"Abuse of Our Employees Won’t Be Tolerated!"​ (Unless We Inflict It)

There are so many things left undone as part of the Human Debt™ that it is not surprising that even the best-intentioned of enterprises never manage to get to them. The trouble is that while they don’t, while these things are not being picked up, thought of, and worked on, people are suffering at work.

Yes, “suffering”, this isn’t a stretch or overly dramatic term and while yes, having a job altogether is a privilege not everyone has access to and while yes, being burned-out, anxious or depressed in the workplace is seen as a bit of a champagne-problem, nothing could be further from the truth.

Disengaged employees cost money. They can also cost lives. This is not news to anyone and yet we live in a world where we let this slide so far behind that a simple “hello” from one’s boss makes a difference. Isn’t that outrageous?

If you read this from the UK, you would have noticed the many “do not abuse our staff” warnings that have started with public transport a couple of years ago and extended to all governmental institutions and are now even permeating private enterprise and helplines mention how we the consumers ought to be nice and not mistreat their staff.

Such an ironic protective measure when the ones doing most of the mistreating are the enterprises themselves. It’s simply a matter of definition whether you think the low-level psychological warfare and the lack of deep care and respect are seen as abuse or not and when it comes to the workplace, they aren’t, because we don’t think we deserve more.