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This recession is not only changing consumer attitudes, it's changing employees as well

07/04/09 10:35 AM Filed in: Consumer lifestyles
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Many people have come to the conclusion that they don't want to work for "the man" anymore. They want to work for themselves or someone they know and trust. It's as a marketing specialist told us recently: "My husband was fired. My hours were cut in half," she said. "As soon as we get on our feet, we're starting our own business. We're never going to let ourselves be vulnerable again." This is a quote from an essay written by Jack Welch in the latest issue of Business Week entitled “Winning back the workforce”. We are seeing not only a change in consumer behavior because of this recession we're talking about a serious trend. This recession has left a deep scar on the psyche of working people. Previous recessions came on more slowly, their layoffs occurred more gradually. And previous recessions didn't leave most people blaming business, especially Big Business, for what went wrong.




What went wrong? Unless you are blind deaf and dumb it’s quite easy to see what went wrong:


-People have come to realize that big business views them as a number on a balance sheet and that their jobs aren’t safe anymore.


-Middle managers, the backbone of any business, feel that their input and recommendations are all to often ignored by senior managers and as thus they feel part of a machine rather and are not getting fulfillment in their employment.


-The number of managers and executives who are really bad at managing people is growing and Dilbert may indeed be correct when he says “that promotion is a way to hide incompetence”.


-Business has too often put profits ahead of everything else including ethics forcing employees to compromise their beliefs or join the line of unemployed.


Mr Welch suggests that when the employment market turns around that it will be the employees and candidates who will determine where and how they work and that most are going to look more at quality of the workplace rather than quantity of the workplace. I mean let’s face it we spend way too much time at the office to “punch a timecard”. We want to be heard and we want to contribute and more importantly we want a manager who treats us like a person and that we can depend on when things get tough.


I have been saying a lot of this for quire awhile now and it’s really good to hear Mr Welch say so as well. I would also like Mr Welch to address the executive recruiter ethics, or lack thereof, as well. These people pretend to be your best friend while they want you as a candidate but are nowhere to be found when they hear that you are no longer a candidate for a job.


Meaningful work means that we want to contribute and feel like we earned our paychecks. We don’t want to redo Power Points because our manager wordsmithed the presentation to commuicate, or hide, key information. The revolution will spread to the workplace and sooner than you expect.
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