People@Work. How leaders are coping with the Woke

If you have just entered the workforce, are you disappointed by the lack of equity and flexibility practised by your senior leaders? Do you feel your parents bestow more trust and respect towards you? If you are a leader and, let’s say, above 50, are there times you get frustrated at the sense of entitlement your younger colleagues exhibit? Why can’t they work like you did when you were their age? Are they any different from your grown-up kids at home?

HP’s latest Work Relationship Index says 64 per cent of office workers want a culture of communicating emotions at work, and I wonder if our leaders are ready to deal with these emotions!

A sense of injustice

I asked a few leaders what kind of reactions they typically get in town halls. Here are some:

“We are being asked to meet customers in person vs the norm of video calls earlier, this is building pressure.”

“In a team review, the manager asked some of us to improve our KPIs. Shouldn’t she be giving some of this critical feedback one-on-one?

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“I know this offsite invite has only gone to those who have met their KPIs, but I haven’t been able to meet mine because my managers didn’t support me enough. Is that my fault?”

The HP Index, conducted in 12 countries, including India, surveyed 15,600 respondents. The respondents said employees are looking for a greater agency, a say in the work they do and how success is defined, space to derive meaning from their personal lives, and greater respect/trust. However, just 29 per cent of these knowledge workers experience these elements consistently today.

Some of the non-managers I spoke to told me:

“The in-person meetings I attend are long and mostly a downloading exercise. There is no dialogue. It could have been an email.”

“The leaders believe coming to the office is a critical component of productivity. We commonly hear them saying — ‘I didn’t see you in the office’ — even after the pandemic demonstrated the success of remote work.”

“We get judged or commented upon if the menstrual leave is taken on a Monday or a Friday”

Staying awake

Our colleagues not only have a higher expectation on how their managers should lead but are also far more vocal in expressing and threatening the employer branding on social media like LinkedIn and Glassdoor.

In 1923, Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican political activist, said “wake up” to the people of Ethiopia and Africa to make them aware of the systems that were putting black people at a disadvantage in their own countries.

In the 1940s, the term “stay woke” began to be used by those exhorting others to wake up mentally and stay aware of injustice. The term “woke” went mainstream in 2014 when Black Lives Matter activists reclaimed “stay woke” to remind others to watch out for similar injustices. The term’s meaning has evolved from staying awake to racial injustice to being aware of any social issue. This, in today’s world of work, has turned the workforce vocal into anything deemed unfair or unjust.

On the other hand, if we expect enterprises to be vehicles of social impact, justice and equality, is it asking for too much? With hungry shareholders and eagle-eyed boards on their back, CEOs can only focus on one thing — generate profits. Organisations are primarily structured to create value for shareholders, and forcing them to do CSR, DEI and employee well-being is a major distraction. The direct incentives by the boards are linked to ROI, and hence, the behaviours of our current and past leaders have been heavily influenced towards productivity and shareholder value.

But in the new woke world, asking employees to work harder, come to the office and meet tough timelines can sound unempathetic. Employees are constantly comparing competing firms where the context can be completely different. Imagine if employees of Intel, which is in a turnaround mode, compare the benefits of Nvidia employees, who are on a roll. Organisations have survived, turned around and outperformed in the atmosphere of competitive spirits and not holidaying mode. If we are oriented only to increase our CTC but not our productivity and accountability, the organisation that employs us will eventually collapse or get rid of us.

One can understand if the younger generation (average age of 25) in America is disappointed. Compared to their parents’ generation, their average pre-tax income has reduced by 20 per cent, their public college cost as a percentage of their income has risen by 17 per cent and their house price to income has risen by 4X. Some of the woke activism that the young in India are doing inspired by them may not be relevant to our contexts.

In India, the average income has risen dramatically and our youth can be more optimistic about their growth prospects. However, even in a moderate year like this, the most profit-making tech, banking and unicorn companies are still losing 12-30 per cent of their workforce. This indicates the opportunities our younger generation has and how to make the most of them.

India is still not even among the top 50 countries in terms of labour productivity. So, can we sit down and wake up to improve our skills, become more productive and moderate our woke mindset?

As American Singer Teri Amos said, “Our generation has an incredible amount of realism. Yet at the same time, it loves to complain and not really change because if it does change, then it won’t have anything to complain about.”

(Kamal Karanth is co-founder of Xpheno, a specialist staffing firm.)