Her expectation of work experience whilst still at school were high and unrealistic almost comical to my baby boomer generation but typical of generation G . After the first day she came home complaining that she had been expected to make tea / coffee for everyone and do photocopying! “I know how to make a cup of coffee and work a photocopier” she said indignantly. The rest of the week didn’t go any better. She felt the “so called” work experience was a wast of time.
It’s not just young people on work experience who find the experience of work disappointing and without meaning. In recruiting managers I repeatedly came across individuals who had five maybe more years in the same post. In their application form they referred to five years management experience but during the course of the interview it was clear it was in-fact one years experience times five. In other words they had learnt nothing nor gained any new experiences since their first year in post. They had been coasting but now expected to be promoted on the bases of time served. It would be easy to blame the individual for not pushing themselves forward for projects or corporate working groups, or volunteering for extra work or applying for secondments but the organisation must take some responsibility for allowing the individual to stagnate. These same managers were often the most cynical and disillusioned who no longer felt they made a difference.
Managers are not alone in becoming disillusioned about work. Employees can all to easily become disengaged, feel that they have no say, unable to change or influence the way they work for the better. Finding the gap between the organisation’s/ senior management rhetoric and their experience increasingly difficult to bridge.
These are people with talent and potential that is simply being wasted. These are organisations that fail to give work meaning. Not everyone is super ambitious or wants more responsibility but most people start out wanting to learn, wanting to do a good job, and whether or not they use the expression wanting to, “ make a difference”. But does the system allow the individual to do a good job? Is creativity encouraged?
Many workers, both young and old, feel that the work is meaningless, lacking purpose with too much focus on the financial status of the organisation and not enough on the “human side of work.” Many are tired of the power games, the conflict, and the bureaucracy
In my experience in working in a wide range of organisations if you want to get more out of your employees, make them more productive , more motivated , more creative, more on board, clearer about how they fit into the organisations overall purpose then you need to change the emphasis from carrot and stick to engage and empower, from bureaucracy to innovation, from treating people like machines to treating them like people , from an obsession with the bottom line to a recognition that the end does not justify the means. How an organisation goes about its business will determine how employees feel about the organisation.
Most of all it is about shifting from seeing the problem as the individual rather than recognising the problem is how the organisation organises work.
Blair McPherson former director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
