Everyone has heard that US workers are dissatisfied with their jobs, but I think many analysts are missing the point. It’s not the recession. The survey reflects the overall decline of the employee/employer covenant during the past twenty years.
Listen up, employers.
- You asked us to accept 3% merit increases.
- You told us we would have company-sponsored health care.
- You changed our retirement plans and offered us a new pension that had the potential to earn more money as the stock market did better.
- You said unions weren’t in our best interests.
- You said that it was okay to create a knowledge-based economy and move our manufacturing jobs to China and India.
Hmmmm. I wonder why American workers are dissatisfied with their jobs?
*
I think about the impact of job dissatisfaction in our personal lives…
- Fathers and husbands are cranky.
- Wives and mothers are stressed.
- Younger workers will never earn enough to retire.
- Older workers cling to their jobs with every last ounce of strength.
The job market is like the housing market. Movement is frozen. No one can leave a job because of health care, poor credit, and equity (that may or many not really exist) in their company.
We are stuck and we are dissatisfied.
*
I wish a corporate leader would write an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal and take on these statistics. I’d like to hear a CEO get on CNBC and respond to these numbers and say, “We hear you. My company bears some responsibility for this mess, and we can do better. Come work for me. Roll up your sleeves, be a part of my team, and help to fix America, fix the economy, and fix the job market at my organization.”
I’d work for that company in a minute. What about you?
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There is a great book called “Hardcore Zen” written by a former punk turned Buddhist monk, and he has a quote in there that helps keep me sane at work:
“You can have the best job in the world, but at the end of the day, it’s still just a f***ing job.”
I completely agree with your arguments here. I think there are good reasons for American workers to be dissatisfied with their jobs and (though this is not the same thing but is certainly related) distrustful of their employers. With the need to answer to shareholders, employees know that if their employers could get rid of them entirely, they would. They represent costs that the company wants to reduce until they can be reduced no more, whether that be through cutting pay, taking away benefits, or laying off until only a skeleton crew is left (and, the employee’s perception goes–yes, the CEO’s job is insanely hard, and he may take a pay cut or something in bad times, but he is certainly not struggling to put food on the table or stay out of debt the way the rank-and-file worker is). Of course this is not true of all companies depending on their culture, ownership, and the people in charge.
I think that people by and large still work hard and try to do a good job within this system, and for that reason I don’t necessarily think these numbers just reflect a lazy, coddled work force as I have heard argued. People are just disillusioned, exhausted, and… well, dissatisfied.
You’re right about the paradigm shift in the employer/employee covenant, and yeah, I’d work for a company that fessed up, owned its shit, and had a plan for recovery in a second, too.
But most companies have no incentives to do the right thing. Other than “karma” which I’m sure they believe is a made-up word.
Just as the housing market is a buyer’s market, the job market is an employers’ market. For all but a very lucky few right now, this is the message from management: Here’s what you’re getting. If you don’t like it, leave.
I have been especially surprised/amazed/dumbfounded to see how many companies just completely chucked huge numbers of retirees from their benefit rolls. It may be necessary and/or legal, but I’m still astonished at how many retirees have lost that benefit (i.e., the entirety of GM’s retirees). Talk about making you lose faith in the employee/employer covenant.
The job covenant was changed a while ago. As Gen X that has been in the professional workforce over 15 years, the last 3 bullets did not apply to my personal expectations. I would add my bullets or modifications to the list.
* More & more public companies have become personal financial buffets for the executives & BODs. Nothing is more inspiring than working for organization so your CEO can end-up in a SEC investigation…
*Mindless Change. Annual reorganizations. Constant leadership changes – (aka The Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor syndrome). A lot of time & energy is burned on these types of changes. We can never see what works or what needs to be improved.
*Flavor of the moment and fad approach to management & projects (related). Due to constant change, all of the new executives need to make a quick splash to keep their jobs. Flashy projects get more resources than core business functions. That frustrates a lot of people – especially the non-job hoppers.
*We are asked to accept 3% merit increases for positions that have market comp growth that exceeds 3%. People do not like being put in a position of having to choose between fair pay or staying in a company/position that they like.
*The pointless of the work. Most people like to have the sense of accomplishment. Much of the work as degenerated in nothingness. In the past people joked about being cogs, but at least cogs make something tangible happen.
Come on Laurie, really?
What is new here? Organisations shitting on the workforce? Did that start in 2009? Corporate failure? Abuse of employee trust and dependence? Is that a noughties invention?
If you worked in a one company town 50 years ago you didn’t have a choice either, or mobility. Did the organisations not make the most of that?
The grass is always greener. We just feel better when we think we have the ability to go and chomp on the other side. We feel freer, more empowered, less tied down. We feel we have choice.
The reality though is always the same. Companies have more power than workers. Always have had, always will do.
I’ve got a feeling I may not have a popular opinion here, but I will say it anyway. I am not so sure employers or “big business” can shoulder the blame on this, for certain, they cannot shoulder all the blame. This is a systemic issue, with so many sub-themes and moving parts, to highlight any one of them and say it is the culprit would be restrictive.
Yes, employers moved us in the directions listed, but other wheels were spinning. Many, many wheels. For the sake of time (my first cup of coffee is calling me) I will only mention one. “Rabid Consumerism.” The American lust for more. Keeping up with the Jones. Where is mine? Mine? Mine?
The same period outlined in Laurie’s post, where presumably Business has taken advantage of the Common Joe, is the same era that caused us all to move away from the support of generational family ties in pursuit of higher paying jobs, tilt our finances for larger and more extravagant houses, cause both parents to leave the home and dump the kids into a stranger’s care for 11-hours a day, sign onto “leased” vehicle packages we could otherwise not afford, max out our credit cards, and to sit in front of the tube, late at night, self-medicating ourselves with alcohol or high fructose corn syrup. You pick.
Rome crumbled from within, folks. Sometimes I think our own success will be the root of our downfall. We think business is different today than 50 years ago…you bet it is. How about the candidate pool? How about the American worker? Student? Has anyone seen what we’ve become?
Now before you call me anti-American, know that I served 6 years in the USMC. I love my country. I volunteer as a member of the State Workforce Investment Board, I Chair the State’s Youth & Education Committee, I volunteer at a non-profit providing services to homeless youth. I am not an onboard terrorist. If anything, I am a Canary in the Coalmine. Just calling it like I see it. What I see is a generation of entitlement crashing into the realities of a system that is not sustaining itself, and I see the road out of this mess as being on more shoulders than Business alone. It is on each of our shoulders, as people who choose to live here and call it home, and the solutions must reside in each of us.
One thing I notice, and you address it here, is that some companies are going to try to blame employee unrest on the recession, when in fact, much of the dissatisfaction was around long beforehand. There will be leaders who are so happy that they made it out of survival mode that they ignore the fact that there was a broken system before the recession bulldozer rolled into town. There are many challenges ahead, and I think the best thing companies can do is be honest that things suck and to stop patting themselves on the back for getting out alive.
PS Love @SalesComp’s Defense Against the Dark Arts reference
Laurie-This is a strong topic…strategic, SPHR-like strong! One quick observation: In my 20+ years of work experience (including my current employment) privately held companies reflect and represent the values of their employees (and vice versa) far more closely than publicly traded companies. Great topic, and great challenge to the C-suite to step up to the plate.
Dale and TheHRD hit on some of my thoughts. I don’t think this year’s job dissatisfaction increase reflects any changes in the workplace that aren’t attributable to the recession. Job satisfaction, after all, is positively correlated with job security.
With regards to personal-life dissatisfaction, recall that work life and personal life are interrelated, and that it’s a two-way relationship (as is the emp-ee “covenant”). Nowadays most people live well beyond their means, moral values are passé, and broken homes are commonplace–the latter fueling an increase in the Labor Force Participation Rate, which has increased domestic competition for jobs and lowered wages. True, both sides of the psychological contract need to more clearly communicate and uphold their ends of the bargain, but IMHO we need to first get our lives in order.
When you point your finger, your thumb is pointing right back at ya. In other words, lets stop putting blame and fault and see what we as individuals have contributed to the dissolution of employee/employer relationships. There is no doubt that there are many employers that see employees as debt and overhead, they are in business to make money, not because it makes them feel good and many decisions are based on the bottom dollar and not on whether this would hurt Mr. Smith from putting food on the table. But as employees we need to empower ourselves too. We need to keep abreast on our skills, knowledge and the work force and take our future in our own hands. Don’t be satisfied with the status quo, go above and beyond, learn new tasks and systems and make yourself marketable out there. And when you are unsatisfied with your current pay, work environment, manager, benefits, company etc. you have the means to do something about it. The cycle will change again to the advantage of the employee and when that happens you have to cease the opportunity and bust a move….but complaining about it and pointing fingers, although helping you get it off your chest initially can be non-productive if you harp on it too long without doing something about it…..in the famous words of Tim Gunn,,,,you have to make it happen.
This is the kind of topic where everyone is correct to some degree. It is so broad, that every issue that hits the paper could contribute. Regardless of how we got here, there is a lack of understanding on what to do about it, and the struture in public companies probably works against a fix.
* CEOs have no idea what the health of their organizations are. They don’t know how to analyze the info if given to them and they can’t translate how it could positively or negatively impact them.
* CEOs who do focus long-term improvements to culture and workforce better not have a single setback in numbers or the shareholders will rise up. The shareholders care about us less than the CEO. The CEO goes against this at their own peril and most likely won’t. This may even be more damaging becuase they say that people are the most important, but look at finance data all day. Workers can always smell bullshit. The ruse just adds salt to the wound.
* Let’s face it, the vast majority of the workforce doesn’t attempt to improve themselves. This doesn’t help either. I may be dissatisfied now, but I have a committment to continuing education and self improvement that will continue to propel me forward. But the population that drive these surveys are stuck in large part by their own doing. They are afraid to move and don’t know how, or can’t afford, to increase their skillset. They are stuck and at the mercy of the company.
* If management doesn’t focus on training and development, nobody will be ready to step up either. That means all managers will be hired in from the outside to manage the same tired, depressed workforce. That absolutely kills morale.
As long as we’re slaves to iPhone’s, Mickey D’s, and Versace handbags– so will we be slaves to corporate “America”– and one CEO doth not a revolution make.
@Dale, @J.D.–I think it is sort of interesting that in 2009 it seems that there is still a view that WORKING MOMS are enough of a negative trend in society to be mentioned as part of this discussion. I realize people could technically be referring to any working parent here, but the implication is that life was better when Mom was home with the kids (and therefore not accumulating marketable skills, retirement income or indeed any money that technically “belongs” to her, continuing education, etc.) Not to say that the job of a SAHP is not important or difficult, but taking it on is a major decision with definite potential downsides for the parent. There are other reasons to have two income-earners in a household than the mindless pursuit of unnecessary consumer goods.
Also @Dale, I agree with a lot of what you say, but whenever millions of people all seem to make the same bad “individual” decisions, I feel like it is more helpful to look at the larger forces that bring those decisions about. It would be nice if people would all individually decide to rise up and start to say no to some of the less-beneficial trends in our society, but we will probably be waiting a long time for that to happen. Not because people are bad and lazy, just because they make the decisions that are the most advantageous within the structure that they exist in. (For example, you could also say that the explosion of consumerism in the past decades has resulted in a push for lower and lower prices which has caused people to earn less and less and therefore have to work more and more even if they don’t overspend. When you get home from your third minimum-wage job I’m sure it is sometimes all you can do to “self-medicate” a bit and try to avoid thinking about how you will make it through the next day.) I don’t really have any answers, of course.
@spacedcowgirl Please re-read what I wrote–I didn’t single out working moms at all. I specifically mentioned “broken homes,” which does not include double-income families.
My point is that people’s personal lives (and thus their working lives) were better off when they took care of their extra-work issues first. Too many sources have corroborated the significant emotional, financial, medical and psychological implications of divorce, etc., to ignore.
As the old fart on this cruise, I believe job dissatisfaction, in a less vocal form, has been around for years. Maybe even BMT (before my time). I don’t think the slaves building the pyramids loved their jobs and they certainly couldn’t call in sick. We’ve come to expect some sort of validation and intrinsic reward from doing our selected professions and occupations. It’s a laudible goal, but it shouldn’t be the lynchpin for our emotional stability.
Laurie, everything you said in your post is true and accurate. I think when the previous surveys were taken, times were better and people knew they could find other employment. The current survey reflects a gloomy reality: I”m stuck in this crap and even if I wanted to there’s nowhere I can go. I need my crappy insurance to cover my pre-existing condition. I need my reduced salary to pay my underwater mortgage. I can’t afford to pay my college loans. Jeeezus I hate this job.
I agree that there is plenty of blame to spread around and am often astounded at the dumb decisions people make. But still, there is no good excuse for the gap between the rich and poor in this country…or even the rich and middle class. Our economy rests on the backs and wallets of the middle class and we are losing ground every year while the top 2% continues to gain ground…that’s just wrong, particularly because their gains are entirely based on our productivity.
Have any of you seen the latest productivity reports? Everyone keeps harping on these lazy, disengaged, entitled workers, yet productivity has increased at the same time that we have massive unemployement. That means that the remaining people are being worked into the ground. And most of us took paycuts while we amped up our workload. No wonder we are so dissatisfied.
Meanwhile, the banks are paying back TARP money, not because it’s the right thing to do but because they don’t want their banker, the US Government, telling them how they can spend their money – that’s right, they want to award it in great big bunches to the top 2% of their earners.
I agree with @Dale in that the problem is complex. If I recall, the ER hires an EE and pays them to do a decent job to continue the success of the business. They don’t have to offer all the other stuff, perks, bonuses, benefits, etc. BUT our society expects it. EEs move from ER to ER looking for a better deal only to find out it is basically the same stuff just at a different place increasing their dissatisfaction. Or EEs stay in the same job and complain about what they do have increasing their dissatisfaction. Yet so many other factors contribute to worker satisfaction beside the ER.
Satisfaction is intrinsic and internal, not external. We have to find out what satisfaction means to us individually whether employed or unemployed, then find it or create it. The expectation shouldn’t be that worker satisfaction must come from an employer. A big part comes from the worker and what they control, how they choose to respond (positively or negatively), and how they choose to perceive their environment.
We cann’t point the Big Finger O’Blame solely on the employers, and I would NEVER work for a company that required me to join a union. The HR people I know who work in local, unionized companies deal with more entitlement and “not in my job description” headaches than I do.
Yeah, I’m pissed that my earning power continues to decrease. I’m pissed that Wall Street was dealing in smoke and mirrors instead of commodities. I’m pissed that employers are making short-term financial decisions without thinking long-term impact. But I’m also pissed that so many Americans believed that buying a brand new 3000 sq ft house on a zero-down adjustable rate mortgage was a good idea. This “but they told me I could afford it” is bollocks. You weren’t 5 years old when you bought that house! Take some responsibility.
Together, we all created this enormous entitlement mentality that we deserve a brand new house by the time we’re 30, new cars every 2 years, European vacations, designer clothes, and that we are owed the right to follow our passions in life. I’m one of those people who just kept saving my money and only bought the (OLD!) house I could afford, and I’m just downright cranky now that I’ve always lived within my means, but now I have to suffer because other people didn’t.
I’ve seen employers not do enough to treat their employees equitably while at the same time doing too much for whiners and young employees who believe they deserve more because mommy and daddy gave them more. On the one hand, we have parents who are struggling to pay the rent and take care of the kids; on the other, we have parents who are buying their kid a brand new Lexus for their 16th birthday.
Frankly, I’ve no bloody idea at this point what the answers are. I’m one of those dissatisfied workers right now, too, but we have to take our part in this mess before we can move forward.
J.D., I did read it carefully–your post views an increase in the “labor force participation rate” as generally negative, and cites broken homes as a contributor to that. Or, to say it the opposite way, the post seems to state that you consider a situation with more “intact” homes, which you say would be associated with fewer overall workers, to be desirable.
Which in turn leads to the conclusion that more single or other moms going to work is a negative outcome (again, since increased participation in the labor force is cited a priori as a negative, and most “increased participation” in our particular society is going to come from additional women leaving the home and going to work as opposed to additional men doing the same). It also implies that single wage-earner households are a better model than what we are currently trending toward. Which may be true, I don’t know.
I’m not saying you set out to vilify working moms or that your conclusions are “wrong” or anything… I just thought it was interesting that this type of idea came up more than once in the discussion.
@Ginger G. – Our society expects benefits & such because its part of the compensation package. I do X so I receive $Y+Z. Companies do not need to offer benefits but they will need to do something to compete in the job market. (Obviously, at this moment they are able to take advantage of the high unemployment rate…)
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the nature of the job itself. Most of our society has gone from doing work that involved being physically active to sitting in a beige cubicle staring at a computer all day.
@JK So true. So concise. I don’t even know why I write this blog when good shit like that has been written.
@Spaced You can only fight for so long before you get tired. That’s all I’m saying. We’re no longer fighting back. We’re just whining to pollsters.
@Patrick I think it’s immoral how we treat our retirees, and it scares the hell out of me. What happens to me in another 35 years?
@Salescomp All true. I think the covenant probably sucked throughout the ages (hence, the unions) but you would think that the middle class of America would learn something by now and protect its self interests. Sheesh.
@TheHRD I dunno. I just wanted to trot out my populist lingo & personality for a little bit. It’s fun. I mean everything I write — and this shit gets me riled up. Not that it’s a NEW development that companies have more power than workers. I just felt like kvetching.
@Dale You sound very American. It’s true. I’ll throw my family under the bus in pursuit of another nickel.
@Emily All good points.
@Frank Thank you. Every privately-held company I’ve worked for has gone out of business. #boo #dysfunctionalfamilies
@JD Some good points — but it’s always about our morals and not the morals of corporations even though we bestow corporations with rights and privileges protected by our constitution? I dunno.
@Latina More good points but I think more blame goes towards corporations.
@Ryan You’re right on so many levels. Sometimes I want to give up and turn on the TV and veg out.
@MattyMat I’m too chubby for a revolution. Give me more fries.
@ali You’re probably right. But I still call shenanigans on these pundits and analysts out there.
@Low Good point on the productivity reports. Snap.
@GingerG I dunno. I wasn’t satisfied when raises were frozen — no matter how much I loved my coworkers and clients.
@H.Aria What? C’mon. I like blaming people. It’s easier than figuring out the answers.
@Suz See JD’s original point — does any job really have meaning? I mean, REALLY?
I have been in the workforce since 1979. I have NEVER experienced a “covenant” with an employer. I have no idea what that is. I have always lived with the reality that I am expendable, and every employer that I have had took every opportunity to remind me of it.
Maybe that is just my line of work (mental health/social services) but that has always been my experience.
Even so, the reality is much more grim now. Not only do I have to live with the understanding that I am expendable, I also have to work much, much harder for much, much less.
All I feel entitled to is the opportunity to be able to do a job within the designated time frame for a reasonable salary and benefits. I have NEVER had it, but now it is further from reality than ever. Dissatisfaction is not the word. Disgust is more like it.
And what’s really interesting is that not only will the pressures driving this dissatisfaction intensify in the short term, companies will need to ask things of their employees they aren’t even asking now.
Like it or not, companies (faced by increasing political, consumer, and environmental pressure) will find themselves needing to engage their remaining employees as public advocates and ambassadors, and those who fail at doing so may well face ruin.
Whether this need to leverage employees as a source of credibility as well as productivity will yield better employment conditions is anyone’s guess–but it underscores that the changes wrought by the Great Recession are only beginning.
Thanks for sharing…
What we have is a society who have been sold a pile of crap…
Go to school, get good grades, get a great job = a LIE
Job satisfaction is NOT owed to you… (Entitlement)
You want happiness, look in the mirror, decide what you love to do and go do that… what the world needs in more people to come alive, and live with passion and purpose…
“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”
Warm regards,
Brian-
Hi Laurie!
I like your take on how employers have brought on a lot of dissatisfaction among workers. I’d like to add that as more people recognize that, they’re more willing to to take charge of their own careers and take some risks by leaving the relative “comfort” of one employer to take on a challenge elsewhere that can help their careers.
Laurie, I wasn’t refering to a job having meaning. Just being physically active vs sedentary all day. The biggest things I miss about the lab is being on the move all day. And windows. I really miss being able to look out the window.
Long-time lurker/fan of PunkrockHR, first time poster here…My boss sent out an e-mail to all of us with a link to this article on Monday. I’m not sure why. I assumed he was seeking some sort of response, so here’s what I said:
“This is interesting…I’m a big believer in meaningful work if you can get it, but I also think there are a lot of myths about what work should be in our lives–too much over-identifying ourselves with our jobs and conversely, often, our possessions. While I totally agree with the quote from the article, “It is two-way responsibility ….Workers also have to figure out what they should be doing to be the most engaged in their jobs and the most productive”, I also think that most times, we need to find meaning outside of what we do to pay the bills.
I wonder if this is more about people lacking a sense of purpose in their lives and expecting that purpose to come from a job or some outside source. I feel this goes a lot deeper than mere wide-spread job dissatisfaction, and points instead to some deep endemic sense of disconnection, powerlessness, and spiritual ennui. Either way, it’s sad.”
While I agree that compensation, health care, and retirement plans play a role in employee dissatisfaction, I think the crest-fallen economy has acted as a catalyst to employee disappointment about their development.
With the push on “doing more with less” and productivity, managers have become very task-focused and are forgetting about their people. Many organizations are taking the “they are lucky to still have a job” perspective, using that as a rationale for why employees will stay with them…but they won’t. DDI recently did a survey of over 1000 individual contributors and when asked the question ‘would you move to another company if given the opportunity’, a staggering 55 percent of the respondents said yes. They want out. They want something new.
As you said, some of the economic incentives have been dwindling over time. However, what has really increased is the abandonment of employee development. It is one thing staying with a company, getting low benefits but learning in role. It is soul-destroying to stay with a company, get low benefits, and no personal development. Of the 1000 survey participants, 51 percent said they felt stagnant, with no stimulating assignments, no opportunity to learn new skills or to advance, and no recognition. For many employees, that development disappointment is the reason why they are stuck and dissatisfied.
Individual Capitalism is to blame, for greatly more than job- and lifestyle- dissatisfactions. It should long ago have been replaced peaceful-revolution-wise by a Cooperative Capitalism.
75% of one’s 24/7/52/Lifespan timeframe is spent spending sleeping studying and celebrating, requiring one to choose lifestyling abilities the most important of which, I shall contend, is PERSONAL-EFFICIENCY i.e. how LITTLE one draws from the Common Purse together with how LITTLE destruction or wastage one causes upon The Environment, the latter being the Source of both individual and collective Natural and Civilisational Lifesupports.
25% is work(place) time, belonging to the Employer who both dictates what skills (not abilities, see 75% above) one must bring and that one must not be spending either one’s own or the company’s money or assets upon one’s private self during workplace hours.
Let Person A, being long-term able to live healthily and happily off $400 per week, be at the personal-efficiency-index level = 100% i.e. the ideal, the smallest Purse and Lifesupports consumption & destruction.
Let Persons B, C … XYZ, being ‘must have mores’ progressively at $100pw more than the preceding-lettered person, be given personal-efficiency scores accordingly. (Person E ‘needing’ $800pw scores as being only 50% personally-efficient (no matter what their 25% workplace-efficiency or productivity score is)).
Conclusion 1: (fill this in, ad nauseam if you will): (e.g. the Pope, UN Secretary General, President, Senator, Minister, local bank-manager, even most of the Nobel prize-winners, score < 50% in personal-efficincy).
Sickening as all that may be, the underlying 'global-economics' graph, x being Timescale y being QQ (quantityxquality) axis ( ? axes), of respectively Lifesupports (versus) GDP, shows an ever-rising GDP but since about 1900 a declining Lifesupports qq, such that around 1950 the two had crossed, beginning a Shortfall which now in 2010 appears to be increasing alarmingly, not linearly but logarithmicly, exponentially degrading and extincting the very Lifesupports upon which Economics depends.
"Someone should be telling the economists that they have a vital equation wrong somewhere" (Prof David Smith, Australian TV Open Learning, Environmental Studies c1990).
Karl Marx got it wrong also "From each according to ability, to each according to need", and none of our 'leaders' (governors/directors/dictators) has reversed that wrong.
Try "To each according to their need, from each according to their ability", and billions of us, Earth's most-personally-efficient humans, won't have to walk barefoot to work on an empty stomach every day, for a mere pittance.
Scrutinise also the human-development professors' agreement (c1990) that "One can become the best worker in the World, the best doctor, the best lawyer, even both eventually, without any education whatsoever…(long pause, for breath whatever) …….
Check out 'Perceptual (Self) Control' by Prof WCT Powers, which should be replacing the prevailing but deeply flawed and even more deeply entrenched 'Reinforcement Theory'; and a similar human-development breakthrough by Prof Caroline Dweck 'Self-theorisation Theory' wherein 'All-roundness' people are longest-term more personally-efficient (75% lifestyle time) and more workplace-efficient (25% employee time) than are the 'wiz-kid' specialists who focus only upon what they are already good at.
Sleep on all of the above, for a night or two.
Then, may we be blessed, each and every one.
I'm OK,
Over to You,
from sincerely John Miles, Plymouth, England.
Suz and Laurie: Absolutely; how far might it be possible to increase the amount of duties-rotating, make a big stride into ‘Jack of all trades and actual part-master of some’ (Jill included, naturally) ? Thus also spreading-the-bad-loads (at first more) equally between all levels of workers and lifestylers ?
Sincerely from John Miles in England.