American Work Doesn’t Work

25 Current Disincentives of a

Broken Employment System

Employment fulfillment is based upon employment Conditions: 

1. If an adult can’t afford safe housing on his or her full-time salary, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
2. When it takes 3 or 4 full-time working adults to afford even the most ratty of apartments, which do not permit 3 or 4 adults to reside together anyway, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
3. If a worker must pay over 50% of his or her salary for safe housing, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
4. If an adult can’t afford sufficient, nutritionally sustaining food on his or her full-time salary, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
5. If an adult can’t access the most essential of health care on his or her full-time salary, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
6. If a worker endangers the health of everyone else because he or she cannot get any sick leave, or cannot afford to use unpaid sick leave, that’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
7. If an adult can’t afford his or her own reliable car to get to work, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
8. If an adult has to get three jobs to afford having a child, then cannot get parental leave to be with the child, that’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
9. If a parent can’t afford a babysitter during work hours, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
10. When a worker has to choose between the job and elder care responsibilities, that’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
11. If an adult can’t afford basic communications services for finding, applying for, and staying in touch with a job, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
12. If people don’t want all their due process rights waived just to get a job, it’s because there’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
13. If they don’t want their HIPAA rights waived by health invasion by their current, prospective, or future employer(s), it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
14. If they demand their rights to employment security without discrimination, it’s pointing to Employment Conditions.
15. If they demand employment security from false accusation, corruption, or other unjust cause, Right-To-Work is destroying Employment Conditions.
16. If an employee cannot get their paycheck within 72 hours of completing the work, and the employer then becomes indebted to the employee who can’t eat, that’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
17. If you think one-time bonus money will motivate people to work, then you’re admitting the payroll is too small to attract workers.  An unlivable wage is an Employment Condition that needs to be fixed.
18. If frontline workers deserve hazard pay, it’s because there’s been a hazardous change to their Employment Conditions.
19. If genders or races are demanding their rights to equal pay for equal work, it’s because there’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
20. If there’s no trajectory for advancement for 98% of the workers, then downsizing and overloading salaried managers is not the answer, there’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
21. If a full-time worker cannot afford insurance of any kind, in a world that typically requires at least a minimum amount, there’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
22. If people are demanding increased safety measures, oversight, or compliance, it’s because there’s problems with Employment Conditions.
23. If an employee cannot voice concerns because retaliation for whistleblowing is too severe, it’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
24. If substantial percentages of the workforce develop PTSD as a result of Psychological Violence made normative in workplace culture, that’s a problem with Employment Conditions.
25. If an employee cannot get legal justice, reparations for losses, or in any other way be made whole as a result of workplace abuses, that’s also a part of Employment Conditions.

So if you want to sell your idea of desirable work to the American People, you’d better improve your product dramatically, because no amount of propaganda bulls**t is going to make them desire a Deathtrap.

Too many people have parts leftover from their business DIY kits. If you make your business proposition attractive to investors, you’ll likely pick up some investors. If your business would be good for the local economy, you may get the support of the City. If you represent advances in business ownership by a protected or minority class, you may be applauded in local or national newspapers and business lists. But if you do not in any way make your work incentivized for the workers, you won’t get any workers to help you. And that’s because YOU ARE NOT OWED ANYBODY’S LABOR. Just because you build it does not mean they have to come. The customers don’t, neither do the workers. If you have purposely worked to design incentives for the investors, the loan officers, the property owners, the architects, the Business Bureau, the marketing firms, the target audience, the curators of the Forbes list and your wealth manager, but have not worked equally hard as all that to incentivize the workers, you have absolutely no right to pull them away from building their own dreams as if yours are more important. Why aren’t you helping build theirs?

Is it business or just busyness? Most of American work was a waste of time anyway.  We didn’t make anything, we didn’t solve anything, we didn’t improve humanity or the environment in any way, we just wasted time and materials on foolishness.  And that’s why America is in such a bad place now.  Brainless robots should be doing the mindless work, and Real Human Capital should be applied to the Real Work of innovating solutions to our Nation’s most pressing problems. Leadership that does not fundamentally believe this will never have a leading company, much less a Leading Nation.

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Don’t contort a new reality to fit an old economy,

Create a New Economy that fits the New Reality,

that has Real Value,

And the People will willingly get on board.

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Who is designing the work? Who is a Work Designer? Do we have Work Designers? Should we have Work Designers? Considering that for most Americans work comprises 33-75% of their life, the answer is a resolute Yes! It takes more than just designing a building, a cubicle, a computer interface, more than just the lighting or clothing that facilitates the work we do. Work design also requires the design of procedures, measuring tools, communications and social structures. We design our work outcomes when we design the worth of our people, the role of our people, and the policies that are all about the people.

Designing work is no different on earth than space, really; if there are humans involved, then there must be considerably more provisions for accommodating the human needs. Physiological, such as potable water and breathable air, access to restroom facilities and food; Psychological, such as perceptions of safety, cause-and-effect predictability for work inputs and outputs, and ability to concentrate; and Sociological needs such as the ability to understand one’s place in the social dynamic and how to effectively teamwork. Designing how we interact with each other is every bit as important as designing how we interact with the tools, furniture, or raw materials of our work. Therefore Workplace and Workplace-Related Policies are Inseparable from Working Conditions. No less so is the why: Why do we work? What outcomes are worthwhile to pursue? What’s in it for us? Will there be regrets? If we, or society, will be worse off for having done it than if we had done nothing, bad work design sends us backward not forward. Can you point to a sufficiently motivating incentive to invest so much time, effort, and expense? Mission Statements and Company Design are part of Working Conditions–in fact, they are the first part.

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Work gets us to the accomplishment of our purpose.

Work is not, in and of itself, our purpose.

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When you have designed a way to make your goals and others’ goals align, such that work is a win-win partnership proposition for ALL participating parties, then you have truly Designed Good Work.

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