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Thinking of Work
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Location: Blogs Webster University Business Experts |
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| Posted by: Webster University |
3/31/2007 |
Welcome to Webster University’s business blog. A handful of professors will be using this forum to offer their musings on a number of topics. Please share your thoughts with us. We would like to have a dialogue, to develop and enrich ideas. Blogging is new to me and seems to have some very interesting possibilities. I am Karen Fattorosi, faculty in the counseling program at Webster University. I have mastered the technical hurdles (something comes to mind about dogs and tricks) which seems to be an ever increasing challenge for those of us kindly referred to as boomers.
Professorship at Webster is a third or fourth incarnation for me. Some of the more interesting have been working in a dental lab making gold crowns, Director of the Spring Arts Festival in Gainesville, store owner, dress designer. My first job was car-hopping on roller skates at an A&W drive in. Along with teaching at Webster University I have a counseling practice and work with many Employment Assistant Programs and talk to workers about their job related stress and concerns.
My own experience of work combined with the many stories of workplace difficulties shared by clients leads me to ponder some of the obstacles that interfere with work itself. The workplace is a complex, dynamic interplay of personalities and objectives. Some enhance work, others interfere. Samuel Johnson said, “No man loves labour for itself.” Do you agree with the venerable Mr. Johnson in his view of work? What is it that we derive from our work? And what gets in our way? We use a tremendous amount of resources on training workers to do their jobs but do we train workers to be co-workers? What do you think? |
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Comments (8)
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By Nicki Nance on
3/31/2007 |
Training workers to be coworkers ought to be an easy sell. Assuming that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, this kind of training could result in more bang for an employer’s payroll buck. And if, as Harry Stack Sullivan said, “Growth occurs between people, not inside people,” the employee trained in coworkership would not leave that training at work. Done well, the growth would improve relationships outside of work as well (and all without begging an HMO for a few more sessions.)
I have been teaching work teams how not to recreate their dysfunctional family dynamics at work. Might there be a better buy in to learning how to recreate healthy work dynamics at home? Backing into the garage is a little trickier, but it certainly makes the next venture easier.
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By Betty Kauffman on
4/1/2007 |
| The best way to work is the "old fashioned" way. Perform the work expected of one in the best possible fashion and keep the family dynamics and social relation-ships away from the workplace. Remember the days when no one, and I mean no one received personal calls at work unless it was a bona fide emergency. Now, the emergencies are all bona fide or someone is lonesome to talk to an employee and is allowed to receive calls. Personal calls interfere with competency, with productivity and with staff efficiency. I think that you and I will agree that business is business and play is play and only on rare occasions does the twain meet, like once per year maybe. Thanks for the opportunity to take us all back a few years. |
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By Nicki Nance on
4/1/2007 |
| Sadly, the best way isn't always the clear way. At some point common sense became rare sense. Then, again, when one income was enough there weren't near as many emergencies for younger families because there was a parent at home. The offspring of those families weren't so needy that they had to have intermittent phone contact just to get through the day. I enjoyed the journey back, too, but like a lot of Boomers working with Generation x-ers, I'm doing my best to flex with the times...to appreciate the techno-savvy, cell phone dependent generation to whom we are turning over our future. I suppose they have a few things to flex with as well -- like my failing short term memory and eyesight, attention to decorum and detail, and the iron clad work ethic that makes me inaccessible by phone because I turn it off when I'm working...well, usually. |
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By deb luther on
4/2/2007 |
| We are generally becoming more lazy, slovenly, more entitled, and risk averse. |
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By Webster on
4/2/2007 |
When I think of work, I am reminded of the many people that hate their jobs and I wonder why they remain working at something they dislike. Of course, the usual reasons such as “I need the money,” “I don’t know what else to do,” “There aren’t many opportunities in Ocala,”etc. are just excuses to more serious issues; you may be wondering if you are one of those people. Here are some indicators that would suggest that it is time for a change: If you hit the snooze alarm four or five times before you wake up; If you call in sick when you really aren’t ill; If you are trying to create an excuse for not going to work; If you begin disliking your co-workers; If you criticize your employer; If you do only enough work to get by; If you regularly come to work late, leave early or exactly the end of your eight hours and not a minute later; and you are really in trouble if you get chest pains or nauseous on Sunday afternoon thinking about going to work Monday morning. For the past fifteen years I have done a lot of career counseling and have seen more of this than I would like to. These are dreadful situations and can be very damaging emotionally and physically. In fact, if they continue for prolonged periods of time, they will damage your relationship with your partner in many ways, even in the bedroom. Employers should consider this when trying to solve problems of absenteeism, tardiness, low productivity, inefficiency, and increases in health claims.
Henri Benlolo
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By Bill Noffsinger on
4/2/2007 |
| I disagree that "we are becoming more lazy, slovenly, entitled and risk-adverse". First, on purely logical grounds unqualified statements of this sort are often wrong, since many counter examples can be found. But more to the point, I think we live in a very challenging time, one with unprecedented opportunities for those who are prepared but also a time in which many older models and accepted ways of behavior for managers are no longer adaptive for current macro economic conditions or the emerging 21st century work force. Effective team work, and the related skill of being a good co-worker, is not only a plus in the modern work force, but an essential. In some professional lines of work (e.g. physician, university researcher, artist) it may still be possible to function as a single-contributor but by and large increased interdependence and collaboration is the order of the day. In the modern global corporation workers are not only widely distributed but are also members of large teams and an individual worker may be a member of several teams simultaneously. Thinking about the “good old days” has some nostalgic appeal but doesn’t get much traction in the modern environment. More about this anon ….. |
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By Karen Fattorosi on
4/3/2007 |
| Bill makes many very important points about the team building important in business today. Do you think that business puts enough resources into the training necessary to build teams. This is a concept that is often very unfamiliar to workers; especially new workers. |
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Re: Thinking of Work |
By deb luther on
4/3/2007 |
I am not talking about team work skills or management style or new world order challenges. I am talking about the employee (whether as an individual contributor or a manager). The unprecedented success of the American economic engine has provided riches but also spoiled us. Unqualified? The existence of counter examples does not negate a trend or hypothesis…Bill, you should know that. Want some objective data? Look at the huge proportion of foreigners in our professional schools (medical, law….). Look at the math or science club members. For each of these, count the number of generations in that they represent in the USA. I am not xenophobic, but rather, where are the multi-generation Americans? Are we letting so many foreigners into our system that these proportions are correct? I doubt it. It might be interesting to compare majors and level achieved with generations in the USA. Or perhaps, income with generations in the USA….. Hmmm, a thesis idea?
Regarding risk, we are becoming more and more litigious, including personal injury and product liability. Could we develop a toaster now with exposed hot and electrified wires, with finger touching access? Could a propeller plane be invented now, with a rotating hazardous blade that could be lethal? No, we shouldn’t abandon the the advances in safety….but as we restrict our risk profile, other countries and cultures will continue advancing. So where will the next “airplane” probably come from? Not the USA, unless we come to terms with accepting development risks.
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