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HR at the heart of the productivity shift

Updated Friday, 10 February 2017
Dr. Caroline Clarke and Dr. Peter Bloom examines the dark side of new HR “empowerment” strategies.

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There is a profound but often invisible danger in this accounting-for-ourselves productivity culture, because rather than the organisation confronting unfeasible objectives or serious structural problems, the workforce take the full brunt of responsibility for how they ‘manage’ or ‘mismanage’ their own productivity.

The employee is nearly always complicit; striving to be more, do more, papering over the cracks of fundamental institutional flaws that rely largely on unpaid labour and goodwill. These conditions are exacerbated by the insatiable demands of 'time greedy' companies in a 21st capitalist world that never sleeps.

In the long term this threat goes to the very core of modern HR efforts to manage productivity. The ethics of accounting can lead to a reality of growing unaccountability and possible subversion within organisations. Present is a top down blame game, where executives pass the proverbial 'hot potato' onto middle managers who do the same to the employees they supervise. It is a vicious cycle where everyone is on the defensive, creating a culture of pointing the finger, instead of constructive problem solving and engagement with work.

Read more: When all that we count becomes all that counts: HR at the heart of the productivity shift

 

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