Know and accept who your team members are
In the modern workplace, we will always have our would-be rock stars, actors, models, film makers, novelists, you name it. Rest assured these talented people among us are honing their crafts at every opportunity whether we realize it or not. But, many people still need to hold down a job or two because their craft simply isn't paying them yet (or maybe never). Add to this list the individuals who have no outside talents that they wish to explore, those who come in to work every day simply because they are very lonely outside of it and those who have earned themselves seniority or power and wish to exploit it. There are many different 'types' of people at any given workplace and there is no sure way to know who is who at the hiring process.
So, you see, there can be a great deal of frustration and emotion ready to boil over at a moment's notice in any place of work. Aside from that, there are the cavalier folks who break rules and do things their own way, regardless of who they may harm. Left to fester, the work system will be sure to tend toward disorder.
Fairness is still a viable concept
The only way to assess what is fair or not is to monitor, evaluate and adjust. In my experience, fairness has often been abandoned because employers and managers either did not understand it or did not care about such a petty concept; their eyes were on the profit alone, not the staff. A typical phrase I became accustomed to hearing in my years in the front line was: "Life isn't fair." That phrase was second only to the popular: "Life's a bitch and then you die."Although such phrases are initially funny when uttered by a jaded leader, the sad fact is that they end up affecting those around the leader, which leads to more jaded workers and thus an unhappy workplace with questionable productivity and indifference to fairness.
Common sense should rise from the grave
It is simply amazing how common sense seems to have been gathering dust and dirt over the years, so much so that when we look back at a serious situation, we are often amazed at how simple it would have been to avoid it. Then comes the famous saying: "Hindsight is always 20/20." followed by: "So, what did we learn from that experience?" If we are talking about low sales numbers or a client who dumps us, we can recover, but if we are talking about a serious accident or the loss of life at a workplace, hindsight will clearly be useless! So, now we have Bill 168 because of poor foresight
It is time we focused more on foresight and begin learning from what we can see happening down the line instead of simply turning a profit and turning a blind eye to the potentially harmful acts around us. People should not be afraid to go to work, they should not be left unmonitored when you know they pose serious risks to others and they should not be treated like 'subordinates' (it's time we used a different term).Bill 168 should not make employers and supervisors afraid to run a company; it is nothing to fear. In fact, the way some leaders have been running and working with teams for many decades makes you wonder why others don't adopt the same policies to avoid foreseeable problems down the line. I understand that companies need to cut back and put more work onto fewer people and that monitoring situations isn't always feasible, but there is always a solution to a system in need of repair.
How to be Bill 168 friendly
1) Develop a system to prevent workplace violence including opening lines of communication to assess any threat to a team member's well being in and out of work.2) Monitor your team closely or delegate the task to a trusted team member. This is not to say 'micro manage', but just be aware of what is happening with the team at any given time. If you decide on written progress reports, some will see that as a Big Brother tactic, but if you make it a policy that the reports are simply a way of monitoring safety and productivity, that's fair because if anything gets in the way of safety and productivity, it needs to be addressed promptly.
Case in point: as a security supervisor in my twenties, I had to carry a black book with me during the entire shift and report on anything that happened (especially safety hazards!). If nothing was happening, we wrote that all was well and quiet. When something out of the ordinary happened, we had to complete a special report that could be used for legal reasons and protect us. At certain sites, we were not to use our books in front of certain workers because they thought we were spying on them, when in reality, we were hired to make sure that the site was safe and secure. There were accounts of violence towards security staff who wrote in their books at such sites - one of which included the use of a fire hose on a guard!
3) Evaluate the progress of your system and keep the focus on the prevention of violence and serious accidents.
4) Adjust the system to keep it from going off the rails. Hold regular meetings and let everybody know what is happening.
5) Always let your staff know why they are doing what they are doing. Share your vision for a prosperous and intelligent company who could not survive without a strong team.
6) Hold a think-tank session with a third party. More minds on the situation will get better results.
Such a big topic, so little time in a day. Until next time,
- Buck Moore
