Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at the University of Lancaster, and an American, has examined all those dire characteristics of the modern corporation-the uncertainty, shift work, overload. In a word: the stress. It is stress, he finds, that is the key to sickness that comes from trying to do your job:
Research in the past has shown that it’s now changing. There’s been this issue a long time in the field that if you have control over your job, that is the higher up you go, the safer you are from stress, is no longer the case. The recent research is showing that people from the shop floor to the top floor are in trouble and the reason is when you get to the top you’re just as vulnerable to the axe as you are at the bottom or the middle now. So everybody is now vulnerable because of the changing nature of work. Work is intrinsically insecure now.
Professor Cooper was talking in 2006 to Dr Norman Swan of the Health Report on ABC Radio National. The audience response to this interview was enormous.
What we’re finding now is that most of these countries have been totally, and I guess I shouldn’t say this with my funny accent, Americanised. Totally Americanised- long hours culture, intrinsic job insecurity. Bottom line-much more autocratic management style, short-term performance, the outsourcing of activities and therefore the breaking of the psychological contract between the employer and the employee. Times have changed now, the people at the top are not safe.
Is it not time we realised the overall costs to society of this neglect? Cooper finds it amounts to 5-10 per cent of GDP forgone or an equivalent of 30 million lost working days in the UK alone.
As for young people, who are surely the key to the future, I find this even more distressing. It is our responsibility to keep at least some small doors open for the young talent who should form the next generation of staff. They should feel special when they are hired, secure as they serve probationary months and going somewhere as they experiment and dare to fail. But my impression is that the young are instead made to take up a mosaic of jobs, scattered in time and place, inherently without any career structure-unless they are lucky. Obviously in changing times no organisation wants to be locked into maintaining jobs that may not be needed in a decade or into employees who have long passed their usefulness. But there is, surely, a middle way that treats people like human beings instead of ciphers or liabilities.
I am hardly surprised that ours is a drug culture. Some of these ‘substances’ may merely be stimulants kids have always indulged in. It is the nature of drugs that they are for NOW, the present. They are the negation of any sense of future. The problem may begin at school, or at college, but I guarantee it is made worse and consolidated by workplaces from hell.
To lead people, walk beside them…
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.
The next best people honour and praise.
The next, the people fear;
And the next, the people hate…
When the best leader’s work is done the people say,
‘We did it ourselves!’
– Lao Tsu, sixth century BC
The Hunches of Nostradamus
2008 Australia finally beats South Korea for longest working day in developed world. Most overtime now unpaid.
2009 Unions in several countries close.
2010 Australian woman claims world record for sick leave, involving 186 different ailments in one year. She attended work for only 37 days. Triumph short-lived; beaten by a New Zealander.
2011 ABC director retires after fifteen years, having never met staff. Payout package exceeds $2.3 million and includes desk.
2012 Average student in Australia turns out to have four part-time jobs. Attends university to sleep.
2013 Employer organisations in OECD countries require 24-hour work agreement for efficiency of operation. Staff can be rostered as desired without overtime.
2014 More white-collar staff required to work from home so less office space needed.
2015 Offshore outsourcing causes unemployment to reach 50 per cent in several OECD countries.
2016 Robots (porn industry) demand union reps.
2017 Five senior managers in broadcasting organisation found to have been absent for two years without anyone noticing. Paid throughout. Offered package to step down.
2018 French unions demand three-hour lunch. Discover this provision has been in place since 1956.
2019 Industries abandoned due to climate upheaval. Minimum wage halved.
2020 Armed forces become largest employer.
9. The Future of Us – Our Last Century?
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with as much reason.
– T.B. Macauley, historian, 1830
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?
– John Lennon
In the last days of the Commission for the Future, in 1998, we decided to do an experiment. We would invite a hundred young people from all over Australia to spend four days talking about their hopes and dreams. To our delight a bank (the National Australia Bank) agreed to fund the event and Macquarie University to host it. Speakers were lined up, including the Prime Minister, John Button, me and lots of others.
The day arrived. So did the kids-high school seniors from the bush, posh schools, state schools, rugger buggers, nerds. At first they thought it was all a laugh, a chance to skive and play. Some stayed out late and looked trashed on Day 2. Then they just sat there. By Day 3, something had changed. We had impressed upon them that it was their views we wanted and that, from John Howard downwards, we were taking them seriously. Suddenly the game was on. All their massive fears for the future and insecurities, their wild ideas and, yes, dreams flowed out. By Day 4 many said it was the most important experience of their lives. Afterwards they sent letters saying so. And all we’d done was listen.
Barry Jones had set up the Commission for the Future in the mid-1980s. Phillip Adams was the first chair. I succeeded him and then, as the Commission ran out of funds and became a virtual adjunct to Monash University, John Button, former (brilliant) Minister for Industry under Bob Hawke, took over. The Commission’s job, as Jones (then Minister for Science) saw it, was to lead a national debate on where Australia thought it was going. Paddy McGuinness, in an editorial in the Financial Review, called us ‘the Commission for Bullshit’. Many in the Opposition front bench thought much the same. I visited John Howard in his Sydney office (these were his wilderness years), and he listened politely but said nothing encouraging. The Commission got on with its work.
A major initiative was the Greenhouse Project. Its aim was to bring sound information about climate change to the public. This was twenty years ago! We felt that the science of climate change was looking startling and Australia could usefully prepare itself. We also gave attention to the effects of IT on the future of work, something pioneered intellectually by Barry Jones in his peerless work Sleepers Wake! We also introduced an exotic-looking Canadian called David Suzuki to Australia. Not a bad line-up when you consider it from the vantage of 2007. But the brickbats continued.