Meaningful Workplaces E-Book

Neal E. Chalofsky

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 278

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

"Anyone who has a position of leadership in your organization should read Meaningful Workplaces. From the CEO to the front-line manager, this book will change the way people think about work. It is truly a must read for people creating the workplace of the future." -- Paul Butler, Managing Director and Founder of GlobalEdg (recently retired -- Director Global Learning and Organizational Development, Proctor &Gamble/Gillette) "Meaningful Workplaces is a must-read for today's workforce. It sagely advises organizations how to create cultures that provide a sense of belonging, a feeling of trust, caring, and shared celebration." -- Dr. Peggy Dolet, Director of Human Resources, American Society for Engineering Education "Chalofsky's Meaningful Workplaces models do a great job of reframing the discussion about work and values. He provides excellent examples of organizations that have made measurable and sustainable strides in achieving "integrated wholeness" in today's competitive environment. I found it both practical and insightful." -- Kimo Kippen former Vice President, Center of Excellence, Marriott International, former Chair, ASTD Board of Governors, and Executive in Residence at Catholic University "Dr. Chalofsky captures the essence of what motivates people to work beyond material gain. Grounded in decades of organizational research and practice, it is a source that can be trusted. I highly recommend this book to students of organizational studies, company leaders, and people seeking answers to the questions of what it takes to create and sustain meaningful work and humane workplaces." -- Dr. Susan Gayle, Chief Administrative Officer, Promontory Interfinancial Network, LLC "Chalofsky's experience and expertise shine through as he takes readers on a journey about how?humanistic organizations lead to increased joy, passion, learning, personal growth, high performance, and bottom-line success. This excellent text ties years of concepts into a coordinated whole?culture, learning, engagement, motivation, community, and work-life integration. Chalofsky provides concepts, practical approaches, and realistic examples for?students, leaders, practitioners, and educators." -- Dr. Virginia Bianco-Mathis Chair, Department of Management, School of Business, Marymount University, Managing Partner, Strategic Performance Group

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

PREFACE

My Journey and What I Learned from It

Reframing Our Thinking About Work

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Why Is This Topic Important?

What Can You Achieve with This Book?

How Is This Book Organized?

Benefits from This Book

Acknowledgements

Introduction

What Is Missing?

What Happened

The Humanistic Movement in the Workplace

Reframing the Discussion About Work and Values

What Is Meaningful Work?

What Is a Meaningful Workplace?

The Rest of the Book

SECTION 1 - Meaningful Work

Chapter 1 - The Elements of Meaningful Work

Meaning Plus Work

The Meaningful Work Model

Chapter 2 - Bringing Your Whole Self to Work

Spirituality and Work

Finding Your Purpose

Finding Purpose by Helping Others

Self-Actualization and Reaching Your Potential

Self-Efficacy and Control

Meaningful Learning

Increasing Capacity to Learn

Conclusion

Chapter 3 - The Meaning Is in the Work Itself

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation

Fulfilling Your Purpose

Personal Mastery

Learning: Challenge, Creativity, and Continuous Growth

Control and Self-Directed Learning

Autonomy and Empowerment

Conclusion

Chapter 4 - Work-Life Balance

Balancing Work and the Rest of Life

Career-Life Balance

A Different Concept of Balance

Conclusion

SECTION 2 - Meaningful Workplaces

Chapter 5 - The Elements of a Meaningful Workplace

Great Workplaces

Findings from the Study

Chapter 6 - Values-Based Organizational Culture

What Goes into a Values-Based Culture

Values-Based Leadership

The Business Case for Values-Based Cultures

Work-Life Programs and Policies

Chapter 7 - Social Responsibility as Part of a Values-Based Culture

Principle: Employment Practices

Principle: Community Involvement

Diversity

Conclusion

Chapter 8 - Employee Engagement and Commitment

Employee Commitment

Chapter 9 - Reframing the Nature of the Workplace

The Need to Reframe the Workplace

Workplace Community

SAS: A Workplace Community with a Values-Based Culture

Conclusion: Reframing Back to the Community

Chapter 10 - Integrated Wholeness at the Individual and Organizational Levels

Integrated Wholeness at the Individual Level

Integrated Wholeness at the Organizational Level

Building the Meaningful Workplace

THE AUTHOR

REFERENCES

INDEX

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Pages 45-46: “To be of use” from CIRCLES IN THE WATER by Marge Piercy, copyright © 1982 by Marge Piercy. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chalofsky, Neal, 1945-

Meaningful workplaces: reframing how and where we work / Neal Chalofsky.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-61863-9

1. Work environment. 2. Corporate culture. I. Title.

HD7261.C427 2010

658.3’8—dc22

2010003896

HB Printing

PREFACE

MEANINGFUL WORK is like motherhood and apple pie: who wouldn’t want it? In addition, who wouldn’t want to do it in a humanistic organization? There are numerous books that will tell you it’s all about finding your passion, so why does the marketplace need another one? Well, the reason that it took me several years and a giant mound of resources is that meaningful work is not just about finding your passion. That’s part of it, but both individuals and organizations need to realize that there is a lot more that goes into finding meaningful work and developing a values-based organizational culture than just finding your passion or offering your employees a bunch of perks.

Like most issues involving individual motivation and organizational effectiveness, there is no quick fix. So this book doesn’t take a ten-steps approach. Good professional career counselors will tell you it takes hard work and dedication to find what you really want to do and then go out and find the actual work or workplace that furnishes the “space” for you to do it. Good professional management consultants will tell you it takes a lot of time and commitment to change, or maintain, a values-based culture. Even with all the evidence suggesting organizations that care about their people perform better than those that don’t, many organizations are still not convinced of the value of such a culture, or at best they pay lip service to it.

My Journey and What I Learned from It

My story is about making choices as to the work I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, and then later realizing the benefits stemming from the choices I made. I went straight into an MBA program after graduating college, and then I took a job working in a small personnel office of a computer systems company that had a contract with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. After spending three years screening computer systems specialists, I was asked to design a training program for supervisors on new personnel policies and procedures instituted by corporate HQ. I sought help from one of my MBA professors, designed and conducted the course, and then realized I had found something that interested me far more than reading resumes. So I asked one of our recruiting firms to help me find a job in training. I ended up being employed by a two-person consulting firm that was looking for someone to do administrative and logistical tasks in support of its training programs. I left them after a year and went with a larger firm, where I slowly began to do some training design and instruction.

Ironically, while working on a training program with the consulting firm back at NASA/Goddard, I was noticed by one of the internal training specialists, who suggested I might be interested in a job with NASA. After conferring with my boss, who encouraged me to apply, I started work as a training specialist at Goddard, as a federal employee. It helped that those were the glory days at NASA, when the space program was extremely popular with the public and we in the training department were encouraged to be creative, experiment, and hire just about any outside expert or consulting service we wanted. One of the strategies our director instituted was that we were to work hand in hand with any outside consultant we hired. Our director left NASA when he was asked to head up human resource development (HRD) for all of (what is now) the Department of Health and Human Services. Bringing me along to direct a new executive development program, he instituted the same policy of hiring consultants at the Office of the Secretary, and since I was dealing with the leadership of the department I was able to bring in the nation’s top consultants and academics. He also gave me the autonomy to design and equip a new facility for our program that befit the clientele we were serving.

While I was at NASA, I got involved with the local chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and began a doctoral program part-time at the George Washington University in HRD and organization behavior. At ASTD, I joined committees and volunteered for projects that gave me tremendous opportunities for learning and networking with fellow professionals, as well as with some of the top consultants and leaders in the field. My last job in the federal government was my most meaningful. I was looking around for an agency that could be a site for my dissertation and happened upon a unit of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that conducted research and development projects focused on HRD in the federal government. I spent the next five years working under an extremely enlightened manager who allowed us to work in teams of our own choosing, permitted us to work wherever we wanted (before the days of telecommuting and virtual groups), and even let us hire our own supervisor.

The division I was in was reorganized, and I started to lose interest in my new job responsibilities. I was adjunct teaching at George Washington University and the Virginia Tech Graduate Center when I heard about a full-time faculty position at the Virginia Tech Graduate Center to design and establish a new HRD master’s and doctoral program. At the same time, my wife and I decided to start a family, which meant she stopped working when our first child arrived while I started a job that paid about half of what I was making in the federal government.

I discovered that not only can a couple live on less than they are used to, but the freedom, the autonomy, and the resulting work-life balance of academic life was priceless. Looking back, the ability to be a parent helper at a coop nursery school, go on student field trips, work at home when a family member was sick, and do quality care giving for our adopted son while my wife built a new career were experiences I never would have had in a typical nine-to-five job. In addition, I also discovered where I belonged. Academia and I were a perfect fit.

Looking back, I can identify the key factors that helped me pursue a meaningful career.

To paraphrase a comic strip I use in the classroom, “My parents wanted me to make a good living; I wanted to have a good life.” My career was never about the money (although I made a good living in the federal government). In fact, when I reached the highest pay grade for a nonsupervisor, I announced to my boss that I wasn’t interested in going any higher. Back in NASA, I saw scientists and engineers who hated being in supervisory positions because it took them away from the work they loved.

I was blessed with a series of bosses who really cared about me as an individual and about my development as a professional. We now know how important an individual’s relationship with the direct supervisor is. I had the supportive relationships throughout my years in consulting and the federal government that allowed me to move into a more independent environment in academia with self-confidence.

I had (and still have) a spouse who believed, along with me, in a mutually supportive and risk-taking relationship that has allowed both of us to achieve real balance among work, family, friends, and involvement in our community.

I had a professional network of colleagues through work and volunteer activities whom I could trust to give me feedback, share resources, lend a helping hand when needed, and challenge me to question, think critically, reflect, and learn.

Reframing Our Thinking About Work

The subtitle of the book, reframing how and where we work, arises from the premise that we need to think differently about the centrality of work in our lives. We must reframe our mind-set from seeing work as a major life activity we have to put up with to seeing it as a major life activity we should make the most of. We need to reframe the workplace from a space where we go to do our work to a space filled with human relationships based on values of caring, supporting, collaborating, and commitment.

This book is for HR managers, chief learning officers, organizational development consultants (internal and external), thoughtful organizational executives and managers, and individuals who want to assist their organization, their subordinate managers, their direct reports, their stakeholders, their friends and family, and themselves to see the win-win that can result from having meaningful work in a meaningful workplace.

I was lucky to have my work life turn out the way it did. What I have learned from the literature and field research I conducted; the numerous colleagues, students, and friends I talked with; and my own self-reflection is that even though I may have fallen into a career path that worked for me, one does not have to rely just on luck. There are tremendous benefits to understanding what goes into finding meaningful work for yourself or creating it for others. The same goes for creating, maintaining, and working in a values-based organizational culture.

If you are going to spend most of your life at work, why not enjoy it?

Neal Chalofsky November 2009

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Why Is This Topic Important?

There are books on the market that relate to meaningful work and workplaces in such subject areas as personal change, career development, motivation, trust, work-life balance, best organizations to work for, and so on. But none of them offer a substantive account of what constitutes meaningful work and a meaningful workplace, so that individuals can be educated as to what goes into finding or creating fulfilling work, and managers and consultants can understand what it takes to create and sustain a meaningful workplace. As with most issues involving individual motivation and organizational effectiveness, there are no quick fixes. So this book doesn’t take a step-by-step approach. Good professional career counselors will tell you hard work and dedication are required to find what you really want to do and then find the actual work or workplace that presents the “space” for you to do it. Good professional management consultants will tell you that it takes time and commitment to change or maintain a values-based culture. Even with all the evidence of organizations that care about their people performing better than those that don’t, many organizations are still not convinced of the value of such a culture, or at best they pay lip service to it. This book is about what it takes to have a workplace meeting the needs of all the stakeholders: employees, management, the community, suppliers, customers, and society as a whole.

What Can You Achieve with This Book?

This book establishes a framework for understanding the components of meaningful work and the criteria for building and sustaining meaningful workplaces. There are examples and descriptions of the various elements and criteria, as well as discussion of various issues confronting meaningful workplaces. As a result of reading this book, you will be able to develop a job search, career plan, and work structures for meaningful work for yourself, your employees, and your clients. In addition, you will be able to create or maintain a meaningful workplace that promotes a values-based, community-oriented organizational culture.

How Is This Book Organized?

The first section covers a model for meaningful work that has been developed from previous literature and continuing research. The model comprises three elements, a sense of self, the work itself, and sense of balance. There is a chapter on each element that explains and expands the concepts with examples and related issues. The second section explores meaningful workplaces and their characteristics, such as values-based organizational culture, meaningful leadership, work-life effectiveness, social responsibility, engagement and commitment, and the concept of work community. Examples of actual organizations are discussed throughout this section. The final chapter combines the individual and organizations levels under the concept of integrated wholeness.

Benefits from This Book

Meaningful Workplaces serves a variety of readers, in seeking to:

• Give an understanding of the complex and deeply felt intrinsic need to have meaningful work that is fulfilling

• Help managers, professionals, and consultants appreciate what really motivates employees to do not just good work but excellent work

• Explain the critical role of learning in developing and performing meaningful work

• Emphasize the need for a values-based organizational culture that is in alignment with a supportive leadership style, social responsibility, commitment to work-life effectiveness, and a community-based environment

• Explore the relationship between a values-based culture and the popular concepts of engagement and commitment

• Support the bottom-line business case for meaningful workplaces