Bad apple or Bad Barrel?
When an organisation rots its people
A junior doctor in the 2000s, Adam Kay was working 97 hours a week. As a week only consists of 168 hours this is an extraordinary feat of endurance, but for Adam and junior doctors like him, this was considered normal. After a particularly harrowing and traumatic chain of events Adam quit his role as a doctor and left the NHS. He had given his heart and soul to a job he had trained for many years to do well. In return the organisation he worked for had literally drained the life out of him. Then, Adam wrote a book…
Now a best seller, Adam’s book, This is Going to Hurt is both side-splittingly funny and agonisingly heart-breaking. It also makes it painfully obvious that the NHS, as an organisation, was a significant and undeniable factor in the loss of Adam and may other committed and passionate staff like him. And it isn’t just the NHS. As I began writing this piece HMP Birmingham (run by G4S but eventually taken back into the public sector) was slammed by the Chief Inspector of Prisons as the worst he’d ever seen. And he had a point. I know, because I had recently been working with managers there to build resilience and support them in efforts to safeguard the mental health of their teams. The fact that G4S were investing in this work actually speaks volumes!
While these may be extreme examples they are provided by our biggest national employer: the Government and, frankly, I think it’s unforgivable.
How has this been allowed to happen? Perhaps, this is best answered by someone more politically savvy than me, so, I’m going to talk about the psychology, not the politics! Because it begs a very important psychological question:
“What if it isn’t a bad apple that rots the barrel, but a bad barrel that rots the apples?”
Working on the frontline, as many of our NHS and prison staff do, the potential for experiencing trauma is actually more common than you might think. Social workers, teachers, mental health staff, in fact any job where work could involve facing other people’s suffering, are called Critical Occupations (Paton & Violanti, 1996); jobs where there is a risk of exposure to traumatic events or material that may, under certain circumstances, exert critical pressure on the psychological wellbeing of those involved. The key bit of this definition is “certain circumstances”. Clearly, not everyone in a critical occupation is traumatised – otherwise, we’d have no one left (although judging by Adam Kay’s experience, it is becoming more common). So, what are the circumstances that make so much difference? Research tells at that the organisation has a very big part to play.
Organisational culture is one of four key predictors of wellbeing at work (the others being physical work environment, age and a detached coping style). If the culture is rotten, it will rot the people in it. Here are just a few characteristics, examples of the rotten barrel in which Adam Kay found himself (there are many more littered through his book):
· Lack of training in significant areas of practice, specifically traumatised people (or actually just people in general)
· Lack of breaks
· Regularly (on a daily basis) working longer than contracted hours
· Holiday leave being cancelled without consultation
· Unpredictable shift patterns
· Required to find cover for your own absence
· No overtime pay
· No recognition for achievement
And all this, whilst dealing every day with the psychological and emotional trauma of other human beings. It is no surprise that he described feeling under appreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered.
An organisation is made up of any number of individuals, all of whom bring to work their histories, personalities, moods, competencies, skills, experience, current life circumstances and a myriad of other features. People are the building blocks and the heart of any organisation. So, it is, therefore, people who develop policies, procedures and strategies to organise the staff into a coherent and productive way of working. It seems to me that there is then a tipping point though, where these documents, policies, procedures and strategies take on a life of their own and become more important than the very people they were designed to serve. They also become a safety blanket for people to snuggle under and effectively fall asleep. Perhaps this is when the rot sets in – when we stop paying attention.
For example, how can anybody think that a policy of working a 12-hour shift is a good idea in terms of human performance? In fact, we already know that human performance dips significantly after 90 minutes of effort. This is the reason why air traffic controllers are only allowed, by law, to work in one and a half hour blocks. A dip in their performance could prove catastrophic. Yet our hospital doctors, prison staff, police officers, fire officers and paramedics are all likely to work for 12 hours without a break, seemingly without thought of the consequences. No wonder mistakes are made and accidents happen.
At a time when organisations (and by organisations I mean people) are finally waking up from their slumber under the blanket of out dated, unhelpful and sometimes frankly damaging working practices, we have an opportunity to stop the rot. It would take a thesis to outline how, but here are three ‘duties of care’ to help us:
The organisational duty of care to the individual
This is enshrined in law under health and safety legislation, but is also a matter of morals and ethics. If you are part of an organisation responsible for developing a coherent and productive workforce, think hard about how to achieve that; how to get the best from people, instil loyalty, motivate them, reward them, recognise them and really see them, not just for the role they fill in your organisation, but as individuals.
The individual’s duty of care to the organisation
When we sign a contract to work for an organisation, we have a duty to do our best; to turn up fit for work, to achieve what is reasonably expected of us and to fulfil the requirements we signed up to. If we can’t, for whatever reason, we have a duty to say so and, hopefully, contribute to a solution.
The individual’s duty of care to themselves
Perhaps this one should come first. Our duty to take care of our “selves” as we do our family and friends, to make sure we’re “fit for purpose”, that we recognise the need to re-energise after periods of high demand, to look after our emotional needs when we have faced traumatic circumstances, that we ensure we allow ourselves to work, rest and play.
As humans we organise our lives in families, groups, tribes and organisations and curate our lives for security,
efficiency and productivity. Sadly, it feels all too often that many of our organisations have lost sight of what they are
ultimately for. What’s an organisation, any organisation, without people at its heart? Would it exist and
if it would, what’s its purpose? Have a think about the organisation you work for, or are involved in.
Are you being seen or sacrificed? Is the rot setting in?
It’s time to take stock and reset our values. If we don’t, more talented people across a whole range
of sectors, just like Adam, will simply throw in the towel and give up, making all our lives the poorer for it.
