Saying please and
thank you is what we are supposed to be taught as soon as we learn to speak.
The fact that so few of us use these phrases in business communication explains
at least in part why the general culture in the North American workplace is not
polite but is fear-based.
A work environment
must go far beyond simple platitudes to qualify as truly polite. An organization
that provides a safe work space for all of its employees, one in which
encouragement and appropriate support are a part of the culture, qualifies. An
organization where high employee retention is reflective of a high morale
qualifies. An organization where employees speak highly of their job and of their
boss qualifies. An organization where civil debate and respectful communication
occurs qualifies. An organization where an employee has someone to turn to if
unnecessary stress, harassment, or abuse rears its ugly head qualifies. And, an
organization where every point of human interaction is a positive one
qualifies.
If you look at
these qualifiers within your own organization or place of work, what answers do
you discover? Dismally low ratings are revealed on an almost daily basis, with
survey after survey uncovering the ugly truth. Mental Health America and the
Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence have both conducted such surveys in
partnership with Canada’s Faas Foundation that indicate that less than 25
percent of employees are fully engaged in their work or speak highly of their
boss or the organization for which they work. And the remaining 75 percent are
actively looking for other work.
These are facts
that cannot be refuted. They are however clear indicators for where we need to
look to begin to fix this colossal problem. It’s not much of a stretch to see
what a long road we have to travel to have businesses that qualify as being
truly polite. Although please and thank you are a start, companies need to
understand the interconnectedness between our life at work and our life outside
of work. Given that most of us spend more of our waking hours at work than we
do at home with our families and friends, I suggest that significantly more
attention needs to be focused on our workplace culture.
Most human
resource trainings, though regularly offered, seldom have any lasting impact.
The reason for this is a lack of desire at the top to welcome any real change.
If this desire to maintain the status quo is the experience you are coping
with, you have little choice but to change jobs. Given that 75 percent of the
workforce is in this situation, it’s a scary jungle out there.
As scary as the
landscape may be, it is up to you/us to make choices for ourselves that help
steer us to a more fulfilled life. Employers need to refocus their thinking
from simply being a place that is offering work to anyone qualified, to a place
of excellence, where there is little turnover and a line-up of potential
employees seeking work because of the way everyone is treated. That would
qualify as polite.
There is an effort
afoot within the province to become the innovative province. I have my doubts
that leadership found within the government has the ability to accomplish this
without a tremendous amount of input from the public at large that they will
listen to and implement when appropriate. My doubt comes from the number of
fundamental challenges facing the province that have gone unresolved for
generations.
If one looks at
poverty, education, and access to quality healthcare, the steep hill to climb
ahead of us is daunting. These challenges will not go away without significant
effort. This requires realigning priorities from community to community.
Without changing the water on the beans, you can expect the status quo to
continue. The weakest links in our society will continue to be marginalized and
not given the assistance needed to achieve a real change. Not until this real
change occurs do we deserve to be dubbed as polite.
Please and thank
you is a start. What will you do to carry the conversation further?
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