'The Centre is dedicated to generating new research and to engendering debates on the most important issues arising as men and women enter the workforce and make career choices. Consequently, one of the key focal points for our research agenda is Humanising Work.
A question that many academics and practitioners alike face in this field of study and practice when reviewing the recruitment, retention and development of talent is ‘How do we build future organisations that inspire men and women?’
The aspiration of this discussion theme is to better understand the nature of work and the contemporary context for work design. Integral to this goal is the development of a broad understanding of the range of innovative and forward-thinking ways that companies employ in order to inspire employees at all stages of their careers. Our studies have shown that companies are beginning to move away from career tournaments to more flexible talent-development structures such as project-based roles and job-share options. Our debate therefore must address how we define work and work-related activities and the motivations that drive us to work. This will involve us working less obsessively and mechanically and creating more people-friendly work and ways of living.
...two keynote speakers, Professor Lord Anthony Giddens and Professor Richard Sennett ... will launch our debate on Humanising Work. The titles of their talks will be “The Politics of Life-Style” and “Crafting Work in the Age of New Capitalism”, respectively.'
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the motivations that drive us to work
very shortly the list will include 'better than stavation'
'to better understand the nature of work'
'And when I split an infinitive I mean it to stay split.' as Mr Chandler remarked to his hard-pressed editor.
Still, 'the nature of work' is a concept worth exploring; not worth paying anybody for, but worth a little musing on the bus before the dehumanising irruption of reality from 9 to 5.
I like my work, I couldn't do it 9 to 5, but then I stick needles in people for a living ;-)
Worthy or not, it's written in the sort of deadened language that make you want to run away. Perhaps I'm disabled by having a degree in English.
You are clearly right HG, and with two offspring recently entered the world of work I have had cause to ponder meself on how it has all been changing over the years
but it has the feel of a 'business-as-usual' sort of question, a bit of a luxury in times when just having a paying job at all will soon be the primary concern
It is about fake work, really. All these New jobs that produce nothing but provide the client New Labour base.
People employed to drive tractors, prune olives and vines, plough, and coppice woodland don't have any difficulty in understanding their work design. They require insurance and the standard pay, and pleasant relations with the employer.
Employment is not the same thing as work. If you take someone's payment you should deliver what was asked for in return. If you want to realise yourself through work, pay yourself.
I observe so many people in jobs that people once seemed to have some pride and involvement in what they did (social work, nhs employees of all description, the police for example) acting as though turning up to work is enough, because that is what gets them their pay packet. There is arguably a need for social workers and NHS employees and Police, so I guess they think their jobs are safe if tedious and unproductive.
Too much relating to other people and not enough relating to doing a job beautifully; too much doing your best is all you can do, when not enough - this is the standard for the job make sure you meet it should rule; too much am I happy in every aspect of my life, and not nearly enough of have I done this well enough to do myself credit.....
Imagine if you started carrying over parts of your private life into your professional undertakings, L. Feeling stroppy this morning? JAB. Pig ate your new sandals? JAB JAB JAB.
It's reflected in the language people use. Sometimes I wonder if the intrusiveness and quite impertinent intimacy of complete strangers expressed in their speech is remotely understood by them. English can tutoyer or not just as effectively as French or Italian. Formal distance is disappearing in a welter of over-familiarity. Just as work and personal is being melded into New Nonsense inefficiency and incompetence.
The sort of people offering the cure are the sort who caused the problem. When you tell eveyone what to do and how to do it - and woe betide you if you do it a different way - don't be surprised when pride in work is replaced by perfunctoriness and "guard your back".
Think of the old station masters and their beautifully-kept stations; the engine drivers and their gleaming engines. There was once pride and ownership in work.
'Ownership in work' is the key phrase, S, you have it. Now workers are asked to meet a soulless, bureaucratically derived, human resources schema instead of respond to not so much the central task, but all the peripherals and initiatives that make a job both enjoyable and rewarding.
They are unschemable too, so they have been removed from the workplace. From Chaplin films onwards there have been every kind of attack on the removal of 'soul' from a job in the interests of 'efficiency' and returns.
JAB JAB JAB? Unthinkable HG :-O But I do know when I need a holiday because I catch myself thinking "You think YOU have got problems..?."
I was unfortunate enough to be in hospital for 24 hours 3 years ago. As I waited in the diagnostic medical ward I watched in horror as a nurse said to the confused frail old woman on the trolly opposite "Hello, is it Kath or Kathleen?" The old lady looked more confused. The nurse continued "Do you feel crap?" in in a loud pseudosoothing enquiry... I am sure she meant well.
Yes, it was the same hospital as Lord wotsit of heroin complained about in the Lords....
Hyperbole Lilith, so sorry. But there are times when I look at what people have written and have to go for a turn round the house before trying to straighten out the words on the screen at level after level.
(Not even the tiniest temptation in the face of the most selfishly induced problem? Teeny little jab-let?)
NO HG! Not even the heroin addict whose wife was paying for him to have detox and all the while he was still taking it, and amusing himself with his porn collection.
Double sorry Lilith.
Might you do a post about what you call 'sticking needles in people'?
What I wonder about is what is the importance in the job of the individual practitioner to the individual treatee. It feels that it must be specific, if not crucial to the effectiveness of the course. (But I'm not informed about the field at all. It's that if inside ourselves our state of being is generalised and transmitted as I understand it, then why should the same system not act between 'separate' individuals?)
Rapport is very important as far as I am concerned, although in China it is seen as less of a necessity, where the system is widely trusted.
There is certainly something unscientific about who comes to see me and who goes to see someone else that can seem oddly propitious.
I can't really post about it on Lilith-Stuff HG...I'd be chucked out of my professional body for bringing disrepute ;-)
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