Have workers lost respect for the office?

Why workplace behaviour has “degraded”: Almost every Australian business can attest to slipping standards when it comes to office attendance, attire, and broader workplace attitudes. Here, we unpack some of the reasons why.

In a recent conversation with HR Leader, business futurist Kim Seeling Smith – who is also the chief executive and founder of Ignite Global – reflected on the phenomenon of poorer workplace behaviour in the post-pandemic climate.

Clients across the country, she mused, have observed that “workplace behaviours have degraded”.

There are, she outlined, several reasons for this.

Reasons for ruder behaviour

One explanation is the blurring of the line between home and work as a result of pandemic-inspired lockdowns.

“A lot of ‘at-home’ behaviours seem to have crept into work, and we’re having reports of inappropriate dress, or theft in the office, or some other interesting things – I won’t go into the more gory details,” she said.

Perhaps more pertinent in the current market, Seeling Smith continued, is that – as HR professionals are well aware – the workforce is “very, very stressed” at present.

“The last four years have not been easy,” she said.

“Between lockdowns coming out of COVID-19, now we’ve got some economic pressures, some headwinds, high interest rates, inflation, cost of living. There’s uncertainty in the world in terms of what’s happening overseas with wars and the shifting geopolitical landscape. I think something like 64 per cent of the world’s population is going to the polls this year,” she said.

“So, everybody is just kind of a little bit more stressed than they used to be, and people will act out when they get stressed.”

A third factor, Seeling Smith went on, is the emergence of Gen Z in the workplace.

“They started coming into the workplace during COVID-19, and so their first experience of working professionally was working from home. What my clients are telling me is that a lot of these Gen Zs, as they come into the workplace, are really lacking some basic work ethic etiquette. They need to be trained on things that you and I have taken for granted for how we could operate in the workforce,” she said.

Seeling Smith also hypothesised that a “shifting” balance of power is occurring in the face of the “severe” talent shortages businesses of all stripes are experiencing.

With that evolving power balance, she said, there is a sense of wanting to “stick it to the man” and not be so subservient to their employers.

“I’m not saying that people are doing this consciously … I think that it’s more of a subconscious cultural phenomenon that we’re seeing,” she said.

Disrespect for the office

Seeling Smith was asked whether, given the factors she outlined, Australian businesses are seeing more disrespect towards the idea of attending the office.

“I think so,” she said.

Businesses and their staff have demonstrated, since 2020, that – when set up correctly – they can be just as productive working remotely as they are when in-office.

This said, Seeling Smith added, “there have to be certain guardrails in place”.

“We need to concentrate on their outcomes, their productivity, as opposed to the time at the seat. Many managers still haven’t gotten to grips with the fact that we need to manage people differently, that it’s not a one-size-fits-all,” she said.

“There are some people that need to come into the office because they’re not performing well, but there are other people that are perfectly adequate, perfectly capable of working from home. So, what I’m seeing is a real pushback from some managers that can’t quite get their head around this new thinking and haven’t figured out how to manage a hybrid workforce.”

Managers must be encouraged, she stressed, to think differently and resolve such challenges by employing different thinking.

“Is some of what we’re seeing a reaction to [workers] not wanting to come back into the office? Yes, it is. And it’s not because they don’t necessarily want to come into the office. People are social animals; they do want to come into the office. We just don’t want to be told to come into the office,” she said.

This, Seeling Smith submitted, is the key.

“If you give them flexibility, if you give them buy-in and ownership around how to structure that and make sure that both the needs of the organisation and the needs of the individual are met, that you won’t have a business without achieving your goals, without serving your clients,” she said.

“You have to meet both. If you involve them, if you co-create solutions with them, they will come back more frequently. But if you require them to be in the office, they’re going to say, ‘No, thank you’.”

HR’s role

On the question of the role of human resources in addressing these issues, Seeling Smith said that HR has a twofold job.

Firstly, she said, leadership training that recognises the existence of a different workforce, workplace, and economic conditions is paramount.

“Leaders need to learn to lead in a new way,” she said.

Secondly, the entire workforce needs to be provided with commercial acumen.

“One of the things that I see missing is open, honest conversations around the business of doing business. Employees are treated as employees, as assets, as capital – not as human beings,” she said.

“If you treat them as human beings and understand that they have a need for information and that they’re actually capable of processing this information, if you sit down and have a commercial conversation about why we can’t do X, if you really take the time to truly explain the business of doing business, then you will have a far greater understanding from the employees as to what those boundaries are, and they’ll have a far greater appreciation for the fact that we need to serve our clients, we need to make a profit.”

But, Seeling Smith bemoaned, “those conversations are still in 2024, still not happening at the level that I truly feel they need to”.