Management Shortchanges Employees At Every Turn

In many companies, management imposes policies and practices that end up costing employees in major ways. Despite no clear business benefits, executives and middle management, both, make decisions and pursue approaches that hurt workers’ wallets, productivity and well-being.

Can we ever expect a healty, productive and mutually beneficial community of relationships to emerge from a foundation of naked exploitation?

Example: RTO

One example is Return to Office mandates after COVID, but this is just a symptom of a broader issue – management making decisions without considering employees’ needs and blythe ignorance of the consequences. (Or is it mendacity? For example, Wage Theft – estimates suggest wage theft costs U.S. workers $15-50 billion per year, more than is lost to robbery and theft combined.).

Shall We Count the Ways?

“How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Other common ways managers financially and personally cost staff include:

• Stagnant wages and lack of raises, even despite rising costs of living
• Minimal spending on employee training and career development
• Avoiding the costs of effective health and safety and wellness programmes
• Mandating outdated tools, working practices, organisational structures, and systems, that hinder productivity vs new approaches
• All talk, no action on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives – “DEI Theatre”
• Ever rising C-suite salaries, bonuses and perks while rank and file see ever-shrinking benefits
• Lack of flexibility for work-life balance, leading to workers’ lives and earnings being disrupted by having to change jobs

Many companies view workers as nothing more than a cost to be minimised. Executives are disconnected from the employee experience. They pursue shareholder value at the expense of the workforce.

But organisations suffer when employees are not valued. Disengagement, burnout and high turnover follow. Customer satisfaction dips as unhappy employees deliver poor service. Innovation and performance decline.

Conclusion

The poor treatment of employees by management seems deeply ingrained in corporate structures and business school teachings. But are there solutions, or is management simply an irredeemable concept?

Some argue that these problems can be addressed through better laws and regulations, such as higher minimum wages, stronger health and safety protections, limits on executive compensation, and empowering workers’ rights to organise. Management training programs could also be reformed to prioritise employee wellbeing over short-term profits.

However, others contend that management by its very nature is exploitative. The hierarchical structure gives disproportionate power to executives and shareholders beholden to capitalism’s pursuit of power-holders’ wellbeing, efficiency, and profit maximization. Workers will always be squeezed under the management yoke

Radical solutions propose democratising the workplace through cooperatives, employee representation and ownership, worker representation on boards, and decentralised decision-making. But can these ideas scale successfully?

Perhaps the answer lies in a mixed approach. Pragmatic reforms to improve life for workers within current corporate models, paired with incubating alternative organisational structures that give workers an equal voice, or even the whip hand (Cf. servant leadership).

There are no easy solutions, but can we continue to accept the status quo of management blatantly and egregiously exploiting employees? Can we find a system that upholds dignity, justice and shared prosperity? Workers are assets to invest in, not costs to cut. Might we have faith that through insight, integrity and innovation, business can empower rather than extract from the workforce? The path will not be quick or easy, but progress remains possible through partnership across sectors and persistence despite setbacks.

For a model of how such an oganisation might look like – and feel like from both the workers’, managers’, and customers’ perspectives – you might like to read my latest book “Quintessence“.

Afterword

What practices have you seen, good or bad, that reveal how a company truly views its employees? Share your thoughts on when management’s decisions cost or benefit workers.