Running multi-employee businesses

I recently wrote a post asking if neoliberal politicians could be accused of enabling their mates who are third rate managers to abuse workers to make a profit. Apart from that being a sarcastic, and thus inherently destructive, question, it is simplistic and not correct - I debunked it myself in that post, which is here.

That post was split off from this one, which I hadn't got around to completing (I'm doing a bit of "clear the backlog" today). I now want to finish the rest of that article - and this will be a bit rushed and unpolished.

Neoliberals and others of a Newtonian mind set have learned some basic lessons - simple lessons, and are applying those as best they know, but don't realise the lessons are not appropriate.

Employees are human beings, not cogs, but to expect them to be self-sacrificing cogs (this also applies to this point) attacks and damages their humanity, and, apart from the inherent evil (yes, it meets the definition, as far as I am concerned) of that, that damages their productivity.

To get more out of human beings without damaging them, it is vital to first learn how to be a genuine human yourself. As an example, when managers contact employees away on parental leave, they must not make it about "when can you get back", the manager should be awed at the privilege they have of being able to share an important part of the life outside work of the human who is in their employ.

Another key issue here is motivation.

I've heard many neoliberals grumble that pay is an incentive/motivation: yes, it is, but, when work is invading the privacy and lives of employees by controlling their social media feed (much as it used to try to control what happened in bedrooms through being homophobic; incidentally, I refuse to mention the company I work for here or even on my LinkedIn account because of their orders to include a paragraph of propaganda), the issue of financial compensation becomes utterly inadequate.

Yes, pay is necessary for survival, but to think it should be a primary driver:

(a) ignores the reality of the complexity of human behaviour, and
(b) ignores the development of civilisation, which means that we should be moving beyond basic survival needs. 

On the first point, this was realised by the psychological teams running businesses when they started measuring good and bad perceptions of work (such as the pay is good, but hours of work are lousy) at the same time - DECADES ago.

They "get it", but some of the bosses don't.

In truth, I've often suspected that those who make the surly comment about pay are really complaining because they haven't got the respect they want - and that disconnect is a measure of a failure to understand that employees have -or should be able to have - a life.

Humans are not solely cogs in the machinery of a business.

Now, at this point I'm going to quote from my other article:

There are also brilliant, first rate managers - I have a couple now, and had another in the 2000s. 

There are two issues here.

Firstly, how do we get more managers to become first rate?

I consider that they need to develop their human competence, stop focusing exclusively on financial numbers and start to see the bigger picture (much as national level politicians should also stop trying to pretend they have sole control over economies - which are subject to the vagaries of international events, and have been for centuries) - and stop shoving human interaction issues off to the HR department.

Managers need to be more than a company focused automaton: this is not Japan - and even there they are slowly realising their willing slavery is dreadful. Managers should set examples - for instance, if changing the culture to one where faults can be admitted, do so. As an illustration of that, if financial targets for the company are not met, admit that the targets were unrealistic and apologise (rather than, perhaps, tell everyone to work extra unpaid overtime to meet the targets).

I sometimes wonder if this problem is unique to Australia. We could never have had a Google, as we are so focused on grudge, money, and details. Is that our convict origin? I would hope not, given how many people have come here since we stopped being a jail for the English, but that may be offset by the narrative we have stuck to around our convict start.

We have had employee-owned companies, which I consider a good thing in principle. However, when the employees have to buy in to the company by purchasing shares, it becomes an excluding device, rather than an in including. (And yes, there are companies - well, at least one - where shares are allocated to workers automatically without the employee having to give back money.)

I've also seen things like a Contractor setting one part of a project up so the workers would get a bonus for completing it early. That wasn't used on other parts of the project because of technical issues that required us to proceed slowly and carefully, but in that part of the project. On the other hand, a couple of decades later I failed to bring a sub-contractor into the project as an equal partner (which would have been SO much better), partly because I wanted to try to make a good return, and partly because I wasn't sure HOW to do so - what would the wording of the agreement be like?

That's actually a pretty good segue into what I suspect is the cure here: education.

However, the education - which should happen in secondary school - needs to go beyond the financial nitty gritty and be focused on the human aspect of running a business, including:

• ensuring that employees (workers) are treated well; 
• the benefits of treating employees better than the minimum standards of the law; and
• how to set up a visionary / inspiring business, like Google in its early days, when it really did live by the "don't do the evil thing" motto.

The second issue is: how do employees, or potential employees, know if a manager is or could be first or third rate? Well, here are a few suggestions:

1. Do they support safe injecting rooms?
   If yes, they are likely to be able to look at the long term outcomes (i.e., keeping people alive long enough to recover), and thus be able to invest in and persist with people, rather than kicking them out quickly.
2.  If ringing an employee on parental leave, what would they talk about first?
   If they first discuss how the child is going, or the employee is finding being a parent, they are likely to have a realistic perspective on the proper relativities of work and life - although they will still no doubt expect some overtime and extra effort.
3. If they are involved in their company's IT policies, do they insist on changing passwords every three months? If yes, they may have a flawed understanding of human behaviour, or problems staying up to date or accepting evidence. Evidence shows that frequent changes of passwords is likely to lead to people adopting weaker (easier to remember) passwords.
4. Do they accept climate change is real?
   If yes, they may have a better ability to assess evidence than the deniers, and you are thus likely to be able to present a case for initiatives, etc and have it fairly considered - which does mean they will necessarily agree :)
   I consider that neoliberals problems accepting evidence - and this is a problem found in many, if not all, points of view - is why they both deny the reality of climate change, and also refuse to admit the evidence showing that their policies are destructive, not helpful.
   (This does not necessarily mean they are scientifically inclined.)

This is all just my perspective, based on four decades of work, and three decades of fighting neoliberals. You, Dear Reader, may have an equally valid, but different opinion.