'Bad' vs. 'Good' work
Oct 10, 2023
I had a chat with the head of health and safety at a large tool hire business this week. He’s been at the company over 20 years, he’s well respected and I can see he really cares about the people he works with, (which is probably a good trait for someone in health and safety).
We talked about the ‘thing that keeps him up at night’. In his case, it’s the demand from the new CEO to track all the cars the sales reps use.
He said to me: “but if we do that, they’re all going to leave”.
There is a logic to tracking your sales reps while they’re out and about on company business.
You will know if they’re in an accident so you can get them help quicker, (and also reduce your company’s insurance premium). You can manage fuel costs and you can provide guidance on the most efficient routes to take for their clients that day.
But all of this completely ignores the fundamental human need for individual autonomy.
Of course, the unspoken suspicion is that these sales reps just go and do their own thing once they’ve hit their target for the month (i.e. shopping / school run / golf club / meditation retreat…).
“So what?!”, we both agreed.
The Institute for the Future of Work categorises this sort of technological automation as leading to ‘bad work’, and they are very worried about the associated risks this poses to human happiness and therefore productivity.
I’ve been engaging in their conferences and briefing papers for a few years and I really like their approach. They define bad work as ‘automation that creates higher levels of insecurity, lower levels of autonomy, poorer prospects and a widening earning inequality, all of which locks people into working poverty and reduces their sense of security, purpose, and control’.
Delivery drivers fall into this category, (and soon, sales reps).
They engage with government and organisations to promote worker-focused, human-centred automation that gives people ‘good work’ to do, which promotes health, provides a good standard of living, a sense of dignity and autonomy and the opportunity to grow and flourish.
If you’re finding you’re having similar conversations about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ work, then they have some useful research to dive into:
Report focused on creating pathways to future good work: https://www.ifow.org/publications/the-good-work-time-series-2023
Briefing Paper on AI and the consequences for jobs: https://www.ifow.org/publications/adoption-of-ai-in-uk-firms-and-the-consequences-for-jobs
We talked about the ‘thing that keeps him up at night’. In his case, it’s the demand from the new CEO to track all the cars the sales reps use.
He said to me: “but if we do that, they’re all going to leave”.
There is a logic to tracking your sales reps while they’re out and about on company business.
You will know if they’re in an accident so you can get them help quicker, (and also reduce your company’s insurance premium). You can manage fuel costs and you can provide guidance on the most efficient routes to take for their clients that day.
But all of this completely ignores the fundamental human need for individual autonomy.
Of course, the unspoken suspicion is that these sales reps just go and do their own thing once they’ve hit their target for the month (i.e. shopping / school run / golf club / meditation retreat…).
“So what?!”, we both agreed.
The Institute for the Future of Work categorises this sort of technological automation as leading to ‘bad work’, and they are very worried about the associated risks this poses to human happiness and therefore productivity.
I’ve been engaging in their conferences and briefing papers for a few years and I really like their approach. They define bad work as ‘automation that creates higher levels of insecurity, lower levels of autonomy, poorer prospects and a widening earning inequality, all of which locks people into working poverty and reduces their sense of security, purpose, and control’.
Delivery drivers fall into this category, (and soon, sales reps).
They engage with government and organisations to promote worker-focused, human-centred automation that gives people ‘good work’ to do, which promotes health, provides a good standard of living, a sense of dignity and autonomy and the opportunity to grow and flourish.
If you’re finding you’re having similar conversations about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ work, then they have some useful research to dive into:
Report focused on creating pathways to future good work: https://www.ifow.org/publications/the-good-work-time-series-2023
Briefing Paper on AI and the consequences for jobs: https://www.ifow.org/publications/adoption-of-ai-in-uk-firms-and-the-consequences-for-jobs
Events: https://www.ifow.org/events
At the end of the chat, we both decided the CEO simply needed to accept that sales reps will do, what sales reps have been doing forever, and move on to something else to fixate on. Like making everyone come back to the office....
At the end of the chat, we both decided the CEO simply needed to accept that sales reps will do, what sales reps have been doing forever, and move on to something else to fixate on. Like making everyone come back to the office....
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