This is obviously what any sensible and thoughtful manager aspires to, and yet it is still so rare. Are there tradeoffs we aren't considering? Why is this such a self-evident ideal, yet rarely achieved in practice? There must be good reasons..
Many American companies that are infamous for not being able to do it here manage it in their overseas locations. I pin it on the deficiencies of American culture and some combination of the failures in worker's rights, corporate priorities, and consumer habits that it influences. We know a good thing when we see it, but with our history and our ethos, we just can't seem to help ourselves. The "what" we do wrong is myriad, but I believe this is the why.
There are differences in how other countries operate. I've worked for foreign company that had offices in the US and they had lots of cultural differences in how they operate. So many people left in frustration including I.
I think the main reason is a failure to properly understand the employee.
Most employer-employee relationships [in the US, anyway] are akin to serfdom, or some other weird form of drastically-out-of-whack power structure. Employees often aren't treated as equals, they're not given agency or power, their needs and desires aren't understood, and they aren't inspired by a common cause. So unless an individual takes it upon themselves to suddenly do the best job they can possibly do, they will flounder in their own little world, being largely ignored by management (until they're not meeting some ridiculous arbitrary yearly goals that are mostly designed to cull the completely apathetic) and never having any interaction with executives other than the way a king would give proclamations to the townspeople.
To me, "treating people well" means treating them like people who have a say in what they do and how they do it, by helping them do the things they want to do, by connecting them to their work, giving them pride and purpose, feeling valued and compensated. After that, the rest takes care of itself. But getting to that point is impossible if management treats them like cattle.
Employee perks and salaries seem much easier to cut than to increase. Given enough time, especially if a business goes through struggles, things end up down hill. But also, I think your implied premise is flawed. The goal is to run a successful company, and unfortunately happy workers don't factor much into the success, not always. Mediocre, unhappy workers are much easier to come by. If you can structure your business to run well on those that might actually be optimal for the bottom line, and that's really all that matters on the stock market.
> If you can structure your business to run well on those that might actually be optimal for the bottom line, and that's really all that matters on the stock market.
That is, in my experience, how a lot of brick&mortar commodity stores - grocery stores, clothing stores, etc. - run in my home town (Kraków, Poland). The infinite source of disposable workers is the population of fresh undergrads that come to the city to study.
This feels a bit like the 10x developer discussion. There is a small percentage of the population who are 10x developers anyplace they go. There is another chunk that are 10x developers given a solid environment, who would otherwise be average or even poor developers in the wrong environment. There are average developers, and then there are a few that just aren't very good and should be in some other profession.
It seems almost obvious this holds true for any job, including Costco, where perhaps someone isn't fast or personable enough to be a checker, but they'd be great driving the forklift. Find the right environment and suddenly they shine. There will always be a percentage of the population that is unemployable for some reason, but my personal experience is that it isn't as large as is often believed.
To take it from another PoV: most businesses aren't 10x either, and aren't in a position to leverage a 10x worker. Commodity businesses don't need good employees, they need warm bodies that can do their checklists and smile from time to time, while not stealing money or equipment.
This is an important angle. "Good people" is, to a substantial extent, a relationship property, not an individual one. That is I am "good people" for one job, but "bad people" for many others.
That said, this is not a random distribution. Some people have serious character flaws (evil, lazy, angry), or are just not very competent at anything. If all organizations only hire "good people", these will be left unemployed.
And here's the thing:
Those unemployed underskilled "bad people" are then an underused resource, and a reasonably functioning labor market will find way to make use of them.
I think of things like fast-food restaurants as a real triumph in this area! That industry has found a way to run a well functioning business using barely competent people who often quit within months.
And that's pretty much what I had in mind when I wrote my tongue in cheek comment.
BTW, my apologies to current and former fast food workers. I know you're not bad people :) But when you argue about those left out "good people" policy, you kind of have to use that term...
Nar, bad people need to change their ways until they are good people and employable.
Unless they are _literately_ unemployable, in which case we should consider them disabled at look after them as if we would anybody else with metal or physical disabilities.
> Unless they are _literately_ unemployable, in which case we should consider them disabled at look after them as if we would anybody else with metal or physical disabilities.
Why? People shouldn’t be rewarded for being disagreeable, unwilling to get along with people, and unwilling to work. If they are literally disabled and can’t work at all, that’s one thing. But even people with mental disabilities can be great employees. Rewarding anti-social behavior with “looking after” incentivizes such behavior. Subsidize behavior and you get more of it. Case in point, all of the fake disability people who have unverifiable soft tissue “injuries” that collect disability as a life choice.
Traits like agreeableness, intelligence, and conscientiousness have some genetic components, and may also influenced by early childhood experiences. A severe deficiency in one or more of these traits may be largely outside an individual's control, but nonetheless prevent the individual from integrating into society and achieving stable employment.
That said, there is still an element of will there, and we should also still try align incentives to give these individuals the best chance of productive engagement with society. The disability scamming is real (though somewhat complicated by the fact that long term unemployment can result in chronic pain symptoms).
I don't think just cutting people a check is necessarily a good idea. I kind of wonder if the problem of unemployable people would be reduced if we removed minimum wage laws.
You would rather have to work with people who have an incentive to behave badly (in order to get fired from jobs they didn't want in the first place), than to just give them enough to live on until they decide how they're going to contribute? Between the disabled and underemployed, there must be more than enough people to seriously jeopardize overall economic stability should destitution force them to action.
And where is the role of the employer and the overall culture in fostering a work environment that isn't miserable?
What an Orwellian use of the word "coerced". There is presently no coercion to work: only the necessity of survival (just as it always has). On the other hand, the future you envision would require the coercion of the productive minority.
Human society is not what it was 100, 500, 1000, 10000 years ago. Conjuring a farcical "necessity of survival" is disingenuous in a world where the average worker is hyper-specialized, such that they perform a fraction of the labor directly associated with surviving.
On the other hand, since failure to participate in this model - again, wherein a given individual hardly contributes directly to his own survival, but instead supports the society which provides the rest for him, usually far below the value of his work for it - is an existential danger, I think coercion is a fine word for the situation.
> I think coercion is a fine word for the situation.
Except the part where simply choosing not to subsidize someone that could contribute to society but does not involves no actual use of force.
On the other hand, using the state to force a productive minority to slave away for a willfully unproductive majority does actually involve the use of force.
You are literally inverting the meaning of "coercion". Hence the apt description "Orwellian".
War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.
>Except the part where simply choosing not to subsidize someone that could contribute to society but does not involves no actual use of force.
Of course it does. What are the various exigencies, used to secure hoarded property for an individual against a deprived public, but force? You're unable to see it as such, because it's the status quo, but it's not a necessity for a civilized society, even this civilized society.
You're right that I do not share your vision, but I disagree with your diagnosis as to why.
Given that I find what you propose to be so anathema, I feel compelled to clarify what your position is, in case our disagreement is resulting from a misunderstanding rather than a conflict of visions.
What I hear you as saying is that given the wealth available in our society, those who do not wish to work (even if they could) should not have to. The minority who do wish to continue working shall hopefully be productive enough to continue to provide this wealth (and indeed, increase the wealth available) and gladly share it with everyone. If the productive minority are less than willing to share the bulk of the fruits of their labor, It is acceptable to take it by force and without offering them something of value in exchange.
Such a system not merely immoral but nonsense. It assumes our great wealth as a given, when it should be obvious that such is not the case. History has shown many other times of great wealth and surplus, only to be followed by collapse. There is no magic line of societal wealth that, once surpassed, renders us immune from disaster. In such a case, those in who lived in a state of dependence will only hasten the collapse by trying ever harder to extract from those they depended on.
Now, if you were a Marxist concerned about workers not being compensated fairly for their labor, or a Christian concerned for those who could not care for themselves (the elderly, the infirm, orphans, etc.) then I would at least understand. But neither Marx nor the Apostles envisioned a society that supported people who were merely indolent.
Furthermore, that you would equate the use of force to steal another's property with the force used to defend said property is dishonest and abhorrent. And let's be clear: if you appropriate someone else's property when you have the choice not to (i.e. if you could work to provide it for yourself or offer something of value in exchange) then it is theft.
Does that really matter? Most people who consider themselves to be "contributing" aren't really accomplishing much in the grand scheme of things anyway.
Some people are certainly employed in pointless jobs, but the idea that this is true for the majority is doubtful.
And for those people who's labor is pointless, the solution is to have more meaningful work, not idleness.
I can think of no more pointless form of labor that to toil away for whatever bureaucracy that would be responsible for administering this harebrained scheme.
This kind of essentialized thinking is why the US is so poor at leveraging its labor force effectively, falls back on MBA sophistry, private equity grifting, and biz guru cultishness.
W. Edward Deming and the Toyota model he inspired demonstrate that it’s more about empowering workers, treating them with respect and autonomy, and respecting their contributions for what they really are, as opposed to ascribing them to management. Go read about what Toyota did at the NUMMI plant if you need further evidence of this.
One possible answer is that much of management is driven by irrational forces, to a much greater degree than is predicted by economic theory. Perhaps ego and selfishness are much bigger motivators than generally understood. Such is my take in "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps":
Culture. If the people up top Only care about numbers then eventually the people down below will only care about numbers. The people who don’t leave for places that are better.
