Working-With-Others Training as a Viable Method for Increasing Employee Morale and Productivity During the Current Economic Crisis

The following is the text of a paper Amanda Kuttenkuler and I are submitting to the Northwest Communication Association Conference in February, 2012. We'll need some luck to have it published. But we are at least giving it a shot.

Working-With-Others Training as a Viable Method for Increasing Employee Morale and

Productivity During the Current Economic Crisis

Amanda E. Kuttenkuler and Robert J. Peterlin

Gonzaga University

Abstract

The current American economic crisis presents myriad challenges to business managers and supervisors who strive to keep employee morale at a level conducive to effective employee productivity.  This paper, submitted as partial credit for the COML 508 (Theorizing Communication) course in Gonzaga University’s Communication and Leadership Master’s of Arts program, explores the current American economic crisis, the phenomena of employee morale and employee productivity during the current American economic crisis, and provides an argument for an employee training program based on a Working-With-Others training paradigm to help companies manage employee morale at a level conducive to effect employee productivity.

Working-With-Others Training as a Viable Method for Increasing Employee Morale and

Productivity During the Current Economic Crisis

Introduction

            That the American economy is stagnant and downturned is an understatement.  One needs only to look at the front page of any newspaper to see the economic indicators forecasting doom and gloom, while the political pundits echo the lament of approaching a possible double-dip recession and double-digit unemployment.  In a time of economic crisis, corporations big and small face the added challenge of keeping employee morale at a level conducive to effective productivity. This paper first provides a brief description of the current American economic crisis, and then focuses on the impact of a lack of morale in the workplace during times of economic crisis, followed by an investigation into the connection between employee morale and productivity, concluding with suggestions for utilizing a Working With Others employee training model--a particular type of employee training rooted in Stanley Deetz’ critical theory—to increase employee morale and productivity during an economic crisis. The reader should note that our literature review is embedded within each of the subheadings below rather than as a separate subheading.

The Economic Crisis

            The current economic crisis is not only an American experience, but some have argued that the American economic crisis is responsible for a global financial crisis the likes of which global citizens have not seen since World War II (Souto, 2009, p. 36; Post-Recession, 2010, p. 2).  While some scholars (Rouse & Schuttler, 2009) trace the American economic crisis to October 2008 after an historic stock market decline and a resulting $700 billion government bailout, others (Souto, 2009) place the blame on the collapse of subprime mortgage lending after the government and regulatory agencies underestimated the extent of the subprime mortgage problem. Still others (Post-Recession, 2010) focus their lens further back to the recession that began in September, 2007.

            Despite the lack of consensus pinpointing an exact time or occurrence that blew out the proverbial American economic tires, indications are that, although the American economy might currently be somewhat on the mend, consumer demand is still flatlining, and unemployment is stuck at nine percent (The Week, 2011, p. 21). The ongoing nature of the economic crisis appears to be feeding on itself creating pessimism among consumers who purchase and organizations that invest--two economic outcomes necessary for a healthy turnaround (The Week, 2011, p. 21).

            Given this realistic and pessimistic economic forecast, corporate managers, as was stated earlier, are faced with the challenge of stimulating employee productivity at a time when uncertainty about the lasting nature of one’s job and the resulting lack of employee morale threaten to further stagnate an already stagnant economy.  This paper focuses next on the issue of employee uncertainty regarding job status in the midst of economic crisis.

Employee Uncertainty

            In times of economic crisis, employees tend to become myopic, focusing their attentions inwardly on the uncertain long-term status of their jobs.  A poll conducted in 2009 by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) indicated that 30% of employees indicated they believed their jobs would be moderately or significantly at risk (Employee Job, 2009, p. 8). These modest numbers led Teresa Bailey, director of human resources at ConvaTec, and member of SHRM’s Corporate Social Responsibility Special Expertise Panel to state that she “was not surprised that in this economic state job security has moved to the number one slot as being most important” (Employee Job, 2009, p. 8). In the midst of the crisis of employee uncertainty, one might wonder if the field of communication has anything to offer to help frame this phenomenon.

The answer to that question is that communication theorists have much to offer in terms of understanding employee uncertainty. Shannon and Weaver’s seminal investigation of uncertainty (1949), for example, framed uncertainty as existing in situations when a high number of possible alternatives exist. Berger and Calabrese (1975) expanded Shannon and Weaver’s paradigm to include a “number of alternative ways in which each interactant might behave (p. 100).  Berger and Calabrese (1975) concluded that an inverse relationship exists between the level of uncertainty in a given situation, and the individual’s chance of predicting behaviors and outcomes.   It is clear that theory on the phenomenon of uncertainty can be applied to the current economic crisis. When employees feel uncertain about the long-term nature of their jobs, for example, they might describe a perceived decrease in their abilities to predict behaviors of their supervisors and other employees. This lack of predictability may, in turn, lead to low employee morale and a type of “employee shutdown,” phenomena that involve the employee pulling back from normal behaviors in the workplace. A brief description of employee morale follows.

Employee Morale

            Although employee morale is a construct that has been traditionally difficult to quantify because it has been described as a feeling rather than an actual outcome (Good, Huddleston, & Linz, 2006, p. 3), noted scholars (Abbot, 2003; Blum & Naylor, 1968: Griffin et al., 2004; Guion, 1958; Hart et al, 2000; Parker & Kleemier, 1951; Smith & Wakely, 1972), as described in Good, Huddleston and Linz (2006, p.3), have come to define employee morale as a feeling coinciding with job satisfaction, high work effort, creativity and initiative, a sense of pride in one’s work, a commitment to one’s organization, and “the desire to put the achievement of group (common) goals ahead of personal goals, thereby enhancing an organization’s performance” (Good, Huddleston, & Linz, 2006, p. 3).  In addition to the difficulty of quantifying employee morale, Good, Huddleston and Linz (2006) also note a history of haziness in regards to whether employee morale is best evaluated as a group experience (Milton and Stening, 1984; Smith, 1966, 1976) or as an individual experience (Doherty, 1988; Evans, 1992; Hart, 1994; Watson, 1988).

Despite this theoretical haziness, the literature indicates that employee morale is a palpable reality that affects employees, corporate managers, and the entire corporate environment. Millett (2010), for example, suggests six reasons why employee morale is an important construct:  improved productivity; improved performance and creativity; reduced number of leave days; higher attention to detail; a safer workplace; and increased quality of work. Mazin (2010) extends Millett’s work by adding that high employee morale leads to employee promptness, improved communication, decreased gossip, improved recruitment and retention, and increased creativity.

In addition to the intrinsic factors impacting employee morale, extrinsic factors also exist. Chief among these extrinsic factors is the leadership qualities of the immediate supervisor (Ngambi, 2011, p. 3).  Schuler (2004), for example, argued that most people who exhibit low employee morale blame poor leadership-related competencies such as communicating vision, energizing staff, demonstrating trust and loyalty, and developing teams. Likewise, Stevens (2009) identified lack of exemplary leadership as a contributing factor in decreasing employee morale. In addition,  Kasper-Fuehrer & Ashkanasy (2001) have shown that the onus is placed more heavily on supervisors to garner present and future employee trust in their supervisors during times of economic crisis (Ngambi, p.1). So it is clear that during times of economic crisis, the stakes are high for employees and supervisors individually, and also for the employee-supervisor relationship. Consequently, one must also account for the employee-supervisor relationship as a potential impacting factor on corporate productivity, an investigation of which follows.

Employee Morale and Productivity

            Although literature connecting employee morale to productivity is limited, a review of the literature makes a clear case for a correlation between employee morale and productivity.  Elton Mayo, who directed a series of experiments between 1927 and 1932 at Western Electric’s Chicago Hawthorne Plant (Neely, 1995, p. 5), conducted the first, and most famous of these types of studies. Mayo’s experiments studied the productivity of a control group by varying the lighting with which to accomplish their production task.  The control group continued to be productive despite the lack of lighting. Mayo concluded that morale and motivation were the reasons for the group’s productivity, coining this phenomenon as “The Hawthorne Effect”  (Neely, 1995, p.5).  In addition, the costs of low employee morale have been shown to be significant.  Ewton (2007) connects low employee morale with absenteeism costing U.S. businesses $760,000 per year in direct payroll costs.  In addition, the Gallup Organization (2008) estimated that at the time of their study, 22 million disengaged American employees existed, costing the American economy $350 billion per year in lost productivity. Once again the question might arise as to the viability of communication theory to help frame the issue of employee morale and productivity.  

            One way to frame the connection between employee morale and productivity is in terms of social exchange theory which researchers (Tsui et al.,1997) have extended to study the economic and social exchanges between employees and organizations (Iverson and Zatzick, 2011, p. 31).  According to social exchange theory, people will try to predict the outcome of an interaction before it takes place, and then will gauge their relationship behavior through a series of evaluations of perceived rewards and costs of interactions with each other (Griffin, 2009, p.117). When employees experience negative emotions including increased anger, depression, fear, guilt, risk, aversion, vulnerability, or powerlessness (Brockner, 1988, 1992), these negative emotions can impinge upon trust and support social exchanges between employees and the organization (Iverson and Zatzick, 2011, p.32), which, in turn, can lower employee commitment (Applebaum, Evard, & Hung, 1999; Brockner, 1992; Niehoff, et al., 2001).  Although no specific connection is made in the literature between this chain of events from increased negative emotions through lowered employee commitment to decreased productivity, since employee morale includes the negative emotions listed above, one can make that leap. Further study, however, is warranted to substantiate the leap.

Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations

            After having rooted the current economic crisis, employee morale, and productivity in theory, we move next to a discussion of a possible solution to the issue of keeping employee morale at a level conducive to effective productivity.  Although Stanley Deetz admittedly did not construct his critical theory in order to solve issues of morale and productivity within corporations, we believe that his critical theory provides the best available theoretical framework for engaging the problem; therefore, we extend critical theory to touch on these issues. 

Deetz originally developed his theory to explore ways for corporations to ensure financial health while simultaneously increasing the participation of employees (Griffin, 2009, p.262).  It is precisely the employee-participation element within critical theory where the issue of employee morale and productivity can be framed.  Critical theory places a high premium on participatory democracy within corporations that invites open dialogue among the various corporate stakeholders.  Deetz calls this practice codetermination (Griffin, 2009, p. 264). As noted above, Good, Huddleston, and Linz (2006) linked employee morale to a perception of contributing to the common good of a corporation. Employees tend to exhibit higher morale when they perceive that their voice is being heard, and when they perceive they are positively contributing to the corporation’s goals. Deetz, however, takes the issue of employee-corporation forums a step further to include employees’ concerns being represented in joint corporate decisions (Griffin, 2009, p. 268).  Deetz argues, as quoted in Griffin (2009), that increasing democratic participation has positive payoffs, creating “better citizens, and better social choices, [providing] important economic benefits” (Griffin, 2009, pp. 269-270).  It is unclear exactly what Deetz means by “important economic benefits;” however, one can extrapolate from this statement the possibility for an argument for an increase in employee morale resulting in an increase in productivity.  We affirm specific strategies borne of critical theory that increase employee morale and that also have the possibility of increasing productivity.  The next section of this paper focuses on several specific strategies for impacting those employee outcomes.

Strategies for Increasing Employee Morale

We start with a blanket generalization:  any effort to increase employee morale during times of economic crisis ought to focus first on the attitudes and behaviors of supervisors. At first glance, this statement might appear oxymoronic since this study deals with the issue of employee morale and productivity.  However, as stated earlier, employees are affected by the leadership qualities of their supervisors.  In addition, classical management theory offers suggestions that can help managers acquire the tools for dealing with their organizational challenges (Ngambi, 2011, p.762 ).

The first step in the acquisition of such tools is a corporate buy-in to Deetz’ notion of participatory democracy.  This is no small task given the somewhat entrenched top-down nature of communication exhibited in American corporations.  We believe, with Deetz, that employees will work harder, and feel more of a sense of ownership in the business, if they perceive they have an equal voice in major corporate decisions.  Exactly how to accomplish such a task is a question for further study, and is a limitation of our suggested solution.  This part of the solution, however, requires a more bottom-up model of communication rather than a top-down communication model.  Training that effectively uses this bottom-up model of communication is what we advocate.

Working With Others Training Program Model

            In 2003, Byron and Bierly developed an exciting training paradigm using the bottom-up communication model.  Byron and Bierly called their training program Working With Others (2003).  As originally published, the Working With Others (WWO) training program is a one-day training course  designed to “elevate the success of all” (Working With Others, 2003).  Key to the training is the development of a skill set that allows managers and others to express their ideas and to understand the ideas of others in ways that keep all stakeholders connected and moving toward a common goal (Working With Others, 2003). It is easy to see the extension of Deetz’ theory here, in that the training places a premium on participatory democracy.

            The training is conducted in an action-learning format in which the participants resolve problems in a group setting while learning and applying such WWO skills as understanding another’s point of view, representing another’s point of view, clarifying to determine another’s point of view, solving problems while understanding others’ points of view, and hitchhiking—a skill that allows a person to add his or her ideas in a way that “builds better solutions while maintaining positive relationships” (Working With Others, 2003). 

            This WWO model training has proven to be somewhat effective in helping to change the culture in corporations from a more bureaucratic culture to a more inclusive and democratically participative culture.  In one study of twenty-two different training groups, for example, participants indicated that their effective use of WWO skills accounted for 64% of the success they achieved in their jobs (Working With Others, 2003).  Another study indicated that for every dollar spent in WWO training, the business received $10 in measurable benefit (Working With Others, 2003). In addition, Vitalo and Byron (2004) describe a series of coaching sessions for a design management team using the WWO training model.  The head of the design organization conducted a follow-up quantitative study two years after the training sessions. The results showed a 54% improvement in morale and climate as measured on a morale scale, a 10% reduction in absenteeism, and a 28% improvement in productivity resulting in savings of $2.6 million per year (Vitalo & Byron, 2004).

            We like the nascent success of WWO training and think it has potential with some tweaking. Although Vitalo and Byron do not specify the number of coaching sessions provided for the management team in their study, we suggest more research and redesign of the WWO program to account for an ongoing series of training sessions. We would also include more of a full spectrum of employees in the training sessions, since the assumption is that communication would be from the bottom-up.  As a follow-up to the training sessions, we suggest ongoing communication in various forms of media to reach everyone in the company, especially those who are working and cannot be involved in the training sessions. Such media would include webinars, bulletins, memos, posters, and mass emails. We also suggest monthly meetings of stakeholders built on the bottom-up communication model.

Conclusions

            This paper has argued that the current economic crisis is serious and has potential disastrous ramifications for American corporations because of decreased employee morale due to the uncertainty about one’s job which may lead to decreased productivity.  Dealing with the resulting decreased employee morale and decreased productivity is not a pipe dream; it is an imperative.  Selecting the right approach to this very real problem can make or break a company during these very difficult times. 

            This paper has also argued that the right approach to dealing with this problem is to train corporate stakeholders in communication practices that completely shift the corporate culture, a paradigm shift rooted in critical theory’s emphasis on participatory democracy. We recognize that this task is enormous, and may be quite difficult to undertake given the history of the inherent systemic embedding of the bureaucratic, top-down model of communication.  This inherency provides a limitation to this paper’s arguments and to any theoretical application aimed to change corporate culture. Finally, the paper argued for training programs modeled after the WWO paradigm to engage all levels of a corporation to learn and utilize problem-solving skills while simultaneously affirming the ideas of workers from all levels of employment. We recognize that the training we suggest is not a panacea; however, we believe that it applies theory that fulfills Griffin’s (2009) criteria for good theory.  The proof, however, as always, is in the execution.

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