fe3 management consultancy

I’m lovin’ it – A passion for work

Notes from an fe₃ mindstretch® – 13 May 2008

13 May 2008

The views expressed here are the personal views of the participants and are not necessarily the views of their organisations. The following people were present at this mindstretch®:

Bozena Benton, RLF
Jenny Coombes, NAO
Karen Drury, fe₃
Fiona Eldridge, Coaching and Communications Centre
Heather James, Learning & Skills Council
Nigel Jones, AXA UK
Andrew Massiah, Learning & Skills Council
Chris Nutt, FiSSInG
Nick Owen, Nick Owen Associates
Mike Smith, Chaucer Insurance
Paul Rudd
Gary Saunders, fe₃
Tabitha Wincote, Learning & Skills Council.

Karen welcomed everyone to the session and went through the agenda . Gary then scribed how the group recognised passionate people at work:

People are “in the flow”
They look forward to going to work
They consider their work is always changing
Enthusiasm can be for status quo or change – and can be quiet or noisy!
Where the role is what they make it
People are eager, hungry and have ideas, display enthusiasm
They reach beyond the immediate task
They want to serve customers well, not let anyone down and get feedback
There’s a vitality, an openness
They take things on
They can be destroyed by over-criticism
A reflection of their work ethic – it can give an impression of enjoyment which isn’t real – there is a difference between commitment and passion
It’s an emotional rather than a financial thing

Karen suggested that the line between the positive elements of passionate people at work and the negative – expressed as workaholism – is very fine.

It’s interesting to note from a brief look at the literature that the definition of the term “workaholism” varies considerably depending on which side of the good/bad/both fence you sit.

The first three elements here are identified by those who consider workaholism to be completely negative – the last two on the list are also part of the definition for a few authors who consider that workaholism has some positive elements and in case of a couple, is actually a positive thing.

The group wondered how “excessive work” (or more than “reasonable”) was defined, and if it when there were healthcare problems. They also thought that it was a personal thing – some people can work more than others.

Paul made the comment that it was perhaps the difference between love and lust, and another comment was that it was when work was considered drudgery rather than enjoyment.

Karen pointed out those writers who considered workaholism as good came from a totally managerial perspective – passion for work was a method of achieving more from the workforce without paying for it.

Here, “hyper-performers” were written about by Korn et al in 1987, and Karen thought the timing of the article might have been relevant here. The quote is from Peiperl and Jones (2001) – and indeed many commentators see the workaholic personality as positive because of its hallmark of the joy of creativity and the passionate involvement and gratification that comes through work.

Certainly – workers like this would be good for business.

Porter sees workaholism as an addiction characterised by:

Excess work behaviour and neglect of family, personal relationships and other responsibilities
Distorted self concept (striving through work for better feelings of self)
Rigidity in thinking (perfectionist, inability to delegate)
Physical withdrawal into work and anxiety if away FROM WORK
Progressive in nature
Denial – uses workplace affirmations to block objections from others

There have been some distinctions drawn too between the enjoyment of work and enjoyment of working.

Much comment has been made in the well-being literature about the consequences of workaholism; regardless of the price paid by the individual, according to many commentators, the organisation may not benefit either – with absence through ill health and poor performance routinely connected with overwork.

The group thought that generally, it’s over simplification to say that workaholism always a bad thing. However, the point was made that some people are scared of the consequences of not being at work, rather than really enjoying work, and that also bad time management or a culture of presenteeism may be responsible for employees spending a lot of time at work, rather than being a workaholic. A comment was made that it was the impact of workaholics on others that caused the issues, with, for example, significant stress being caused to subordinates from a workaholic boss.

Karen noted that this seemed to be a growing area of research, in the US and particularly Japan, where there have been deaths from overwork, and also that the research was mostly about office workers than factory or production workers who are regulated through shifts patterns.

Participants did say that staying late in the office wasn’t so dreadful if you had a choice about staying but once again, the issue of impacting on others came up, with comments made about setting the norm of staying late. The group considered that this was a key cause of people staying at work too long, and culture. Some participants thought that working a lot might also be a feature of where you are in your life or profession – where you know that you’ll work very hard for five years or so and then slow down when you’ve reached your career goals. In addition, the group wondered whether it was more prevalent in some careers than others, or a byproduct of a certain age – Generation Z is less likely to work very hard as their expectations of life appear to be very different from Generation X, for example.

Going back to Spence and Robbin’s view of the components of workaholism, different combinations of scores have been assumed to produce different types of workaholics:

Non-enthusiastic workaholics – high on involvement, high in drive, low on work enjoyment…presumably bad?
Enthusiastic workaholics – high on all three (presumably good)
Work enthusiasts – high on involvement, and enjoyment, low on drive ….Buelens and Poelman (2004) refer to this final group as “happy hard workers who are enthusiastic, meet interesting people, love their jobs and avoid confict at home and in the workplace, possibly owing to their resulting positive attitude and a high level of social intelligence”

although Karen wasn’t sure how the researchers came to this grand conclusion about the positive attitude and high social intelligence.

Karen explained that this next graphic is from a theoretical model from one of the latest studies she found, from 2007. She noted that she had not included all of it, just the elements she thought would be useful in this discussion – she has omitted Socio-cultural experiences from the antecedents column.

Dimensions
Positive affect – addiction involves satisfaction or gratification from whatever you’re addicted to; here there are two elements, not just joy in working, but problems when NOT working Cognition – refects the intellectual processes that propel workaholics to work excessively – here defined as an obsession with work Behaviour – actual involvement in work; commonly accepted that workaholics work long hours – although authors accept that need to work long hours isn’t JUST associated with workaholism; second element indicates that workaholics uncomfortable shifting focus from work; hence this final dimension.

Antecedents
The proposition in the model is that self-esteem is negatively associated with workaholism – that is the extent to which one likes onself and feels one is a person of worth. The authors contend that those with low self esteem more likely to engage in addictive behaviours. In addition, working to excess provides control over an important part of their life.

Achievement-related personality traits – here, Type A personality, obsessive-compulsive personality and Need for Achievement can also predispose people to become more addicted to working.

Type A personality characterised by ambition, impatience and hostility, and one of its core dimensions is striving for achievement. Need for achievement is from McClelland’s typology and reflects drive to reach personally important goals.

The authors consider that those who highly value achievement and self direction are more likely to become workaholics. So the proposition is that both traits and values are positively related to workaholism.

When workaholics realise that behaviour is rewarded (salary rises, promotions, verbal praise) they’ll continue to do it.

Consequences Karen thought the consequences identified by the authors in this theoretical model were interesting, particularly when put besides one actual study done in the Netherlands with data from almost 2,000 respondents – in the next slide.

For example using previous research as their rationale, the authors here acknowledge that there are positive correlations between both job and career satisfaction. They also identify research which leads them to identify poor mental health, perfectionism and distrust in coworkers as positively related to workaholism.

In terms of career success, those who work longer hours have been found to have greater extrinsic career success, ie greater promotion and higher salary – long hours represent an investment which is often rewarded in the labour market. Burke (2001) found that workaholism positively predicted promotions. But there’s a cost, according to these authors, in that energy is finite and what is spent on work, is unavailable for other activities – here social relationships. The authors consider that lack of leisure and exercise also leads to poorer physical health – although again, Karen thought that this was related more to office workers than other types of employee. The authors note research which says workaholics report more illness than non-workaholics.

The authors split their views over performance into time, concluding that although career and job satisfaction and performance will be related to workaholism in the short term, it is related to poor mental and physical health, perfectionism, poor social relationship problems at work and poor job performance in the long term.

There were some comments from the group about the direction of causality, but thought also that given the budget reductions in the public sector and that better performers are being encouraged to absorb the extra work and poor performers sliding out of additional work, dimension of work avoidance, rather than workaholism might be more interesting to examine! After this, the group discussed a possible lack of decent performance management and a “bare minimum” mentality that pervades some organisations. Some thought that this mentality was related to the closeness of employees to the end user in the public sector.

Karen moved to an alternative study as mentioned – conducted in the Netherlands with more than 2,000 responses. This survey, by Schaufeli et al, found that while working long hours was related to ill health problems, this was only a weak relationship – and in their study, it wasn’t related at all to absenteeism – although Karen thought this was unlikely anyway as people addicted to work want to be there.

A comment from the group was that stress related illness wasn’t just caused by workoholism in any case, but could be caused by many things. Another comment was that “working from home” might also be classed as a kind of absenteeism. The authors also found that working excessively was positively related to workaholism AND work engagement and that working HARD was positively related to workaholism AND work engagement.

Contrary to their expectations, this survey found that workaholism was positively related to performance, and to innovation. Here, performance was designated as extra role performance – i.e outside the job, meaning that workaholics go the extra mile – so some shared impacts there too. Karen thought that this was strongly reminiscent of commitment and discretionary behaviours which are often a result of commitment.

The authors speculate that work engagement could develop into workaholism as the employee becomes more and more drawn into work, but the reverse – the workaholic becoming engaged – seems less likely.

In discussion, the group thought that there was a strong message sent by people who use technology to be available for work when they actually are thought to be away (holiday, illness) that others should do the same. There was a question about whether the organisation should intervene, but if not, what message are they sending to employees?

After the break, Karen asked for views on the following questions .

When does engagement become workaholism?

When it becomes detrimental to the individual AND those around them
When the individual starts to have bad relationships/bad temper

When the individual concerned identifies others as doing less good work

What might stop engagement becoming workaholism?

A systemic connection to the rest of life Are there people who will NEVER become engaged?
Yes! Especially where they separate the profession from the employer
Didn’t choose, or think to choose
People happy not to be engaged
OK if at least neutral and competent, and if attitude is ok
If the job and role design doesn’t allow for it

Karen noted that previous mindstretches have talked before about the crossover between some concepts often used in organisations. She explained that when preparing for this session, she looked for concepts that she knew researchers have used to see how people feel about their jobs. This slide shows the top three.

Starting with commitment, Karen noted that affective commitment is where commitment is given freely because individuals feel a sense of belonging to the organisation – an emotional attachment to, identification with and involvement in, the organisation. It is measured with questions such as:

We’ve discussed engagement before in these sessions and generally, there appears to be a view among the academic community that commitment is a more generalised emotional state towards the organisation, but that engagement is more localised to the job. Engagement is a day to day concept related to the job role, and this differentiates it from the broader concept of commitment. Engagement, according to the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) is measured with questions such as:

A slightly different take on engagement is that of the Institute of Employment Studies. Their measure has quite a few facets and Karen focused on the identification facet of engagement which looks at answers to questions such as:

Finally she noted that there are some views that engagement is a direct antecedent to satisfaction (Jones and Harter 2005) – hence the inclusion of the potentially “poor relation” concept of job satisfaction.

Perhaps one of the best known job satisfaction measures is the JSS developed by Spector in 1985 – although there have been lots of others, for example, the Mitchigan Satisfaction Questionnaire or MSQ. The questionnaires generally measure facets of job satisfaction, such as pay, supervision, promotion and co-workers. Of interest to this discussion, is the facet in the JSS called “Nature of work”. This is measured through questions such as:

Karen asked the group to note how the three concepts seemed to overlap, particularly given the questions used to measure them. The group commented that it was interesting that job security doesn’t feature. Nick suggested that a more holistic, total life concept might also be useful, in that people may draw engagement from social or informal networks.

Going into more detail on what’s required for Schaufeli’s model of engagement , Karen noted that many of these bore an uncanny resemblance to facets being measured by Hackman and Oldman’s Job Characteristics Model. In addition, she read to the group some the questions being asked as part of the JSS which seemed to be measuring the same concepts:

Co-workers	I find I have to work harder at my job because of the Incompetence of people I work with There is too much bickering and fighting at work
Supervision	My supervisor shows too little interest in the feelings of subordinates My supervisor is unfair to me
Contingent	When I do a good job I receive the recognition for it that I should
rewards	I do not feel that the work I do is appreciated

And also from the Hackman and Oldham JDS:

Autonomy	My job lets me be left on my own to do my own work. My job provides me the opportunity of self-directed flexibility of work .
Variety	My job provides a lot of variety While performing my job I get the opportunity to work on many interesting projects.

The group felt that job autonomy and task variety are problematic in some settings, call centres for example – therefore is there less engagement? Comments here were that some people see the variety in the different people they deal with. Nigel said that a training programme on call centre staff that put the emphasis on maintaining energy through using supervisors as coaches had had a lasting impact.

In the IES engagement model, the most important driver is feeling valued and involved.

Karen said that the session had already looked at the personal qualities that characterise workaholics…..Type A personality, obsessive/compulsive, with high need for achievement.

According to more recent studies, there are some employees who will NEVER be satisfied with their jobs – the two traits in particular that seem to play a significant role in the development of job satisfaction are these – locus of control is a cognitive variable that represents the individual’s belief in their ability to control the negative and positive reinforcements in life. If the locus is external, it means that events are controlled by outside forces and people; if internal, events can be controlled by the individual.

This correlates significantly with job satisfaction – the more internal the individual’s locus of control, the higher Job Satisfaction tends to be.

Negative affectivity is a personality variable that reflects a person’s tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety or depression; a high score here leads people to experience the job (and probably much else) in negative terms, leading to low job satisfaction. A report on core self evaluations done very recently show that self esteem is shown to be essential to job satisfaction.

Karen said that there wasn’t much on engagement in terms of personality that she could find, although it seems sensible to assume that there is some Need for Achievement, although the compulsive bit of the obsessive/compulsive personality – if it is to differ from workaholism – should be absent here. One thing which was noted at the session on engagement in January was that according to one study we looked at, one of the requirements for engagement was “psychological availability” – that is, the cognitive energy expended on work by employees – and this was NEGATIVELY related to outside activities….which seems to link to workaholism.

Looking at whether committed employees are born or made, the majority of research has been managerial in focus – that is, what organisations can do to get committed employees. However, given the links between satisfaction and commitment, Karen wondered if some of the individual characteristics may apply to both – meaning that organisations have a better chance of commitment and satisfaction from employees if they employ those with the right characteristics. Finally, there is some evidence that job satisfaction is a consequence of person-organisational fit.

Comments made by the group here were that employees should be encouraged to see themselves as able to influence events and that personal drive may well be enough to make things happen – a self-fulfilling cycle which increases a sense of efficacy. A further thought was that commitment would be more likely when employees have a high Need for Affiliation.

When we turned to look at what organisations can do to develop passionate employees, Karen thought that developing job satisfaction, engagement and commitment appears to need different organisational approaches.

However, she commented that the requirements for engagement from Schaufeli, and the requirements for job satisfaction seem remarkably similar. As a result, you could approach this in a very instrumental way and, through the job design approach, consider things like:

You might also want to consider that people don’t go to work just to earn money and reasons for working include being social, timekeeping, self esteem and identity. Jobs provide many people with a sense of belonging, of identity – it is part of who they are.

Therefore employer branding extends and reinforces the identity of the organisation to attract employees, provide a “short cut” to an understanding of the organisational culture, and provide an platform to demonstrate the employee’s own identity. Values are a major part of this.

Looking at avoiding workaholism, the literature suggests encouraging a feminine culture (co-operative, communicative, teamworking) rather than a masculine (competitive, task-oriented, with a fear of failure). Other elements:

Managers – employees take cues from managers; managers often don’t have clear work expectation and reward system is often ambiguous;
Clear work expectations – outputs, rather than inputs
Technology – on one hand, technology enables employees to balance demands of personal life and work because it means you can choose when and where you work – but that’s also its weakness, as employees can work from home and email is always on
Finally, comfortable offices including restaurants, concierge services, gyms etc can often make the office more comfortable than home…

The group thought that a concierge service may remove an “excuse” for leaving the office.

They also thought that the contract of employment may be seen as willing slavery; it’s about the perceived balance of equity between what the employee gets out of the job and what they put in. Employees may not like the job, but like other elements – the boss, their mates, the firm or the service (NHS especially). One comment was that who you work for can destroy that balance.

Some employees are able to build their own passion through taking particular roles but the group thought that this was commitment rather than engagement.

There was also the view that employees want different things from work now and that we may be moving into an era with less commitment and engagement.

Finally, there was a comment that there was a fine line between enabling hyper-performers to do their thing and exploiting them.

After the session, Nick recommended “Crossing the Unknown Sea” by David Whyte, published by Penguin, as a different perspective to work.

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Mindstretches® // I’m lovin’ it - A passion for work

I’m lovin’ it – A passion for work