Creating Great Workplaces – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #967

Creating Great Workplaces – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #967

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post 967 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Bali Demiri

Credit: Ivan Samkov

Credit: Ivan Samkov

Credit: Jopwell

Help for this article has been taken from Boston Consulting Group research, link at the end.

Preamble

Workplace is where we spend most of our active life. Whatever happens at the workplace impacts us deeply. As has been recognized the world over, work becomes our identity also. When someone loses a job, the loss is multidimensional; it is income, loss of face, fear of future, and loss of identity. The workplaces must be great places to be, but alas! These are not in most cases. Talking of pharma companies in Pakistan, due to uneven distribution of business, the best can be expected only from the top 100 companies. The rest 700 or so companies are running more like shops, not organizations. They search for day-to-day business here and there, trying to find deals, or getting into institutional supplies somehow. These are all survival tactics and making a great organization is not anywhere on the priority.

It should not stop us from discussing ways to seek improvement. Whenever, wherever, whoever can benefit from it is a welcome achievement. 

Key Issues

• Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries found that nearly a half are dealing with burnout, which increases attrition and lowers morale, engagement, and productivity. 

• Burnout is highly correlated with low feelings of inclusion.

• The four sentiments that have the greatest impact on employees’ overall sense of inclusion are: 

o Having good access to resources

o Senior managerial support

o Psychological safety with direct manager

o Fair and equal opportunity for success

• Delivering improvement in these areas will have the greatest positive impact.

We shall focus on these four areas for today’s blog post.

Having Good Access to Resources

Several years ago, Gallup® had concluded the same point in their surveys. We, in Pakistan, are particularly miser with resources. I was visiting Angola for an exhibition. Angola had been a civil war-torn country for 27 years and had become peaceful few years ago. It is a country of extremely high disparity. Their capital Luanda has been consistently among the most expensive cities of the world. Half of Luanda was the worst kind of slums and half was upscale like Dubai. Cars, apartment high rises, shopping malls lined the upscale part while the slums did not have any amenity. Our hotel was on the border of the two parts, and we saw both worlds. Due to high cost, I used to exchange currency every morning from the small bank branch adjacent to the hotel. Two tellers sat at the counter. Each of them had two different types of note-counting machines, one large calculator with printing roll, and whatever else they needed. Come to a large bank branch here, and we find only couple of note-counting machines behind a line of six tellers. Even those machines are not routinely used, and the tellers keep counting large stacks of money with hands. This is the difference of having access to required resources. 

In the offices of smaller pharma companies, the situation is almost pathetic. The desks and seats are small and uncomfortable damaging their spines over time, lighting is poor, air-conditioning is poorer, printing is remote or completely disconnected. Supplies like papers, files, and other stationery items are not just rationed, but a matter of constant scolding. How can great productivity be expected in such dismal places? 

The organizations must provide adequate resources to staff to get them better engaged, perform optimally, and contribute towards developing a great place.

Senior Managerial Support

Most senior managers consider it essential to isolate themselves from the staff on the pretext of observing hierarchy protocols. It is a complete misrepresentation of the facts. Senior managers’ support is a necessary morale and confidence booster on one hand, and a good way of staying connected to the ground realities on the other hand.

It is necessary to follow hierarchy protocol, but the employees must have the opportunity to approach senior managers when needed. A near total blackout is against the spirit of inclusivity which we saw was directly related to burnout. 

In my observation, most senior managers do not carry a balanced approach. Either they do not observe line of command at all, and keep communicating directly with all levels, or they stay completely out of touch. Both approaches are flawed. In the always connected approach, the middle managers and staff feel overwhelmed and stifled; the staff is perplexed as to who they should follow, the boss, or the boss’s boss. In the aloof approach, senior managers miss out on the issues and opportunities, and are unable to put their weight behind initiatives where it is required, thereby affecting overall team performance. 

Senior managers must adopt a balanced approach. They should stay in touch without being obtrusive and play their part in building great workplaces.

Psychological Safety with Direct Manager

This is the probably the biggest thorny area.

Very long time back when managers were generally better, I saw a scene. A district manager of an MNC was sitting with his team in a public place for usual team meeting. The manager said to one of his teammates, “I feel too tired today, will you massage my legs a little?”. And the poor team member gave his boss leg massage in full public view. Taking the example further, what else the manager could ask in less public environment? 

Most direct managers treat their direct reports in a very shabby manner. They use abusive language freely and do not even consider the presence of female staff. Too many direct managers try to get into personal lives of their direct reports on the pretext of being their big brother. They give unsolicited advice and insist that it should be taken also.

An even larger number of male direct managers try their best to have some relation with their female staff. They would offer incentives, and if these do not work, they would use coercive methods to being them in line. 

Psychological safety with direct managers is essential for building great workplaces, and serious campaigns must be run organization-wide for this purpose.

Fair and Equal Opportunity for Success

Though this should be accepted as the primary right of every employee, it is not so practically. The real ground is quite unfair and unequal. 

Alex Hailey, after he suffered a heart attack and stayed in a hospital, wrote a novel on the pharmaceutical industry, titled “Strong Medicine’. It was made into a movie later. The novel also took up the case of malformed babies due to thalidomide use during pregnancy into its plot. In a conversation, a senior manager advises a rising female star that she should find a senior who is rising in the organization fast, and that she should ride on his back to grow with him. 

The concept of having a ‘mentor’ at workplace to look after your interests, has now been replaced with a ‘sponsor’, who will not only guide you but will also find opportunities within the organization, and get you placed over there. Obviously, everyone cannot have a sponsor, therefore the inequality is born in the system.

For a place to claim being a great workplace, it must provide fair and equal opportunity to everyone to work and succeed.

Sum Up

Going by the above four parameters, most organizations do not qualify to be called great workplaces. There are some who are doing their best to do so and ca be followed as an example. 

Having a great workplace is not a nice-to-have thing, it is in the greatest and deepest interest of the organization to build and maintain a great workplace. The organization shall be able to achieve much higher successes, the employees shall be happier and healthier, and there will be no limit to what can be done.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intention to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets.

Reference:

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/four-keys-to-boosting-inclusion-and-beating-burnout?utm_campaign=none&utm_content=202406_send2&utm_description=featured_insights&utm_geo=global&utm_medium=email&utm_source=esp&utm_topic=innovation-strategy_ceo-agenda&utm_usertoken=CRM_ec8a706ddd1afd128c0d41808e57173ddaa23495&mkt_tok=Nzk5LUlPQi04ODMAAAGT2eFnF7rhN2BOCP0w6mrAouLDA8oJLO5DZyG9Vnj1bOo-saEChO1YFYYYqKJnwSrxi17kV9XH6o0dZKD5uZsfHKIEwNN18IDmpnF2pDoWNdWthKA