Work pressures
Britain’s long hours culture is becoming legendary. According to a report by the National Centre for Social Research, one-third of employees are now working more than the 48-hour a week maximum laid out in the EU Working Time Directive (The Sunday Times, 1 September 2002). Round-the-clock working is becoming commonplace in many service and retail environments. Britain tem-porarily opted out of the Working Time Directive, meaning that employees do not enjoy the same protection as European counterparts on the number of hours they are permitted or expected to work. The 2005 Management Agenda find-ings endorse this, with 20 per cent of respondents regularly working 15 extra hours each week just to keep on top of the work-flow. The survey findings sug-gest that the long hours culture is firmly embedded in the UK, with 83% of respondents working consistently longer than their contracted hours. Not sur-prisingly, perhaps, in nearly a third of organizations surveyed, morale was low.
People’s jobs also become more complex in changing times. For instance, according to a survey conducted by insurer Royal and Sun Alliance, 83 per cent of respondents reported that they had been personally affected by change, with the need to integrate teams and manage conflict being common aspects of their working week. The report also claims that British couples have developed a system of ‘shift-parenting’ to cope with ever-longer working hours. The UK government is under pressure from Europe to extend statutory paid leave.
Another survey (CMI, 2003) describes the growth of ‘work addiction’, finding that up to 40 per cent of managers in the UK say that they do not take their full holiday entitlement and half feel compelled to phone in regularly for updates if they do get away.
Stress
A survey carried out for Personnel Today and the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (Willmott, 2003) found that 83 per cent of HR professionals believe that stress is holding back the UK’s efforts to close the productivity gap, with more than half of UK organizations reporting an increase in workplace stress. Similarly 60 per cent claimed that stress is adding to retention problems. There is a danger in our obsession with task delivery that we forget that the ways in which people work together can destroy the human spirit. The relentless pressures for performance and reaching targets can result in increased stress to the point that people become dysfunctional. The National Employee Benchmarks Survey (Wigham, 2003) by BRMB, found that the issue of stress has reached such proportions that 42 per cent worry about their job outside working hours, 40 per cent feel they cannot report concerns over excessive pressure and 19 per cent dread going into work;
35 per cent admitted that they felt unsupported by managers and 33 per cent felt overwhelmed by their workload.
Stress levels in Britain are now reportedly so high that an estimated 80 million working days a year are being lost to the condition, creating a financial burden of approximately £5.3 billion. A MORI survey found that 39 per cent of British employees felt that they were operating under unac-ceptable levels of stress and the World Health Organization has predicted that, by 2020, depression (much of it stress-related) will be the second biggest cause of death (The Sunday Times, 6 July 2003).
In the 2005 Management Agenda, company practices such as failure to follow though on policies such as diversity, work–life balance etc., promoting people who act unethically and a macho, competitive management style are reported as leading to a high-stress work climate. The tough workplace climate is reflected in the number of national conferences that focus on issues such as work–life bal-ance, diversity and bullying in the workplace. Most new recruits to organizations also report their motivation drastically diminishing after 18 months with their organization. Lack of recognition and lack of time to achieve their workload were reported to be major demotivators. The broader picture to emerge is of a demand-ing and pressurized environment, where low morale is commonplace.
Stress as a symptom of lack of work–life balance is reported by 71 per cent of respondents, with long-standing employees being hardest hit. People report that they have had to make sacrifices in relationships and health. They report lack of balance if they experience heavy workloads (made heavier not easier by e-mail), lack of time to do the work, little support and lack of control over their workload. These four factors are frequently mentioned in the survey, as are organizational (management) expectations and pressures to respond quickly and accurately. The increased pressure on managers is apparent from the fact that less than a third of Management Agenda managers felt that they had ade-quate resources to do the job.
Bad management is the major source of stress according to a major survey by Personnel Today Online (14 July 2003), with lack of career opportunity
being the second biggest source of stress. Various reports suggest that employers are failing to tackle the sources of work stress and that stress is doubling heart death risk in the UK. Organizations appear to be doing little to redress these imbalances and the only forms of organizational support reported are the use of performance management systems and training man-agers in coaching skills.
Respondents suggest, perhaps optimistically, that within the UK economy, there is a need to reassess the emphasis on work, which is reported by a quarter of respondents as contributing to breakdowns in relationships and family life, as well as affecting physical and psychological health. Obviously work is essential to economic prosperity but the nature of the work that really needs to be done is often misunderstood and the costs of repairing damage to individuals and families caused by heavy workloads is hidden elsewhere in the nation’s budget. On the whole Management Agenda respon-dents report that performance is judged more on inputs than on outputs. The role of managers at all levels in effectively managing performance becomes pivotal here.
Workplace legislation can protect employee interests. For example, the Employment Act of 2003 offered parents of children aged under 6 the right to ask for flexible working. It was initially treated with scepticism by some employers while many organizations extended flexible working rights to all employees as a benefit. Legislation can also add to the pressures on employ-ees. In some industries the impact of such legislation is greater on some roles than others. In the construction industry, for example, site managers can be personally liable for injury occurring as a result of non-compliance with health and safety legislation.
The effects of stress are reflected in the fact that two-thirds of Management Agenda respondents report that they are thinking more short-term in relation to their current position and therefore may not see themselves hanging around to witness any more change. This potential loss of capable managers is a risk for organizations.
The political nature of organizational life
The Roffey Park research also highlights the increasingly political nature of managerial life, with 70 per cent of respondents indicating that political behaviour has increased within their organization in recent years. Although a slight majority reported that they do not engage in political behaviour themselves, this leaves a considerable minority (45 per cent) who do.
Many respondents accept that political behaviour is inevitably more preva-lent in times of change as people position themselves to take over other people’s ‘turf’ or prepare to defend their own.
Of the respondents who do admit to playing politics, 45 per cent say they do so because they consider it essential to getting things done within the organization, while 24 per cent reported that it was the norm within
their organization. A further 23 per cent get involved in the political side of management as a survival mechanism, believing that their job is at stake if they do not. This leaves only 3 per cent doing so because they enjoy it and the same percentage doing it to attain power and influence. Political behaviour therefore appears to be an added pressure for managers, who feel obliged to play the political game within their organization in order to do their job.
The prevalence of political behaviour is linked with a reduction in levels of trust. Ironically, at a time when many organizations are trying to introduce high commitment work practices, such as increasing collaboration and team-working, people appear to be less willing to put faith in their colleagues and managers. Politics appears instead symptomatic of an organizational climate of conflict and competition, with people retaining knowledge as opposed to sharing it.
What we see happening is something of a vicious circle. Ongoing change seems to give rise to a political workplace environment. This in turn causes people to lose trust – in colleagues as well as managers. Consequently they keep their best ideas to themselves and become risk-averse for fear of saying something politically incorrect in their context. This reduces the organization’s ability to innovate as people stick to familiar ground where they feel safe. This in turn drives more change as organizations attempt to rectify their slipping market position.
Conclusion
Organizations need to change in order to keep pace with the strong external forces which are transforming the marketplace. However, when organizational change takes place, the pressures on people in the workplace can expand, causing stress and a potential loss of productivity. For organizations seeking to remodel their approaches to getting work done and aiming to attract and retain key ‘new’ employees, such a scenario poses a potential risk to business.
Simply changing structures rarely produces the benefits identified on paper.
Managing change taking the human factor into account is more likely to deliver results.
In the next chapter we will look at the psychological impact change can have on employees and at some of the commonest causes of resistance to change. We shall also examine some of the implications of the changing employment landscape, including some of the broad shifts in work and work patterns. We shall look at how this is reflected in the changing employment relationship between employees and employers. We shall draw on a number of sources, in particular findings from the annual Roffey Park Management Agenda survey of employee experience of the workplace. I shall argue that organizations need to get to grips with the changing nature of employee expec-tations if their success depends on the skills and willingness of employees to perform at their best.
Key messages