Unemployment in Denmark is at an all-time low. More than ever before, people are free to find a new job if they’re not happy where they are. This calls for competent and attentive managers who ensure that their employees are thriving and don’t feel the need to search for greener pastures. Times are changing, and that’s a good thing in the sense that it forces managers to up their game and separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to leadership and management skills.
Dear co-worker, you can now pick and choose your manager as you see fit. You no longer have to accept an employer who isn’t attentive or doesn’t possess leadership skills. You’re now free to express your wishes and tell your manager what it takes for you to thrive and grow. If no one listens and you don’t feel you can state your needs freely without penalty, chances are that other employers are waiting to welcome you with open arms.
We live in a time of optimization and streamlining. The financial crisis made us better at thinking and acting with profit in mind: fewer layers of management, less positions, and little to no wage rate development. Fewer people had to perform more tasks, and productivity became an even more of a focus.
When moving in extremes, from recession to rapid economic expansion and vice versa, a loss of value is likely to happen. When going from recession to an economic boom, businesses often fall into the trap of investing without also building a productive platform. There’s more than enough funds and thus too many people are hired, resulting in the business not getting the invested value back. When going from an economic boom to recession, the risk is optimization at a pace that no one can keep up with. This can result in a loss of value as there are suddenly fewer people performing more tasks, and management doesn’t properly equip the employees to compromise on their professional pride in the name of optimization and profit.
I have personally experienced several rounds of job cuts carried out for the sake of profit, but while we became fewer and fewer we still had to perform the same amount of tasks with more and more demands being made. The management team told us to deal with the extra workload and lack of resources by lowering the quality to 80% rather than the 100% we were used to. The problem with this was that we were all hired to deliver 100%, and compromising on this went against our very nature as none of us had been trained to decide when to keep striving for perfection and when to lower the quality.
On a professional level, I was unable to figure out exactly where to compromise on the quality of my work so that I didn’t miss my deadlines. And at the same time my customers expected me to perform at the level they were used to.
Several of my colleagues crashed and burned. More employees than expected ended up on sick leave due to stress – not out of malevolence or lack of commitment, and not because of an unwillingness to adjust, but because they didn’t immediately find a way to succeed in only delivering 80% as both their own professionalism and expectations from customers/stakeholders demanded that they maintained their level of performance and continued delivering 100%.
In hindsight, the management, who itself was undergoing change and moving along a steep learning curve, was not capable of guiding people safely through the ‘transition jungle’ that several quality-oriented employees had gotten lost in. But it was also near impossible for the management to read these employees. Many of them belonged to generations of people who don’t just quit or ask for help from authorities because they fear being the next ones to be cut with no new employment opportunities on the horizon.
If management had been proactive, it could have ensured that the required 80% delivery was clearly defined to each employee in relation to their new roles and responsibilities so that they all understood how to perform their individual tasks based on a strategy of 80% delivery. Furthermore, the management could have acted proactively by communicating with all partners and continuously assessing the expectations of this group, resulting in a shared understanding of the new working conditions – and shared expectations for the quality of future work on which individual employees would be measured. This way, the new method could have been implemented relatively painlessly, while focusing on faster delivery as well as thriving employees.
The overall problem illustrated above is that management tried to have their cake and eat it, too – and that they assumed it would be possible to change people’s working habits and preferences with just a flick of the wrist. It isn’t. Not for the employee who has to get used to a new way of working and a new identity, but also not for the management team who is ignorant of the damage that these changes cause to the organisation in the long run.
There is no doubt that the future will bring more optimization and increased calls for efficiency, but due to the steady, low unemployment rate in Denmark it will be easier for those who do not wish to compromise on their 100% delivery – or who don’t mind a 80% delivery but aren’t given proper guidance by a competent manager – to find their place on the job market. There are other roads to walk down if you’ve gotten lost in a corporate strategy you cannot come to terms with and that requires you to fundamentally change who you are, both professionally and ethically.
So, dear co-workers. Times have changed. Be true to yourself by carefully choosing your job, your workplace and the culture in which you invest many, many hours every week. And, dear manager, make sure you are properly equipped to prepare your employees for the changes brought on by your corporate strategy.
You can read this article in Danish via this Berlingske Business link: https://www.berlingske.dk/opinion/naar-man-ikke-vil-kompromittere-sin-faglige-stolthed-med-80-procent-loesninger
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