Jester’s morale

It’s been a while since I blogged on this site. The main reason being time; I don’t have as much of it now as I used to. This has more to do with a change in my domestic circumstances than work as I don’t feel the need to spend so much time on the computer nowadays. Another reason was that a change in my work circumstances significantly reduced the number of petty irritations I had to blog about and the main reason for this blog was the petty irritations at work.

However, times change and we have a recession and work is no longer the enjoyable activity it had become. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t actually enjoy work. I do it because I have to; I would far prefer to be able to indulge in more pleasureable pursuits: fell walking, Morris dancing, playing the piano (if I had one) and spending more time with my loved ones; but work doesn’t have to be an ordeal. You can go to work and have a reasonably good time and come home at the end of it in a good mood.

Unfortunately for me and my colleagues, it had become an ordeal and I viewed it as the most unwelcome 8 hours of any day. I was going to work, having a reasonably bad time and coming home in a foul mood. I didn’t want to go in in the morning and I clock watched from start to finish. I timed the day from start to break, break to lunch, lunch to break and break to home time. Anything that interfered with that routine was unwelcome in the extreme. A caller that made me late for my breaks or lunch or, Heaven forbid! going home was the lowest of the low. I knew, everyday, where the halfpoint of that day was. My whole work day was geared to getting to the end of it as quickly as possible.

Which is not a good way to be. By all means look forward to going home at the end of the day and appreciate the weekends but to be so desperate to be away from the place was shocking.

There were a number of reasons for this state of affairs. I think the original boo boo was the organisation of training, which in its first week took too many of my colleagues off the call centre floor, leaving the rest of us trying desperately to keep up with the work. We were not able to and we have been trying to catch up ever since. Then there were redundancies, reducing our number by about a fifth, which left us in worse straits than before. Then we were all called in for a meeting and told that our productivity had dropped and we would need to pick it back up. The worst case scenario being we would lose our contracts and we would all be out of a job.

So we now had a thoroughly demoralised workforce, more work than we could hope to do in our 8 hour shifts, productivity down (I know my productivity was down), a seemingly chaotic situation with managers to all intents behaving like headless chickens and fewer people to do the work. I don’t think we had reached rock bottom and I think that it could have got worse but fortunately it didn’t. We are very lucky with some of our managers, whose actions dug us out of a hole and effectively saved the day.

I came into work one day last week to find that we were being organised and given different tasks to do. Some of us were to tackle the backlog of work that had built up – an elite team to all intents and purposes – and the rest of us were to handle the higher volume of calls that were coming in. I wasn’t on the elite team but that wasn’t a problem for me. I know that I don’t work as quickly as some of my colleagues; probably because I can’t cut corners and have to do everything exactly as it should be done. I can’t help it; that’s the way I am. Others are, for want of a better word, more slapdash than me but they get the job done quicker. I was on calls but I quickly realised that I would be doing my part too.

This had an immediate effect on my morale. The effect on my morale had a knock on effect on my productivity, which increased dramatically. The change was amazing. I went home that night feeling so much better and found to my amazement that I was not dreading work the following day. Fortunately for us all, this new regime has continued and has made a huge difference to our workload. I even got to be on the elite team for two days. An honour indeed.

My contention is, therefore, that a demoralised workforce cannot be forced into increasing productivity by harsh words and threats. Browbeating people who are already down does not work. However, taking charge, having a plan, enthusing people and getting them to join in does work. A happy workforce is a productive workforce and bosses, from the lowliest team leader to the loftiest chairman of the board, should take note of this.

Make us happy and we’ll work so much better for you.