Has the Future of Work Passed Us By?
The U.S. economy is doing rather well. Not that you’d necessarily know it if you don’t work for the Federal Reserve: A recent article by Steve Moran on Senior Living Foresight starkly illustrates the reality of work as experienced by all manner of employees in the senior living industry:
Hourly workers don’t make a living wage, and many are being forced to work all the overtime they can get – or work a second job.
Department heads make a bit more money but still struggle to pay their bills.
Executive directors who work 40-hour weeks are considered to be slackers.
Regionals work long hours and spend most of their lives traveling and the rest on phone or video calls. They own responsibility for the bad stuff that happens and rarely get credit for the good stuff that happens.
Moran’s solution? “Actually paying frontline workers more money. It might mean making a commitment to having a system where executive directors really only work 40-hour weeks and get three or four weeks of vacation a year.”
Makes sense. Simple enough. Right?
Workers Are At the Brink
Well, not quite. In fact, if you were to read more closely, the Senior Living Foresight piece suggests something else entirely:
Ambitious career-track professionals and executives are no longer willing to work weekends and late into the night. Fewer people have big career ambitions. They are a lot more interested in improving the quality of their life off the clock.
When salaried team members are asked to do more work, they will only do it for more pay.
More workers are taking all of their vacation time and even taking additional time off without pay.
Workers are demanding more money – enough to live a comfortable life.
Most employees don’t believe working harder will actually improve the quality of their life.
Many workers would be glad to take a pay cut to achieve a better work-life balance.
One could sum up the above rather cynically as: People want to work fewer hours, get more time off, generally aim lower, and make more money doing it all. But the #HumanFirst way to frame it is to note that employees feel overworked; they feel their work-life balance is suffering; they’re having trouble making ends meet; and they refuse to make a blood pact with a corporate world that is increasingly only loyal to shareholders, not to employee stakeholders.
Management Isn’t Getting It - Yet
A KARE-givers Survey suggests that management and caregivers are talking past each other:
Employer: “Caregivers are highly motivated by pay. COVID has made most of them rethink staying in our industry, and we just can’t compete with other industries like retail. Most caregivers won’t even be in the senior living industry five years from now. The best way to offset this is to provide a great company culture for them to work in.”
Caregiver: “I love working in senior living, and I see myself in this industry for the long haul. I just wish they would pay me better. I can deal with commute times, distance, and even mediocre co-workers, but I won’t put up with disrespect from managers. I want to work in a nice-looking community (6 in 10), have a flexible but consistent work schedule (9 in 10), and good benefits (8 in 10). It isn’t just that pay is important to me. Senior living pay is important to me.”
Simply put, employers overestimate the value employees put on pay and the negative impacts of COVID-19 on caregivers’ career interests.
FICTION: Furthermore, employers ranked “culture” – whatever exactly they mean by that – as a high-level motivator, missing the mark regarding what cultural elements meant most to caregivers (respect from management). Tellingly, employers largely believe that caregivers are willing to give up part of their pay (10%) if they liked the company’s culture (66% believe this).
FACT: Almost as many caregivers (60%), however, disagreed on this point. The “culture” card, then, isn’t the trump card that management imagines it is, and it’s worth even less when employees aren’t receiving a living wage.
How to Turn The Page? Read A New Story
Caregivers give more of themselves than just the hours that make up their day. Their expertise, mental energy, and physical well-being go into doing what they do; and absent an employer with an intelligent grasp of the work-life balance concept, their social lives are so much burnt offering. And if things don’t change, their smoke will rise forever.
