The Deloitte Report: Workers Overwhelmed By Incompetent Bosses
The Deloitte Report is an interesting study on human capital. It is produced every year and is based on research within companies. In recent editions he has been pointing out a phenomenon that is growing: workers are increasingly overloaded and bosses behave in an increasingly incompetent way in the face of this evolution.
We all assumed that, with the development and massification of technology, work would gradually become lighter and more agile. However, the opposite happened. The quality of employment declined and the number of working hours grew considerably.
The Deloitte Report has repeatedly outlined the concept of the “overwhelmed worker”. It refers to the worker who is constantly bombarded with job information. You can receive messages 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Look 150 times at your email or your cell phone to see if there is anything new. Your stress is always on top.
What the Deloitte Report says about work overload
It seems as if working hours have become a relic of the past. According to the Deloitte Report, a good part of the bosses do not care about the rest of their workers. For them, only the urgency of the tasks counts. So they have no problem submitting a new assignment at 2 in the morning. They are urgent and need their employee to get to work as soon as possible.
The worker feels that he must be attentive all the time to the new information that may come to him. You must know it, filter it and manage it continuously. He practically never stops working. You have to live according to what your boss needs.
As if this were not enough, we are also witnessing an unprecedented precariousness of work. They call it “outsourcing” or “uberization. ” Progressively, companies hire more workers who simply sell their services, but do not have any job guarantee. And workers always feel on the verge of losing these contracts, which is why many times they do not dare to question these policies.
The proliferation of incompetent bosses
According to the Deloitte Report, bosses have grown increasingly incompetent. And precisely one of the ways in which this incompetence is most reflected is in the incessant bombardment of information towards its workers. This does not reflect commitment, but rather a lack of efficiency.
Company managers are also overloaded with information. But their role as leaders forces them to be a first quality filter. Also to manage that information in such a way that it increases productivity, not overload it. It is as if they do not understand that an overwhelmed worker performs less, instead of being more efficient.
Incompetence is also revealed in an insistent tendency to delegate complicated tasks. If something distinguishes a leader, it is precisely his ability to solve difficulties. However, many bosses today resolve them by delegating them, even if these decisions are very important. His thing is to get rid of problems, often not so that they are solved, but to have someone to blame in case things do not go well.
The serious effects of this situation
The Deloitte Report indicates that around 57% of the workers interviewed feel overloaded. And that same percentage affirms that their bosses do not know how to manage information. They claimed that they are victims of bland orders and counter-orders all the time. Your main motivation for working is need.
There is another interesting piece of information in the Deloitte Report. They indicate that around 100 million work-related messages can be exchanged in a single day. But, according to their estimates, only 1 in 7 communications is relevant. The rest corresponds to trivial information and follow-ups. Still, workers must keep an eye on their mobile device or computer to keep up with their work.
The data indicates that, on average, workers spend a quarter of the day reviewing the information sent to them. In economic terms, this can cost companies as much as $10 million a year. And ultimately, productivity suffers.
The solution to all this is common sense. According to the Deloitte Report, the keyword is: simplify. It is simply a matter of respecting working hours, first of all. Then, to manage the information in a more efficient way: say more in fewer messages. And finally, to understand that work breaks and free time are the best guarantee of productivity for a worker.
