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Zombie workers cost U.S. businesses $550 billion a year, according to Gallup.
Over three-quarters of U.S. employees don’t like their jobs. This is a huge economic problem regarding lost productivity but just as significantly, a human problem with real consequences for individual workers. Many are disinterested, disengaged, and disgusted. Poor management, along with technology-related disengagement, may be the leading causes. These working dead may show up for meetings but simply go through the motions. At best, they fail to contribute their talents and energies. At its worst, they actively sabotage the efforts of others.
What Does a Disaffected Worker Look Like?
Some disaffected workers act out of fear, and that fear takes many forms. Most disaffected are risk averse. They do what they are told to do, no more and no less. If they see a better way to accomplish a task, they keep their lips zipped. Emotionally, they are flat – they never get excited about anything because they don’t want to be disappointed once again. Their smile never reaches their eyes.
Some of the disaffected are highly emotional and act out. They attack management and other employees out of frustration. Paradoxically, these disaffected are easier to rescue since they still care. Once they give up and lapse into depression, they may be permanently lost.
Enter Technology: Villain or Hero in the Story?
Technology can strip the meaning from jobs and disrupt social connections, causing disaffection and isolation. Conversely, technological tools can support collaboration and teamwork, enabling employee engagement. Technology can be a villain or a hero.
Technology as Villain
Unless leaders pay close attention to technology’s potential negative impacts, new systems can leave employees withdrawn, disengaged, and depressed.
Passiveness – New technologies in the workplace can contribute to a sense of powerlessness. Employees don’t get to vote on new systems; they are merely recipients of a series of never-ending disenfranchising new technologies.
Isolation – New systems and technologies can disrupt existing workflows, which breaks natural work connections and socialization opportunities. When data is always available, there’s no need to go to someone else’s desk
Regimentation – Technology can require rigid behavior or worse, rote, repetitive behavior. It can monitor, critique, and regulate the job. Indeed, it sometimes reduces a person to an automaton
Loss of meaningful tasks – New workflows change job responsibilities. Restructuring can take the meaning and value out of a job. Employees may no longer see a connection between their tasks and internal and external customers.
Loss of control – Artificial Intelligence and other technologies can take decisions away from employees. People monitor, report and check, but the system makes the decisions.
Technology as Hero
When managed properly, technology also offers opportunities for improved relationships and enhanced employee engagement.
Collaboration leads to recognition – powerful collaboration tools can support empowered cross-functional, cross-product and customer connected teams. With the right workflow design coupled with collaborative team tools, individual employees and team members can achieve break-through results and recognition.
Breaking ‘Over the Wall’ Mindsets: The promise of iterative development processes like ‘Agile’ can be fulfilled, resulting in radically shortened delivery times and recognition for previously invisible employees.
Connections create engagement – Managers can create and encourage online forums that cross organizational and geographic barriers on topics of interest. Employees can use powerful work team tools to propose, structure, and deliver critically important and innovative new projects. Projects they wouldn’t have been involved in otherwise.
Learning supports personal development and advancement – With a wide range of online learning available, companies can offer courses to employees. In addition, individuals can share their knowledge and experience with others.
Automation enables work enrichment – Robots and systems can take over repetitive tasks. By reducing the drudgery, employees can spend more time and effort on interesting, strategic, and highly valuable tasks.
In summary, far too many U.S. employees don’t like their jobs and are disaffected. Gallup estimates this as a $550 Billion problem on an annual basis. This is a huge problem not only economically regarding lost productivity but also as a human problem with real consequences for individual workers. It is worth addressing this issue with meaningful attention and focused actions.
Questions for Leaders:
- How do you know if your people are disengaged?
- What are you doing to ensure that employees have a sense of meaning and contribution?
- How are you utilizing technology to enhance connections and collaboration?
About The Prometheus Endeavor
Our mission is to apply our knowledge and management experience to further the IT and Digital Endeavors of society, its institutions, and businesses. The Prometheus Endeavor does not do consulting or represent vendors. For over 30 years, members have advised and managed some of the most successful deployments of IT.
I believe whether tech is the villain or the hero depends on the management culture. If managers, especially senior managers, see employees as expensive temperamental nuisances to be automated away as soon as practicable, employees pick up on that. If they think they’ll be history as soon as a machine can replace them, why on earth should they do more than the minimum to avoid getting sacked immediately? They’ll see the symptoms: ever-shrinking autonomy about how to do their jobs, emphasis on quantity of work over quality (not that management gets that haste makes waste), lack of interest in anything workers or first-line supervisors might think of to make things work better…in other words, turning everything to be learned from “The Art of Japanese Management” on its ear.
On the other hand, if workers and first-line supervisors take part in the design process for automation, they’ll focus on the least rewarding parts of their jobs. (In my reengineering work, I always asked lower-level people what they most disliked, the most frustrating activities they had to do. If the reengineering addressed them, no zombies!) I’ve observed far more unrequited loyalty to employers than the other way round. That loyalty can and should be tapped into to create wins for all parties. So if you don’t want zombies, treat people as if they’re still alive!
Your comments are very insightful Paul, I completely agree that much of this results from the ‘quality’ of the prevailing management culture. I too have used the question for employees of “what are your frustrations?” as a way of positive engagement. Working with those frustrations as input for improvements (often technology based or nearly always technology related) has yielded powerful work process AND engagement results. A big challenge remains on how to convince skeptical – or recalcitrant managers/leaders that they need to adopt this “180” change in their management culture? Worth more discussion, it is a touch ongoing change management challenge.
Good food for thoughts! Let’s not kid ourselves, technology is the villain for those that are displaced by it. Also for those that end up as slaves to the machines. But technology can be the hero for those whose jobs will be enhanced by technology. For the first group, compassionate advance career planning and transitioning may be an answer. For the second, active participation in the changes to maximize the value from their collaboration with machines. For both, proactive involvement, and participation. (easier said than done!)