How To Fix Our Society
Questions:
How can managers support employees who do a disproportionate amount of emotional labor? Learn the signs of burnout and step in when an employee is struggling.
What can we do so that coworkers understand and appreciate the demands of customer service and emotional labor? Cross training and spreading the burden - many hands make light work is an old adage that seems appropriate - we’re expecting the least paid people of our society to handle the hardest jobs
Pay for customer-facing jobs tends to be low. How else can we compensate employees for their emotional labor? Give the most basic human needs our undivded attention.
Let me pose a question to you. What makes the most sense when building a house? Is it a strong roof structure? Is it strong plumbing connections? Is it a sturdy electrical system? Or is it a solid foundation? Hmmmm, hard question. All those things go toward the goal of having a strong and stable home and without one of them or one system that is lacking, the whole structure is put in jeopardy. However, if the foundation is not strong, then the rest of the systems will not have a place to function. And if it starts to lose some of its parts, then the system is weakened and cracks may begin to show throughout the house. The roof may start leaking and the walls may start separating. Water gets to the electrical system and wreaks havoc. Now the plumbing separates and you have one hell of a mess. Jokes aside, this hypothetical house needs attention. Let’s start at the foundation and try to work our way up to the roof. In this scenario, the front line workers will be the foundation. The supervisors will be the plumbing. Management will take the role of the electrical system and the top tier leadership take the roof. For this article, we’ll focus on the foundation, the front facing customer service jobs.
The foundation of any business depends on its customer facing employees. It doesn’t matter the service, you can put any name in place of customer. For example, taxpayer, client, community member, human or whatever noun you can think of. It doesn’t matter if it’s internal or external service related jobs. I think that our entire society owes itself to the front line/customer facing employees. If not for the customer/taxpayer, then no one at the organization would have a job. However, it is very easy to forget the struggle when you move up the ranks within the system unless you make the effort to put yourself back in the ‘trenches’ so to speak. That and having a conversation with all employees so that you never lose sight of the goal and the struggles that we all have to go through in order to deliver on that goal. And don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. This small act would go a long way to dismantle the silo scenario and the effect it has on judgement/leadership/decision making.
Businesses that seem to have a high turnover in lower ranking jobs should really take a look at their business structure. Do you have a division between management and workers? Do you have a wall between different departments and they seem to be playing tug of war from within? Does the ship seem to be just sitting there because everyone is rowing in their own direction? Businesses will stagnate if they don’t innovate. And in order to innovate, leadership has to be open to new ideas, concepts and opinions. And a good leader is able to take those big concepts and ideas and to turn them into action. That same leadership has to be willing to lead and guide the ship and take the role of organizer. Most established businesses are structured for a top down approach and the spirit of the leader is what the organization will follow. If you have a good leader, they will incorporate all employees and create environments of safety and inclusion and diversity, not just on paper.
Cross training and opportunities for employees to mingle with others from different departments/levels of management/groups would help to break up the division that will create itself if not actively addressed. We also need actual internal support systems that can detect when employees are going through hard times and burning themselves out. My research shows Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) as an industry standard checklist to find someone’s engagement quotient. Of course, this directly leads to the person’s capacity to handle the duties of their job and subsequent performance. This also brings in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The dual concept is illustrated best here by Dr. Paul DeChant. He offers a very simple understanding of how both of these theories work together. Someone cannot perform at their peak level if their basic survival is in question. Just as the education system reported higher child engagement and performance at school when they implemented school breakfast and made sure the kids had access to healthy food.
Security and economics also play a part in the types of employees that find themselves in customer service roles. The people in the lower/entry level jobs are usually high school educated and may not have formal college education, so they are lower on the class structure and therefore take the lesser ‘skill’ jobs. They may fill less skilled jobs, but as someone said, they have a large emotional investment in their job roles. They may also not have strong social and familial support systems. This will directly impact their ability to ‘weather’ the storms that will come when the emotional investment is not returned to the employee. Burnout will come if the empathetic feelings and energy are not correctly and effectively released. Most poor folks have a hard time letting go of anything, possessions, situations, experiences, people, food, etc. You don’t know when you might get them again. We must answer the most basic human needs first and then we are able to build a very strong foundation in which to create the reality we are all striving to achieve.
Meaningful monetary incentives would have an impact on performance, however not in the way they are now given. We can incentivize the performance of our front line workers by assessing the impact of their job duties on the target audience. However, it’s not easy to quantify emotional investments on a trackable scale other than a customer survey and most people only leave a review if there is a negative experience. Or if it’s an employee, the exit interview shouldn’t be the only time that they have an option to voice their concerns or what led them to making the decision to leave an organization.
And don’t get me wrong, I think bonuses are great. IF they are given correctly. A friend of mine shared with me a story about the company they worked for and how through creative accounting, they did away with the lump-sum bonus based on performance and replaced it with a percentage increase on their base salary. This was implemented from the top down and no employee perspectives were requested. Even though select groups within the company still benefit from the lump sum bonuses, the majority of employees have the cents added to their base salary for the next year. This accounting may be beneficial to the employees (in the long run), but some people need and rely on the one time bonus to help them and they don’t want to have to wait a year for the performance recognition from last year to materialize. Also, a fair wage for that employee is crucial. This may not be an option for poorer counties/smaller businesses that don’t have the ability to pay better wages.
Our current systems are very class oriented, no matter how we try to cover it. We can break it down into individual groups, but at the end of the day, cash is king. You can’t live without it and there is no substitute for bread and beans. Also, if the decision makers are far removed from the employees, it’s very easy to take the Marie Antoinette approach and when your employees are complaining about low wages and being overworked, you respond by ‘let them eat pizza’. This modern day band aid is what some companies use to cover up the fact that they are all short staffed and overworked and underpaid and just trying to hang on.
We’re not going to fix our entire societal system issues with one sweeping change. We can start where we are and use what we have. A strong internal support system that is employee focused can have huge impacts on the mental and physical health of the employee. We must utilize our already existing internal systems (HR) that can detect and address high turnover, employee burnout, absenteeism, lackluster performance reviews, lower morale. However, I understand the institution is also doing the best it can and may not have access to services that are employee focused and don’t have the time or energy to worry about them. The mentality of ‘we can just hire someone else to do that job’ can be felt, even if it’s never said.
This subject can feel very doom and gloom, but I’ll leave you with a nice scenario. This was given to me by a good friend and it bears repeating. Remember those old detective crime shows? You know the one, where the staff psychologist walks with the person and asks them questions and finds out that they are having home issues and it’s now starting to affect them at work. Or they’ve been going too hard at work and the burnout signs are showing themselves. Sometimes the boss comes down and says ‘Hey, you should take a few days off and go fishing/hiking/spa day.’ Businesses would be wise to invest in a therapist, group or one on one resource for employees to go to …. Right now, we have access to the EAP (Employee Assistance Program) services through our healthcare provider, but we need much more support for everyone working.