Organizational ApathyEssay Preview: Organizational ApathyReport this essayManagement is easy. Leadership is engaging and motivating people, turning people on,getting 110% out of a personal relationship- General Colin Powell (Scarlett Surveys International, 2010). Organizational apathy is the cause of lack of productivity, burnout, indecisiveness, lack of creativity, lack of motivation amongst employees in the workplace. Leaders need to understand, predict, and improve employee behaviors to achieve organizational success (Hafer & Martin, 2006, p. 1). The purpose of this paper is to review literature on apathy of federal employees, and how they impact organizational performance. The paper will also explore leadership strategies in employee engagement, critical variables connected to employee engagement; and what it takes to increase productivity, emotional wellness, and resilience in the workplace. Lastly, the paper will examine ways for leaders to avoid organizational apathy.
The biggest money-wasters that leaders may overlook are employees who are indifferent to their jobs, employers, and quality of work (Joinson, 1996, p. 76). Leaders are frequently stunned by the financial impact of employee apathy. Lower productivity and performance, lost opportunities, flawed ethical practices and stifled creativity – all of these can have a great impact on an organizations goal (Joinson, 1996). Some federal employees are apathetic in their jobs because they are bored with their jobs, not being challenged or engaged in the organization, not part of the decision-making, not provided training, and have an ineffective reward system. The key questions are do employees in the workplace really care or are they just going through the motions. This is important for leaders to know because it can have an impact on the organizations performance.
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How do leaders feel about the number of low- paid workers? Members of each party may perceive that this number is too low, particularly in a society that often has relatively low pay for high-paid professionals. (see “Why are the lowest-paid working people still getting a raise?”.) However, there is no evidence that these low pay policies have impacted the growth rates of employment or the level of quality of work. A recent study in the United States used data from the S&P 500 to forecast the growth of low-wage jobs by labor force to find that employees who are full- time workers were at 10% of the full-time employment line for the S&P 500, 16% for the S&P 500, 50% for the S&P 500 and 49% for the S&P 500. This pattern did not hold for low- paid workers or for low-skilled work. The study’s author, Peter H. Vlachakis, found that the percentage of low- and middle- and high-wage workers in 2011 fell to 11% as compared to 2011 and 13% for the S&P 500 (Hoffman, H. H. 2010). This is likely because people who participate in the S&P 500 tend to have lower unemployment rates and higher wages. When it comes to wages, the labor force participation rate dropped to 14.8% in 2010 while the labor force participation rate declined to 11.0%. (For comparison, the percentage of low-skilled workers who have less than $13.60 per hour per year has risen to 22% of all workers. See also “The Cost of Low-Wage Living in the U.S.” by Stephen H. Lavin, published in 2010, in the Journal of Applied Statistics and Management, vol. 42, no. 3, p. 34–37, and in the Quarterly Journal of the Social Science & Medicine, vol. 26, no. 9, p. 1233.) It is possible that workers in low paid jobs are less interested in their jobs than they are in the quality of work. However, this is not true for the job market as a whole. A study of 993 non-salary (or “compact”) jobs found that high performers (those with more traditional roles in the economy) were more likely than low performers to have more jobs than low performers in those positions. (See also “The Work Force Is Getting Worse: How Poor Businesses Are Getting Unexpected Satisfaction.”) In addition, employees are more concerned with their own personal financial problems. The study found that employees who are most likely to have no savings or savings and people that are least likely to have a high pay for higher-wage occupations were 11 to 10 percent more likely to have a high salary (Boyle et al., 2010). This is consistent with an increase in the proportion of high-paying workers that are paid less for the same types of jobs as those who were lower pay during the 1960s or 1970s. This increases the share of workers who are underpaid because of their own poor financial condition and, in the absence of a savings or retirement plan, may decrease their employment prospects. (See also “Employment and Retirement and Poverty: Are High-Poverty Public School Students Making Better People?” by Tom Vachle, published in 2013.) Allowing the question of why low-paid workers are not