Definition of Work Place and Dimensions

Introduction

Dear learner, in this lesson we are going to discuss on an interesting and important concept called “Work Place”. A work place is generally defined as “a place where work is done”. Work place has various forms, design, lay out. Work place may be for production, packing, book keeping, managing, storing etc. You may now think why we have to know about work place. Good question. Think on these lines. A work place is similar to that of a living place. The place we live is important to us in many ways. It should be clean for some, should be spacious for some and should be peaceful for some and so on. Why we get attached to the place we live in, because it influences our behaviour. A clean, calm, ventilated, cool and bright setting of home gives us happiness. On the other hand, a dirty and problematic home may result in depression and demotivation. The same way, the work place has its implications in the productivity of the employees working over there. A cleaner, friendlier work place will certainly help to improve the quality of work life of the employees and also will result in increased productivity.

There are a few important concepts related to work place, which we are going to see in detail below. These concepts are for understanding the various issues of workplace all over the world and the importance of a better work place for better performance.

Let us first see Work place Privacy.

Work Place Privacy

Going by the dictionary Work place Privacy can be defined as “Freedom for employees from unauthorized intrusion from the employers’ or the general right of the Individual to be let alone”. In other words, “Work place privacy is a quality or state of not being under observation and freedom from unauthorized intrusion”. Privacy at home or at our place is of course different from the one at our work place. Work place is common to many other people and obviously owned and controlled by other people. But still, there is a level of privacy the employees has to maintain, in order to perform their job in an effective manner. Even though privacy is generally accepted as a basic right, whether it is for the personal information or the place of work, the question is where to draw the line.

The level of information sought by the employer and the level of information used by the employer are all under the vague umbrella of work place privacy.

The major issues of work place privacy and its violations are as follows:

Electronic surveillance and Video Monitoring of employees at work place

Monitoring of emails (including personal emails) of the employees through the office server system

Tapping of phone calls of employees during office hours

Credit check on employees

Seeking personal information of employees

The above said issues are ongoing debates and yet unresolved in many countries. In USA, invasion of privacy is considered to be a major infringement of individual rights. In India, the MNCs and industries with western ties like BPOs, KPOs and Software companies are the major users of softwares to monitors the employees. The popular softwares like “spector soft” and “VPI empower suite” are available in the market which are specially designed to monitor the desktops and phone calls of employees in the organisation.

On the other side of the coin, employers justify the surveillance or monitoring by stating the following reasons:

Monitoring employees helps identifying genuine and honest employees

Surveillance improves productivity

It helps in keeping a check on thefts in the organisation –may it be materialistic or knowledge base or data base

When employees know that they are under observation, they try to act cordial and amicable to co-workers and conflicts are reduced

Cuts out the misuse of internet facilities

Keeps check on Industrial espionage

Cuts our computer slack time

Keeps the misuse of company resources at bay

Even though critically commented, there are situations where we cannot say altogether that monitoring the employees is wrong. As in the present scenario, where technology rules and day- by- day new softwares are invented to do millions of things from your desk top, the concern over the sustainability and reputation of the organisation becomes vital. The employees, particularly those who have negative thoughts about the organisation, may misuse the organisations possessions or name to damage them. For instance, let us imagine a scenario.

An employee who is in cash transactions of a financial company may use the company email id to create a rumour about funds manipulation in the company. There may be investigations later, may be the culprit gets punishment, but the damage done will be irrevocable. Once the goodwill and the reputation of the financial company gone, it’s gone forever. If there is a surveillance system to monitor the emails, this problem would have been stopped before happening.

It can be explained through a real time document of Davis & Company, on the year 2000 “The employer is the custodian of the griever’s character or the conduct. However, his conduct is a concern to the employer if it adversely impacts on the legitimate business interests of the employer”.

Apart from the data base security concerns, the work time wasted in internet surfing is also a major issue in work place monitoring. An article from IIM, Bangalore mentions that approximately 8 lakh rupees is calculated to be wasted on cyber slack time by a software engineer in India. If we imagine the total wastage for the software industry in India, we should be certainly on the side of employer and will start justifying ourselves for work place monitoring.

Activity

Read the following survey report excerpt:

A 2007 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found that two-thirds of employers monitor their employees’ web site visits in order to prevent inappropriate surfing. And 65% use software to block connections to web sites deemed off limits for employees. This is a 27% increase since 2001 when the survey was first conducted. Employers are concerned about employees visiting adult sites with sexual content, as well as games, social networking, entertainment, shopping and auctions, sports, and external blogs. Of the 43% of companies that monitor e-mail, nearly three-fourths use technology to automatically monitor e-mail. And 28% of employers have fired workers for e-mail misuse.

Close to half of employers track content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. And 12% monitor blogs to see what is being written about the company. Another 10% monitor social networking sites.

Almost half of the companies use video monitoring to counter theft, violence and sabotage. Of those, only 7% state they use video surveillance to track employees’ on-the-job performance. Most employers notify employees of anti-theft video surveillance (78%) and performance-related video monitoring (89%).

How would you react if your employer notify through a circular that your desktop, email and phone calls will be monitored at your work place?

If you are an employer, with a report saying that your employees are using the internet facility for surfing and personal emailing, what would be the action on your part to increase efficient work time?

When an employer justifies workplace monitoring by curbing thefts and violence at workplace, what is wrong in it? Where can it go wrong?

You may now think “so, violations in work place privacy are allowed then?” The answer is NO. It is just that, monitoring systems are necessary to keep the performance of employees at the expected levels and standards. It becomes questionable only when it crosses the line. The problem is, most of the time that line is invisible and most often, employees doesn’t bother or doesn’t know about this line. This workplace privacy issues will be well sorted out when, both employer and employee understand their responsibilities and try to keep up their performance to their competency level. It is important in present day context that, employees should know their rights in the workplace regarding privacy along with their sense of sincerity and responsibility, if possible a little dedication, towards their work.

Work Place Stress

Work place can be stressful at times. Whatever may be the industry, institution, organised sector or unorganized sector – the presence of stress is inevitable. Some stress are good and gives motivation. Stress makes us stronger. But, when it crosses the limit, it creates bad effects.

Stress is a very commonly used term in our world now. Not only you and me, we can see that even school children say casually that they are stressed of their project works or home works. Whether we understand the term correctly or not is an interesting question of course. But one way or the other, we understand the implications and symptoms of the concept of stress. Like, we identify the frequent outbursts, frustration, headaches, anger – all these or any of these or any other things other than these-without any justifiable, identifiable, obvious reason, may be symptoms of stress.

Work place gives employees a lot of scope to develop stress. They are called as stressors – Think of these things:

Employees work in confined places – most often cabins, rooms.

Employees work with people around – on top as superiors, bottom as subordinates, and peers all around – forced on us and often not very amicable and friendly, sometimes the worse – with hatred and enmity

Employees work with targets ahead – targets of different kinds like targets based on time, quality, production, knowledge, skill etc

Employees work on challenges, over load of work, sometimes under load. Over responsibility, over authority or under power – any of these, which ever not properly balanced, make us feel stressed

Employees often have to forget home in office and office at home, which most often they are not able to.

Monotonous, soul less routines of procedures of work, causing thoughts about the irrelativeness in one’s own passion and job

Low levels of Job satisfaction

These are just samples of how a human mind can start on feeling depressed. Let us first see, what the academic world thinks of stress. Here comes the definition:

Work place stress can be defined as “a person’s physiological and psychological response to external stimuli that demands reaction from the person’s physical or psychological system and create imbalance in the activities of the person.”

The reason we have to look upon stress as a serious issue related to employee performance is, that, stress changes employee behaviour. It has been identified that stress causes the following behavioural changes:

Difficult to focus

Losing sense of humour

Losing temper

Over eating/ under eating

Excessive smoking/ drinking

It seems that, the overall belief is “Work place stress is the curse of this century on human kind”. Look at this interesting quote:

“Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven’t fallen asleep yet”

If you look at the above illustration, you can see that stress starts up as a change in emotions

Anger, anxiety, frustration, irritation- all are very common symptoms. Slowly when gets accumulated it turns its self towards the physical side and create disorders like obesity, hyper tension, headaches, heart burns and the list is a long one. After this stage, behavioural changes start appearing and conflicts between relationships, peers and sometimes with the person himself. As for as our scope of performance management, we are worried about the performance of the employee. So, what is the result of accumulated stress on the performance - the result is decreased performance.

Types of Stress

Even though the new age psychologists comes out with quite an impressive collection of technical terms for different types of stress like Time stress, Anticipatory stress, Situational stress, Encounter stress, acute distress, chronic distress etc, let us confine ourselves with the basic approach – the three important stress types are

Eustress (Good stress )

Neustress (neutral stress)

Distress (Bad stress)

Eustress

Eustress is a positive form of stress. Let us think on situations when we will feel tensed with happiness, thrill of enjoyment, spiraling expectation for a joyful event. Consider the following:

An inspirational speech you listened to,

A motivational appreciation from the Boss,

Unexpected Promotion with a hike in salary,

The person you love accepting the marriage proposal,

Dinner with a role model celebrity

All these fall under the category of good stress. Eustress situations gives you stress, anxiety and increased levels of adrenalin but you will enjoy the feel of stress and will not be harmed by it – physically or mentally.

Neustress

Neustress is neither good nor bad. It is neutral stress. It will not have any effect on our system. But the problem is, when accumulated, it may fall into either of good stress category or bad stress category. For example, news of a film stars marriage postponed in a neighbouring country would not give us any reaction. But, if it is because of a disaster in the same area like flood or earthquake, it slightly shakes us. If the earth quake area is where our relatives live, now it starts to stress us. Hence, a Neustress doesn’t have any impact by itself, unless carried over or accumulated and can fall into either side of the wall.

Distress
Distress is the most common type of stress, having negative implications. Distress takes a toll on the body too, that is where it becomes a bad one. Physical health is troubled by the distress, as it gives a cumulative effect and easily multiplies with whatever comes your way with a face of problem. Usually distress is divided into two called

Acute stress and

Chronic stress.

Acute stress appears and disappears over a short period of time and can be intense, while chronic stress may not appear to be intense but lingers for a much longer period of time. Whatever be the name we give, distress certainly is a hindrance to the performance level of the employee.

I hope you have understood that there is a positive correlation between the stress level and the performance level. Hence, next topic for discussion is how to keep the performance levels as desired by us and our employer. Let us see some of the measures the employee and the employer has to take to control the stressors in the organisation.

Measures to improve Performance and Decrease Stress

Environment: Creating a positive environment with a friendlyatmosphere and freedom of work space will result in reducing the work place stress

Realistic targets: Targets that are practically possible to attain is areal attack on the common stressor.

Leadership: Effective and empathetic leadership is a key to curtailthe stressors

Work life balance: When the employer takes initiative to bring outa qualitative work life for his employees, the scope of stress will be gone forever in the organization

Culture: The organisational culture, when entwined with thewelfare of the employees, many factors that creates stress can be cut.

Stress Management: Employer can introduce small stress manage-mentProgrammes to create an awareness of stress and its effects. Stress management techniques such as meditation, yoga, laughter therapy, counseling, paid vacations, outings, get-togethers – can be introduced as a regular practice in the organizations to keep up the well being of the employees. Identified as the high stress industry – Software development industry had implemented many successful stress management programmes as employee welfare measurements.

Ok, now let us move on to another symptom of workplace behaviour which causes disturbance in performance of the employees. It is called s work place anxiety.

Work Place Anxiety

Anxiety at work place is an unavoidable phenomenon in the ever growing globe of corporate world. The Symptoms of anxiety range from obsessive worry and racing thoughts to fears of appearing nervous and avoidant behavior. Those who suffer may go to incredible lengths. The line between normal anxiety and abnormal anxiety is very fragile one. The symptoms of fear, nervousness while facing people and feeling awkward at some situations are anxieties of normal type. It poses a threat of stress only when anxiety starts controlling the employees. Employees, especially those at the managerial level when consumed by worry and anxiety may face a plunge in productivity, career de-railing and risk of mental health.

The figure shows the linear relationship of anxiety and perfor-mance. When an employee is not having any anxiety, which means he is not having any interest towards the job and feeling bored. When there is no push from within the person, the performance will be very low, with-out any involvement and attachment. He is in a demotivated condition.

When anxiety piles up, his interest is aroused and hence, he starts enjoying his work. His performance boosts up and at one point, the employee reaches the optimum level of his performance. Unfortunately, if the anxiety at this level fails to cease down, the employee finds himself in a crisis. He doesn’t find a way to cope up the developing anxiety, as his competency level is used at maximum and he is exhausted. At this stage, the performance slowly dives downwards and in due time, if not attended with correct remedy to decrease the anxiety level, reaches the bottom line of performance. What do we mean by remedy here? Proper communication between the subordinate and the superior, accomplishing the competency deficits to achieve the goal, timely assistance by the team, counseling if necessary, a little motivation etc. when the organisation steps in through superior to help the employee cope up with his anxiety, that’s what the remedy is.

Feeling of uncertainty and powerlessness is the reason behind the work place anxiety. The Managers should understand this to help his employees overcome and have a control of this symptom. Psychologists suggests following tips to control the anxiety in the work place:

Loving the job or doing the job we love to do! Satisfaction in job and being passionate about the work outcome is an important self esteem booster.

Having trust on trustable peers. After all we are all social animals and we need human company during stressful work hours.

Creating own self identity and not hesitating to be creative, because it stimulates the stress busters in a natural way

Creating awareness and knowing the symptoms of anxiety and stress and make it out in a positive way. Eustress is really a good friend.

Improving time management skills and having work and workplace organised.

Relaxing and loosening up as often as possible during work hours. It is not that hard as we think. Relaxing needs hardly 2 minutes like walking a small bit through the office corridor, closing the eyes for a few seconds, taking a deep breath, etc

Trying to accept and embrace the changes and challenges as they come. Too much of resistance takes the toll on mental as well as physical health.

Work Place Violence

The term “Work Place Violence” is often misleading and we think only about the incidents in history like the riot happened in Maruthi Plant in Manesar. But, the reality is more painful. It is more an issue than just what merely affects the performance of the employees. Work place violence not only has the negative impact over the employee performance, but sometimes destructs the life of employee, physical health or mental health. In an organization, work place violence may be in any form of

Intimidation

Harassment

Bullying

Physical abuse

Verbal attacks

Minor injuries

Unwelcome teasing

Harmful or malicious gossip

Verbal or written threats and

It also includes

Damages caused by animals in the workplace

Hazardous chemicals

Laboratory experiments

Hazardous machine operations

Work in terrorized zones

Work in dangerous and unhealthy climates etc

When we talk about violence, we think of heavy physical damage and pain. But, hurting of mind and soul is almost equal or even worse than hurting the body. The popular Thirukural in Tamil has a hymn of two lines “Theeyinalsutta pun ullarum, aaratheynaavinalsuttavadu” meaning “the scar of fire will heal sooner than the scar created by the tongue (words)”.

Work place violence usually involves

Employee and the employer

Employee and co-worker

Employee and customer/ client

Employee and outsider

Employee and the Employer

The acts of violence like verbal abuse, throwing the table weight or files, hitting/slapping in the workplace is the commonly visible in many places. It is not necessarily the victim is always the employee –most often the victim may be the manger or the superior. The recent incident of riot and violence in Yanam, an enclave of Pondicherry union territory given in the activity box below will make you understand the seriousness of this issue.

In global scenario, the Corporates are taking steps to curb out these inhuman practices. Let us take a look at the “United States Bureau of Labour Statistics” fact sheets. From 2006 to 2010, an average of 551 workers per year was killed as a result of work-related homicides. A preliminary total of 4,609 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2011. The table below is “Fatal workplace shootings” that happened in the year 2008 and 2010.

A Campaign poster created by CAWV, the Coalition Against Workplace Violence, based on Canada and an interesting fact from the same.

As a step to curb the work place violence, all over the world, Governments are also taking steps to ensure safety at the work place. As on today, Indian Government is also on the path of imposing a check on sexual harassment of women at workplace.

This topic is given with a lot of fact sheets instead of theory and concepts. It is to know that what we talk about is not only in Books or in some other geographical location, but around us. The rates of convictions are too high in western countries when compared to India. But still, it is an area the Business world is keenly watching for new practices and methods to keep the violence issues on check. Some factors worth considering are

The organisational culture and value system can avoid such unfortunate happenings to an extent

It is the duty of the management to address the grievances of the workers at an earlier stage. The unattended grievances accumulate and convert itself to mob violence and hooliganism

If necessary, even an external agency may be sourced to understand and solve the problem.

To avoid the third party (external people) violence on the employees, like a customer attacking a Counter sales man, the employer should have a vigil arranged in the work places where such incidents are expected.

Installation of alarms, bright and effective lighting in the work place, installation of surveillance equipments to monitor the activity, controlled access to the work place and other modern techniques can be used to prevent violence.

Moreover, creating awareness amongst the employees on the rights of their privacy and safety will be the best and foremost solution to prevent the unfortunate happenings.

To conclude, I remember a quote of Albert Einstein, it goes like this “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing” (and makes the evil exist).”

Work Place Harmony

The next topic is a step on the positive side. A harmonious work place. The dictionary meaning of Harmony is “the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent; the state of being in agreement or concord” and harmonious means “free from disagreement or dissent”.

Work place harmony is employees creating a unique wave of workflow together. As the literal meaning of harmony says, it is like creating a beautiful sweet music together, harmonious environment free from arguments and disagreements.

Dear learners, I have a question for you. Have you ever had a chance to watch the singing choir group, or a music orchestra playing symphonies or a group of young men climbing on top of one another to reach for the jackpot or a group of tribes entwining each other’s hands, dancing in a big row without messing up? That is harmonious.

It would look beautiful to see the performance of the above said examples as

A team work,

The leader or conductor setting things in motion without losing his cool,

All members performing with perfect synchronization without confusion or tension,

Not interfering in others area of work,

Enjoying the performance they do,

Feeling pride of what they are.

This is what we call as harmonious work environment.

In an era where people move around the globe as if it is a small village, expatriations are so common and diverse group of employees are to be under the single roof. Thousands of reasons and practices divides them like colour of skin, race, religion, caste, creed, life standards, literacy levels, Political parties, language, Countries, states and districts, gender, social status, economical status, - I bet you can add thousand more.

The major reasons that destroy harmony at a work place are

Loss of morale (To know more about morale, refer Unit III)

High level Absenteeism

Poor leadership style and

High employee attrition rates

So, how do you think an organisation can develop or create a harmonious work place? Together. That is the first and foremost answer. Next to that, let us see what all the employees and the employer can do to transform the workplace into a beautiful likeable environment.

Knowing the boundaries – Employees should know with claritywhere they stand, what their role is, what they are expected to do and what not they should do. Interference in others boundaries is often the major problem causing factor in the workplace relationships.

Role of Leader – The vital part in creating harmony is leader’srole. He has to clarify the roles, vision, mission, goals, and the relationship between the organisational goals and the employees role in achieving that, aligning the goal of employee and that of the organisation, attending to grievances, being a real supporter to his team mates, being empathetic and loyal to his employees and other innumerous actions he can perform to create the harmony.

Team – Team playing is inevitable in creating harmony. A workplace is full of people and each one has to compliment the other to make it a whole picture. Team work gives positive energy even with long work hours and tough targets. The flaws of individuals can be adjusted with the strength of others in a team play.

Clear Agenda – A day’s work should start with a breakfast plateof proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and calcium. Is it not? The same way, a day’s work at the work place should start with clear plan of, hard work, meetings, intervals, reporting etc. A clear agenda for small groups which comprises of big groups and their agenda with a clear focus to attend to the goals will avoid small conflicts at the work place.

Rewards and appreciations – A good reward system andappreciation to the employees create a place of happiness. In case of errors, a system of pointing out them and helping the employees to rectify those errors will help in reducing conflicts and thus resulting in good harmonious environment.

Removal of Hindrances – Creating a good work place meansclearing off bad elements also. There is always a possibility of having a black sheep in the team who spoils the spirit. That should be taken care of for creating harmony.

Continuous Training – A trained employee is a confident employee.That helps him develop loyalty, hence, turn over comes down and as a result, the people staying for long years automatically develop friendship and team spirit among them.

Promoting Work life balance –The employers initiate to a sustainedwork life balance of his employees will result in a much harmonious environment. A well balanced work life, gives a sense of satisfaction towards life including the work time. It improves the attitude of the employee to act cool and calm, friendly and team spirited, which is essential for workplace harmony.

Employee satisfaction, happiness and well-being are valuable assets to an organisation. That is an assured path way to success. Workplace harmony helps build a healthy, collaborative workforce that, in turn, will be more efficient, productive and loyal.

Work Place Ethics

Business dictionary defines work place ethics as “The belief that work has a moral benefit and an inherent ability to strengthen character.” It can be described as a set of values, right attitude and right behaviour towards others in the work place. The explicit behaviour at a work place has chain of reactions and hence, to retain work ethics is to retain good behaviour- responsible, honest and dependable. Organisations also have their own culture, value system and ethical code of conduct. The traditional virtues such as loyalty, trust, commitment, Social responsibility, good governance are some of the traits of a good value system of organisations. In the current globalised world, customer satisfaction & sustainability, innovation, green culture & eco-friendliness, team culture is all new additions to the way of work place ethics.

Dear learners, you may be thinking that "is it relevant in today’s world ?" The answer is within you. If you are a manager and you are in a dilemma to decide on issuing a promotion order between two of your subordinates. One is hardworking, smart but unethical – like taking home stationeries from Office, using office telephone to make long distance calls, submit false bills for claims during out of station official duties etc. the other one is straight forward and honest, responsible and dependable. Which one would you select for promotion?

The clue is, if the manager himself is unethical, he would find the first one suitable and the flaws acceptable. Then, when that selected subordinate has to select someone for promotion, he will also do the same thing and select anyone with ethical flaws. In the long run, the office would be full of people not caring about the good deeds and traits, and the climate and culture of the organisation would be in deep trouble.

On the other side, if the manager cares for ethics, he will select the second one and the remaining story you can write. A good company with good reputation.

Even though it looks likes unethical practices, short cuts and wrong routes at a work place may reach to the destination of fame and fortune early than others, the question is about sustainability. There are a lot of real time examples out there of rising quick and losing quickly, all because of using corrupted ways to survive.

Further, a place where ethics doesn’t matter, the employees tend to transform too to the path shown by the organisation. It becomes a vicious circle – employees leads to the unethical practices in the organisation, unnoticing organisation supports the employees and convert itself to the corrupted way too and vice versa.

Good work Ethics at a work place means the existence of following among the people from top to bottom in the organization:

Honesty

Positivity

Responsibility

Trustworthiness

Loyalty

Dependability

Team Spirit

Helping spirit

Harassment free

Transparent accounting to the stake holders

Occupational health and safety

It would look like a fantasy that how all the people at one place can be so good. That’s what you are thinking right now, right? Being good or bad – both are infectious. A person who can influence and dominate is the key. His behaviour gets infused into others slowly. Leader is the answer. If leader can pave a path of good deeds, the others will follow some day, near in the future, how near we can’t say- but follow – is for sure. Here leader need not be necessarily the top manager. It can be a group leader, team leader or supervisor. Even sometimes a leader by mere charisma in an informal organisational group can do wonders. The percentage of these leaders in the organisation decides the overall work place ethics of the organisation.

When we say what to be present to create an ethical work place, we should see what not to be there. Is it not?

Lobbying

Discrimination on race, caste, creed and gender

Bribery

Corruption

Unfair trade practices

Unethical/ misleading advertisements

Misuse of Politics, Government policies and Media

Performance and Ethics