The Wall Street Journal's Jared Sandberg wrote a thought-provoking "Cubicle Culture" column last week. In it, he addresses the increasing gap between the amount of work required by workers and opportunities for them to assess it in tangible form, including benchmarks. Says Sandberg:
In the past, people could see the fruits of their labor immediately: a chair made or a ball bearing produced. But it can be hard to find gratification from work that is largely invisible, or from delivering goods that are often metaphorical.
Making matters worse, the ever-expanding emphasis on team-based versus single employee contributions makes it "difficult to pinpoint individual productivity," according to a researcher from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. When employees are able to focus on the completion of their goals on an individual basis, the time between when they actually complete it and receive the gratification that comes with it – perhaps in the form of a quarterly or annual performance review with their supervisor – is much longer these days, according a professor at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management.
Thus, Sandberg's piece takes a dismal tone, reasoning that when it's time for workers to clock out, "work doesn't seem completed, just temporarily abandoned."
How does the organic or more purposeful removal of tangible ways for workers to gauge their productivity and creativity affect their morale and commitment? Have you noticed this trend within your workplace, or in the arc of your career across several workplaces?
If you're the owner or leader, has senior management thought about this or implemented any practices designed to keep the tangibles there for employees to see?
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— Winning Workplaces, February 26, 2008 | Add your thoughts