Nigel Cassidy: Too many workplace conflicts, staff saying managers don’t listen to how to discover and remove barriers to good work. I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD podcast.
We're trying to think about what makes a good work and at first it seems pretty obvious, i mean make jobs fulfilling, and as autonomous and as well paid as you can, and then people should stay loyal, and productivity will rise. You can't imagine setting out to offer pressured, poorly organised and badly managed jobs, but well I suppose employers never learn. If people keep quitting or taking inordinate amounts of time off sick with stress, it has to be a sign that something is lacking in job quality and your organisation. Luckily CIPD’s continuing research into people's experience of work can pinpoint many of these barriers so you can hopefully start knocking them down. Joining us to talk about good work and what gets in the way, with firstly a talented development manager with over a decade of experience in the fast moving and pressured airports operation industry, she's with Etihad Airport services, its Aysha Al Marri from the United Arab Emirates. Welcome!
Aysha Al Marri: Thank you.
NC: And from the home team an advisor with a close focus on fair work, skills and productivity, he spent almost a decade advising ministers and civil servants in the Scottish government and now leads CIPD public policy work in the UK nations, its Marek Zemanik.
Marek Zemanik: Hi, Nigel.
NC: So, before we get stuck into those hurdles to great work, i just would like to ask both of you, what does a good job look like, Marek?
MZ: Well, I think this is a great question actually, it probably is the first barrier to overcome when we think about how to improve jobs, it's to improve the understanding of what good work actually looks like, because I think, I mean even thinking back at my time before the CIPD, if you ask me what is a good job i would probably think, you know, pay package, reward package, benefits package, probably job security i would think about. I think the pandemic probably increased our understanding of the importance of work-life balance and flexible working etc. But there's other things there as well. And you mentioned actually some of them in your opening remarks, like job autonomy, job complexity, the meaningfulness of work as well, and also things like effective employee voice increasingly I think clear, that's one of the dimensions that underpins all the other elements of job quality as well. So, I think improving our understanding of all the various dimensions of jobs and of course the inequalities and the trade-offs that we make between those job quality dimensions I think is absolutely crucial. So, yeah, lots of different dimensions I think, the seven dimensions of job quality that the CIPD conceptualise are incredibly useful and helpful and widely used, and spreading awareness of that should be key.
NC: Excellent. Well, we’ll go into some of those barriers in a bit more detail in a moment but just broadly, Aysha, what's your concept of good work?
AM: Nigel, good work to me is having a clear direction, the environment of the place that I’ll be working with. Also, Marek mentioned about the pay, it's all compiled together, one another can make the good work for me better, especially if the leadership is really looking after their employees and their employees have a voice which can make the difference in a good work.
NC: Do you think you should expect to be happy all the time at work, for example?
AM: Let's be realistic, being happy all the time is not an option as a human, we sometimes we are happy sometimes we are not happy, but if you see all the lets say all the good aspects that you need or anybody need at work to make you happy, why not? So, we need to separate our personal from the work to make ourself happy because when you always have something to be busy with, you should be happy.
NC: Okay. Now Marek, in your latest CIPD good work index, you were hit immediately on one particular barrier and that is conflict at work did come up quite often. I mean, just elaborate on that a bit, I mean, we’re talking about conflict. Is this always between workers and managers, and what are the wider implications if you don't address these conflicts?
MZ: Yeah, so we focused on conflict in this year’s good work index because its questions we asked in the past and we didn't for a while and we wanted to see if there's a difference over the years, but also i think the evidence that we have uncovered shows the real impact experiencing conflict has on the individuals, on their wellbeing, on their job satisfaction, but also of course then linked to other outcomes including their performance for example, as well. So, overall, we found 25% of employees experienced some type of conflict. Now, that can be lots of different things. That can be things like being undermined or humiliated in your job, it can be verbal abuse, it can be a lot more serious things like discrimination based on your protected characteristics, of course physical assault, sexual assault very uncommon but they did come.
NC: if I just stop you there for a moment, you're talking about these protected characteristics, you're talking about people where it's been more likely that they've experienced problems because of their situation?
MZ: Yes, I mean it falls logically that people with protected characteristics are more likely to experience this type of conflict and we see that in sort of overall differences as well, women more likely to report that they've experienced conflicts, disabled people more likely that they've experienced conflict. The question then is what is the impact this is having, how are employees dealing with it and most importantly what can you do to try and prevent it. And I'll start with the last one i think, and that's probably because there's three dimensions there and all of them are linked to sort of our understanding of job quality in general. Number one its line managers, line management quality, training line managers
NC: OK. Well, let's ask Aysha how she deals with some of those things, I suppose where there is conflict, you need to know first if it's specific to a particular difficult relationship, a kind of a one off, or whether it's kind of baked into your way of working. So, can you just sort of talk about some of the actions you might take where you see there is conflict, which is getting in the way of productivity, for example.
AM: So, I'm giving you an example of from our organisation. For example, if there is a conflict then it should be raised to the line manager immediately, then the line manager with the Representer of HR sit with the each one separately and then sit together to put everything on the table to be transparent and then to find where, is the solution or where is the issue in this conflict. Then this is the way that we build on, on our organisational, cultural that open conversations, speak to each other, find the problem, then find the solution. This is the only way that we can go further. The leadership are taking a great measure on this as they always ask for, let's say for a monthly meeting with the direct reports. They follow up is also a key from my experience, the follow up from the leadership to the direct reports is key, so whenever we ask the line managers have you done the collaborations, have you done one to one with your employee, you know everybody should be prepared with that data. So, it's clear it's like a cultural that we built.
NC: I want to go back to the issue of sort of handling the senior managers in a moment with you Aysha, but before we do that, I can see that if there isn't proper training Marek, we can get into trouble here. Let's say you decide to address work quality issues for people. It starts with a conversation, say, involving a, a senior, or a line manager. Many may feel the need immediately to be rather defensive to respond, to justify, you know, the status quo, things they can't or won't fix, and that can make things worse. Because, I mean, if a team member thinks something is a barrier to them having a good job, then then it is, isn't it?
MZ: Look, I mean, ultimately it has to be, it has to be a conversation, right? I mean, it has to be a conversation between the manager and the employee. And, you know, I think going into a conversation thinking it's your way or the highway on either side, by the way, it's, it's surely not conducive to try to sort out any issues. And I mean, there's so many different aspects of job quality, where there has to be a bit of give and take I think by employees and by employers as well. I mean the probably the most obvious example here is homeworking, right, we've seen a huge shift and there's been some moves to try and bring employees back to offices to a certain number of days per week for example. I think the way to do these things is to speak to each other, explain personal circumstances, explain the reasons for that particular approach, and see if there's a way of finding some sort of a middle ground and the vast majority of cases there is a middle ground to be found.
NC: What? What if there isn't middle ground, Aysha? I was thinking of an example perhaps where a manager doesn't want to be told how to run the place. They maybe don't think they should be put on a programme, for example.
AM: So, if the line manager feels that he can't handle this conversation, he always will be referred to his line manager or to the HR to gain a support and have the training to handle these kind of cases because it's a, it's a bit of sensitive and you need to know how to deal with these kind of conversations. And just adding to Marek about the COVID. A great example happens to us here from our region we actually never been introduced to work from home unless we have the COVID, then suddenly everybody's been working from home, and we start to see conflicts between us as a team. Our manager just decided that we will have a meeting in the morning and meeting in the afternoon and teams, so we all can get on the same page, and this shows like 100% of alignment of the team, which can show you how the communications is really effective in this case.
NC: Hmm, well, it's a very good point and I think it's come up several times on this podcast that it's quite valuable for managers maybe to change their style, to devolve responsibility for different things so that you don't have one person trying to sort of lead a team in an autocratic way online. Responsibility can be shared around a bit more. Marek, this leads us on to the fairly obvious conclusion that good jobs are those where I mean, whether it's in a conflict with a manager or any other situation, the employee feels they have a voice. Employee voice is a term that's sort of banded around a lot. And of course it can be informal or it can be formal with the sort of meetings that Aysha has just described, just tell us how that fits into the sort of good job picture.
MZ: I mean, I think feeling like you're being hurt is one part of it and then feeling like you are able to affect change is another thing. I think both of those extremely important. Now you're right. There's many different types of voice channels, quite formal ones, collective voice channels, trade unions, for example, but also individual voice channels, which is just your meetings with your manager, for example, on a one-to-one basis. The thing that has struck me from the first time I looked at these numbers five years ago when I joined the organisation, the first time I saw the numbers around the voice, I was quite shocked because consistently, you've got about a fifth of all employees across the UK who say they have no voice channels whatsoever. A fifth! And that includes one-to-one meetings with managers. That includes team meetings as well. Remember that all this, this is people excluded from the numbers who are sole traders who don't have manners, etcetera. So, these are people who should have access to voice channels, but they don't. And it's such an easy fix as well, you know, to try and put in place at least you know some sort of a formal meeting once a week with your employees. But still this has not changed over the years that we've been doing this research. It has simply not shifted despite its importance.
NC: But of course, for employee voice to be powerful, managers do need to respond to what people say, Aysha, and that can be more difficult in a pressured organisation.
AM: Yeah, that's for sure. If the employee don't feel that he has a voice, then this is the real problem, you know. He will just lost the trust of the company. So, the line manager need to act smartly to see where he can fit the need of or the voice of the employee. For example, doing a survey to listen from the employee. If they are engaged, if they are unhappy, what suggestions they can bringing up something with this concept having huddles with the employee, like monthly huddles like we do here we have monthly huddles where employee can have free voice like to raise their all concerns and these concerns will be written down to be answered by the leadership and then afterwards they will study it and then they will see how can they adjust and implement some of these within the organisational capacity to apply.
NC: And Aysha, would you say your region is strong on employee engagement in general?
AM: I would say that as we have more than 300 nationalities. We have different events that always allowing the employee to interact. For example, recently we having the diversity day, you know, everybody's showing case their own country. This makes you feel so proud of your country, even though we are learning about each other cultural and each others let's say food because they are sharing some food from their own backgrounds. So, I feel the engagement in my region is really strong as it is a part of the cultural even, in, in our cultural we always gather, we always speak, so it's also accepting our organisation on that.
NC: Well, that's good to hear. And of course, there are a lot of different ways of engaging with people Marek, and I guess you see a lot of well diversity for lack of a better word across the organisations that you follow in your research.
MZ: I mean, I think this is, I don't want to just keep bringing this back to home-working because I think one of the mistakes we've made over the last few years is just to sort of keep talking about home-working, forgetting about, you know, the let's say 45% of all workers who can't work from home, but homeworking has certainly meant challenges when it comes to communication. When it comes to, let's say, a sense of team spirit, a sense of, you know, shared values. And it is one of the things that does come up in research in this case in the Scottish report that I wrote that home-workers tend to report slightly poorer relationships with their colleagues than those who do not work from home. So, I think it's probably even more important to try and you know, find ways of engaging with each other on a social basis as well, and make sure you don't just sit on teams calls on a daily basis talking about work, but you, you know, you put extra effort into, you know, a bit of fun as well, getting to know each other on a personal level as well.
NC: Well, we're talking about different barriers to good work Aysha, one which is a problem for many people, is technology in its many forms, and now, I mean, it's such a massive subject and I can't just blandly sort of throw them together, but how large do you think technology looms as a sort of barrier to job satisfaction and what have you done when you're sort of bringing in a new platform or trying something new, how do you ensure that it isn't frustrating people in their job?
AM: So, I'll just give you one example that we had to implement a system for a disciplinary where everybody felt like they are unconfident to do it. So, what we have done, we have done several sessions of training for the line managers on how to use it, in additional to that we have also implemented some ‘how to do’ videos to help the visual people to understand how to use it, even though we were having like opening a door of the office for like one month for anybody to just come in and see a trial, how to do it and in reality. And afterwards we can see that everybody comes down and like it and they start to commend that, OK what about changing the next, what is the next system that we can use? So, they see then the benefits, but of course after the training, after the sessions after all this like it took time for them to be feeling comfortable to use technology.
MZ: I think it's important to realise that just like people have different work preferences, so they, you know, some people prefer working in one way or another, people also have different learning preferences as well and for some, they would much rather go into an office and take part in a training session, be able to try it out themselves, for example, learn from peers, others, me for example, right, I would much rather sit at home and try it myself and do some sort of a webinar situation. And I think when it comes to the adoption of technology, it's important to recognise that people are not the same when it comes to learning. Now we did actually ask in the good work index this year as well about people's learning. One of the options that they could select was whether they had any sort of training on AI and sort of emerging digital technologies. The percentage was 2%, so it is sort of still I think, I wouldn't say in its infancy, but I think I think we're still a bit slow in trying to adopt it. I think the fundamental problem is there is still a huge amount of uncertainty around it. I think people have you know have not used it enough to be able to see its benefits, and I would encourage anybody who's listening to actually go and try one of the AI tools because it is mind blowing and it can help you in your job immensely.
NC: Well, in fact, we have a whole podcast, two or three back I think where we talked about particularly AI and learning development, so there's a lot of useful information for people there. Marek, how can you kind of measure and test the quality of the jobs that you offer before some of these barriers emerge?
MZ: I think step one, as I mentioned in the sort of first thing that I said is understanding what the different elements of job quality are. In an ideal scenario you would understand it, explore it and try and perhaps speak to your employees about it as well, do some surveys and try and ideally compare yourself against competitors, right? I mean, there's lots of surveys organisations, we were especially large organisations that tend to measure quite a lot of metrics but very rarely do we look at quite sort of fundamentals of job design because you just think right, job design is that's what the job is and that's what it is, right? But sometimes it is just a matter of, you know, having a little think, right? What if we allowed this employee a little bit more initiative and allow them get a little bit more job autonomy to try and do that, for example. And well, who knows? You might actually be surprised that you'll find improvements in performance and productivity from that employee just because they were given a little bit more job autonomy. So, I think understanding it. Perhaps figuring out where some of the biggest gaps are. I think our good work index, even though it's a, you know, it's a big report based on the UK by survey, but it does show some of the clear inequalities between different groups of employees, but also between different occupations and industries, differences by employer size, for example. So, if you can see yourself in that, you probably already have a good idea of where some of the biggest gaps might be. Skill development, career advancement, career progression, for example, some of the low, lower paid occupations struggle in that particularly badly. Yeah, I guess understanding it is step one.
NC: Aysha, taking responsibility for improving job quality, it's another job for HR, isn't it already doing so much? Do you think that it is the responsibility of people, professionals or they're being stretched too thin already?
AM: At the responsibilities of leadership and of HR, it's really huge. However, we are trying our best, especially to measure what we have done already with the conducting some surveys during the year, trying to get some feedback, offering some kind, sort of development where it need from the organisation perspective. We get this from the line manager. We work on them, then we create some programmes even for to just develop people and where they think they need these developments. It is a responsibility and we are keen to understand what is the gap? How we, can fit on there? We always offer our support to the business in any case of the employee development.
MZ: I just don't think it should be seen as an additional responsibility. I just think this is what we do. This is what HR does. This is what people professionals do. I mean recruitment and retention, that's all done through creating good jobs and that's why our organisations purpose is to champion work and working lives, better working lives. It is simply part and parcel of working in HR, trying to make sure that employees have the best possible jobs and they can, we can get the best out of them in terms of performance.
NC: Makes sense. So, to bring this to some kind of conclusion with both of you, I mean, we're in a world where as we discussed in detail on last month's podcast, ever more workers see their jobs as transactional. You know, there's risk that they're just doing it for the money and they're not so committed. I mean drawing on some of the things we've said already during the discussion, what are the priorities then in ensuring people stay committed, happy and productive doing good work then, Aysha?
AM: First of all, you can see the attendance of the employee. It can show you a lot. The commitment of the employees. Coming, setting initiative. You can see from the environment or from the cultural everybody is greeting everybody, talking to each other. For example, we have finance and HR and we all know that they are very close to each other, but they don't actually communicate. They always use like emails, any sort of communication which we always encourage, to forget about e-mail. Go to the person, greet him, open a topic, open a conversation. This is how we started this in our teams between finance and HR and it's really very well working. We can see they are sitting in meetings together. They are talking the same language, even though it's finance and HR. So, we see all of this, plus we have the organisational health survey that we conduct yearly to see how we can prioritise our employees good work.
NC: Banning emails. What a good idea. And Marek?
MZ: I think there's, I mean there's obviously quite a few things, but I think the values of an organisation are incredibly important. I think, to sort of feel that you are in some sort of meaningful job, you agree with the values of the organisation, the purpose of the organisation that you, that you and doesn't matter what sector this is actually because you can, you can always, I think articulate those values to improve levels of engagement. I think that's very important. I think that's where senior leaders have a really crucial role to play. And then, yeah, we've spoken about line management quite a few times. I mean the old idiom of people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. I think I think it's just absolutely correct.
So, for us as people professionals to make sure that managers have enough training, but also crucially enough time to manage their staff well. Have these conversations quite openly, quite honestly, feel make sure that employees feel that they are listened to. I think that's just so, so important. And then, you know, looking at all the other elements of job quality. You know, some people trade off elements of job quality for others. You know, the most obvious example being, for example, going for a job that's much better paid but has a much higher workload, right? So that's a sort of trade off that people will make, they trade off some work life balance for better pay, right? But understanding that are things that you can do for all employees to improve their job quality experience and there are skills that open up opportunities, career progression. You know there are sectors where career progression is virtually non-existent, you know flat. But the steps can be taken to try and make it a bit more stratified and show people these sort of paths through the organisation and that's what makes people feel a bit more committed to the organisation as well as seeing that there's some sort of future.
NC: Well, thank you for that. I think you've both done extremely well in talking in some detail about the nature of good work and some of those barriers and the things that can be done to bring them down. So, a big thank you to Marek Zemanik who leads CIPD public policy work in the UK nations. And a big thank you to Aysha Al Marri, Talent and development manager with Etihad Airport services in the United Arab Emirates. Just still on the same theme, I can't finish without a quick shout out to our podcast listener Emily M, Who handles a product marketing for Finn Qi. She posted the result of listening to our June episode about our growing transactional attitudes to work, she thinks today's managers must advocate for employee autonomy. Talking about that today, step back and ensure staff have the training, resources and mentoring to succeed. She also says she's going to consider how each of her daily tasks contributes to her personal goals and career before just ticking off items on her To Do List. Until next time from me, Nigel Cassidy and all of us at CIPD. It's goodbye.
