Photo by Matte

…is the one you tell yourself every time you work a second of overtime or don’t look for another opportunity when the one you’re in is circling the drain.  While the fact may be, the reality is that salaried workers don’t come together in the workplace in a way that’s transactional.  That’s to say, they form ongoing relationships.  The work is based on larger objectives.  People arrive every day and work towards a larger goal.  Moreover, organizations encourage them to participate in a way that makes them a part of the greater good.  The brain can’t keep “this could be gone tomorrow” and contribute meaningfully at the same time.  Why else do people work overtime in an age that doesn’t provide comp days, overtime, promotions or bonuses?  It’s because they get something out of it that isn’t monetary.

Most of the people I’ve talked to at networking events have been laid off at one time or another in their careers.  In fact, it is getting to where I couldn’t name you someone who’s job hasn’t been lost to a merger, downsizing, reduction in force, or banktruptcy.  No, wait, I can name you one person.  Anyway, even these folks, who’ve had the experience of coming into the office one day and finding that their super-important, must-be-done tomorrow project has been canceled and that there is no longer a place for them at the company, give me all sorts of reasons why they continue to work overtime, why they aren’t filling their “opportunity pipeline” with interviews.

Again, besides the threat of layoff (I don’t hear anything these days about getting promoted or getting that bonus), here’s what they tell me:

“My manager needs me.”

“The company is going through a hard time, and I would feel bad leaving now.”

“My co-workers are like family.”

“We just had a layoff, and I couldn’t do that to my teammates.”

There is an integrity issue there around being loyal, and as such, the work environment doesn’t feel “right-to-work.”  When people go to the same places every day, work towards a goal, go the extra mile when asked there becomes an unconscious expectation that the loyalty will be repaid, even when they know in the linear thinking, logical parts of their brains that they’re betting against their own best interests.

Don’t get me wrong.  My mission is to create workplaces that foster collaboration, trust and empowering relationships in which leaders develop the talents of their employees and facilitate greater learning and profitability.  I believe that the most profitable companies in this new era will be those that leave command and control behind in favor of a mutually respectful and accountable community of brilliant minds.  I just don’t think you can achieve that winning environment when piece-parts of the organization keep getting fired.

It can be devastating to the culture of the organization when that loyalty is repaid by layoffs, pay cuts, and pay freezes.  Why?  It is betrayal of our fundamental sense of humanity to be treated like an expendable thing.  Not to mention the business knowledge that walks out the door with them.  Not to mention that the survivors are waiting for the ax to fall on them.

In the words of Steven Covey, “You can’t have trust without being trustworthy.”  Even though by the letter of the law, most employment relationships are “right to work,” ask anyone who has been affected by a layoff whether they felt it was a violation of their trust.

I don’t know about you, but I think it is time that we created something better in the places we work.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann