Go get a good deal
I loathe
A bad deal I got
A deal I loathe
Pegged at a lower level
With less competent ones
Pedestrian views
A deal I loathe
Yet, the little Pollyanna says,
Be contented
Count your blessings
Count them for most of 365 days
Allow me a few days
To loathe and fume
Esp after having to deal with them
The lesson for you and me, especially after 50: Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin."
Indeed, I felt it too upon my return
Isolated and kept out of meetings
Even ignored when joining their table at staff welfare lunch
Others had it worse, I heard
Now under a new veneer in a different place
Professionally we have to work together
But I can't forget what they tried to do
And what they did to my team
Commentary: Toxic offices dynamics don't disappear just because people work from home
Even though staff are working from home, indefensible behaviour never stops, says the Financial Times' Pilita Clark
Working from home (Photo: Unsplash/Annie Spratt)
22 Feb 2021 06:01AM(Updated: 22 Feb 2021 06:10AM)
LONDON: When I went to live in the US in the 1990s, Mike Wallace was still one of the biggest names in TV journalism.
The ornery 60 Minutes star was close to 80 at the time, but regularly came up with knockout interviews that shot into the headlines.
Little did we viewers know what a monster he was to work with. In the newsroom, he would poach stories from outraged colleagues, throw stuff at cowering producers and grab the bottom of any hapless female passing by.
All this was revealed last week by Ira Rosen, the late Wallace's producer, in a new book called Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes. And what scenes they were.
READ: Commentary: Co-working spaces look pretty attractive right about now
BAD BEHAVIOUR
Wallace was also fond of snapping secretaries' bra straps and getting women to sit on his lap. Once, after grabbing and squeezing the breast of a female producer, he said to her: "That time of month."
Rosen himself was routinely shouted at and humiliated. "The verbal harassment I experienced from Mike Wallace and other TV big shots was, in a word, criminal," he writes.
"Today, I might call HR, hire an attorney, and threaten a very public lawsuit." But neither he nor anyone else did that, and so the abuse went on.
The book is a reminder of how much has changed since the years when such bullying was routinely ignored.
For a long time, there was not even a name for it. Newspapers did not use the term "toxic work environment" to describe dire workplace behaviour until 1993, the Factiva news database shows.
In 2019 it was used nearly 760 times. But last year there were a record 1,750 mentions, which I found quite surprising considering how many offices COVID-19 has emptied.
PLENTY OF BULLYING REMAIN
Early in the pandemic, close to 60 per cent of Londoners were working at least part of the time at home. In the US, 42 per cent of the labour force was working at home full time.
I had thought that one of the few benefits of Covid-19 was that people at home might at least be spared the physical presence of someone like Wallace.
They may be, but the experience of British business psychologist Clive Lewis suggests a toxic workplace does not go away when it goes virtual.
READ: Commentary: Here's what I won't miss about working from home
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Lewis has also written a book that came out last week, Toxic, which is drawn from his experience running a workplace conflict resolution company he founded 16 years ago, the Globis Mediation Group.
"We are busier than we've ever been right now," he told me the other day.
THE COMMON COMPLAINTS
One common complaint comes from people who belatedly discover they have not been invited to big online work meetings. "That's a big one," says Lewis, whose clients range from the NHS to big corporations.
Online meetings themselves can deepen existing strains. People who refuse to put their video camera on in a meeting infuriate others who say no one would hide their face in a normal office meeting.
Other cases are far worse. When we spoke, Lewis had just been asked to intervene in a case at what he described as a very large organisation, where a man had told a female colleague the only reason she had been hired "was because of the size of her breasts".
THE HIGH COSTS OF BULLYING
Lewis's book makes two important points about such toxic behaviour: It is not just inhumane, it is costly, and though it should prompt speedy intervention, it often does not.
It typically takes more than 19 months before a conflict goes to mediation, according to research Lewis carried out in the NHS. I doubt it differs much in other organisations.
In that time, people subjected to toxic monsters can suffer depression, migraines, fatigue and a slew of other disorders that affect their work.
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Rosen says his back went into painful spasms the entire time he worked for Wallace. Other producers on the show developed ulcers and worse.
As Lewis writes, studies estimate bullying and abuse cost billions a year in lost productivity. That is just the financial cost.
The human cost is far harder to calculate, and indefensible at all times, whether it is incurred in an office or at a kitchen table.
Source: Financial Times/sl
From July 1 next year, older workers will be able to continue to work longer if they wish, when the statutory retirement age is raised from 62 to 63, and the re-employment age from 67 to 68.
This is part of a gradual increase that will ultimately set the retirement age at 65 and the re-employment age at 70 by 2030, changes announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2019.
...One of the largest employers in Singapore, the Public Service Division, will also be raising its retirement and re-employment ages from July 1 this year, a year ahead of schedule, despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The longer-term challenges and opportunities presented by an ageing local population do not change. Hence, the Singapore Public Service is committed to its plans and efforts to help our officers to work longer, if they would like to," said a spokesman.
More than 2,000 officers in the 145,000-strong Public Service will be affected by the move. A similar number will benefit in the 20,000-strong NTUC workforce.
Meeting up. Old team.
Camaraderie through crises
Through thick and thin
Now out of the circuit
Chatter, oh so familiar
Yet, so alien
Familiar characters
Doing familiar things
Saying familiar comments
Yet, so alien
Hanging onto those comments back then
Now so alien
Now so distant
No longer my concern
Familiar world
Yet so alien
Ever since one of your kind,
And those aligned,
Closed the door
Close the door
I too
Not my world
No more
'Life is nothing but solving problems'
Prof Cham Tao Soon and his memoirs. He set up NTU when it was still NTI.
Solving problems is an important skill.
Too often, staff come with problems, sometimes with no recommendation of solution. They should attempt recommendations more often, even if not confident. At least try their best.
When one doesn't even try, one is a postbox.
