One of the many pleasures of life is the pursuit of meaningful work. Since we all have to be working in some way to justify our place in society, work can be of all different sorts.
With the onset of the industrial revolution, a promising future for humankind in terms of self realization and technological progress was on the horizon. However, a look at the job market of our time reveals a rather dreadful picture. What has evolved since is not the promised reduction of labour and the pursuit of meaningful preoccupation, but rather a culture that has systematically extolled labour as the ultimate virtue in life.
Corporate & Culture have blended Meaning with Labour — Now it’s backfiring
Over the decades, a whole bunch of machines did take over a lot of jobs — just as promised — but the “hustling” culture persisted all throughout. This has lead to whole sectors of occupations of which some produce zero tangible outputs.
The truth is: not every participant in the job market will have the pleasure to pursue what is truly meaningful to them. This is not least because not all occupations are equally rewarded — especially not when we talk about artistic activities of all sorts.
Let me elaborate on this:
Startups are basically living on belief. On average, a newly founded company begins to generate actual profits after 3–4 years.
As companies grow, taking care of administrative chores is needed, which generates jobs that solely take care of bureaucratic acts. These do not generate revenue, but merely exist due to company size and to remove pressure from producing individuals.
Nothing bad there yet, but these jobs have the tendency to venture out on finding tasks that would justify the existence of the position — to an extend a self-fulfilling prophecy where corporations are filled with positions like that. David Graeber illustrates this so beautifully in his book “bullshit jobs”.
The eternally painful part about this is that employees of the sort are often aware of this fact, which surely contributes to the deterioration of mental health within the labour market at large.
Alas, this is how we have built our economy and how most things work these days. To make matters worse, the very cause for many of the mentioned adverse effects has since created a whole body of tools and strategies to minimize negative sentiments at the workplace: Mental health days, Friday drinks, group activities and fruit baskets (all which need to be organized of course).
Why Company Cultures are toxic if they need to be Designed and Enforced
Nowadays, having a vision and mission board in your company is essential to be taken seriously in business. Although these manifested customs would need a revision (most of them lack the statement of the CEO saying “I figured this will make me very rich”), one thing should be clear:
If you need to create a narrative around the company culture and indoctrinate your staff about it, it’s not real and it will not last.
A culture forms naturally through the members of their environment. Anyone who joins will contribute as well as comply to the endemic of the company.
If the culture stems from a couple of Friday-afternoon brainstorming sessions of the HR department, carefully designed and displayed with sharpies on whiteboard and then put in a newsletter sent out to the employees, that is not culture. They are enforced rules that each employee needs to abide by in order to please the people who came up with the rules so to not be fired. With the objective to create a favourable environment for all, the decision-makers have just defeated themselves. The artificial environment will indeed result in compliance, but at the same time provoke more dishonesty and feelings of unease and hostility among your staff.
Retention & Turnover Rates over the Decades
While a couple of decades ago, a well-established career meant to work yourself up within a corporation, these types of career paths have become extremely rare and unlikely. Today it is the custom to be able to present a number of employers in the CV. Having been in only one company with changing positions for longer than 10 years might even be detrimental during todays job search.
In general, shelf-lives of employees are very short, especially those who want to progress, since companies these days rarely engage in training and development programs.
Employee training is expensive and make for less reactive companies in a market that has become extremely complex and fast-paced (due to technology and harsh competition). The responsibility lies mostly with the employee these days. This circumstance, however, also results in a higher turnover rate at large.
Obviously, career progress does not have to correlate with retention rates, but the sentiment at large should definitely be looked at. While it is reported that people stay in their companies longer when they are happy, general unhappiness in the workplace has been reported to be at 64% worldwide. This mostly stemming from a lack of engagement at work.
From Individual to a Personell Number
Every corporation once started with a business idea that happened to be successful in the market. However good that idea might be, venturing out at larger scale for the sake of higher outputs and profits comes at a cost. The cost usually being a deterioration of interpersonal relationships at work and an increase of anonymity.
Once working in an MNE, identifying with ones work becomes harder when outputs can be hardly attributed to one person.
What’s more is the dehumanization that inevitably takes place. Much like the difference between a town and a city, places become lonelier and impersonal the bigger they grow. The individual gets lost in the crowd.
The Bottom Line
From observation and personal experience, there are only a few things that are more beautiful than watching someone do what they love. Surely, every job entails tedious tasks. No matter what’s your pursuit, every person with a goal needs to get up on a Monday morning.
The difference lies all in how one feels about the day they had when it ends. Thus, corporate as we have known it for the past decades might at some point vanish from existence — for the better of us all. The culture around high-output and high profits has come at the cost of individual performance. Who knows what inventions are never hitting the market because most workers have been trained into obedience rather than innovation.
As the world and its manifested structures are changing, there is hope for a future with more purpose and meaning — and the opportunity of pursuit — for everyone.
