) Are companies doing all they can to properly train employees not only on the "nuts and bolts" of their job, yet also train them about the mission and values of the company? If not, should we really be blaming these employees for their lack of care or should we be blaming the leadership team?
2) What does it say about the leadership of the company if unproductive employees are left doing a mediocre job and no one bothers to deal with the problem? Is it really about lazy employees or lazy leadership?
"Almost half of all workers say the companies they work for fail to deal effectively with problem workers. They leave them on the payroll infecting others and destroying enthusiasm and morale."
The biggest problems corporations have are with what they identified as the "walking indifferent": "They are silent killers. They have learned to expect not too much and to give not too much. Yet, these workers are normal people with reasonable human wants. Somehow, their human needs are only marginally satisfied, if at all, by the companies for which they work. In return, they give to the companies a mere fraction of what they are capable of contributing. The economic cost of this underutilization to the affected businesses is enormous."
As we enter into another holiday shopping season in which many of us will spend far too much time in stores waiting in line (realizing the entire time that we must really love those we are buying the gifts for in order to suffer thru this), the above article gives us an opportunity to reflect on the leadership that is in place (or seemingly not) in the service industry:
1) Are companies doing all they can to properly train employees not only on the "nuts and bolts" of their job, yet also train them about the mission and values of the company? If not, should we really be blaming these employees for their lack of care or should we be blaming the leadership team?
2) What does it say about the leadership of the company if unproductive employees are left doing a mediocre job and no one bothers to deal with the problem? Is it really about lazy employees or lazy leadership?
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