Economics of Employee Morale

Clearly, technology and the economy are on a lot of people’s minds these days. After all, if I was a savvy business owner, I would be doing everything I could to ensure that I could continue to pay my employees and stay competitive, including finding ways to ensure that I made my employees feel needed and valuable.

So I find this article in the Washington Post indicating that people are cutting back on their telecommuting, and other benefits, in an effort to appear more dedicated. Or to put it another way, more essential.

From the article:

Teresa Hopke, talent management director for the national accounting firm RSM McGladrey said that while senior leadership at her company remains committed to flexibility, some middle managers have become more resistant.
"I have heard comments like, 'now is our chance to take back the company,' [and] comments about the fact employees shouldn't feel entitled to ask for flexibility during this time because they should be lucky to have a job," she said.

There are a couple of trends here that disturb me, both as an IT professional and as a worker bee.

First, it would seem that the dinosaur mentality that made getting permission in the first place to work from home has not completely gone extinct in the corporate world. I find this disconcerting because it makes me wonder what their continuity of operations plans look like. After all, just because we are in an economic slump, it does not imply that things like natural or man-made disasters are not going to afflict our operations. A certain degree of remote access should be required for continuity of operations and if it is not, then you are overlooking a major risk factor.

Second, it makes me wonder who is counting the beans. I will be the first one to tell you that supporting telecommuting is not cheap, but if a large enough percentage of your workforce is telecommuting, there are savings to be gained in environmental and real estate costs. To reverse the trend, either consciously or subconsciously, those costs are going to increase. Of course, the counter argument is there are holes created by the massive layoffs, so there are not savings. I would counter with the argument that the savings have not been realized, but the point is made, or moot.

Thirdly, if you are injecting an atmosphere of we don’t allow this in times when hiring and firing is easy, you are going to have a difficult reputation hill to climb when trying to attract and maintain the good talent when hiring becomes more challenging.

Finally, from an IT perspective, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fewer people are using the remote access system, so less money goes into keeping it functioning, so fewer people use the system…until it is turned off. Then you have to go through the process of getting it all spun back up again. If you are lucky, the technology is still useable and the hardware has not been cannibalized for other purposes.

There is no question that people are under increasing amounts of stress and pressure as the economy goes through this rough patch. It is also clear that things like traffic and illness have not abated just because money is tight. It is at this point in the business cycle when employers should be doing all they can to keep the employees they have happy. While I have trouble with the argument that you pay bonuses to keep your best and brightest when your company is into the government for billions of dollars, there is a certain logic to ensuring that your already stretched thin staff does not get stretched any thinner and put your already fragile company into the broken business category, simply because of a few short-sighted managers.