Since work and home are very different environments, our experience of happiness and meaning in life appears to have more to do with who we are than where we are. Rather than blaming our jobs, our managers, and our customers ... for our negative worklife experience, we might be better served by looking in the mirror.
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What can companies do differently? They might stop asking, "What can the company do to increase employees' experience of happiness and meaning at work?" which encourages dependency. Instead, managers can encourage employees to ask themselves, "What can I do to increase my experience of happiness and meaning at work?" This strategy may produce a higher return in employee commitment -- and do so at a lower cost.
Companies can conform to the needs and expectations of their employees and the communities they serve. Failing this basic test of legitimacy does not put one in an ideal position to preach introspection to the aggrieved. Asking employees what they can do to increase their "experience of happiness and meaning" at the same time they are being asked to fall on their swords for institutions that have no feeling for them beyond the bottom line is not a "strategy" likely to "produce a higher return" in anything other than an "employee commitment" to open revolt. It is the stupidity of corporate thinking that this should go wholly unconsidered, assuming as it does that what is imposed on others is also what they will inevitably accept.
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Asking employees what they can do to increase their "experience of happiness and meaning" at the same time they are being asked to fall on their swords for institutions that have no feeling for them beyond the bottom line is not a "strategy" likely to "produce a higher return" in anything other than an "employee commitment" to open revolt.
Well said! Keep up the good blogging.
Well. You've just rendered my whole book blogging project pointless. I think I'll just link to this post for each chapter's entry.
In other words, um yeah.
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