An employee has to attend his official duties. At the same time, an employee has his own family and social life. If an employee is overburdened at the workplace, this may affect his life at home. To overcome this anomaly, there are week-offs, casual leaves, and vacation leaves. The idea is to have a balance between work and life.
The employment scene has become competitive. Even C-Suite executives at corporates are expected to show results in terms of healthy bottom lines. They try to cut costs, and at times eliminate costs. In order to achieve the so called ‘best’ results, they try to extract the work of 2 employees out of one employee. The working hours are extended — some remain in office from 9.30 am to 9.30 pm and may be more. It is 12-15 hours a day at times. Some superiors ask employees to attend duties on weekends. There is so much of multi-tasking. There is reduced variable pay and there are lower entry-level salaries.
There is some fear psychosis in office.
Younger employees become a victim of such toxic environment. These younger employees may be living away from their homes. They are cut off from families and friends.
There is lack of job security. If the employees cannot fall in line, their appraisal becomes negative, and they may be sacked.
In fact, the crux of the problem is the management — the superiors who take credit for the results, and who ignore the social needs of the employees. They burden the subordinates with too many tasks with impossible and constantly changing deadlines. These bosses never stand up for their staff.
It is for the HR to see that the company has the right managerial manpower. At times, an exceptionally performing subordinate is promoted to a managerial post but may lack managerial qualities. He becomes a mediocre or substandard manager. Every good salesman cannot become a good sales manager. HR must spot the candidates with the right mental abilities, personal interests and personality traits to become a leader.
Even an ordinary technical person can be promoted as a project manager, provided he has the right managerial abilities. And an outstanding technical person cannot always become a good manager.
An employee should not feel disrespected at the workplace. It has the highest negative impact on corporate culture. Managers cannot have a sustained hostile behaviour towards their teammates.
Work culture should be inclusive, respectful, ethical, collaborative and non-abusive. The company can incorporate these in their core values.
Work stress is inevitable. There should be positive stress, that inculcates achievement motivation in employees.
Anna Sebastian Perayil, a young CA, working for EY India died and her mother wrote a moving letter to the CEO attributing the death to overwhelming workload and toxic work environment. Health costs of stress is much more. There is anxiety, depression and burn-out.
There is a necessity of good communication channels in the organisation, grievance redressal mechanism, addressing grapevine communication. A company’s management should be candid and open. Just a sugar-coated letter of a CEO is not enough. There should be communication between different levels of employees. Everyone has a vital role to play to make the organisation successful.