WORK AND A LIFE

1
WORK AND A LIFE

• Dr Peter SaulDirector, Strategic Consulting
  Group
• Presented to
• AHRI National Convention, May 1999
• Adelaide

2
The product of work is people

• The view I reached is that life is an inherently
  disappointing experience for most human beings.
  Some people cant cope with that.
• Premier, Bob Carr, speaking after the NSW Drugs
  Summit
• 21st May 1999

3
WORKING HARDER, LONGER, LESS SECURE

• I have huge workloads, no time off in lieu, no
  tea breaks, no adequate training. Some weeks I
  dont have time to think and have suffered
  anxiety and stress. I actually had to take time
  off and sought counselling and medication.
  People never take a day off in lieu. Finance
  sector worker
• I thought, this is not a status symbol
  regularly working 12 hour days, including
  weekends, this shows that you have nothing else
  to go home to. I started to see that I had
  swallowed the corporate myth and that it wasnt
  particularly healthy.There was more to life than
  just work. Senior HR manager
• Source Australia at Work (p. 6 and
  p.110)ACIRRT, Sydney 1999

4
RUMBLINGS EVEN AT THE TOP

• Australias business world is a pathetic
  corporate structure filled with work-obsessed
  male executives. The pervasive culture is that
  employees are owned. Commitment is defined not
  by productivity or efficiency, but by the number
  of hours one puts in.
• working fathers continually state that their
  children are the most important thing in their
  lives but never spend any time with them. They
  refuse to change the corporate culture through
  which they battled their way to the top, often at
  great cost to their families.
• Daniel Petre, ex MD of Microsoft Australia
• and author of Father Time

5
A HARDER PARADIGM

• We have hardened the paradigm in which our
  employees operate. We've hardened them by
  downsizing. We've hardened them by constantly
  changing the way we manage our business and the
  way we structure our business. We've hardened
  them by reducing the level of security.
• Mark Paterson, CEO, Australian Chamber of
  Commerce and Industry
• 1 April, 1998

6
IMPACT OF WORKPLACE CHANGES

• Work effort
• higher 58
• lower 4
• no change 36
• Amount of stress on job
• higher 49
• lower 7
• no change 42
• Pace of the job
• higher 46
• lower 4
• no change 49

• Satisfaction with work/family balance
• higher 14
• lower 26
• no change 58
• Satisfaction with job
• higher 30
• lower 29
• no change 40
• Source Derived from AWIRS 95, Employee Survey
  reported in Australia at Work 1999, p. 106

7
THE COST OF WORKPLACE STRESS

• Stress at the office and in the factories is
  estimated to be costing Australia at least 150
  million a year in workers compensations claims
  and has now reached epidemic proportions.
• Mounting medical research evidence suggests
  stress can have a profound effect on the immune
  system, raising concerns that prolonged or
  extreme stress may increase the risk of
  infections and other diseases, possibly cancer.
  
• stress is contributing to increasing rates of
  depression and other mental illness.
• Sydney Morning Herald, p.1, January 2nd, 1996

8
LIVING AND WORKING AT WORK

• For most workers, the working day did not just
  consist of transforming inputs into outputs. It
  also involved relating to ones fellow workers
  and finding some satisfaction in being at the
  workplace. Thus attempts to eliminate dead
  time in the productivity chain also undermined
  the social relations of the workplace. Workers
  make boring work bearable by fostering
  sociability, particularly humour and other forms
  of mutual assistance. An agenda for workplace
  change which undermines these social relations of
  the workplace is experienced by people as a
  profound contradiction between the social and the
  economic.
• Source Australia at Work (p.33 )
• ACIRRT, Sydney 1999

9
WHO ARE YOU CREATING?

• "You can plan everything in your life, and then
  the roof caves in on you because you haven't done
  enough thinking about who you are and what you
  should do with the rest of your life.... People
  ask me why I'm still working so hard. I tell
  them that without that, and without my kids and
  grandkids, I'd lose it - I'd have nothing".
• Lee Iococca
• - after three years of retirement from Chrysler
• Fortune, 24 June 1996, p. 47

10
SUCCESS TODAY DEPENDS ON WHOLE HUMAN BEINGS

• THE MORE CREATIVITY, COMMITMENT, PASSION, CARING,
  TEAMWORK AND DISCRETIONARY EFFORT EMPLOYERS WANT
  FROM THEIR STAFF, THE MORE OF THE WHOLE HUMAN
  BEING THEY WILL HAVE TO INVITE INTO THE
  EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

11
MANAGING CHAOS

• In Chaos you cannot do, you cannot plan, you
  cannot reason to an end point. In Chaos, you
  can only be.
• The 500-Year Delta by Jim Taylor and Watts
  Wacker 1997, p.16

12
LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

• We don't see things the way they are. We see
  things the way we are.
• Talmud

13
WE ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM
We want economic, social and environmental wealth
plus psychological wealth of keeping up
Constant pressures to aspire to more, different
We work (harder) to satisfy current and future
wants
Economically biased cultures and tough people
policies
Less time for non-work life, including citizenship
Dependence on 3rd parties and demand for
passive
Pressure on leaders for performance
Emphasis on returns and not falling behind peers
Third parties driven by their values, norms,
perceptions
14
WHY DO WE FEEL SO UNEASY?

• GROWING QUANTUM AND DIVERSITY OF WANTS
• Persistent gaps between actual and desired lives
• THE OLD DEALS ARE BEING DISHONOURED
• Security for loyalty
• A time of ease for a time of hard work
• Share of prosperity for trust in government,
  leaders
• Meaningful life for not questioning current
  paradigm
• THE OLD BASES FOR DECISIONS ARE FAILING US
• Reason
• Precedent
• Rules
• Formal authority
• WE KEEP POLISHING AN OUTDATED PARADIGM
• Newtonian, linear rationality and control
• Avoidance of anxiety

15
A TEST

• What are the 5 most important competencies or
  characteristics you strive to develop because you
  believe they are essential to being a successful
  HR professional?
• What are the 5 most important competencies or
  characteristics you strive to develop because you
  believe they are essential to being a successful
  human being?
• What are the consequences of striving to develop
  and demonstrate the latter competencies and
  characteristics in your current organisation?

16
A PERSONAL SEARCH FOR BALANCE

• MORE REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS AND CLEAR PRIORITIES
• SHARING CONCERNS, RESOURCES
• ASK FOR WHAT YOU NEED
• COURAGE TO DISAPPOINT SOMEONE IMPORTANT TO YOU
• CREATIVE SYNERGY
• STAYING REASONABLY FIT AND HEALTHY
• BEING ABLE TO QUICKLY CHANGE THE STORY

17
ITS SOCIETY STUPID - A DAWNING REALISATION

• Everyone from the far Left to the far Right,
  from business and from welfare, is using the same
  language, stressing the need for an integration
  of social and economic policy for the promotion
  of social inclusion for the rebuilding of our
  stocks of social capital.Michelle Gunn
  reporting in the Weekend Australian on Australia
  Unlimited conference held in Melbourne on 4-5
  May 1999

18
AN AUSTRALIAN SCENARIO

• CREATE CITIES AND REGIONAL COMMUNITIES WHERE
  GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE WORKERS CHOOSE TO LIVE AND RAISE
  THEIR FAMILIES
• Leading edge work in exciting corporate clusters
• World class, accessible, learning facilities
• Reliable, cheap telecommunications
• Efficient, cheap local/international transport
• Attractive town planning, environment management
• Neighbourhood resource hubs
• Social services to help create safe, stable,
  clean communities
• ACTIVELY FOSTER ORGANISATIONS AND SUPPORT
  INDIVIDUAL CAREER CHOICES THAT REINFORCE THE
  NATIONAL MAGNET STRATEGY
• Differential tax rates for givers and takers

19
HR AGENDA - MOVING FROM MASS TO MICRO

• LEADERS WHO ARE SUCCESSFUL IN ATTRACTING THE BEST
  (SCARCE) TALENT WILL HAVE PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
  POLICIES AND PRACTICES THAT SUPPORT THEM IN

• Involving all contributors in a self-aware,
  meaningful community
• Supporting contributors lifestyle choices
• Fostering partnerships with contributors in
  achieving shared or complementary goals
• Aligning with contributors personal and
  professional values and aspirations
• Accommodating changes in the relationship in
  response to changes in contributors life
  circumstances
• Maintaining high levels of contributor autonomy,
  self-esteemand vitality
• Telling mission, values and performance stories
  that include the above - and consistently
  embodying theirstories

20
LETTING OUR SOULS FIND US AGAIN
One morning, after travelling fast through the
jungles of Africa, Andre Gide (the French author)
urged his native guides to get moving. They
looked at him and with firmness said Dont
hurry us - we are waiting for our souls to catch
up with us. Adapted from Organisational
Mindfulness by Tom Heuerman with Diane Olson
21
THE RAINMAKER
There was a great drought. For months there had
not been a drop of rain and the situation became
catastrophic. The Catholics made processions,
the Protestants made prayers and the Chinese
burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten
away the demons of the drought, but with no
result. Finally the Chinese said We will fetch
the rainmaker. And from another province a
dried-up old man appeared. The only thing he
asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and
there he locked himself up for three days. On
the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was
a great snow storm at the time of year when no
snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the
town was so full of rumours about the wonderful
rainmaker that Richard Wilhelm went to ask the
man how he did it. In true European fashion he
said They call you the rainmaker. Will you
tell me how you made the snow? And the little
Chinese man said I did not make the snow I am
not responsible. But what have you done these
three days? Oh, I can explain that. I come
from another country where things are in order.
Here, they are out of order they are not as
they should be by the ordinance of heaven.
Therefore, the whole country is not in Tao, and I
also am not in the natural order of things
because I am in a disordered country. So I had
to wait three days until I was back in Tao and
then naturally the rain came. Jungs account of
a story related to him by Richard Wilhelm, who
had lived in China (in C.G. Jung Mysterium
Coniunctionis).