Mirko Bagaric: If all we do is moan about slackers, we won't get anything done

Workers are particularly put-off by lazy colleagues. Photo / BOP Times

Opinion

The human condition is wired in such a way that there are few absolutes - it's all relative. Our sense of wellbeing is principally governed by how we are faring compared to others, as opposed to how we are actually travelling.

Thus it is not surprising that a recent employment survey revealed that the thing that most upsets us at work is not poor pay or conditions, or even an absence of work-life balance. It is lazy co-workers.

Pay and rewards barely rate a mention, coming 32nd on the list of things making us most cranky at work.

There are lots of messages here for bosses and employees. First the humble workers.

For most of us our sense of wellbeing is derived from looking backwards and over our shoulder at what others are doing, instead of looking straight ahead and assessing how we are going in terms of achieving our goals. Especially when it comes to the association between money and wellbeing.

While money makes a negligible difference to our wellbeing once we are beyond average wealth, extracting ourselves from poverty gives a significant boost to our happiness barometer. However, this wellbeing increase does not occur when whole societies progress from relative poverty to affluence.

This partially explains why depression has increased 10-fold in many parts of the Western world in the past four decades despite more than a three-fold increase in real purchasing power.

At work, the most immediate point of comparison is our co-workers. The lazy ones are despised because they do less than we do, meaning we have to pick up the slack. We also feel an innate sense of injustice that the loafers are getting paid about the same as us, despite our toils.

Yet there is a way out of this negativity that doesn't involve whinging to the boss about the non-worker.

It involves focusing on what you can control and defining yourself according to your own efforts and attainments, instead of concentrating on the activities of others.

As a species we desire a sense of achievement and progress. We feel good about ourselves when making progress towards fulfilling desirable ends.

Unsuccessful and unhappy people seek to achieve this by putting down and criticising others. Viewing others as going backwards makes plodders feel that, relatively speaking, they are progressing.

Real winners move ahead by actually achieving something more every day. Tiger Woods and Bill Gates got to where they are by doing what they do well, not by obsessing about the behaviour and practices of others.

The only proven formula for career success is to focus on one's own projects. It takes time and energy to monitor and comment on the performance of others.

This is always better spent pursuing one's own goals. Your boss will also appreciate it.

He or she has invariably already distinguished the slackers from the troopers and has better things to do than listen to complaints about others.

One lesson from the study for the bosses is that it is okay to mistreat workers so long as they are all mistreated equally. But there are better ways to make the world a happier place. Employers should implement fair, transparent work practices and consult on performance targets broadcast to all staff.

It is also important to empower staff. Make each employee a self-manager, to the maximum extent possible given their work requirements. Set their targets and let them determine how best to achieve them.

Autonomy and the capacity to shape one's activities is a key to happiness. Studies show that the outlook of even prisoners improves markedly by letting them take of control of simple things, like rearranging their furniture.

Ideally this means that workers should be given the maximum possible flexibility regarding the times they work and from where they work. Most workplaces have failed to incorporate 21st century technological and communications advances into their work pattern designs.

Internet, email and mobile phones provide for instant communication irrespective of location. Despite this, the CBD office compact is still the norm instead of being the prehistoric construct that it rightly merits.

To the extent that changes have been made to the office environment, they are overwhelmingly negative. A study this year reported that the current trend towards open-plan offices is proving to be a disaster. The study's author noted that "employees face a multitude of problems such as the loss of privacy, loss of identity, low work productivity, various health issues, overstimulation and low job satisfaction when working in an open plan environment".

The report noted 90 per cent of open-office workers reporting adverse health and psychological effects.

Improving this situation is strikingly simple. Workers who aren't required to regularly deal face-to-face with clients should be given the flexibility to work from home. The benefits are considerable - far beyond the 90 minutes per day that on average will be saved by not needing to commute to work.

Working from home allows people to enjoy higher levels of autonomy and to better integrate the demands of work and home and ultimately makes them more efficient. It saves employers massive office rental and infrastructure costs.

Yet in Australia and New Zealand work from home is the exception rather than the norm. There is no good reason for this, except the misguided suspicion that home equals bludging. Yet the reality is the opposite. Trust engenders honesty and commitment, leading to higher productivity. Moreover, work from home means that productive workers are not distracted by the loafers' anti-work ethic.

* Mirko Bagaric is a professor of law at Deakin University, Victoria, and author of Being Happy.