By Eleonore Brocq, Clinical Psychologist
Introduction
The objective of any business is profitability and success, but companies’ profitability and success depend on so many important factors like Employee’s performance, customer’s satisfaction, brand promotion and reputation, and many more. These are the important factors which provide companies the reason to grow, perform, get success and to be the best in their fields.
These days most of the companies majorly focus and care about their benefits, market presence, success, customer satisfaction (…). Lastly, they come to their employees and completely forget and ignore the word satisfaction and then ask them to work and perform. These companies do not feel and understand that their employees are contributing and playing a major role in their business’s growth and success. They are not providing a healthy environment to their employees. They do not satisfy them and that is why more than 85% of the people admit hating their jobs especially their boss. They are frustrated and emotionally disconnected from their workplace.
Analysis of a psychologist on the actual corporate world
I started to write this article with a question in my mind: why are companies striving to build organizations that scare away the best employees when their main goal should be to attract them? I am referring to employees who want to act and move forward for their company. As a clinical psychologist with a special interest in corporate psychology, What I see today is that management is no longer adapted to the current skills of individuals and especially to the way young talents work. There is a disconnection between 20th century management techniques and 21st century operating models that need to be more fluid and more sensible the psychological functioning of the individuals, of the employees.
The corporate world is changing. Today, employees absolutely need to see the purpose of their work; the trades have become so technical and specialized that employees no longer even see the fruit of their work. These dysfunctions raise several questions: How to restore meaning to work, how to give autonomy to employees? In my opinion, it is urgent to let workers freely express their critical intelligence and for the business holders to be assisted by psychologists to avoid those mistakes. Indeed, corporate psychology helps companies to maintain their environment, understand their employees, provide them safety and security at the workplace, and in the end, it helps to create a strong bonding and great understanding relationship between companies and their employees.
Employee’s new needs and solution given by corporate psychology
These new aspirations come from a new sense of work. Before, work was an end in itself: we worked, we realized and that was the purpose of existence. Today it’s different and most likely for the new generations who wants to find a true purpose. When you work in a large company or bank, it is no longer the grail, but a chore! This was not the case for the previous generation.
I think the main sources of dissatisfaction in companies are a lack of meaning and autonomy, an inflation of processes and a lack of flexibility and fluidity. Some companies are in the process of questioning themselves, and this is a very good thing, because they have fallen into an unhealthy procedural ideology, and they noticed it mostly thanks to the fact they opened their doors to corporate psychologists. When companies and employees carry great understanding and strong bonding together then it makes easier to achieve success, get profits, and to be the best in their fields.
Employees must be empowered, and trusted. I think this is the key for companies to inspire employees to give their best to them which will highly increase their productivity. Then you have to break down the silos, because there are so many managerial layers within large companies. Our society of procedures can turn to “absurdity” and paralyze action. Processes prevent us from thinking,” Kant said. For example, today the process is that if you work well, you become a manager. However, management is not a promotion but a skill. Charisma is one of the essential qualities of a manager, and it is not procedural. Finally, the sense of work must be put back at the heart of the operation of the company. Today a lot of people are working with absolutely no idea why they’re going to work; they don’t see the purpose of what they’re doing, which is absurd.
Employee’s wellbeing is a very serious concern
It is true that recently we’ve seen companies investing in the wellbeing of their employees. But from my point of view, as a clinical psychologist, not the right way. Companies seems focusing only on making people happy and they invest a lot to reach this expectation: hiring chief happiness officer, hiring private smaller companies to offer yoga sessions to their employees or planning one time per year a “building team’s day”. Despite those efforts made, we have never seen so much discomfort in companies as today. That means that we are aiming badly, that there is something wrong. Very often, the well-being of employees is reduced to the artifice of “happiness”. This has to change. Even well- being and happiness in business has become procedural. While happiness is indefinable, subjective and personal: it goes beyond the professional sphere, it is a changing state. By saying that well-being makes you perform, you reverse the cause and the consequence. It’s the ability to act and to perform that can make you feel happy.
In my opinion, employees must be given a renewed sense of action, of being active in their professional lives. To have a feeling of submission and to endure one’s life is very harmful and devitalizing for the employees.
Conclusion
A corporate psychologist can evaluate the situations. Unlike a mediator, the psychologist will not focus exclusively on the issues but will include psychological concerns such as the needs for respect, dignity, empowerment, and effectiveness. Corporate psychology in itself, is something which helps companies to make smooth and successful business by operating each and every core of the companies. It helps companies to understand and provide all required support to their employees and help employees to open their mind and work towards their company growth, profit and success.
