The real cause of apathy in the workplace

WORKER apathy has become a global epidemic. Is it any wonder when technology has led the charge to the gig economy and a non-existent career path, asks Terry Sweetman.

“HEIGH ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go,’’ the little people cheerfully sang as they marched into the diamond mine in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

If Walt Disney were around to remake his magical movie today, he’d be short of a few cheerful dwarfs.

And Grumpy might well be the leader of the tiny toilers if a bunch of new research into the workplace counts for anything.

It seems that when it comes to productivity, the one thing we’re churning out big time is apathy and disengagement.

(“Disengagement” is such an in-word that it was trotted out by Australian Border Force this week after a staff survey found distinct lack of gruntle in the ranks.)

A Gallup survey has found that worker apathy is now a global epidemic with Australia right down there with the ho-hum average.

Worldwide, the percentage of adults who work full time for an employer and are engaged at work — are highly involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplace — is just 15 per cent.

In our region — that’s pretty much Australia and New Zealand — just 14 per cent of workers are engaged with their job, turning up each day full of beans a motivated to be highly productive.

The notion of happy workers trotting off to work is now outdated. (Pic: Supplied)

Gallup cautions that low percentages of engaged employees represent a barrier to creating high-performing cultures and imply a stunning amount of wasted potential.

Oddly, the disengagement rate is highest in those countries we like to think of as powerhouses — Hong Kong, Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea — were only 5-7 per cent of workers reckon they are engaged at work.

I guess that the whip of unchallenged workplace authority, exhausting and long working hours and inflexible jobs works to a point.

The other really weird thing is that so many Australian and NZ workers have trouble keeping their eye on the ball but rate their overall lives higher than employees in any other global region.

You might wonder how long this can last.

For how long can people reckon they are leading the good life if that large proportion of it they spend at work is pretty much crap?

For how long can people do jobs that they don’t give a damn about before they take out their frustration by kicking the dog — or worse?

Why are people so uninterested in their jobs?

There are plenty of reasons but Gallup reckons that difficulty keeping up with the pace of social and technological change is a common underlying theme.

“In particular, organisations and institutions have often been slow to adapt to the transformative spread of information technology, the globalisation of markets for products and labour, the rise of the gig economy, and younger workers’ unique expectations,’’ it said.

Sound familiar?

Technology has changed all of our lives, but workplaces are struggling to keep up. (Pic: iStock)

Are there answers? Gallup says strategies include “giving employees more opportunities to do what they do best, recognising that not everyone will make a good manager, and creating an employee value proposition that emphasises work-life balance and overall wellbeing’’.

I’m pretty sure Gallup isn’t the first outfit to come to this conclusion but we don’t seem to be particularly smart at turning good ideas into good practice.

One of the much-touted elements of such a balance is “flexibility”, that glorious thing we have been conditioned to accept as combining productivity with an amiable work routine.

One way to achieve that is though to be what they quaintly call the Compressed Working Week, in which people labour 10 hours a day for a four-day week.

Sounds a no-brainer but maybe not, according to University of Melbourne PhD candidate Edward Hyatt who examined a United States workplace that forced a CWW onto a third of its staff.

There may have been an element of “heigh ho” in the firm but 35 per cent of workers thought it was pretty shabby.

The company was trying to save money by closing one day a week but marginal saving came at the cost of sick leave data suggesting those on a CWW were suffering fatigue.

The lesson was for bosses to be very careful when tinkering with the working week and to consult more.

You might well wonder how much real consultation there is in many Australian workplaces.

I am shocked by the number of people in all manner of pursuits who are just going through the motions and have all the engagement of a car in neutral.

But when I look at the sheer tedium of some jobs, the lack of dignity, the absence of a career path thanks to the lack of permanency and purpose in casual, part-time and “gig” work, I begin to understand.

The theories of the workplace revolution have left behind too many people for the good health of the country and its toilers.

Never mind, thank God it’s Friday.