“Almost a million Australians turned up to work drunk or under the influence of drugs last year, a survey says. The first results of the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household survey found 4 per cent of the population aged over 14 – about 690,000 Australians – admitted to going to work under the influence of alcohol. A further 1.6 per cent, or 276,000 people, said they went to work after taking drugs.
All figures were down slightly from the 2004 survey. More than 23,000 took part in the survey, widely recognised as representative of the population, conducted every three years by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.” (Workers turning up drunk or stoned, Herald Sun Newspaper)
On one hand, employers spend millions of dollars each year – productivity specialists, training programs, research, etc – trying to mitigate the effects of low productivity.
On the other hand, employees seem to show up under the influence of alcohol and drugs more often; spend more time in social media sites such as Facebook (a study predicted that in Australia only, employers could spend billions a year in “Facebook-time”); and take more “sickies” than ever.
Here’s an interesting paradox of causality – does increased pressure for productivity and increased competitiveness has a more predominantly positive or negative effect in the workplace today? Is the stress derived from this pressure provoking workers to have more “time-out” during work hours, or needing to have a quick drink before work? Are the incentives from Employers really working with generation Y?
These are all interesting questions to ask – what are your thoughts on this subject?
Win a Life Effectiveness eGuide!
Write your comments about this social issue here or email them to editor@aipc.net.au and you could have your words published at our National Newsletter – The Professional Counsellor - and also receive an exclusive FREE copy of our “Coping with Sudden Unemployment” Life Effectiveness eGuide.
Submissions will be accepted by Monday 1st of December and will be subject to review by our Editorial Team prior to publication.
Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments
You'll regularly receive powerful strategies for personal development, tips to improve the growth of your counselling practice, the latest industry news, and much more.
We'll keep your information private and never sell, rent, trade, or share it with any other organisation! And you can cancel anytime.
There are a number of areas of the national workforce were productivity pushes have created untenable stresses in workplaces. This situation is also getting much worse as corporations increasingly demand staff make psychological interventions in their interactions with customers.
My experience of the rhetoric and processes used in business organisations in relation too increasing productivity left me with the impression that this is the corporate way of legitimising under-resourcing, especially in the customer service areas of major businesses like banks and telcos.
It also leads to the double-bind of corporate discourse emphasising the value of its people (staff) while corporate practices and processes undermine any value an individual may have outside of their capacity to contribute to the current scorecard.
Another tension for customer service staff is dealing with the customer expectations that have rachetted up after two decades of corporations continually promoting themselves as having great customer service. This creates intense stress on staff who are operating in under-resourced business units that cannot hope to provide customers with a service that matches the rhetoric coming from corporate HQ.
With Australia’s changing workforce demographics productivity will need to continue increasing, however, organisations are going to need to be realistic in the resources required for to highly productive employees from burning out. One only has to compare the growth in the number of support staff at AFL clubs over the last 20 years (whose players have increased on field productivity immensely) to see the business community has an idea of productivity that is doing more with less financial resources, rather than having their people doing more.