By Jack Cumming
Of late, two themes recur in discussions among senior living providers, vendors, financial firms, and development advisers.
- The demographic wave of the “boomers” will be a valuable near-term bonanza for those who benefit from high senior living occupancy.
- It will be challenging to find the high-caliber workers to provide the services that higher occupancy will require.
The first theme is inevitable. The fuel for the bonanza, people of a certain age, were born long ago, and so have their successors, smaller generations, been born. The consequences of the boom and bust, all else being equal, are demographically predictable. Unlike demographics, finding and motivating good workers is a constant. Some employers do it well; others fall short.
What’s Manageable
Industry pundits like to call that people situation the “workforce challenge.” The opportunity is for the industry to create attractive remunerative work that people choose, want to do, and that provides the sense of accomplishment that most people crave.
Given that premise, consider the following posting that appeared recently on social media.
“I made a big mistake by asking questions and asking for help. I feel like I have had a string of off days making silly mistakes. All of a sudden, I get pulled aside, asking if I am okay.
For context, my family is falling apart, but I can’t take time off because I honestly do better when I am busy and seek help off work hours. I have my therapy once a week. I am simply very frustrated because my employer never gives feedback and then all of a sudden, you’re under a microscope and then not again.
I have never caused harm or done anything egregious. I am just tired of trying to read people’s minds. I try and improve, and when I ask for feedback and ask how I can do better next time, I am met with blank stares.
Then MONTHS later I get feedback from a random thing I forgot to do MONTHS ago. When I try and be proactive, I then get feedback that I am asking too many questions which turns into ‘oh, they don’t know what they are doing’. I am very burnt out, not because of the work itself, but because I am tired of feeling free to ask questions and learn and then subsequently get dinged for this.
I am so tired of all the gossiping, nitpicking, and constantly changing preceptors who all have slightly different key ideas about how everything should be done. Each a little different …..
Signed, “tired and annoyed.” I can’t read minds.”
If this is a valid experience, and there can be little doubt that it is in some contexts, who is responsible for the consequences that inevitably follow? Is it the CEO or the owner for not creating a more positive environment? Is it management for putting inadequately qualified supervisors in positions of authority? Is it HR for treating people as resources and not as the individuals they are?
What Do You Think?
What do you think? Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the emergence of Chief Culture Officers. It’s made me wonder why that isn’t a function that HR actively pursues. HR seems to have congealed into an assortment of necessary back-office functions like onboarding, exit interviews, compliance, compensation structures, payroll processing, job descriptions, performance assessments, screening out mismatched job candidates, and the like.
What department within a modern corporation is responsible for creating a happy, positively motivated workforce? What department is responsible for happy customers? Who has the responsibility for ensuring that investors are happy? These are all points at which a corporation depends on people. They are not merely “resources.” Who thought it was a good idea to think of them that way?
What would be your ideas for making your employer more people-sensitive? Let us know in the comments below. In senior living, in particular, residents are more than customers. What ideas could enable residents to feel respected as people? What kind of employee culture would that take? Would your employer ever consider moving in more of a people direction?
How would your HR department, or People Department, handle an unhappy employee like the one quoted above? Is that an HR problem or a cultural problem, and what differentiates the two? Is that differentiation warranted?
A Culture Story
That brings me to a cultural story. Years ago, I was consulting with a German company that had bought a forging manufacturer in Columbus, OH. They brought in German foremen to oversee operations. Germany has an apprentice, journeyman, master system that many think produces more capable craftsmen than the American system. German executives thought that German craftsmanship could improve forging quality.
The problem was that turnover went through the roof, greatly affecting the very quality of the forging which the Germans sought to improve. The Germans couldn’t understand what the matter was. My finding related to a little-noticed cultural difference. Americans expect frequent praise for their accomplishments. We are governed by the axiom, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Silence tends to connote dissatisfaction.
Germans, in contrast, have a different governing axiom: “Nichts gesagt ist schon gelobt.” “Nothing said is praise enough.” This is reflected in schooling as well, where the German pursuit of perfection leads to an emphasis on avoiding mistakes.
Think of a school paper returned covered in the teacher’s red-ink corrections. In Germany, that’s expected to motivate students to be more eager to learn, hoping to avoid the dreaded red ink. That cultural indoctrination carries over into the workplace.
In America, that’s more likely to make students or workers give up, feeling they are falling short. A lack of approbation can lead employees to seek new jobs, imagining that they may be on the verge of being fired. Americans think they should be complimented for what they have accomplished, not denigrated for what they haven’t.
The forging manufacturer turned around after German foremen were taught to be lavish in their praise. Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that German workers like praise too. Some workers who had left were approached and lured back. Sometimes, the best prospective workers and supervisors turned out to be those who had left previously. Merging HR functions into culture may be the coming organizational advance.
