Guide
This is the first essay out of a series of four that addresses the need to create healthy work environments conducive to the well-being of the worker. The series consists of:
Building Human and Social Capital.
Evolutionary Thinking - Transforming the Workplace Culture.
Behavioral Engineering of the Work Culture.
Building Human Competence - Transforming the Way We Do Work.
Introduction
The culture of work in the United States is not always healthy. According to a Forbes online article by David Stuart and Todd Nordstrom (March 8, 2018), “employee engagement continues to sink.” Gallup polls remind us nearly 70 percent of employees are actively disengaged. CareerBuilder.com provides data that 58 percent of managers said they did not receive management training. Sturt and Nordstrom concluded, “We have a bunch of leaders who aren’t trained on how to lead.” They also noted that most bosses believe that “employees leave because they want more money.” A Harvard Review survey reveals that 58 percent of workers “trust strangers more than their boss.” Culture trust is at an all-time low. Many people who quit their jobs cite a “lack of appreciation” as to why they quit.
Most employees (53%) report that they are unhappy at work. To work longer hours, Americans forfeited about 50 percent of their paid vacation in 2017. Stuart and Nordstrom concluded, “Recognition is the number one thing employees say their manager could give them to inspire them to produce great work. Recognition is more effective than higher pay, promotion, autonomy or training.” That is the power of appropriate socially conditioned reinforcers: they do not cost anything but produce lasting effects. Acts of gratitude and kindness as well as forgiveness are some of the most effective social reinforcers. They work both ways, enhancing the well-being of the giver as well. To transform work, we begin by creating a work culture that builds social capital (a set of shared values/resources that allows individuals to work together in a group to achieve a common purpose effectively).
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2018) and the Pew Research Center, most American workers are employed in the public and private sectors (71%). About 16 million Americans are self-employed. Millennials are now the largest generation in the U.S. labor force (35%). American women earn 85 cents on the dollar compared with men, but the gap is narrower among young workers. Today, a smaller percentage of U.S. teenagers are employed compared to previous decades. This shift may be influenced by the fact that more older Americans are choosing to work for an extended period than in the past.
Jeffrey Pfeffer (2018), a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, very accurately documents the state of many of today’s workplace settings. Pfeffer contends that many modern management commonalities such as long hours, work-family conflict, and economic insecurity are toxic to employees. They decrease worker engagement, increase turnover, and destroy people’s physical and emotional health -- while also negatively impacting company performance. He argues that “human sustainability should be as important as environmental stewardship.”
Chari and others (2018) proposed expanding the paradigm of occupational safety and health within the conceptual framework that the work environment should also focus on promoting worker well-being. They concluded, “There is a need to translate theoretical concepts into practical models for measurement and action.” Schulte and others (2019) have provided a hierarchy of controls for protecting workers from injury and promoting health enhancement, focusing on environmental control of potential hazards and implementing measures for increasing workers’ well-being. The science of behavior has much to offer in expanding and implementing those control measures. The control measures proposed focus on behavior management. The worker must learn to engage in behavior that prevents injuries and accidents and enhances their well-being. The workers must also learn how to look out for each other, enhancing collaborative actions.
Total Worker Health®
In 2014, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) established the WorkLife Initiative, focusing on worker health and well-being by addressing the physical and organizational work environment, incorporating personal health decisions and behavior of individual workers. The initiative supported the evaluation of integrative approaches to work and health. It fostered collaborative research on best practices.
In 2011, the WorkLife Initiative evolved into the Total Worker Health (TWH) concept to better convey the comprehensive, evidence-based approach to the prevention of work-related injuries and health hazards and promote the work culture change required for workers’ well-being, enhancement, and TWH implementation. The objective was to integrate occupational health and healthy behavior promotion in the workplace. The work environment is seen as not only promoting and reinforcing physical health but also the behavioral well-being of the worker. The essential elements of the TWH approach are to prioritize a hazard-free environment for all workers, apply evidence-based prevention practices, and recognize that job-related factors do have a significant impact on the well-being of workers, their families, and communities. Hudson and others (2019) provide more detail on the evolution of the TWH concept, and their book (Total Worker Health, 2019) provides evidence-based research documentation as to the effectiveness of TWH environments.
Total Worker Health® is a strategy that involves establishing policies, programs, and practices that combine protection from work-related safety and health hazards with promoting injury and illness prevention efforts to advance worker well-being. It is developed and funded by NIOSH and the CDC. Research has been conducted at various Centers of Excellence for Total Worker Health implementation in the United States.
Successful implementation of TWH in the work environment requires significant behavior change on the part of all stakeholders, both individually and collectively. The first step is to facilitate the changes needed in the specific work culture so implementation of the TWH program can be successful. The science of behavior has proven technologies and practices that can be implemented to affect behavior change at such a large scale. It must start with implementing changes in the culture of work. Changing the culture of work, such as changing the national culture, requires starting and reinforcing an evolutionary process of behavior change. The expanded TWH framework provides the behavioral objectives, and the science of behavior provides an evidence-based approach to accomplish those objectives. It will take time.
Work Culture: Creating the Environment for People at Work
Khan and Smith-Law (2018) explored how national cultures influence the management and work cultures of organizations. For example, they pointed out that “national culture influences managerial decision-making, leadership styles, and human resource management practices.” In many ways, and with some variation, business culture in each country reflects the practices of the national culture. To enhance the well-being of workers, we need to work at evolving both national and work cultures so they support and reinforce each other and become one. The focus is on promoting the well-being of all by enhancing collaborative and prosocial behavior in all structures/institutions of society. The work culture can facilitate and reinforce the cultural switch from I to We. This evolutionary change takes time.
A work culture is the behavior that results when the work environment has a set of some general written as well as implicit rules defining consequences for specific behavior. It is usually arrived at through the process of verbal and social interactions that generally result in unspoken and unwritten rules as well as written rules for working together. The result is rule-governed behavior (behavior that is under the control of a verbally mediated rule, such as looking both ways when crossing a street, even though you have never seen someone or yourself being hit by a car). That is how We practices are created - working for the common good by following rules.
Well-established Principles that Shape the Work Culture
Culture is behavior - Culture describes the individual and collective behavior that represents the general operating norms/rules in the social environment. The product of that behavior defines the way of life, the arts created, beliefs, and institutions that create the social and physical environment of a culture. These are learned and shared behaviors and beliefs. language, symbols, and norms that provide the framework for the social environment where we live and work.
Culture is learned - We learn to act in certain ways by the consequences that follow behavior. A culture that does not enforce consequences consistently usually evolves into chaos.
Culture is socially learned - Most behavior and rewards at work involve other co-workers. Such behavior is socially reinforced. It can be intentionally shaped by being aware of what others do for you and by acknowledging their behavior, most of the time with a simple “thank you.” Cooperation can be mutually shaped and rewarded socially.
Sub-cultures are created through rewards - Social rewards come from co-workers. Creating outside work activities with co-workers is rewarding as well as generating the intrinsic reward of working as part of a project team. There are other possibilities. We tend to gravitate toward those that reinforce our behavior. Becoming a social reinforcer of others’ behavior thus facilitates your working with them.
People shape the culture - Our behavior at work creates the culture of the organization. Working together in a mutually rewarding environment facilitates cooperative behaviors and self-satisfaction. We can reinforce inclusion and respect.
Culture is negotiated - There is no culture of one. To achieve cultural change, we need to actively engage in giving and taking and negotiate with others by focusing on the common good. Through this process, we take ownership of the culture.
Work culture supports a positive and productive environment - Focus on creating an environment that contributes to the well-being of all workers, not only you, as well as facilitating all becoming productive and collaborative co-workers toward a common goal. It is important to create a reward system that supports obtaining each of those goals.
The primary objective of a work culture is to build human and social capital first which will create financial capital for all—working together.
Pass it on and see you soon!