Scrooge and the Unhappy Workplace

The Scrooge Mentality

Despite what may seem to be an obvious truth—that people who enjoy their work perform better at it—the fact is that for much of human history, employers have believed that misery is the most powerful motivator of their workers. Specifically, they’ve invested themselves in two ideas:

1. Employees who are working hard should not appear to be happy. If they look happy, they’re not working hard enough.

2. Employees are like any other component of the supply chain. You want to pay them as little as possible while making them as productive as possible. (We’ll see later in the book just how contradictory this formula is.). By definition, this does not produce happiness.

You can call this the Scrooge mentality, in honor of the famous character from “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. His employee, Bob Cratchit, labors under dreary conditions, in “a dismal little cell,” warmed only by the weak heat from one lump of coal. Scrooge himself rails against any thought of creature comforts; he lives only to make money. His cold heart warms only when he’s in his counting room. Nothing else matters.

In the world of academia, where people of action often go to find intellectual justification for their personal beliefs, the 20th century Scrooges of the world found validation in the writings of Milton Friedman. His views roared into the public spotlight on September 13, 1970, when he published an article in The New York Times. Rather grandiosely entitled, “A Friedman doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” the article asserted, “a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”

Friedman’s article was adamant: business executives who pursued a goal other than maximizing investor profits were, he said, “unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.” They were guilty of “analytical looseness and lack of rigor,” and were posing as “unelected government officials” who were illegally taxing employers and customers.

On the surface, you’d think that Friedman and Scrooge would make perfect bedfellows. In the Friedman doctrine, employees are no better than machines to be operated at the lowest possible cost. But Friedman blinked. He slipped in a very interesting caveat when he wrote, “It may well be in the long‐run interest of a corporation that is a major employer in a small community to devote resources to providing amenities to that community or to improving its government. That may make it easier to attract desirable employees, it may reduce the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage or have other worthwhile effects…”

Those two sentences hint at what we now know to be true: Organizations that see the big picture and embrace the fact that all of us—owners, employees, customers, investors—are human beings, not robots, will in the long run enjoy higher profits and stronger growth. It can be worthwhile to make an investment in the organization, its employees, and the community, which, by improving overall working conditions, will boost productivity, improve marketing, reduce waste, and result in higher profits than if the investment had never been made.

Employees are driven as much by emotion as they are by logic. They work not only for the paycheck but for themselves and the good feeling they get from doing a job they enjoy, and which allows them to go home each night with a feeling of satisfaction.

Take Action!

? Take some time to think about what makes you happy in your work as a leader. Are you engaged in work that makes a difference to your community? Do you feel appreciated and fairly compensated? What would you change if you could?

? Now think about the people you manage. Given the culture of your organization, can they feel the same sense of satisfaction as you do?

? Look at the statistics for employee engagement metrics including average tenure, sick days taken, productivity, accidents, and inventory shrinkage. Are they as good as they could be? It’s possible that unless your workplace is truly a happy one, you’re leaving money on the table. #happyemployee #worklifebalance #worklife #remotework #job #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #employees

[i] NYT. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html