In this section of the website you can read in-depth reviews of some important factors that we have found to be of critical importance for establishing a healthy workplace.
How does a value-creating organisational culture emerge? (Where one of the values is promoted health among employees.)
The interdependence between leadership and employeeship
How to develop the organizational and psychosocial work environment
Positive and negative stress in organisations
How to create and maintain conditions for commitment and job satisfaction
Measuring and investigating how things really stand in different parts of the organisation is good, but after completing employee surveys and psychosocial work environment surveys, many company managements feel a bit helpless in the face of the challenge of achieving improvements for the next measurement occasion.
This is why I (together with my network of experienced specialists in various aspects of this gigantic subject area) offer not only different types of surveys of the status of the organisation, but also – and above all! – to help the managers concerned implement the necessary measures to bring about real improvements. We take a holistic approach to the situation and assist the management in establishing a targeted action plan aimed at improving the organisational culture, addressing subcultures in parts of the organisation, developing leadership and people skills, strengthening the conditions for engagement, developing performance measurement systems, introducing performance-based reward systems, developing core values, counteracting negative stress and creating conditions for job satisfaction in stressed parts of the organisation, etc. Below you will find a comprehensive review of how psychosocial phenomena work and what can be done to influence them in a desirable direction. Let’s start by looking at the so-called cultural factors and how they affect what happens at any workplace.
Organizational culture
The word ‘culture’ comes from the Latin cultura, meaning cultivation, plantation, but also development, refinement. The term is still used in several different contexts with different meanings. For example, doctors may use it to mean bacterial cultivation, horticulturists may use it to mean genetically unique plant seedlings, and sometimes it is used to refer to a specific group culture, the culture of the locker room, the culture of honour, cultural politics, corporate culture, etc. Furthermore, the word culture is often used in everyday language to denote refined and elevated forms of entertainment such as poetry, theatre, ballet, art music. Behind all these specific examples there is a generic meaning of the word culture as everything we humans contribute beyond what occurs in nature. Cultural things are ’unnatural’ in the sense that they are uniquely associated with human activities, not generated by nature. At the beginning of the 20th century, humanist idealists, empiricist philosophers and some anthropologists began to use the word culture to mean: ‘all socially transmittable ideals, beliefs, customs, arts, institutions and all other manifestations of human thought’ (Boas, 1911). This new meaning of the word culture was widely disseminated and has since had a strong impact on public debate in Europe and the United States. This concept of culture has also contributed to the emergence of a new branch of anthropology and history (cultural evolution) that studies, among other things, how common, shared beliefs and convictions influence the development and distinctiveness of human groupings and entire societies (Gavrilets et al., 2017; Spencer et al., 2013; Carneiro, 1970).
I will try to explain why cultural factors, and related mental phenomena, should be expected to come into play at workplaces, and how they can be so important that they even determine the effectiveness, sustainability and outcome of the working processes.
Culture may be a vague concept, but it is nonetheless something that clearly exists and exerts a strong influence on our daily lives. It is about internal beliefs shared with others in a group to which one feels a sense of belonging.
Based on this definition of the word culture, it is obvious that different human groupings have developed different cultures. It is this meaning that underlies the definition of the more recent concepts of group culture, corporate culture and organizational culture, according to which the culture of a group is the mental phenomena that create shared beliefs and meanings among the individuals of the group, thereby greatly influencing how group members interpret and react to various events. Religions, nationalities and clan affiliation are examples of phenomena at the grand end of the cultural scale. At the other end are the more subtle and detailed beliefs and interpretive systems that we share with those we meet daily, live and work with (Smircich, 1983b; 1985).
Thus, the existence of a group culture means that individuals in a group interpret what is happening in the same way, unlike the interpretations and explanations of other groups, which are based on their cultures. The concept of culture does not refer to social structures or behaviors, but to mental phenomena that affect how individuals in a group influence each other to imagine and evaluate reality in a similar way. These shared beliefs Culture is what lies behind and guides behavior. A group’s culture is expressed in a behavioral norm, but it is important to understand that behaviors are merely the ‘surface’ of culture.
Our ability and strong propensity to develop group cultures distinguishes us humans from all other animals. Homo sapiens is the only species that shares stories and fantasies with each other, that constructs common explanations of how the world works, that builds up whole sects of myths and symbols that create meaning and belonging. Religions, nationalities and clan affiliation are examples of phenomena at the grand end of the cultural scale. At the other end are the more subtle and detailed beliefs and systems of interpretation that we share with those we meet daily, live and work with.
Characteristics of organizational cultures
Organizational cultures have been studied and analyzed from several different angles over the last 50 years. Based on his studies, Hofstede (1990) described seven characteristics of culture:
1. culture is holistic, referring to phenomena that cannot be reduced to individuals.
2. culture is a time-related phenomenon; it emerges and is transmitted through both verbal and non-verbal communication, reactions to events, traditions and habits
3. culture is difficult to change; people tend to believe in and hold on to ideas, beliefs, values and habits shared with others
4. culture is a social phenomenon, it is created by human interaction and shared by those who belong to the group. Different groups create different cultures. Thus, it is not human nature that drives culture; however, it is human nature to develop cultures as part of our herd instincts.
5. culture is related to and often described in anthropological terms such as shared beliefs and creeds (myths), customs and traditions, rituals, and symbols
6. culture is vague and elusive, genuinely qualitative and difficult (*) to measure and classify (* but not impossible; authors’ comment)
7. culture is more about mindsets, values and ideas than about concrete and visible parts of the organization.
Smircich, another organizational researcher who has studied cultural phenomena, has concluded his observations as follows:
“To conduct an organized activity so that interaction can take place without constant interpretation and reinterpretation of the meaning of what is being done, a sense of commonality, of self-evidence, is required. Functioning organizations therefore need a meaning system that is shared by the vast majority.” (Smircich, 1983a).
Schein, yet another workplace culture researcher, developed this approach further. He constructed a three-level model of organizational culture, which has been influential on research in the field ever since (Schein, 1985). He described how the core of culture, the first level, consists of a set of unspoken and implicit assumptions that everyone takes for granted and assumes as a matter of course because everyone else in the group does too. (We will come back to this in the next chapter where we look more closely at the concept of shared beliefs and how to influence a group culture.) These assumptions form an intersubjective explanatory model which functions as a belief system. A true believer does not question day-to-day and moment-to-moment, but lets himself be guided unconsciously by his deeply rooted assumptions about how reality looks, how the outside world works, how people act, how the organization and the business work. These assumptions guide the everyday thinking and actions of the organization.
Schein’s second level is the shared values and norms that exist at a conscious level within people and are shared with others in the organization in an explicit way, dressed up in specific terms and values. These values and norms prescribe how a member of the organization should act, what codes of behavior, goals and principles the organization holds dear. If these norms are supplemented by something new that the influential people in the group start to adhere to, and that proves to work, they can over time be taken for granted and integrated into the deeper, less visible (implicit) level of assumptions.
At the third level, Schein places the concrete cultural expressions of the governing assumptions. He calls these artefacts, by which he means physical, verbal and behavioral manifestations of the basic assumptions, such as, for example, geographical location, architecture, furnishings, dress code, use of language, the organization’s image-creating slogans, how to build its brand, status-creating systems, compensation and reward systems, environmental concerns, gender roles, how to use profits, etc.
Organizational culture and identity
For a distinct and coherent organizational culture to develop, employees must identify with the organization. In practice, this means that individuals incorporate membership of the organization into their own personal identity (Hogg & Terry, 2014). This requires the organization to have a tangible and meaningful identity, i.e. it stands for something unique, has an appealing style, status, history, market profile and so on. Since the mid-1980s, researchers have studied the importance of these mechanisms, including Ashforth and Mael (1989), who identify four factors that determine how strongly members identify with their group or organization
1. The clarity of the group’s values. Conscious and adhered values give rise to a more distinct identity.
2. Status and importance of the group, recent successes. High status exerts a stronger attraction and strengthens members’ identities.
3. Relations with neighbouring groups. If ‘they’ are clearly visible, it is easier to construct a more prominent ‘we’.
4. The existence of social processes that facilitate the definition of the group, active interaction between the people in the group and neighbouring groups that create a sense of community within the group itself, a sense of commonality, shared history and common goals.
An organization’s identity interacts with its culture. In their analyses, some researchers note that culture is contextual, implicit and difficult to describe, but has a significant impact on how people in the organization feel and behave, which in turn is influenced by the organization’s identity, which is more explicit and linguistically formulated (Hatch & Schultz, 2002). If an organization’s members feel that the organization stands for something unique and positive in terms of identity, this may increase their propensity to embrace the organization’s shared values. Conversely, a functioning common organizational culture can also be seen to lay the foundation for a distinct organizational identity. Adherence to values and clear symbols and ideas of how the organization should function can create a common identity even in large organizations with mixed activities.
To the extent that an organization is a powerful and positive source of identity creation, people tend to see themselves as part of an overarching ‘we’ and experience closeness and belonging with the organization. However, if the identity of the organization is weak and unclear, dispersed and contradictory, people look for alternative sources of identity closer to home, such as their own department or a subgroup within it, a project, colleagues with similar specific tasks or professional affiliation. It is common to identify with one’s position in the hierarchy or with one’s department (e.g. sales, service or production) rather than with the whole organization if it is perceived as abstract, unclear or unattractive. This leads to the emergence of subcultures (Alvesson & Svenningsson, 2008; Martin, 2002; Martin & Meyerson, 1988). Subcultures are always present in large organizations, and are mostly benign, but when they emerge in the way described above, they can cause organizational fragmentation.
Subcultures
People in different departments, in different parts of the organization, with completely different tasks, at different hierarchical levels, with different backgrounds, professions, genders, generations and social classes hardly see everything in their organization in the same way. This is not simply due to variations in education and skills; rather, within large organizations, it is common to see different meanings, values, symbols and language used by different groups, and if you are able to ‘dig’ a little deeper, you often find that there are a large number of more or less diverse subcultures.
So, when people talk and write about a single, unifying organizational culture, they should be somewhat sceptical. In fact, the term ‘our organizational culture’ often refers to just one of many subcultures within the organization, namely the management’s own subculture. Sometimes not even that, but just management’s ideas about what the desired organizational culture should look like (Alvesson, 2001; Sköldberg, 1994). When the understanding of psychological and cultural processes is at such a low level in management, there is an imminent risk of marginalizing or completely overlooking the meaning-making of other groups within the organization. Then much of what managers say goes unnoticed.
Group culture as an intersubjective phenomenon
We humans attribute meaning to everything we experience, even trivialities. This constant creation of meaning is largely unconscious. Here we do not mean something Freudian or Jungian ‘subconscious’, just that it happens without active conscious interpretation. That is, we put the event into context without dressing the mental process in words and conscious considerations; as a kind of autopilot maneuver that does not always have to burden the consciousness.
Sometimes we experience something that we think we can interpret in terms of objective truth, that is, when we believe we have real knowledge that explains the event. In other situations, we know that our interpretations are entirely subjective, and we can stand by that: “I think it is like this. This is my opinion.” When we are aware that we are making a subjective assumption, we are generally quite open to the possibility that others may have a different view, and if someone presents us with facts that appear to be objectively true, we do not have much difficulty in changing our interpretation.
Many people, most people it seems, believe that there are only these two categories of interpretation, that one’s view of things is either subjectively constructed or based on objective facts. Now, however, there is a third category of frame of reference that affects us humans very much, and this is where culture comes in play, and with great power.
As we noted above, it is human nature to share explanatory models, beliefs and convictions with the other people around us. This mental process underpins our unique ability to interact in large groups, forming clans, countries, armies, economic systems, businesses and other types of organizations (Spencer et al., 2013). If these shared assumptions and beliefs are embraced by everyone else in the group, we easily mistake them for objective truths even when they are man-made mental constructs with no objective truth content. This phenomenon has been studied in anthropology, history, philosophy and social psychology since the late 19th century. The term ‘intersubjectivity’ has been coined for these community-building stories, beliefs, myths, rules and belief systems that we share with the others in the group, organization, society (Harari, 2014; Habermas, 2007; Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Husserl, 1911). The intersubjective reference is a form of unspoken agreement that creates a sense of self-evidence in many situations when we do not actually base our interpretation on objective facts, but feel as if we did just that, because if we question our conclusion for a moment we realize that it is grounded in something outside our own subjectivity. If we only know two alternatives, it is logical to believe that the interpretation is objectively based, because it is not subjective. Organizational cultures also depend, often to a high degree, on this intersubjective category of meaning-making explanatory models and beliefs that largely determine our interpretations and approaches. During a change process at a work-place it is of vital importance to find out if there are any irrational components among the established intersubjective beliefs within each work group. Identifying these can be tricky, and when dressed in words they sometimes sound weird, even though they have a strong influence on the way the group members ‘understand’ things. In philosophical and rhetorical terminology each such intersubjective component is called a “superthesis”. I will come back to the use of this later.
‘If the culture is against it, the strategy has no chance’
The statement in the headline has been made by many famous business leaders over the last 20 years. And with good reason. An existing group culture has a strong influence on the behaviors of its members. And that it is difficult to change the culture of an organization or the subculture of a group is well documented by research in the field, and amply attested to by both leaders and consultants with their own experiences (Alvesson & Svenningsson, 2008). Change leaders must understand the breadth and depth of what they are trying to achieve, and they need the skills to diagnose the existing organizational culture, the subcultures in different parts of the organization (including that of the management team) and then to influence the right components of them in a constructive way.
Cultural change is sometimes the main purpose and stated goal of a change program. Of course, sometimes there is a real need to change an existing organizational culture, and it can be done if you give it time and go about it in the right manner (which we come back to below). However, it is counterproductive to communicate such a goal. Do not tell people anything like ‘you need a new culture’. We will explain below why this is risky, and something we strongly advise against. Even changes that ‘only’ aim to introduce new tools, working methods or simple structural changes can challenge the organization’s functioning. And even more so when the established culture is the target of the change. If done in the wrong way, it can not only sabotage the whole change program, but also cause misunderstanding, conflict and unnecessary suffering for many managers and employees.
Even seemingly simple changes, which management initially sees as strategically obvious, and certainly does not expect to cause any drama, can run into obstacles and cause an entire organization to falter, if they are not supported by the culture of the affected parts of the organization. We are often called in by desperate managers asking for help to rescue a long-established change program that has stalled or failed completely. We meet a puzzled and sometimes slightly desperate manager who tells us about a well-planned and well-motivated structural change or the introduction of a new business system, reporting tool, IT system or other work tool that was in obvious need of improvement. Management had initially taken for granted that the staff would understand and willingly implement the necessary changes, but for some reason it has not at all been adopted by the organization. When we have been able to understand what has happened, it often turns out that the new ways of working brought about by the change have come into conflict with the existing organizational culture and have therefore not had a chance to be implemented. This is because group culture has a huge impact on how people perceive things, behave and react to change. If change leaders don’t realize this in time, they will be left scratching their heads a year later, puzzled by the strength of the resistance they encountered or the chaos that has ensued in the organization. The explanation is often to be found in the way the planned change results in necessary behavioral changes and how these are counteracted by the existing behavioral norms, which in turn are governed by the culture of the parts of the organization concerned.
Changing the culture
Cultures are changeable, but not overnight, and not by someone ordering a group to adopt a new culture. In fact, the culture of a group or organisation undergoes a continuous evolution, but this happens slowly, sluggishly and imperceptibly. Schein has described how the interaction between the three levels of his model (1. implicit assumptions and beliefs, 2. explicit values and norms, 3. physical artefacts, linguistic manifestations and behaviours) ebbs and flows. Not only do the mechanisms of influence move from level 1 to level 2 to level 3, but if new behaviours emerge and are rewarded by the most influential people in the organisation, they will eventually become established as new habits in the organisation. They will then force a change in the norms and values and eventually also leave their mark on the assumptions and beliefs at level 1.
Anyone who wants to take the initiative to change an existing organisational culture must influence all three levels. First, the culture, or rather cultures, need to be mapped. In a large organisation, this includes the sub-cultures of all the departments involved. The mental processes that are normally unspoken and taken for granted must be made explicit. Otherwise, no one knows what it is you are trying to change. Then you need to go through how values and norms are described and communicated, how they are interpreted and translated into everyday reality in different parts of the organisation, which at the same time gives an idea of the degree to which they are adhered to. Thirdly, it is necessary to specify which behaviours need to be changed. If this is not possible or is too long a list, as is often the case, the desired effects of the new behaviours should be described instead. The key is to put in place a performance measurement system that generates realistic feedback.
The last thing you want to do is to tell an organisation that “You have to change your culture!”. This is one of the worst examples of how wrong it can be if management starts a transformation process and calls it change, in this case “culture change”. The focus of employees and operational managers is then inevitably on abstract and difficult to understand concepts instead of the views, attitudes and behaviours that you really want to influence.
(In Chapter 15 of the book “Don’t call it Change” (see menu 4 – Shop) I describe how bad it can be if you set the goals and headline for a change in such a way that the focus is on the wrong dimension, so that a large expensive culture change programme capsizes despite the fact that many expensive change management consultants were involved).
Work can be health-promoting
The lack of meaning in everyday life is one of the greatest scourges of modern man. When asked what their interests in life are, many young people answer: “Shopping.” In this light, it is not surprising that the ability of the workplace to offer something to engage in and identify with is becoming increasingly important. An enthusiastic leader, who has mastered the art of creating a deep sense of meaning in daily work, can have a decisive influence on the quality of life and health of many employees. The myth that the best life is to be financially independent, so that you don’t have to work, is false and should be actively countered. This is not to say that employers should primarily offer work to people to relieve the burden on the healthcare system, but the societal benefits of workplaces offering people the opportunity to engage and increase the meaningfulness of their lives ought to be better emphasised.
The meaning of working life
Almost anyone interested in motivational mechanisms will sooner or later come across the uniquely human ability to reflect on the meaning of life. Including working life. The ‘spiritual’ dimension of working life cannot be overemphasised when discussing intrinsic motivation.
In fact, ‘not working’ poses a significant risk of impairing quality of life. There are several scientific studies showing that unemployment, even voluntary, quickly leads to a worse life with more destructive habits, anxiety, sleep disorders, alcohol problems, gambling addiction, depressive disorders. The decisive factor seems to be whether the unemployed have sufficient structure and strength in their own internal motivational mechanisms so that they find something meaningful and urgent to engage in. For all those who are weak in this respect, the workplace is an important source of spiritual health and quality of life. Several
studies show that work brings more joy, excitement, pride, community and other positive emotions than any other arena in life. Of course, most people mention family and friends and their interests first. But when you look at the real picture over a longer period of time, work is an equally important piece of the puzzle that gives us a sense of human identity and meaning in life.
A great writer, who showed in his books what a good judge of character he was, put it this way:
“If you want to break a man, you have only to make his labour meaningless.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Conversely, if you want to give a person a boost in life, help them realise what a great opportunity it is to be part of an enthusiastic team, to share a vision of life with like-minded people, to put their values into action, to be challenged and to develop as a person – and even to be paid for it. Wise managers bring this perspective to work in the way they communicate. Not by preaching, because no amount of finger-pointing will work here, but by sharing their own enthusiasm for life and commitment to the essentials. It’s not about a ‘once-a-year kick-off-halleluia’, but about the everyday meaning of life that we create in the workplace as well as at home. Everyone does it whether they realise it or not, and not just for themselves but also together for each other.
When you are part of a group, you are each other’s environment. It goes a long way towards reminding yourself and each other of this at regular intervals and, in an uncluttered way, simply raising awareness of the possibilities of making your own workplace a good place to be.
Sometimes you can sharpen it by inserting questions that cannot be answered with yes or no: Why work here? Where are we going? Why is it important? For whom more than ourselves? How good do we want to be at what we do? How do we respond when someone asks what it’s like to work here? What is that twinkle in our eye? What is it that you can look forward to in the workplace? Why-questions are particularly effective.
Wise management, genuinely concerned about long-term success, builds a higher purpose into the company’s mission and values, and allows a significant share of profits to be a means to realise them, not an end in itself. If you are the head of a department in a large company that hasn’t quite reached that level of maturity, you can still take big steps in that direction for yourself and your part of the organisation. If your senior managers do not quickly punish you for not maximising short-term profitability at all costs, you have time to show in a few months that a deeply meaningful and enthusiastic group culture creates an employee base with significantly higher “scores” and points and profits, not only for joy and energy, but also for commitment, efficiency and qualitative value creation, which in the long run can lift profitability to completely new heights.
Meaningful work provides motivation
Gary Hamel, Professor at London Business School, one of the world’s most widely read authors on leadership and business strategy, says:
“Management objectives are often described in terms of efficiency, benefits, value, focus and differentiation. Important as these goals are, they do not speak to the heart. Instead, let your dialogue with employees be informed by the higher ideals that give meaning to your engagement. Deep down, everyone wants something urgent to strive for and fight for, to realise themselves in the sense of becoming the best person they can be on their own terms. A workplace that offers to help with that is an extremely motivating place to be!”
So: fuel the motivation fire with meaning instead of benefits. It gives a much better effect in the long run.
The interdependence between leadership and employeeship
Regardless of where you and your employees are on the maturity scale, it is important that you as a manager can help everyone find the approach to work that makes it deeply meaningful. To be truly engaged, the values of the workplace need to strike a chord that resonates deeply within each individual. Employees who feel this way do a much better job than those who just want to earn their pay cheque or shrug their shoulders and would just as soon stay home if they could afford it. Which doctor would you choose to be operated on by, one who is committed and enthusiastic or one who sighs and seems bored?
Many workplaces formulate their values so cautiously that they become bland. This misses the opportunity to bring true enthusiasm to life in staff. The vast majority of people work better, and feel better, if they can relate their work to clearly defined long-term values. The purpose of a set of values is to clarify the intentions of the organisation, both directly and indirectly, in the short and long term. What matters most to the company or organisation should be reflected in the description of the values that the business will generate. Together with the mission, the values tell the organisation why it exists at all, what values it wants to bring to the world, its customers, employees and shareholders.
A set of values that is known and understood by all is a prerequisite for decentralised decision-making. In turn, it is almost a necessity for success in today’s changing business environment. A functioning values framework ensures that these decisions will be in line with what the company stands for, regardless of who makes them. The deeper version of values-based leadership that we advocate involves complementing the business-related values with considerations of the kind of world the company wants to help create, the kind of life it wants to favour for employees and customers.
The answer to the question “what do you stand for when you work here?” can be made deeply engaging if it is taken seriously and allowed to challenge everyone deeply.
The core values should be challenging
One of the reasons why so many workplaces have watered-down values is fear of offending someone. “Everyone should feel at home here” is a common argument. This is completely wrong. A workplace with values so superficial and universal that no one is repelled cannot be good for anyone. A good employer declares its intentions in all respects, takes a clear stand on why it exists and what it stands for. In such a workplace, not everyone can fulfil their potential. Those with different values should naturally look elsewhere. The primary purpose of values, however, is not to repel those who do not fit in, but to attract those who do, to give them a clear entry point, something to relate to and take a strong stand for. This applies to all stakeholders, customers and staff, as well as owners, retailers, employees’ families and anyone else who has a direct or indirect relationship with the company. Entering a workplace whose core values you share gives you a boost of joy and an injection of energy that you take home with you, infecting your family and friends. Being employed in such a workplace can dramatically change your life. At heart, humans are meaning-seeking creatures who thrive and function best when they share values with those with whom they flock. If we recognise this drive, we can unleash a win-win enthusiasm for life in the workplace.
Leadership that creates conditions for engagement
The concept of value-based leadership is young (less than 30 years old) and has not been the subject of many scientific studies. Nonetheless, the concept has gained wide currency and impact in the public debate on leadership over the last fifteen years, not least because improved individual performance and growth have been measured in organisations that have been able to credibly present their intentions to achieve more than financial success. Henry Ford said a hundred years ago:
“A company that only makes money is a poor company.”
In recent years, however, it is a completely different car manufacturer that has become famous for its approach to value-based leadership, namely Toyota.
In the leadership and work environment literature, two other concepts are often used as synonyms: charismatic leadership and visionary leadership. However, these two differ from values-based leadership in that they do not look much at the organisation but focus on the behaviour of managers and leaders. Charismatic and visionary leadership are about the characteristics of the leader, based on the leader’s ability to move the organisation from strategic vision to concrete action. Nothing wrong with that, but the advantage of the concept of values-based leadership is that it includes how everyone in the organisation behaves. In practice, value-based leadership means implementing value-based people management. It is not only the manager who should be guided by the company’s values and make wise trade-offs between short- and long-term goals. The very purpose of the values concept is for everyone in the team to know why the workplace exists, what it means to do a good job and what values are then achieved, for whom you are there, what considerations you should take even if it costs.
Being a “clear” manager does not mean constantly pointing with the whole hand, shouting and judging, issuing work orders for each task and controlling at a detailed level. Instead, the best clarity is created by introducing a behavioural norm (group culture) that guides all employees in their daily work and allows for a far-reaching delegation of responsibilities and authority. Such a behavioural norm presupposes that a large majority of employees sincerely feel the values created are meaningful and respect the agreement on how to create them. In a workplace where everyone realises that the vision, mission and values are real and must be lived every day, a lot of energy is mobilised from everyone who shares these values.
Values-based employeeship
As an employee, you should be able to stand up for the company’s values, feel harmony inside when you put them into action. This presupposes that you have your own personal values that are very much in line with those of your employer. If not, you are in the wrong place and should look for another job. It is directly harmful to your health to find yourself, as the weaker party, in a prolonged, sharp conflict of values and to be forced to act contrary to your own values.
The exception is if you have a reasonable chance of influencing the other party’s values to the extent that a healthy compromise can be reached, although this is rarely possible for an individual employee in a large organisation.
A sharp conflict of values, which is not due to misunderstanding, should therefore, in the best interests of all, lead to the employee moving to another workplace. Unfortunately, another scenario is more common, namely that such an employee stays too long and gets into a so-called “passive aggressive” behaviour in the workplace. Some people have such low expectations of genuine engagement in everyday life that they are content just to belong to a group. They do well even if they do not share the values of the employer or the company, as long as they find like-minded colleagues. If the community of values is strong in such a subgroup, the people in it can act contrary to the values of both the boss and the company, and be quite happy with that, if the consequences are no worse than a bit of bickering and nagging. Such subcultural phenomena are quite common, especially in large organisations where unofficial leaders with their own agendas have too much influence. This does not necessarily mean that these subcultures become subversive, destructive ‘counterparts’. More often than not, they become “just” passive, unmotivated, uncommitted, unfocussed; but guess what the cost is! (A caveat is in order here: in some highly decentralised knowledge-based organisations, self-organising teams emerge around the experienced specialists who are the hubs of the business. These employees naturally become influential and driving forces. They can then be perceived by outside consultants and senior managers, who do not understand how the organisation is formatted, as self-appointed, subversive, unofficial leaders. Giving these people formal leadership can bring the whole organisation to a standstill because they spend too much time on administration and internal politics. We return to this below in a later section).
The same values as the others in the team
Wild and immature people with a passive personal value base do not need to be in conflict with the employer at all, as long as the manager invites them to dance in the right way. Most people with a weak personal value base are in fact impressionable and deep down long to be energised, challenged, engaged and motivated if only someone will help them get out of their old, passive, comfortable rut.
Passive personal value base means that you have not made clear to yourself what you value most in life and that you lack active intentions in everyday life. Many of these people walk around with blinders on and follow their own old ways, round and round in their comfort zone. To end up in a workplace that shakes off the blinders and offers something to lift the gaze and fix it on the meaningfulness of everyday life, urgent challenges and stimulation that provides personal and professional development, is “perhaps not entirely wrong” as Eeyore said in one of his bright moments. Enthusiastic and high-performing employeeship can only come about if the employee has the same values at heart as the others in the team, and if these are in line with the values of the manager and the company.
Values not set in stone
The values statement should show why the company or organisation is important to customers and to the world. And for the staff themselves. The values should provide a clear basis for answering the questions: “Why work here? What is it that I should be proud of? Why not apply for a job with a competitor instead?” Periodically, the team needs to update the descriptions of how value creation, both ‘hard’ (for customers) and ‘soft’ (for themselves and their colleagues), will be realised in practice. The aim is for each employee to have a clear understanding of the direction of every decision and every behavioural choice. In today’s fast-paced world, decisions often need to be made quickly and in a complex way. This increased complexity means that the manager is not able to have an overview, know everything and decide on every detail. Day-to-day decisions should be left to those who know most, the employees. Clarity is then no longer detailed instructions. Those days are over in most organisations. A modern work team needs overall guidelines that they can relate to, i.e. a clear definition of what values they are expected to create, what the company stands for and what they, as employees, should thereby also stand for and try to achieve. The alternative at the other end of the scale is to be led by orders and control, by a manager who does not give employees much room to make their own decisions. This is sometimes necessary. But it works poorly as a basis for long-term, developed, engaged and high-performing employeeship. We have already embraced this in Sweden. Some even claim that, together with high competence, it is one of the most important strengths Sweden has in internationally competitive organisations. Our management style is by nature more delegating and involving, and the more complex the world becomes, the better suited is a management style that promotes active and value-based employeeship with self-organising work groups. Unfortunately, Swedish managers have now started to move away from this leadership style. Surveys show that in recent years we have become less good at challenging and inspiring our employees. In the now dominant Swedish leadership and people management model, the pendulum has swung both too far and too far, so that leadership has become unclear (sometimes even cowardly and lax) and the wrong values have crept into people management. ‘Co-determination’ and consensus decision-making can go too far unless the manager is strong enough to constantly reinforce a performance-oriented set of values that provide a business-sound behavioural norm. Another reason why the typically Scandinavian, self-organising and responsible employeeship is being eroded is that Anglo-Saxon management ideals have crept in and in many organisations completely taken over, which unfortunately has led many organisations backwards in development towards more micro-management, more control, more focus on short-term profitability and the resulting loss of commitment and responsibility among employees.
Dare to give confidence
When a value-based, engaged and accountable workforce is established in the team, managers can delegate more and focus on strategic issues. For many managers, it feels scary to let go, stop controlling, not interfere at the detail level, dare to give employees responsibility and confidence to do their job independently. This is not the same as sitting back and being a permissive leader who allows everything. On the contrary, it is a very active leadership, leading by constantly communicating and following up on the value-based behavioural norm, instead of managing on a petimetric level. This is the true meaning of the concept of trust-based leadership, but like many other originally good concepts, it too has begun to be eroded and distorted to the point of being unusable. A common misconception of trust leads to condoning underperformance. In fact, a firm hand is needed if the manager notices that there are people in the team who do not comply with the values, deviate from the agreement, and the closest colleagues are not able to correct their colleague. Then the supervisor must immediately crack down on that behaviour and show that it is not acceptable. By this I do not mean dramatic statements and drastic measures, but a constructive reminder. Of course, the agreement on values and rules should always be kept alive in an enthusiastic way, if possible.
Translate to everyday reality
Interpreting the company’s values and translating them into the daily life of your unit requires a good sense of judgement on the part of the manager. On the one hand, everyone must be involved. On the other hand, the manager, and ultimately the principal, is responsible for the values that apply in the workplace. The variety of terms used in this context can be so confusing that staff do not understand what to make of all these words and concepts in practice. Therefore, it is best to integrate in each team the mission, values, vision, aims and objectives and related concepts into a clear agreement for the group that “this is how we behave in our workplace to create the values we prioritise”. This is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, the principal and the management have stipulated the starting points and key words that apply. These must be adhered to. On the other hand, it is important that everyone feels that they have been involved and that their views have been taken into account in the discussion on how the team should translate the values into their own everyday lives. The employee who is completely excluded from the process will try to cower in the benches and continue to do as usual.
Negative stress at work is more often due to how you perceive your work situation than to being overloaded
Perception of the workplace may be more important than the objective nature of the workplace. This statement causes many to frown in disbelief, but it is nevertheless true, provided of course that a certain minimum level of physical safety, handling of toxic substances and other basic physical work environment factors has been achieved.
Work environment efforts in Sweden have come a long way. There are still horror stories of bad and dangerous workplaces due to ignorant and cynical management, but they are rare in our country these days. In international comparisons, we have a very low rate of work-related injuries and illnesses. On the other hand, we are surprisingly badly off in the statistics on mental illnesses classified as ‘work-related’. Sweden has by far the highest number of people, including young people, retired on sick leave for mental disorders officially recognised as work-related. The debate on the causes of this phenomenon is divided and confusing. For many years, those who claimed that work-related stress was the cause went largely unchallenged in the media. Recently, the debate has become somewhat more nuanced and research-based evidence has become more readily available. These suggest that it is unusual for a stressful work situation to be the sole cause of ‘burnout’ (the name mild to moderate mental health problems have been given since the late 1990s). Most researchers now agree that workplace stress has been wrongly blamed for too much of the mental health problems and illnesses that have led to sick leave and retirement. The incidence has fallen sharply in recent years, both as a result of stricter application of the wording of the Social Security Act and thanks to better training of the medical profession, which is no longer as liberal in “sick-listing” for all sorts of diffuse expressions of fatigue, dissatisfaction and discontent.
Of course, we cannot be complacent just because we have less dangerous workplaces than most other countries and falling sick leave rates. There is much room for improvement if the aim is to minimise accidents and create the best possible working environments. Safety awareness training is an ongoing challenge in many workplaces. But at the same time, it is fair to say that sometimes it has actually gone too far in that in many places safety regulations and rules for the physical working environment have been drawn up in absurdity, while the psychosocial working environment is only mentioned in passing with a few fine words about participation, development opportunities, responsibility and authority in the right proportions, the possibility of influencing one’s own work situation and the like. In fact, systematic work on the psychosocial work environment can be one of the best ways for operational managers to make a real difference for the better in their organisation.
Psychosocial work environment not just a problem
Psychosocial environment is about how we experience our situation, and how this experience affects us mentally and physically. Researchers in this field of knowledge have recently started to turn their attention to the mechanisms of true job satisfaction, how a workplace becomes a truly great place to be, and how work becomes a life-enhancer, something much more valuable than just being a feeding trough. In this chapter, we will explain how it is that high-performing, efficient and high-functioning workplaces actually offer a better psychosocial work environment than those where staff are comfortable.
Let’s start by looking at how the psychosocial work environment actually works, then we’ll go through why it’s so important for a manager to have the tools to work proactively with employees’ experiences, and how this is linked to motivation, commitment and job satisfaction.
Direct and indirect environmental impacts
In principle, everyone understands what happens when you are exposed to a physical impact. For example, if you spill hot water on your hand, a chemical reaction occurs in the burnt skin. A few hundredths of a second later, the pain signals reach the spinal cord, where a reflex is triggered that causes you to jerk your hand away. A few hundredths of a second later, the pain signals reach the brain, which interprets what has happened, forms an emotional experience and triggers a stress reaction. The stress response is designed to mobilise the whole body so that, if necessary, new, more complex protective behaviours can be performed quickly. The stress response can involve all physiological systems, causing changes in heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, visual acuity, redistribution of blood flow from certain viscera to muscles, etc. The intensity and temporal extent of this second-wave bodily reaction depends on how the brain interprets it all, i.e. how you perceive the event, how scared you are, how injured you feel, etc. All these bodily reactions are of course also originally due to the water burning the skin on the hand, but they are more actually an indirect bodily impact that is mediated via our own experience and can therefore vary from one individual to another depending on how the personal interpretation looks. If you measure what is happening in the body throughout this process, you can therefore read a double impact, first the direct reaction locally in the hand and a few tenths of a second later a whole-body reaction mediated via the stress system. It is the second wave reaction, the experience-triggered impact on the body, that we call the indirect reaction. Sometimes an environmental factor may have no direct physical impact on us, but still trigger very tangible bodily reactions by triggering a strong psychological reaction, which in turn gives rise to a bodily reaction through psychophysiological mechanisms. Such environmental influences are thus experience-mediated and are therefore called psychological, or psychosocial when other people are involved, as is usually the case in workplaces.
Many physical environmental factors affect us in both of these response systems. For example, if someone claps their hands hard right behind you, there is wave motion in the air that causes your eardrums to vibrate. The movement propagates to the inner ears, where the sound wave is perceived by special nerve cells. A few hundredths of a second later, the brain has interpreted these nerve signals and we jump, turn round and look to see who has clapped and why. This reaction involves two separate mechanisms of influence. First, the purely physical effect of the energy in the sound wave that reaches the ear, and then the indirect, experience-mediated one via the nervous system reaches the body barely a tenth of a second later. Thus, in practice, physical and psychosocial environmental impacts merge and can be difficult to distinguish after a while.
Let’s look at an example. Patrik was a design engineer at an engineering company in Skåne. He had been experiencing ear problems for some time, specifically pain and ringing in his right ear. The occupational health service had been called in to take various measurements at the workplace, because Patrik attributed his problems to the whistling in the ventilation system that ran just to the right of his desk. In addition, he had become so chilled in the right half of his body by the cold airflow that he had tried to block the vent with towels and duct tape, but he had not been able to eliminate the whistling sound. The earache, the hissing and the cold feeling in his right cheek and arm had become so intense that Patrik had asked to be moved to another workroom. There he had placed his desk in the centre of the room, far from the windows and air vents. The discomfort had been reduced somewhat, but had not completely disappeared. The manager was concerned that Patrick’s work capacity had dropped significantly and had not recovered significantly despite the move to the new room. There had now been three meetings with the occupational health service, but the manager did not think they had led to anything constructive. They had discussed all sorts of possible explanations, such as mould in the ventilation system, electrical allergies and similar loose speculations. It had ended with the company doctor agreeing to write a referral to the ear clinic to investigate whether Patrik had tinnitus or some kind of damage to his ear. While waiting for this, Patrik would be on half-time sick leave. When we got involved in the case, Patrik told us that his life had become really difficult. He could no longer tolerate being in rooms where he was exposed to windy sounds, draughts from windows or vents. He now had problems not only in the workplace but also in other premises, and lately he had been spending most of his time at home when he was not at work. We carried out a psychophysiological examination (body stress test) and found that Patrik had subtle but fully measurable physiological disturbances in the right side of his body. We could detect muscle tension in the right temple, cheek, side of the neck, neck and shoulder. Blood flow in the skin was abnormally low, eccrine sweat gland activity was increased and the skin in the area showed hyperaesthesia. These disturbances were accentuated whenever Patrik became anxious or when we mentioned the problems. There was thus a psychophysiological disturbance that can be described in simple terms as follows: The whistling sound and the cooling draught had caused an unpleasant direct effect on the right side of Patrik’s head, neck and arm. At first, Patrick had hardly noticed anything, but from the moment he started to be annoyed by the sound and worried about what was happening in his body when the unpleasant symptoms appeared, he had unintentionally come to amplify these symptoms through a so-called nocebo reaction. Nocebo involves directing anxious and negative attention to a particular body part. This disrupts the natural interaction between the nervous system and the body part in question, creating new, real symptoms. However, these symptoms are not due to injury or disease, but to the fact that the functions of the body part are disrupted by an imbalance in the nerve signals to it. This regulatory imbalance is caused by worrying that something has gone seriously wrong, feeling anxiously, checking again and again to make sure it doesn’t get any worse, and so tension builds up in the limb which, within hours, gives rise to unpleasant secondary symptoms. It took a while to explain this to Patrik so that he could take it on board and gradually start to change his own behaviour. After a few weeks, he had fully realised that a large part of the symptoms caused by certain sounds and cold draughts was due to his own negative, and eventually anxious, experience of it all. Once he learnt to relax rather than tense up in such environments, his symptoms reduced drastically. But they didn’t disappear completely, of course, because underneath there was a direct impact of the sound and the cold draft that he was sensitive to not only mentally but also physically.
The principle of this psychophysiological mechanism explains indirect environmental influences and is useful to keep in mind to understand how some complex work environment problems can arise and worsen, despite the physical environmental factors being investigated and minimised over and over again. In addition, this model explains how physical symptoms can arise from psychosocial problems. This is not hocus-pocus, but well-researched psychophysiological mechanisms. Thanks to modern brain research, we now know not only that but also how our experiences ‘settle’ in the body.
Can we not leave the psychosocial work environment to HR or Occupational Health Services?
Hardly! This is very much part of a good manager’s toolbox. Firstly, because a poor psychosocial work environment creates a spike in the organisation’s efficiency (costing much more than most people realise). Partly because 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. away from the problem approach and instead investing offensively and purposefully in increasing the conditions for experiences such as commitment, pride, community, togetherness and joy, there are opportunities to make a real difference. This is how you create a really well-functioning and high-performing workplace.
The psychosocial work environment has a very tangible link to the business, value creation, business development, profitability, competitiveness.
A manager who develops a certain skill in actively managing the psychosocial work environment within his or her part of the organisation will thereby have an option for a higher return on investment throughout his or her working life, an opportunity to improve work results while adding a large portion of joy and meaningfulness to everyday life for both himself or herself and his or her employees.
How important is it?
Incredibly important. Consider that we spend almost two thirds of our waking hours on work-related matters. Surely it stands to reason that we should be able to enjoy and be enriched by that part of our lives! Unfortunately, too few people even think about it. Too many people see work as a feeding trough they would rather not go to. Such an approach is nothing but a waste of time and energy. Life is far too short and precious for our experience of work to be half-baked.
In a really well-functioning workplace, value is created in two dimensions. In one, we have objective work results, production, customer benefit, profitability. In the other dimension, we have experiences.
No matter how you behave, you create experiences both in yourself and in others. If these experiences are to be considered valuable, most people want them to be uplifting, encouraging, inspiring, positive experiences that enhance their quality of life. In fact, for a great many people, the workplace is where they are most likely to have such experiences. Life would be much poorer, less joyful, less enthusiastic, less meaningful if you had no work to go to.
Job satisfaction and performance
Anyone with a few years of work experience knows that enthusiastic people perform better. It is therefore natural that many managers make mistakes when they want to improve their workplace, raise the performance and job satisfaction of their team. Many start by trying to increase well-being. That is starting at the wrong end! The fact is that if you want to improve an existing workplace, with an already established behavioural norm, you have to start with performance. Once you get some way into an improvement programme, it is clear that the energy and well-being of the group will be boosted, leading to higher productivity. Yet, the first step from the existing baseline should not focus on happiness and well-being. The first changes should lead to better efficiency and engagement in objective value creation, otherwise the process will quickly stall. In a workplace, you cannot have fun first and perform later. True job satisfaction requires pride in good performance, both personal and team.
The most common problems in the psychosocial work environment create negative stress in the organisation
Just as there are both desirable and undesirable stress reactions at the individual level, there are positive and negative stress states at the group and organisational level. The principle is the same: stress is about the mobilisation of resources and energy to deal with challenges. A totally unstressed organisation does not get much done. A positively stressed group is engaged and effective, and feels that resources match performance requirements. In negatively stressed organisations, employees feel inadequate, anxious, pressed for time, hounded, dissatisfied, frustrated, disappointed, tired, resigned. The type of stress that predominates in an organisation has major consequences both for the business and for individuals. Employees end up becoming cynical and disengaged, and the organisation becomes increasingly short-term reactive, focusing on the wrong things and struggling to maintain quality value creation.
There is a common misconception that negative stress at group level is always due to overwork and understaffing, but this is far from always the case. While there are certainly managers who stress their staff by giving too much to too few, research has shown that other factors are more important and more common.
Negative stress inevitably occurs in organisations where several of the following factors are present:
- lack of common goals (based on a holistic view of the organisation) or unclear goals and unrealistic expectations (may apply both to day-to-day tasks and to the long-term direction of the organisation)
- the organisation does not live up to agreed values and goals, because it does not follow up and ensure what has been agreed (decisions and agreements ‘fall by the wayside’)
- common basic values are lacking, or there are discrepancies between official and unofficial values so that value conflicts arise, i.e. there is no easy-to-read standard of behaviour that is valid for everyone and that employees can relate to in all situations
- the core values are not applied in everyday life: desirable behaviours are not rewarded, leadership does not dare to deal forcefully with undesirable behaviours
- reward systems – not only monetary, but also the principles of how we show appreciation and what behaviours are recognised – are not linked to real value creation, but are determined ad hoc by powerful leaders (sometimes by informal leaders) acting on their own agenda
- old inefficient corporate culture, staff turnover in key positions has been too low, positioning and power become the driving force of too many
- there is a discrepancy between the objectives of the organisation towards which employees are steering and the expectations of customers
- employees’ knowledge and experience are not sufficiently utilised
- the opportunity to take responsibility is not given, and when and if it is given, employees are poor at receiving, for example due to old habits of “delegating upwards”
- top-down organisation where individual employees feel they have too few opportunities to influence their own work situation
- focus is more on quantitative than qualitative performance – the clock is ticking rather than value creation (in some organisations, those who do not regularly work overtime may be seen as deviant, and the risk of key people burning out is high – on the other hand, there are workplaces where the opposite is true: any effort beyond the ordinary should lead to overtime pay)
- leadership is focussed on something other than creating the right conditions for employees to do a good job (usually because managers are rewarded for something other than leading their teams)
- unclear and inconsistent leadership, which neither follows up on decisions nor provides feedback on actions taken, lack of both praise and straightforward correction of mistakes
- meeting culture and information structure lack customisation
- too many staff have the wrong focus, worrying about threatening future scenarios rather than directing their energy towards desirable developments
- many in the group have low stress resilience and negative trends therefore risk being reinforced, creating ‘vicious circles’
- frequent reorganisations that disrupt the functioning of the business
- unclear or inconsistent incentive schemes, perception of unfairness, genuine commitment and loyalty are not rewarded
- – and last, but certainly not least these days: unnecessary administrative burdens, such as unrealistic documentation requirements invented by bureaucrats who do not understand the core business and who seem to think that the value-creating colleagues ‘on the ground’ have all the time in the world to create pseudo-value for the staff far from the real operations.
The above leads to poor functioning and performance of the company/organisation. It first manifests itself in stress and poor performance of a few individual employees. More and more people are affected and pretty soon the performance of whole groups and departments is affected. Some sensitive individuals suffer such severe stress and fatigue reactions that they cannot cope with their work at all, they become ‘burnt out’. However, burnout can be caused by reasons other than a stressful work environment, so a single case does not necessarily mean that something is wrong in the workplace. However, if more than 5% of employees show signs of intellectual or emotional exhaustion, it is time to seriously review the psychosocial work environment.
Even before it gets that far, team spirit, commitment and focus are disrupted in such a workplace. It is not long before the economy is affected and the organisation’s chances of long-term success are diminished.
So, without exaggeration, from both an individual and an organisational perspective, negative stress is actually the opposite of a successful way of running a business. What should be the primary focus of all employees (how best to contribute to value creation) slips down the priority list in stressed groups, and instead stressed staff focus on problems rather than opportunities, administrative burdens are magnified and given undue attention, personal qualities of some are subject to excessive scrutiny, speculation about reorganisations and other unproductive things gives rise to destructive rumours, etc.
Once the group is in a negative stressful phase, it is not long before external complaints emerge, contributing to further internal division and disintegration. More and more energy is then drained by internal conflicts and expressions of dissatisfaction.
Some common detectable symptoms of negative stress in an organisation:
- Quality shortcomings – dissatisfied customers
- Lack of co-operation between units, low efficiency of internal processes
- Diffuse dissatisfaction among employees, complaints about work environment, information, management, premises, etc.
- Work is no longer perceived as stimulating
- Poor dialogue climate, insufficient opportunities to exchange thoughts and ideas
- Lack of holistic approach – wrong prioritisation
- Resistance to development and change
- Constantly measuring and analysing without taking proper action
- Lack of awareness of the importance of external changes for the survival of the organisation.
- High or increasing absenteeism due to illness, loyalty to their team, preferring to stay at home
- High or increasing ‘sickness absence’, staff feeling unwell, low energy availability, decreasing performance capacity
- Frequency of occupational injuries and incidents higher than the industry average
- Workplace attractiveness declines, retention problems, high performers and key people leave the company to an undesired extent, difficulties in recruiting new ones with the right skills
Some examples:
Quality shortcomings – customers expect something to happen
Quality deficiencies are often an early signal that the organisation is not functioning well. Many companies and organisations try to find out what customers think about their services and products through extensive questionnaires, but it is better to talk to customers. Nowadays, customers are often annoyed when they are asked to fill in a questionnaire without any follow-up. This is a prime example of the downside of ill-considered use of digital tools. If customer feedback is not taken into account and leads to adequate action, the whole point of conducting a customer satisfaction survey in the first place is disqualified and, in the worst case, customers who have reacted to the arrogance of no follow-up from the supplier are lost.
“Can you tell me why I should spend time filling in this survey again? You are still good at what I have always said you are good at and you are still just as bad at what I have been criticising for two years.”
Nothing would have happened to the information collected, which is not unusual, because it is much easier to collect information and present it in a fancy way, than to really address the issues described as problem areas. It is not only customers who notice when this is the case, but also their own staff are affected and become less customer-centred.
Poor co-operation between the different parts of the value chain
In a service company in the communications sector, salespeople complained about the poor performance of the customer service and delivery unit. Customers complained unreasonably often that deliveries were incorrect both in terms of timing and content. A closer look at the sales process revealed that the documentation provided by the sales staff to the downstream units was so poor that it was very difficult to deliver what had been promised. For example, delivery times were promised without contacting those responsible for production planning or deliveries, so that the promised times were sometimes completely unrealistic from the outset.
Poor working climate – dissatisfaction with information, management, work environment
In an organisation with negative stress, it is common for employees to complain about inadequacies in the physical work environment, insufficient information, management inability, etc.
A growing proportion of employees’ time is spent feeling how bad the air is, worrying about electric fields, talking rubbish about people in management, complaining about not being served the latest news about something… In the end, only the most urgently necessary things are done.
These signals can be seen as a warning that the conditions for engagement and job satisfaction are being eroded; an expression of the fact that many people see shortcomings and opportunities for improvement, but do not see the possibilities to take initiatives, or even worse: no longer have the energy to care.
No stimulation of the work – low possibility of influence – low commitment
In one large workplace in a distribution and logistics company, where most employees had rather monotonous tasks, there was a problem of disengagement. Workers had even created a tradition of going home an hour or two before the end of regular working hours – a temporary benefit during a tough delivery period long ago that supervisors had made permanent as an unjustified entitlement.
The main reason for this was that employees no longer felt engaged in their work. They were simply bored, and looked elsewhere for stimulation.
Not surprisingly, there was also a high level of sickness absence and many work-related injuries. On closer analysis, it was found that employees had no say in the matter, feeling that they had only to carry out what they were told to do, with no scope for actually influencing the design and content of the work.
In this workplace, there was also no tradition of taking initiatives, with employees expecting managers and the trade union to make things happen, without trying to contribute themselves.
Poor climate for ideas and dialogue, no constructive dialogue culture
In one company in the food industry, there were no channels to make use of employees’ knowledge and experience and the climate of dialogue was not perceived as encouraging. “No manager is interested in what I want and can do anyway…”
Idea and development work was institutionalised, not a natural part of the business. It is still common in government-like organisations to appoint a staff unit to be responsible for ideas activities. But to find this relationship in a manufacturing industry can be characterised as strange. The link to creativity in everyday discussions was missing. For the staff concerned, the whole thing had been distorted so that they were endeavouring to come up with a good idea for which they could get an award, instead of seeing development work as a natural part of everyday life.
In order to develop co-operation between the financial functions in the different departments, the staff concerned had to start a group training activity. It was very quiet at first and the seminar leader eventually asked why the participants thought this might be.
The answer was: “We are not so used to talking to each other. Everything has to go through the bosses otherwise you just get penalised.”
Lack of holistic approach – wrong prioritisation
In a consulting company with technical consultants who had a high workload and a good reputation in the market, they nevertheless had to borrow to pay salaries at the end of the months. The reason turned out to be that the project managers, for reasons that were obvious to them, prioritised their technical client projects and forgot about administration. There was simply a lack of understanding of how the finances worked and the importance of timely invoicing for the future of the organisation. As a result, when the finance department sent out invoices for completion, they ended up in the low-priority pile where they remained for longer and longer as the workload increased, making the invoicing backlog even more paradoxical. In stressed groups, problems arise as a result of mis-prioritisation due to the fact that staff in a stressed situation are not able to consider the big picture as they would otherwise. Simply adding to the pressure by shouting and threatening can have all the wrong results. Here, management had to take a completely new approach to how administrative tasks should be understood by all consultants, and to allocate resources to support them at critical moments so that they were helped in the right way.
Resistance to development and improvement efforts due to feeling overrun
A mail terminal had a mechanical sorting area. Mail was delivered there in boxes that were transported via specialised box conveyors. The terminal had a technical department that worked on developing and improving the technology in the terminal. During a review, it was realised that there was a much better way of routing the box conveyors. A new proposal was drawn up, and staff were asked to consider it in its final form. The proposal would have been a clear improvement for everyone, but the unequivocal reaction was still negative because staff had not been consulted. They had not been involved in developing the proposal and therefore felt no ownership of the issue.
Constant measuring and analysing that provides a lot of information, but without doing anything
In a government agency with highly qualified staff, a psychosocial climate survey was conducted which confirmed the dissatisfaction expressed earlier. The dissatisfaction was centred on leaders and management issues, particularly governance and follow-up.
The action taken was to start meeting the management team in special sessions, which could have been a good start if they had resulted in a development process involving staff. Instead, a new analysis was carried out, this time a cultural analysis, which provided similar information to that already obtained. As there was no genuine desire on the part of management to develop themselves, nothing significant changed after the cultural analysis either.
Comment: Climate or attitude surveys and other types of psychosocial work environment surveys are a common way for management to probe the “mood” of the organisation. Sometimes these are done even though management already knows what the situation is. Sometimes information is sought without management having decided in advance how it will be handled, shared with employees, addressed or followed up. Sometimes an employee survey is carried out as if it were a measure to improve the psychosocial work environment. Many times, these budgetary resources can be put into effective action programmes right away, without having another consultant’s report telling you what you already knew.
Lack of insight into the importance of the customer and the outside world for the survival of the organisation, unrealistic self-overestimation – “customer contempt”, effects of bad-will
In many companies that sold occupational health care some years ago, the prevailing view was that customers were poor purchasers who did not know what service they really needed. They built up an OHS organisation that was not based on what the customer wanted, but instead on what the selling company had decided the customer should have. This created a corporate culture of self-appointed experts who looked down on the customer instead of establishing co-operation on the customer’s terms. This worked as long as the budget was guaranteed by central labour agreements and also partly funded by government grants, but when the VAS business was deregulated and forced to stand on its own commercial feet and rely fully on paying customers, it did not work as well anymore. Many VET centres had to be closed down when the purchase of their services became voluntary, as the offer was not tailored to the customer.
A similar culture could be observed in the heyday of the new economy when there were companies that felt so confident that the customer was not considered to have the faintest idea of what was needed in terms of IT development. That realisation was reserved for the IT consultants. That attitude was not very sustainable in the long run. When it eventually dawned on these organisations that cash was running out as venture capital was spent on luxury premises and unearned staff benefits, it was too late to start showing customer focus. Perhaps things would have gone better if there had been a humble attitude to the customer’s ability to recognise their own needs from the outset…
In the past, it was not common practice in healthcare to involve the patient in how best to manage treatment. The doctor knew the most about the disease and thus the best way to solve the problem. What the doctor did not know best was the patient’s life situation, which was an even more important ingredient in the organisation of treatment, which meant that some patients became dissatisfied and sought other forms of care. The map is not always better than reality.
It is important to nurture all the contacts you have in the outside world. Organisations that think they are so big that they can mismanage relationships with their suppliers and customers may do good business in the short term, but in the long term they may acquire a bad reputation that backfires in another context.
It is becoming increasingly important for job seekers to feel that they share the values of the organisation they are applying to. It is therefore essential that every organisation thinks about its values and behavioural norms, and then lives by them at all levels.
Sickness absence, presenteeism and occupational injuries
It is a well-known fact that high levels of sickness absence are linked to negative stress and exhaustion.
The same applies to occupational injuries, which are often caused by high psychological strain, monotony and short-termism. Whatever the cause, they are clear signals that something needs to be done about the overall work situation.
‘Sickness presenteeism’ is a term that may not be as well known as sick leave. It is used to describe two different phenomena: the first is that many people are generally feeling “a bit under the weather” and working at a reduced level of performance. This can sometimes be a serious illness or occupational injury that slowly sets in, but more often it is the onset of a stress-related fatigue reaction, which over a long period of time produces moderate symptoms from many different parts of the body (not just the brain), resulting in a gradual reduction in work capacity. Long before sick leave becomes necessary, such employees are underperforming (relative to their actual capacity).
Sometimes the term ‘sickness presenteeism’ is used to describe the phenomenon of people going to work even when they feel unwell due to illness and should really stay at home. In this case, it is more a case of ‘unwillingness to take sick leave’. The reasons for this can be many – a concern about not being able to keep the job, an intolerance of absenteeism on the part of managers and colleagues, or an unwillingness on the part of the individual to feel the need for rest, acute pressure and stress in the department that they do not want to affect their colleagues. The effect of such short-term behaviours can be devastating in the long term. The remedy is to create the conditions for long-term healthy engagement at work.
Difficulties in retaining staff, recruitment difficulties
In some sectors, notably public administration, health and education, recent years have seen a not insignificant number of well-qualified employees leaving jobs that they previously found very stimulating. Some of them have simply left their employer and continued with the same tasks with another employer who could pay them better. Many leave the industry altogether because of a feeling of never being able to get decent working conditions in an unaccountable organisation. In recent years, we have met many doctors who have left their profession to, for example, open a shop, become an excavator operator, become an insurance salesman. The reasons for such choices can, of course, be several, but probably not primarily the possibility of getting a higher salary, but rather some kind of realisation of what kind of working environment one wants for the rest of one’s active working life.
Attack best defence
The main reason for writing this is that I want to see more managers making a real difference for the better and creating workplaces where people find it fun, challenging and stimulating to work. Workplaces where employees feel respected for what they can and do, where they can participate and influence and take responsibility within the framework of their abilities and where they feel seen by both manager and colleagues.
I believe that such workplaces lead to business success with satisfied customers and good profitability growth, which in turn creates a positive image and makes employees proud to work there and nowhere else, not even where they can get a slightly higher salary.
It is important to create a continuous improvement process and follow up across the board (finances, customer satisfaction, workplace climate), and not just make one-off cuts where you already suspect something is wrong.
The best way to counteract negative stress in organisations is not to create procedures for early detection of psychosocial workplace problems and stressed employees and to prevent ‘burnout’. Such measures are of course also needed, but they are not enough. The most important thing is to establish positive stress in the organisation in the long term, which promotes both performance capacity and health.
Positive stress in organisations
Genuine job satisfaction is a form of positive stress. This statement may sound ridiculous at first, but just as at the individual level, there are reasons at the group and organisational level to strive for certain states of stress. Well-functioning and sustainably high-performing workplaces are in a state that could well be described as “positive stress”. In the previous chapter, we saw that at the individual level, positive stress means that you are faced with a challenging task that requires you to be alert, to work hard, to make an effort. You are challenged. At the same time, you feel that you are capable of solving the task if you mobilise your resources. One of the prerequisites for positive stress is that the task feels urgent. A positive stress reaction also involves adequate recovery so that you are ready for new challenges.
Burnout is (usually) not due to overwork but to under-recovery.
Positive stress at the group level has the same basic features. You and your teammates face a number of meaningful challenges that you jointly mobilise your energy to overcome, and then everyone takes responsibility for recharging your energy during breaks and free time.
Good mental fitness is achieved by individuals and groups who are in a so-called ‘positive stress state’. This means, firstly, that the ‘input’ (recovery) equals the ‘output’ (effort) per day, and secondly, that this balancing act is sustained at a high level. This message makes many people frown. A common misconception is that you should do the balancing act at a low level because it feels much more comfortable in the short term. However, in the long term, this approach leads to increased stress sensitivity and reduced physical and mental fitness. Because you can’t rest when you’re fit.
We all know that if you want to improve your physical fitness, you need to work out more often and more intensely, eat well and rest properly between workouts. No one thinks that taking the lift instead of the stairs will give you strong legs. But many people seem to have overlooked the fact that the same applies to mental fitness. If you want to get a better mental energy supply and increase your mental strength, you have to exert yourself, rest with quality, exert yourself even more, recover properly, and then at it again the next day, and again. Those who avoid all unpleasant challenges in favour of a comfortable alternative will only become more fragile, weaker and less energetic.
This principle also applies at group level.
Genuine job satisfaction is a form of positive stress
For job satisfaction and enthusiasm to be present in a team, the group must master the same oscillation between tiring effort and energising recovery. If these two categories of behaviour balance each other out every day, every week, every month, the team can be sustainable, well-functioning and high-performing in the long term. Such workplaces are not places where people have little to do, can surf privately, take long breaks and go home a little earlier. Not at all. Several scientific studies show that a really good psychosocial work environment is linked to high and clear demands, efficiency and commitment, a focus on common goals, a community of values and clarity of purpose, a willingness to develop, dedication and a readiness to fight and take responsibility. When you go home from work, you should be tired. But proud, satisfied and energised by having accomplished something important. Job satisfaction does not presuppose freedom from all forms of stress; on the contrary, it is closely linked to those forms of stress that are inevitable when you get involved, care, work hard and try to do your best. A good workplace is not, and should not be, constantly calm, relaxed and stress-free.
True job satisfaction is a phenomenon linked to the pleasure and reward system in our brains. We are not looking for workaholism, but for desirable conditioning mechanisms that reinforce the establishment of good habits and useful skills.
In a well-functioning workplace, where team enthusiasm is strong, everyone helps each other focus on good performance and rejoices in joint endeavours and celebrates successes, even small ones. Not only is the manager generous with feedback, but all team members give each other feedback. This is made possible by having a single common agenda, with no one running their own race on the side. All this togetherness, acknowledgement of each other’s efforts, positive feedback and celebration of successes are extremely powerful triggers for the pleasure and reward system in people’s brains.
For true job satisfaction, it is not enough to have fun, to be surrounded by ‘good guys’ who can tell jokes and jokes on a regular basis. Of course, humour is important. Laughing is even very important, we are the first to agree. The point of our reservation about ‘having fun’ is merely to clarify the risk of misunderstanding, superficiality and misdirection, if too much priority is given to playfulness and having fun without putting it in a wider context.
Nor does genuine job satisfaction come from having a generous employer who offers generous benefits. At the heart of job satisfaction is commitment, good camaraderie and pride in good performance that is recognised and rewarded.
A group that meets every now and then to have coffee while updating each other on what has happened in the village, crocheting tablecloths, carving butter knives and crocheting potholders for the Christmas market is hardly focussed on performance. You are welcome in the group if you contribute to the good atmosphere, bring coffee bread sometimes and help with the dishes afterwards.
The situation is completely different if the reason you are a group is that you are a workplace. In that case, value-creating performance must be everyone’s focus. Job satisfaction can never be based on having long lunch breaks, good coffee, favourable well-being programmes and a luxurious kick-off every year. First, the team must prove to itself that it can do a good job. When there is reason to take pride in good performance, genuine job satisfaction can arise. Then, as a second priority, if you start to contribute more actively to the team spirit, this will lead to increased energy, better stamina and higher performance capacity. This synergy works reciprocally, back and forth at ever higher altitudes. Sustained enthusiasm in a team is based on the team’s interest in doing a good job, shared joy in common successes and fair rewards. A virtuous circle emerges whereby health and happiness increase in synergy with performance quality and value creation. Engaging and doing a good job is not tiring and unhealthy. Provided that the ‘battery charge’, i.e. recovery, works between shifts. It is important to realise that a large part of recovery must take place during leisure time, which means that everyone must take responsibility for what they do in their free time so that the activities complement what they do during working hours. The more monotonous and repetitive the work, the more important it is to engage in activities in your free time that are completely different and that put a completely different strain on your mind and body than the work activities.
One more thing is important to realise here. In order to get quality rest, you need to be able to relax. If you never really rest, you will not have a good quality of recovery (I explore the reasons for this in the section on positive and negative stress under menu 3 and in the blog article on burnout/exhaustion).
Both sides of this model are interdependent and mutually reinforcing if you start at the right end. The focus must therefore first be on performance, i.e. value-adding work. This is one of the most important tasks of the leader. In workplaces with weak leadership and too little to do, staff start to talk about and care about everything but what is directly work-related. In such a workplace, no healthy person can thrive in the long run.
Enthusiastic leaders ensure that value creation works and that those who do a good job are immediately recognised. The most important way to activate an employee’s desire and reward system is for the manager to show that he or she recognises when they are doing a good job.
When this works, only then can managers start investing in well-being activities and ways to have fun and relax together to energise the group.
Labour-triggered happiness
The reason why job satisfaction is such an important form of happiness is that it is beneficial to us in the long term. We feel good when we work with others to earn rewards. It provides a much deeper and healthier joy than the short-lived and superficial exhilaration of pleasure, indulgence or gluttony.
It’s not just about ‘having fun’, but a profound effect that affects the way the whole brain and body work. Many researchers have looked into this, such as Carles Muntaner of the Institute for Work and Health at the University of Toronto, who reported in a 2008 WHO report that he had found that people who are deeply engaged in their work have better mental health and live longer.
There is also research showing that unearned rewards can lead to a lower quality of life, even be harmful and eventually contribute to mental health problems. For example, psychology researchers Jonathan Gardner and Andrew Oswald at the University of Warwick and Rainer Winkelmann in Zurich have found that large sums of money unexpectedly dropped in someone’s lap greatly increase the risk of poorer quality of life. A few years after winning the jackpot, many lottery winners have developed anxiety and depression-like conditions. Small lottery wins, on the other hand, lead to increased well-being, probably because the winners do not quit their jobs and do not make any radical changes, but simply experience increased opportunities to enhance their social situation within the framework of the lifestyle they have already mastered.
We noted above that leaders should start by recognising good performance. This requires having good measurement methods that reliably show when an individual employee or the whole team has done a particularly good job. It requires the manager or leader to be socially courageous enough to really give employees feedback, to look them in the eye and smile, pat them on the shoulder and say: “Excellent job, Lisa!”, “Well done, Kalle!”
This is how the positive psychological energy should start to be raised in a workplace. After that, the leader can invest more directly in actions that lift community, camaraderie, team spirit, pride, confidence, motivation, dedication to the shared vision.
One of the manager’s best tools to contribute to that energy in the team is to emphasise what is going well, show that you notice when someone is making an effort and trying hard, pass on positive comments from customers to everyone in the group, increase the focus on the positive.
At the same time, leaders must not hesitate to correct misbehaviour and give straightforward feedback to employees who do not live up to the agreed level of performance or who do not contribute to the positive energy of the team.
A cowardly manager, who does not dare to give negative feedback in a clear and constructive way, cannot in the long run give positive feedback either, because he or she has simply lost his or her credibility. (Anyone who knows that this is a skill that needs to be trained to the next level can contact me and get tips on current good courses in practical feedback techniques. Email questions to me at: clas@dcmhk.se)
If some team members have personal visions of life that are not in line with the shared vision of the workplace, there will be problems. They will seek each other out and try to support each other in the struggle to create a subculture with their own exceptional norms recognised. Even if they are a small minority, they must not be held back, as this may lead to the disengagement of the others.
Attracting and repelling employees
An enthusiastic leader creates the conditions for positive stress in his or her organisation also by being clear about what he or she is personally passionate about and will fight to achieve. A courageous leader who is clear about his or her own values and vision will attract employees who share those values. At the same time, such a leader will repel employees who do not see life in the same way, those who dream of something completely different or simply do not want or cannot muster the necessary commitment to anything.
One of the effects of flat, cowardly, unclear and unenthusiastic leadership is to keep the mediocre and the half-hearted employees without a fight. The potential “rocks” among employees, those who are looking for a workplace where they can fulfil their desire to be wholeheartedly committed, to struggle and learn new things, and to be part of a skilled team, they move on. Or they use their saved energy for something else outside work, start renovating their house, become a junior coach at the football club, get involved in politics, join a volunteer movement or get involved in some other activity where they can fulfil their desire to be useful, develop, contribute to something meaningful. Such side jobs are not always wrong from a labour point of view. They can mean that the employee is stimulated and inspired by an active leisure time. Nevertheless, the question is of course how much time the activity takes up and whether the energy equation adds up per day and per week.
Many executive recruitment and assessment programmes nowadays use role-playing. Applicants meet an actor who stages different employee roles that the prospective manager must respond to as constructively as possible. In scenes where an employee who has misbehaved is to be reprimanded, a frighteningly large proportion of Swedish management applicants show a serious lack of ability. In particular, when the actor plays the role of an aggressive co-worker, only one in five of the applicants is approved by the watching and listening judging panel. The worst consequences of this potential flaw in a leader’s arsenal are when one employee’s irresponsible behaviour takes its toll on the others in the group. In that case, he or she must be vigorously corrected for the sake of the others.
“Cosiness-managers” create a bad working environment
Ingrid Tollgerdt-Andersson is a Swedish researcher in economic psychology who has studied this phenomenon. A few years ago, she conducted a study of different leadership cultures. She divided a number of workplaces into two groups according to how good their work ethic was, in this case measured as high or low sick leave. The workplaces were then analysed. The result was quite logical, one might think from a common sense point of view, but nevertheless surprising to many. Tollgerdt-Andersson found that it was the workplaces whose managers emphasised equality and comfort, who bought massage chairs and talked a lot about feeling good, that had the highest prevalence of sick leave among the staff and scored worst in measurements of psychosocial work environment. Managers who rarely or never talked about “feeling good”, but emphasised creating value, responsibility, clarity, high standards, pay for performance and who delegated both authority and responsibility, proved to be more democratic in practice and created a better attitude to work. Not only did their staff stay healthier, they were also more committed to the job and showed better loyalty to both their boss and their colleagues.
The “feeling good manager” makes life unclear. It becomes unclear who is really in charge, how to take responsibility, what is required to get a higher salary. These managers are often too soft on the edges, perhaps even a little afraid of conflict, and do not speak up, either upwards, outwards or downwards, which leads to more negative stress than in a clear organisation around a courageous and straightforwardly communicating manager who makes realistic demands.
Paradoxical? Not at all! It’s perfectly logical. “Feeling good managers” have kind intentions, but at a work-place it’s easy to get it wrong…
Unfortunately, there is very little research on this in the world of work. However, all the experienced managers we spoke to agree that workplaces with a ‘permissive’ attitude towards disengaged employees are severely penalised in that the best employees disappear.
This is one of the reasons why I so intensely emphasise the importance of not succumbing to the fear of challenging and confronting colleagues. Elicit consequences, both positive and negative, of how people are behaving. That’s how you crack the culture code, making it clear to everybody what it is all about, working with you, being part of your workplace.
Many managers care too much about well-being and avoiding confrontation, and thereby unwittingly create a worse working environment than those managers who focus on performance and compliance with the stated behavioural norm.
To some extent, this is a Swedish phenomenon, and a recent one. Over the past twenty years, Swedish managers have been influenced by the flip side of the “Swedish model” with an excessive preoccupation with security. At the same time, a strong media opinion has pushed the theses: “demands = stress = danger” and “everyone must be allowed to participate regardless of whether they contribute or not”. This has gone so far that Swedish managers have generally become worse leaders. Despite all the leadership training programmes. An international headhunter was quoted in Dagens Nyheter on 6 February 2011: “. . . this flight from responsibility has given Swedish managers a bad reputation abroad. Has he made a decision or not?” foreigners who have witnessed a Swedish workplace meeting often ask.
Let’s listen to Kalle, an employee at a mechanical workshop, who said something like this in a follow-up interview one year after his boss and the whole team had gone through our programme:
“We now know how to create value for our customers. We know what behaviours are desirable and how they are rewarded. We ourselves have been involved in creating a system to monitor our operations from a holistic perspective. This system allows us to see how well we are doing and how we are performing at regular intervals. This means we don’t have to spend time speculating about how things are going and whose fault it is when things go wrong, but we can focus our energy on solutions and improvements. It has become much more fun to work here, I must admit.
We have weekly meetings where everyone is present to discuss how we are moving towards our vision. The monitoring system and our own observations provide us with the data we need.
We feel good about being seen, that our opinions and experiences are sought after and our knowledge is respected. We feel that we are doing a good job and that this is recognised. This is the basis for our well-being in the workplace. Community, team spirit and camaraderie are also extremely important prerequisites for our job satisfaction, and we invest in them by paying attention to each other and sometimes doing things together in our free time.
Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes sometimes, misinterpret a situation or act on a misconception or let negative emotions take over. In these cases, we welcome constructive criticism from colleagues who saw what happened and can help us handle the situation better next time.
Our monitoring system also measures the atmosphere in the workplace and how we interact with each other.
As we also need to have a good personal life, we try to maintain a good work-life balance and inspire each other to engage in rewarding leisure activities so that we all stay fit both mentally and physically.
Our regular follow-up calls with your manager are not just about how well you’ve been doing lately. We also talk about how much energy you have, how you are looking after your health and fitness.
Within the group, we agree with each other which activities each behavioural goal contains. We take note of the common goals and try to book activities together.
We have a fair reward system that is aligned with our values and objectives.
All this means that the energy of our team has gone up several notches in the last year. It has become really fun to work here.”