Scroll down and see this week's 'Balloon' from Sybil Cummin
Welcome
We'd like to invite you to help us in creating a humane workplace.
Each week we will feature a 'balloon' of insight. This week? Sybil Cummin - "Business Cards and Empty Connections"
About Us
Scientific Management was a movement that flourished during the previous turn of the century. Though the idea of efficiency seems sensible enough, it spawned the contagion of people-as-things. Cogs. Replaceable parts. Clinical model profiles. Work cubicles. Windowless offices and schools. Maybe it’s time we revisited the bottom line. If that line crushes any part of our emotional and spiritual well-being, we need to generate a different work. When onboarding new employees, why not ask ‘what can we do?’ rather than instructing ‘here’s what you’ll do’. And we now have the data to support the value of engaging humanity at work.
Here are questions we asked ourselves, as well as lots of other folks, that generated this project:
What about work is most important?
Money? Engagement? Dysfunction? Pain? Misunderstanding? Servitude? Satisfaction? Happiness? (Self)Respect? Retirement (this got the most laughs)? It seems like the work rules include a formula that too often stifles our spirit and our sense of community.
Who says? Is there some grand commandment that sets the rules for work? Well, Yes and No. We've been operating under manacles generated by the motors of efficiency, profit, and power. Barry Schwartz, one of our contributors, opens some possibilities in his book, Why We Work:
" Forty years ago, the distinguished anthropologist Clifford Geertz said the human beings are 'unfinished animals.' What he meant is that we have a human nature that is very much the product of the society that surrounds us. That human nature is more created than discovered. We 'design' human nature by designing the institutions within which people live. So we must ask ourselves just what kind of human nature we want to help design." (p. 9)
So that leads us to - - - If we want to change the pain and gain formula about work so that we can move toward something better, we can be very, very clear about what it is now and what it could be. Let's do that.
How about if work felt more like purpose and less like a sentence?
This week's balloon, from Sybil Cummin: "Business Cards and Empty Connections"
I started to figure out what had been missing all this time.
It was a true sense of community. Relationships that were not forced because we work in the same office setting. These relationships could grow because of the nature of the environment and the intention of each of the momma therapists that attended. And when relationships grow and become sustainable, a strong community is the result.
As my business grew and I added contractors and employees and interns, I did not want the things that were missing for me all those years to be missing for them during their formative years as a therapist. And I also wanted to forgo the common problem of low employee retention and burnout as they grow and become licensed. So, what was it I was intentionally trying to create for my team? The thing that was missing for me, and so many others…community. A sense of community encouraging authentic connections with and between my staff.
I will tell you that this really does take some intention to create. Intention, transparency, vulnerability on your part as well as on the part of your staff. This makes many business owners uncomfortable, I’m sure. But the results are worth it.
This is already fun and will continue:
We will be publishing Humanity@Work April 1, bringing in perspectives from all over the world. We will be focusing on changing the way we think of, imagine, and show up for work. We are seeking exciting contributors with new ideas, ANY FORMAT. We currently have art, music videos, research articles, blogs, podcasts, animations and cartoons.
This project is pro bono; any proceeds will be donated to charity.
If you have an idea, an insight, a brainstorm, a story, we'd love to hear from you. This project is ongoing - anything that can add to all of our work journey so that the formula of work = hell with pay can start to disappear.
We are totally non-political, btw. Totally.