POST CORONA WORKPLACE
An organization is a group of diversified people from different cultures, educational qualifications, and different interests. It’s like a subset of the economy. it’s essential that, everyone has to work together to deliver great results for the company.
When working with many companies we might have noticed that office politics were always affecting the productivity of the resources and the company itself. There is politics in almost all companies. But the question is how unhealthy it can become.
But have you ever thought why politics happens in companies, many a times the answer I get is companies are the reflection of an economy so there will be politics inside every company? But why!?
Things start getting complicated or political when
- People want more power and positions
- When people want to prove that he /she is better than others in the group
- When people want to prove the worth
- Insecurity is directly proportional to politics
I would like to see a workplace without any politics and people are motivated to do their work and go home with a sense of satisfaction and happiness. It might sound like an ideal world.
Before we march towards the future lets think about what can happen and what can we do.
COVID has badly impacted many people's lives, many lost jobs, whoever is remaining with jobs are working with a lesser salary.
Psychology of people
The secure feeling they had in the companies has gone forever. Once they know their position is not safe then people will automatically stop sharing info and knowledge, because they want to keep the dependency on them. At the same time, they will try to learn what the person next to him/her is doing because the more I know the safer I am.
This attitude is going to create more friction and lesser productivity in the workspace.
More workload on people.
Many of our teammates have lost jobs during this pandemic. This means the same amount of work needs to be done by a lesser number of resources.
Now we all will be ready to put that extra effort and finish that, one because we are worried about our jobs and we will be forced to work on that extra load.
Second, we know that we don’t have any other options now and if we don’t do it the companies can get people in lesser salaries because the workforce is abundant in the market.
It might look productive for now but in the long run, people are going to burn down and this is going to impact the company culture, personal and mental health, and is going to impact the family life.
Living Expense.
The salaries have gone down but the living expense hasn’t. What will people do in this situation? This is going to add much more mental pressure to each of us. This is going to reflect in the workplace and families.
People will become less loyal to companies. Loyalty was already a scarce commodity and it’s going to be even more scarce now. Employers and businesses should be more empathetic to the employees and customers. If you try to get more sales or demand more work from customers and employees respectively, then psychologically you are not going to have any place in their minds.
What Leaders, HR’s and Companies have to do :
More than ever you have to give priority to the mental health of the employees. Make a genuine effort to make a connection with the people around you. Try to transform the office culture into more fun-filled. It's right that you have a lesser workforce and leaner budgets to achieve bigger targets, but always keep in mind that leaner team means they are more Agile, provided you give them clear directions and motivation.
The companies and the leaders should understand that, without managed trust people will show up to do their jobs and will primary about themselves. This is the root cause of office politics. The way to overcome this is by creating passion, it comes from the feeling that you are part of something bigger. If the people do not trust that “the company is organized to the why”. Then the passion becomes diluted.
You should work towards sending people home happily with a feeling of fulfillment. This will bring smiles in their homes and they will be less stressed and will be happy to come to the office every day.
If you start forcing and threatening the people then it going to end up in the unhealthy office politics. It’s your responsibility to keep an eye on this and always keep this under control.
We will overcome this situation and we are going to have a new life after this. But we have to make sure we plant the right seeds now because that’s what we are going reap that after corona.
