Why don't people like their job?

As an undergraduate engineering student, I was required to do vacation work. At the end of my first year I worked for a fabricator, a shipwright at the end of my second year and the research division of an exploration drilling equipment manufacturer in my third. While the work was variably interesting what I had decided to do was talk to as many people as I could about what they did and find out if they liked doing it.

I grew up in an environment of encouragement and good education. I had the na?ve belief that everyone must like their job. My rationale: why would people spend most of their waking hours doing something unless they liked doing it? What I found is summarised by a 2017 Gallup study “State of the Global Workforce”.

Barely a third of US employees are fully engaged in their work, where engagement is defined as being “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to work.” The majority of employees, 53 percent, were “not engaged,” while 13 percent were “actively disengaged.” Globally, the situation is even worse with 15 percent engaged, 67 percent disengaged and 18 percent actively disengaged.

Given these statistics, your boss is probably just as disengaged as you are. 

My thought was that it’s not about capability or passion. Undoubtedly there is something in everyone’s life that ignites their passion, something that captivates and energises them. Maybe it’s their family, their faith, a social cause, a sports team, or a hobby. And we all have to deal with household expenses sometimes paying many hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars. Many of us have a mortgage. We definitely have to deal with social and psychological issues in or families and communities. Some of us grow succulents while others fly autonomous drones. In one company, I found a factory worker who took sick leave every second Thursday to attend to his local church’s accounting and finance needs.

What I failed to understand at the time is that this engagement deficit isn’t about what people do at work or their capability but how they are managed. The fault lies not with any particular manager, but with a management system that empowers the few at the expense of the many, that prizes conformance over originality, that wedges human beings into narrow roles, robs them of agency and treats them as mere resources. The question at the core of the current management system is, “How do we get people to better serve the organisation?” 

The question at the heart of the management system should however be, “What sort of organisation elicits and merits the best that human beings can give?” The implications of this shift in perspective are profound.

I have been in business for more than 30 years now and my passion is transformation that makes work worthwhile for everyone. It is through this transformation that organisations grow profitably. I have come to understand, as many business leaders do, that a company is more than a balance sheet. It is an expression of human bonds, a living entity that is sown and grown and whose harvest is lives and livelihoods.