This raises some interesting questions about wealth distribution among many other things. What does happen in service jobs, to the people left behind without other options?
From reading these stories, it’s clear that there is not always an appreciation for people who don’t leave, just an expectation that they will be taking advantage of more by employers, and treated worse by customers.
This makes me consider a couple of things:
Look, it makes sense at any time, but right now with companies varying sets of rules around a pandemic, forcing employees back to an office, mandating a vaccine if they do, closing offices, etc. there is bound to be at least one person who just isn’t very happy with whatever stance the company has taken.
Would the vast majority of them stoop to purposefully installing ransomware on the corporate network? Probably not, but the hacker doesn’t need the majority, they need 1. Just one person to be so angry, and also unethical, and they are in.
Because if my value to my team is only a factor of productivity versus cost, and not as a human being, why should I put my own mental wellbeing at risk for you?
That makes no sense, and we are seeing more and more people recognize this fact. Either figure out how to support the human beings who work for you, or stop hiring them.
At least that way you aren’t actively harming anyone with your job.
Imagine being so bad at disconnecting from work, or letting your coworkers and employees truly disconnect, that the only way to actually get them to take a significant break from working is to close the business down for some time.
What does that say about our society, and our values?
Putting this on individual employees is a cop-out. Saying this isn’t anyone’s fault is a cop-out. This obsession with busyness is a direct result of poor management. There was no mass movement of employees who decided that appearing busy was more important than getting real work done, they simply responded to incentives, and the incentives have favored people who don’t make time to be productive, but are also quick to respond, no matter how unproductive it made them, and until recently, were also the ones sitting at their desks for long hours. People who tried to avoid this, and unplug from work? Yeah right, again, this wasn’t something employees just decided to do on their own. They responded to poor management.
Yesterday I attended a meeting that lasted 3 minutes.
At the time I was happy to have not wasted any more time in a meeting than was absolutely necessary and get 27 minutes back of my day.
So, good for us for not wasting time and filling the half-hour time slot.
On the other hand, if ever there was a meeting that could have been an email, this was it.