One of the trends/ideas that surfaced in my former workplace around fifteen or so years ago was the idea of having the workplace be inclusive. I googled the term 'inclusive workplace' recently, and this is what popped up as the first link: Inclusive Workplace - Canadian Association for Supported Employment
An inclusive workplace is more about culture than anything else. It is about creating a workplace where everyone is treated with respect and valued for their contributions. In an inclusive workplace, colleagues and customers are treated with dignity, respect and equality, and these values are reflected in the company’s mission and vision. Policies and procedures are implemented and managed so that employees’ rights are preserved.
It sounds nice, reads well, and leaves a good taste in your mouth. My question is what happens when workplaces are not inclusive even when they purport to be so? When it's all talk and no action? When there are no consequences for treating employees disrespectfully? What then? What happens when a disrespectful culture is what defines a workplace? What happens to employees' self-esteem and sense of self when they are not valued for their contributions?
I bring this up because today I met with a former colleague whom I haven't seen in a while. She still works at my former workplace but wants to retire soon. It's been three years since I left my workplace behind, and I don't miss it. More specifically, I don't miss the workplace culture. I don't miss the lack of real interest in employees, the lack of interest in their contributions, the many indifferent leaders, or the unending talk about change and how employees should just acquiesce to leaders' wishes. I don't miss the tasks that were assigned to me that ended up stranded halfway because they were tasks that required the collaborative efforts of several individuals. In other words, they were not tasks that one person alone, without personnel or a budget, could perform. It was sad, really, because I poured my heart and soul into several of them, but without support from above and below, they ended in limbo. Luckily, I could focus on my cancer research projects, and they were successful because they were well-designed and supported. I wouldn't have had it any other way, since being a research scientist was my chosen profession. I did not study science for many years and pursue a doctoral degree to become an administrator, but that's what my department would have preferred I ended up as. But had they really wanted that, they would have supported me with personnel and a budget. As it was, I had to supply my own budget for a specific department activity by writing a grant proposal for it. That was my initiative and I got grant support, not for myself, but for my department. All well and good, but this is not how things should have been run. Money should have been appropriated by my department for the task at hand. My department never had much money to spare. It was chronically overstaffed with mediocre leaders and understaffed with competent employees who knew what they were doing and who were willing to work with me on solving some of the departmental issues. In the end, we concluded that the department talked a good fight but couldn't 'put their money where their mouth was', as we say in the States. Sad, because some of the tasks could actually have been successfully accomplished and finished.
My point with this post is that my former workplace was not really interested in inclusiveness. You were left on your own, left alone, to work it all out. Emphasis on alone. I spent most days alone in my office. I don't envy others as a rule, but when I hear people describe their workplaces in glowing terms, I envy them. I wish I had had another type of experience during the past decade; I wish that I hadn't felt abandoned, ignored, bypassed or irrelevant. I have gained a perspective and understanding now that I no longer work there. How much of it had to do with age and how much of it had to do with a dysfunctional workplace, I'll never know. I do know that the turnover rate among lower-level employees was high. I do know that there was a lot of dissatisfaction among many employees. Many of them said and still say (when I meet them socially) pretty much what I've written here; they did and do not feel appreciated by their leaders, and many of them worked very hard, so laziness was not an excuse for the disrespect. It's odd how a dysfunctional culture can gain traction and then end up permeating every aspect of one's work life. It's odd when you gain perspective after no longer working there--that the workplace wasn't an inclusive one. Had it not been for one leader (a friend of mine) who worked there briefly and tried her best to change the culture (and failed) during the last four or five years of my work life, those years would have been among the loneliest ever. I have a friend here, in her early sixties, who is still working and feels that she still has a lot to give. She doesn't want to retire. But she is treated poorly by her workplace (not my former workplace); she is bypassed, ignored, and frozen out of major decisions. She calls it harassment. I think it is. But nothing will change and she will end up leaving that workplace because as one person, she cannot fight a team of indifferent leaders who don't care about her or whether or not she is happy at work. It's pervasive, the non-inclusive workplace. But it's more common than one might think.
