Positive Changes in theWorkplace Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.
So sang the charminglyquirky dwarfs in Disney’s Snow White. In many ways theystood for the hopes of mid-century Americans: Hold down asecure job, produce your share of goods or products, dowhat the boss says, go with the program, and earn enough tosupport a comfortable lifestyle for yourself and your family. Things haven’t really changed all that much–or have they?Only a few of us are currently involved in any type of manuallabor or production. In fact, more than 80% of the workforceis in a service position according to most of the informationwe receive in our Human Resource office. In the past 100years, the tools of the trade have changed dramatically.
We’vegone from plows to assembly lines to computers as theprimary drivers of our livelihood. What about off to work wego? All indicators point to an ever-increasing rise intelecommuting, home offices, and part-time and just-in-time ortemporary workers, spurred on in large part by theincreasingly transnational nature of corporations. So this placecalled work is rapidly becoming any place at all. Changes likethis are happening in all aspects of the workplace and can beattributed too much of the stress that employees are feelingtoday. I have noticed that many employees are complainingthat the high stress of their jobs is causing employee burnoutat a very young age, but all of this change is not ascatastrophic as it may seem.
There are many positive effectsto be garnished from the inevitable changes in the workplace. This paper is going to look a four of these positive resultsfrom change. 1. Changes allow for freedom on new ideas.
2. Changes meet the Generation X’s needs for a constantvariation in the workplace. 3. Employees work better with alittle stress (Fight or Flight). 4.
Done right, involvingemployees in change can create a feeling of ownership. Changes allow for freedom on new ideas. Without changes inthe workplace you are stifled with the age old traditions. Ifemployees are seeing new ideas tried out regularly, they will inturn, try to provide new ideas in the workplace. A topexecutive, interviewed for the book The Leadership Challengestates that If organizations & societies are to make progress,then, leaders must be able to detect when routines arebecoming dysfunctional. They must be able to see whenroutines are smothering creative planning and blockingnecessary advancements.
(Kouzes, Posner 47) This was amajor problem when I was working for the newspaper. Wehad some long time employees, many who dated back to thehand set press days. These employees were very resistant tosome of the methods we needed to change to make uscompetitive in the marketplace. Many of the old routines thatwere established eons ago were still in effect because it wasthe newspaper way with unnecessary deadlines and extraprint runs. Those ways needed to change to bring in the newtechnology needed to run a competitive newspaper in today’ssociety. We needed to look at the demands of the advertiserand reporter which was our ability to react at a momentsnotice without unnecessary delays.
Once we were able tobreak the old traditions, the new technology became acceptedand the old seemed cumbersome and tiresome. Some changeis inevitable, a totally stable company can cause you tobecome stagnant in you working environment. You never get achance to shine with your ideas. The only direction up in atraditionally stable company can be a pre-determined routethat you will need everybody’s consent to take.
If thecompany had been totally stable, I might have stayed a vicepresident or who knows what. I just wouldn’t have had theopportunities that I had states one top executive interviewedin the book Smash the Pyramid (Doyle, Perking 234). Everyone wants to protect his/her status in the company andchange can challenge this on a regular basis. But, JamesKouzes, author of The Leadership Challenge recommends thatif leaders do not challenge the process any system willunconsciously conspire to maintain the status quo and preventchange. This change may be the one thing that stagnates thecompany and will eventually cause the company to looseground in this world. Embrace change and it will become apositive force for you in your travels to the top of your field.
You’ve heard that every problem is an opportunity, and astough times begin to close in, you can probably spot severalways to do something good for your company. So, let thetough times roll? and the new ideas will follow. Changesmeet the Generation X’s needs for a constant variation. Wehave a new type of work force developing in the horizon. Theschools are experiencing trying to teach these futureemployees now. These youth are going to require a differentworkplace than what our parents had.
They will not be able tosit and perform the same task over and over for eight hours aday because since birth, they have been constantly stimulatedwith all of the high technical devices available in the modernday world. These people have been stimulated with everythingfrom dolls that read to you to Nintendo games that give youvirtual reality. The teachers of today are now learning how totrain these future employees and we are going to have tochange our workplace to meet their needs. Students, however,conditioned by years of television, interactive video gamesand computers, are looking for something other than continualdiscourse from the teacher. They want to manipulate thejoysticks, move the mice, and be on-line with theireducational process.
In other words, they want to be activeparticipants, not passive observers, in their learning. Thesituation has prompted a call to action by the United StatesSecretary of Education, R. Riley: We cannot sit still rootedto the chalk board and pencil at a time when a 12-year-old canliterally touch his or her mouse pad and travel from web site toweb site around the world (Riley, 1998) Generation X’erstake longer to make job choices. They look upon a job astemporary instead of as a career, partly because they want tokeep their options open. They are always looking to jump shipwhen they can upgrade their situation. They will often leave ajob at the hint of a better position(Losyk 29-44).
States BobLosyk in his analysis of this new generation. He makes a pointof noting that this generation does not expect the loyaltiesfrom the companies, with their downsizing, and in turn are notnear as loyal to their place of employment. To attract theseemployees and provide a beneficial work place environmentfor them many companies are changing their workplacestrategies. Where once you were encouraged to bring youchildren on a specific day to see where you work, then theycame up with the idea of workplace child-care, now theemployees are being allowed to bring their pets with them towork. These new Generation X’ers are going to change theface of the workplace creating an environment of excitementand innovation.
As long as our economy continues to improvethis generation will provide us with many new looks to the oldstandby workplace. People work better with a little stress(Fight or Flight) When humans first appeared on this world,they needed a little stress to survive, to kill the mastodons andlive for another season. We really have not changed all thatmuch. Today’s workplace requires us to give our best as oftenas possible. James Kouzes feels that Opportunities tochallenge the status quo and introduce change opens thedoors to doing one’s best.
Challenge is the motivationenvironment for excellence (Kouzes, Posner 39). The onlyexception that needs to be brought out by that is that we needto give people a change to get used to the changes before weintroduce more. The major reason for stress is when you donot allow for the adjustment period in-between major changes. Stress has gotten a bad name. Stress of all kinds is good—– physical, emotional and mental. It’s strengthening.
Whattroubles us is the absence of recovery strategies need tobalance the stress. by James Loehr, sports psychologist (asquoted in Fortune, 11/28/95) Many times when people feelthreatened by change they may be willing to take on morerisks to improve their status within the company. GeoffreyColvin, author for Fortune magazine says One great thingabout difficult times is that they make our hard-wiring work inour favor. People really do feel threatened.
That makes this agood time to launch gambles you believe in. It also means thatothers in the organization, feeling threatened, are more likely tothink up risky, innovative moves that could be worthwhile, soit’s important to make sure you find out about them. Andremember that those above you also feel threatened, so nowcould be an excellent time to propose that crazy idea you justknow would succeed. Your audience is receptive. (Colvin243) If you have built trust in your ideas you can create apositive situation for both you and your boss with thesuccessful ideas you may develop. We must be careful not tobombard our employees with the catch phrases of the day.
Many top managers are looking for a cure. They areembracing the latest concepts to improve their productivity. These concepts are in abundance in today’s society. Itappears that anyone can come up with an idea that will workfor someone. You can have everything from Total QualityManagement (TQM) to Work Focus Groups (WFG) to Justin Time (JIT) processing. In the article TQM reducesproblems and stress by James Montague you are given thetheory behind TQM.
Simply put, TQM is focused onunderstanding customer requirements and meeting their needsevery time. (Montague 16) Like that is a reality. It may besomething to strive for, but the reality is that you are not goingto be able to do this all of the time. The problem with these isnot with the concepts, because many of them are basically thesame but with the adoption of too many of these processes inthe workplace. Employees who have gone through many ofthese processes just look at the new one and assume that theycan talk the talk and then go back to the way things were. Thecompany I work for, Appleton, has joined in a joint venturewith another company.
This company has placed most oftheir managers in the upper management positions of the newjoint venture. They are trying to instill their way ofmanagement in the new company. This has created a feeling ofchaos in our local plant. When the employees have a feeling ofunrest, they will be more accepting of the new ideas that thisjoint venture has fostered. It will be an effective way ofdeveloping acceptance with little or no resistance to the newways. Changes in the workplace can bring out the best in theemployee if it is introduced correctly and with the properfocus.
Involving employees in change can create a feeling ofownership. If the employees are involved in the changes andare made aware of the need for these changes they will bemore likely to accept these changes. The companies are goingto have to set out company goals and organize people aroundthose goals. They will have to have a team for every businessprocess. Formal, narrow jobs will have to be replaced byfluid, versatile, flexible roles on a team declares Marc J. Wallace Jr.
, cofounder and partner of the Center forWorkforce Effectiveness. Most companies are developing thisform of team work as a vast array of information just waitingto be tapped. These new and innovative work environmentsare allowing employees to become more flexible in their workenvironment. This allows employees to take control over thetotal outcome of the product they are producing. KenanJarboe and Joel Yudken, authors of an article, Time to GetSerious About Workplace Change, from Science andTechnology magazine, feel that a high-performance worksystem will seek to enhance organizational performance bycombining innovative work and management practices withreorganized work flows, advanced information systems, andnew technologies.
Most important, it builds on and developsthe skills and abilities of frontline workers to achieve gains inspeed, flexibility, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Keeping top performers happy can be a full-time job, but inthis economy with 1-2% unemployment rate, it’s worth theeffort. Just ask Walter Noot, who is head of production forViewpoint DataLabs International, a company in Salt LakeCity that makes 3-D models and textures for film productionhouses, video game companies, and car manufacturers. Hecompares the modelers and digitizers on his team to sportsstars: high performers who sulk if they suspect they’re gettingless than they deserve. Noot decided to do something radical. Now no one in his group gets a salary.
They’re still full-timeViewpoint employees, with benefits, but they’re paid as if theywere contract workers. Every project’s team splits 26% of themoney Viewpoint expects to receive from a client. Almostovernight salaries have jumped 60% to 70%. But productivityhas almost doubled. Where the group used to have set hours,they now work when they please. One fellow works 24-36-hour marathons, keeping a pillow and blanket under his deskfor catnaps.
Some people work only at night. Whatever. Now life is bliss,: says Noot. It has totally changed attitudes,I never hear complaints.
(Munk 62-6+-) Noot has learned, asother managers are learning, we need to give the employeescontrol over their destiny and then the changes that go intoeffect will come from them and they will accept them and evensometimes embrace them. Bibliography Works Sited Doyle, Willima and Perkins, Willima Smash thePyramid Warner Books 1994 Colvin, Geoffrey. Let the toughtimes roll!. Fortune.
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; Yudken, Joel Time to get seriousabout workplace change. Science and Technology. , v. 13(Summer ’97) p. 65-7 Kouzes, James M.
and Posner, Barry Z. The Leadership Challenge Jossey-Bass Publishers 1987Losyk, Bob Generation X: what they think and what they planto do. , The Futurist, V. 31 Mar.
/Apr. ’97 p. 29-44 Montague,James TQM reduces problems and stress. Business Credit. ,v. 97 (Feb.
’95) p. 16 Munk, Nina The new organization man. ,Fortune. v.
137 Mr. 16 ’98 p. 62-6+ Riley, R. , (1998, March). Education first: Building America’s future.
Vital Speeches ofthe Day, 64 (11), 322-327. Verespej, Michael A. The oldworkforce won’t work: technology isn’t the only thing tochange. Industry Week, v. 247 no17 (Sept. 21 ’98) p.
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