Disengaged At Work

I just returned from my short holiday in Tokyo and Beijing.  I spent a good part of Sunday afternoon writing a piece titled “The Value of Ignorance” for this blog and “When Not To Use Big Data” for my professional blog.  I was set to post the personal entry here when I stumbled across a shocking figure.  71% of Americans are not engaged or actively disengaged at their jobs.

Seventy-one percent of American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive. That leaves nearly one-third of American workers who are “engaged,” or involved in and enthusiastic about their work and contributing to their organizations in a positive manner.

Above quote from Gallup poll available online.

I stumbled upon this fact in the first couple of pages of Dave Coplin’s book, Business Reimagined.  (And it was a bit of serendipity that I stumbled across the author when he wrote a Financial Times piece about which I emailed him.)  Even as I write this I mumble over the implications of this stunning number.  Are three quarters of the US workforce on autopilot, as I described earlier?  Coplin faults standardization, the legacy of the industrial revolution, for today’s disenfranchisement.

But later in his book, Coplin describes my biggest complaint about large office environments.  If I am going to blame one thing for disengagement, one enslaving force, one subjugator of the human spirit, it is email.  Nothing turns a challenging and exciting job into emotionally crushing task management more than processing hundreds of emails a day.  I know of few people that live without the heavy burden of email management on their shoulders.

The sickness of email continues to spread.  It is trivial to cover our rears by adding one more address to the “to:” line.  It is hundreds of times easier to add an email to someone’s inbox than for them to properly process it.  Because email is easier to spread than to contain, the sickness is growing.  The tumor has metastasized.

Part of the problem is the technology.  Part of our disorder is our own need to attend to our communication devices like a crying child.  In any case our happiness requires a change in both technology and behavior.  We must email less.  We must focus more.  Some better communication system must revive us.  Some healing meditation must restore our mindfulness.

I am two months into my sabbatical.  10 months from now I will probably be back at work.  How wonderful it would be to join a company (or start one!) with a progressive attitude to work environments and communication.