Getting the best from your workforce

This article was written for e-academy's regular e-mail newsletter.

Word count: 930 words

Well, most people knew it all along: treat people well and you get more productivity, better loyalty and improved retention. The difference, according to some organisations, is quite staggering.

We'd all like more life and less work. But developing a more ethical and positive work culture is something that isn't just good for employees - it's good for business too. What's more, it may not just be optional for businesses to change the way that people are managed - but inevitable.

A lot of our work culture - ridged reporting structures, fixed working week, fixed workplace and so on, are actually just hand-me-downs from the industrial revolution. Prior to that, most people worked either for themselves or in small units. Once the factory/mill came along, larger numbers of people, all doing roughly the same job, needed to be managed. This meant: a big, central, place of work, fixed hours (and 'clocking on' to prove it) and narrow, specific, roles. Despite changes made possible by technology, we've carried a lot of this baggage with us - and are often reluctant to discard it.

Along with the above, 'work culture' evolved, which at its worst was almost military, with employers believing that they 'own' employees. Rules, regulations and policies are all needed to some degree, but can become dehumanising when taken to the extreme. Even within enlightened and liberated organisations today, it's still possible to find some departments run as 'centres of power', where people have an unnatural and perhaps disrespectful level of control over others.

Work/life balance is often seen as the 'crunch point' - but that can be misinterpreted as just 'more time off'. But many experts believe what's wrong runs deeper than that: our ideas surrounding constitutes are often way out of date and need to be reassessed.

First, the workplace. For many people, this just isn't needed - full stop. Today's technology can allow many people to work from home, without any issues. Of course, managers and directors squirm instinctively at this notion, but really - there are benefits, and not just to the individual (who, fair enough, might get more than an hour a day of her/his life back). According to the Office of National Statistics, the average cost of office space per head in London is a whopping £23,500 - and, worse, typically, only 50% of workstations/office space is occupied at any one time (JBA Time to Work research study, 2003). You don't have to multiply those numbers many times to see a worthwhile saving. It's a question of attitude - a manager who is terrified of letting telesales people work from home because of 'lack of control' might not even blink at the idea of outsourcing the whole shooting match to India!

Next, the working day. Nine-to-five is one that size fits all. OK, some businesses need that 'core availability' but many don't. What matters most is actually 'task completion' together with an understood level of availability. At a presentation by Richard Reeves of the Work Foundation, there were sharp intakes of breath when he said that NONE of his staff had set working hours and that he didn't care what they did with their time as long as they got their job done. Here, the attitude is really one of control - it's hard to let go, once you have it. But how much control do you actually need? Many managers/directors would challenge that, and say it's not control that's the issue, but trust. They don't want people loafing around on 'their time'. But it's just a question of measuring output instead of attendance - and, let's face it, lots of organisations employ people who 'just turn up' so measuring output has got to make more sense.

This shift also moves the role to the competency-focused and contribution-focused. The payback is that people do what they enjoy and are good at, and get rewarded for it. Employers get more output; employees feel more valued and enjoy their work more. It's a virtuous circle instead of a vicious one, where the employee inevitably leaves because she/he feels undervalued. According to CIPD Labour Turnover report, it costs an average of nearly £7000 to replace a manager - so again, big savings can be made if employee retention is improved.

Another factor is that our work is less similar than it used to be - dramatically so. Of course, factories, production lines and mills still exist, but many workers do significantly different work than colleagues who are notionally doing the same thing. This is the foundation upon which many of our current attitudes to work were built.

The main problem with trying to shift attitudes to work is that our current view is very entrenched and those who object believe that new practices favour the individual and only have 'touchy-feely' benefits. This isn't true. Study after study shows that enlightened work policies directly result in many business benefits - but most importantly better productivity/profitability and better retention of staff. Just one example: study by US analysts which compared 100 companies with the best human resources policies with the 100 worst found that those organisations with the best employment practices had five-year annualised returns of 18.3%, significantly outperforming the worst firms - which had just 7.9%.

And it's these statistics which make change - although slow coming - inevitable. Because, if it makes financial sense, or if not doing so is a measurable disadvantage, then organisations will start to change.