Australian Financial Review
Dec 9, 1998
Bottom line: work smarts
Work Relations,
By Julie Macken
"Work smarter -- not harder". Such a slick,
gen-X idea; why didn't we think of it before?
Imagine if we could find clever ways of doing
what we do now, but doing it in half the time.
We could all work 25-hour weeks, maintain the
same level of productivity and dedicate our free
time to doing the things that make life worth
living.
Remember them? Hanging out at the beach,
being there for our
kids-partners-brothers-sisters-parents-friends,
reading books, practising the piano and building
pyramids. Imagine that.
Then imagine how much the tooth fairy makes
a night, because there's more chance of her
becoming the next George Soros than there is
of smarter work becoming less work.
Of course we can't blame the state of work
polarisation on puerile trans-Atlantic
sloganeering. After all who's the dumb one --
the person who thought up the bumper sticker
or the one who tries to live by it. And try we
do.
As the corporate and public sector contract
their workforce via downsizing and
outsourcing, those who remain are expected to
maintain both productivity and morale.
According to one director of human resources,
management attempts to reconcile these two
mutually exclusive goals by employing this kind
of rhetoric.
Step number one: send out a memo informing
everyone of impending retrenchments. Step
number two (having achieved those
retrenchments): send out a memo saying what
an "exciting", "challenging" period lies in wait
for everyone. Make sure this memo includes a
number of references to "smarter work
practices" and "intelligent deployment of
resources".
Employees in the finance sector know all about
this scenario, having lost 23,000 workers
through restructuring and downsizing between
1994 and 1997. According to a study just
completed by the Finance Sector Union, more
than a third of the remaining 310,000
employees compensate by working almost a
million hours of overtime a week -- two-thirds
of whom receive no time off or extra pay.
According to John Buchanan, deputy director
of the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations
Research and Training, "working smarter -- not
harder" is code for management by stress.
"This slogan is about forcing people to work
harder with less resources in more stressful
circumstances," he says. "It's the new principle
of management by stress. That is, management
find out how much stress employees can take
by removing resources and increasing the
workload."
The obvious question being: how do they know
when their employees have reached their limit?
If the increase in stress leave is any indication
to go by, they don't. According to Rob Moodie,
CEO of Vichealth, the cost of stress leave now
exceeds that of physical ailments.
Unfortunately, while the statistics and big
numbers tell a story about a system of work
that is as unsustainable as it is unintelligent, the
individuals taking the stress leave are far more
likely to experience it as an indictment of their
personal failure. As opposed to the obvious
by-product of a dysfunctional system that's
supported by a management with a
bumper-sticker mentality. Now that's smart.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ax.com.au
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