For nearly two decades workers have been confiding their workplace frustrations to me, first in my role as a union activist and organizer, and for the past five years as a labor relations educator and consultant. From minimum wage workers to highly skilled professionals, in home visits and focus groups, hundreds of workers have expressed the same core frustration to me – management just doesn’t “get it”. (And judging from the investment most employers are making in “employee engagement” it sure isn’t for lack of trying.)
This disconnect isn’t limited to those pathologically unapproachable bosses we so often encounter in union drives. Even in worksites with great engagement scores, it’s not at all unusual for employees to have the same frustrations with well- liked and respected leaders who suffer from the same empathy deficiencies as the lousiest bosses out there. And to make matters worse, these otherwise solid approachable leader can become consistently and blissfully out of touch on the key core sore subjects that burden their employees most – money, work/life balance and job security.
These are the areas where there is typically far less common ground – and more day to day tension — between management and hourly employees. In my union days I trained organizing apprentices how to probe around in these same fertile fields, actively listening for fear and frustration, and to respond with empathy, not platitudes. Judging from what I still hear in even the best worksites out there, many managers, supervisors and HR specialists need to learn how to do the same.
Income
I wish I had a dollar for every manager I’ve known who displays almost a cavalier indifference to the painful economic realities of low wage earners. Most seem like otherwise good people, so maybe the grind of managing within a narrow profit margin has them defensive and desensitized. Yet the employee discomfort is still very real, even after conceding the boss, an otherwise great guy, is just incapable of understanding how an hour cut from the schedule means saying no to the field trip this month or going without a haircut.
Work /Life Balance
The reality is precious few hourly employees are destine for management, and for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with personal initiative. As such, most employees don’t see sacrifices made for the company through the same lens as their management team. To the average hourly worker, going above and beyond is not an investment in their future. To the contrary that mandatory overtime or short notice schedule change is draining energy from the future they can imagine for themselves outside of the job that puts food on the table.
Job Security
The power imbalance between managers and employees makes it particularly challenging for leaders to respond empathetically to concerns about job security. Employee distrust heightens when their leaders seem evasive, dismissive or superficially reassuring about the future. Some (or many) of those same employees may be living on the financial fringes already where losing a job without warning (or a deep cut in hours) doesn’t just mean unemployment in the immediate but perhaps repossession, shutoff, lost custody, even homelessness. Even at the less extreme, an interruption of employment for a low wage worker can drive them (and their loved ones) even further down into an ever deepening financial hole with no leg up or safety net in sight.
