Every so often the internet throws up some serendipitous issues. A discussion on Twitter about the recent case of the Vicar unable to make an unfair dismissal claim since he was deemed to be employed by God caused me to look at Rerum Novarum, the 1891 Encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, which said among other things that
- Employees should be paid a “living wage”and receive stable working conditions
- They should have proper rest breaks
- Trade unions were on the whole a good thing
- Even if they had the economic power to do so, employers shouldn’t exploit or treat their staff badly
At the same time, the latest post from blogger Maid in London, which details life as a hotel housekeeper, popped up in my timeline. I think it’s fair to say that her employer takes the opposite view to Pope Leo.
Some people do pretty awful jobs in unpleasant conditions. They clean hotel rooms, collect bins, make or assemble things in hot and noisy environments, work with dangerous equipment, or deal with people in difficult or crisis situations. Although it’s true that you can get job satisfaction from even the most mundane or demanding task, most in those roles don’t do it for the love of the job. And despite what some in social media suggest, these jobs aren’t all going to disappear in the next 5-10 years.
So why do we think that just because someone does a manual job, for low pay, that it’s somehow okay to treat them like dirt? While some HR people might get slightly orgasmic at the thought that the world of work is full of “cool” organisations like Google, where employees drink lattes while sliding down pool tables, others boast of their commercial prowess by looking at new and innovative ways to cut employee terms and conditions in pursuit of the “bottom line”, and a third group wander around ineffectually bemoaning the fact that line managers don’t listen to them or follow their carefully constructed processes. None of these groups seem to consider that just treating people with a little common decency might pay dividends both in terms of staff morale and productivity.
Let’s face it, if a celibate theologian from the Victorian era can “get it”, then twenty first century HR professionals should be able to.
This is so true Simon… I hate it when I hear employers use “we are not Google” as an excuse for… well anything really. Anything from bad recruitment practices to even worse HR practices. Not even Google is what people mean when they mention the name – but does it really matter? Ultimately treating people well is the highest value, crazy benefits have nothing to do with it. But it seems like we oscillate between two extremes – if we can’t provide the dream, we just stop caring. Not everyone, of course, I hate generalizations, but it seems to be happening a lot. Especially in case of manual workers.
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