Adele's LIS 271 Blog

Tired of hearing about the bad economy and unemployed workers? Well get used to it, and while you are at it go ahead and add the employed workers to the list. Librarians should be prepared for the next wave of information seekers: the workers who are left behind. These are the workers who are still employed, and who are being told that they are the lucky ones. These are the workers who get to do the extra work since the company has downsized. These are the workers that are having benefits and rights taken away, while getting more and more duties added to their job descriptions. These workers are the ‘lucky ones’.

Are corporations playing fair? Or are they using the bad economy to some extent as an excuse to further maximize profits and workers output? According to Art Wittmann, “what beat-down, disillusioned, burned-out employees need today is a belief that management knows that “business as usual” just plain sucks right now, and that it has a vision for how things will be different – and better – in the future.”

Wittmann suggest three things that management can do to help alleviate this situation.

1. Don’t try to BS your way out of an honest appraisal of the state of your business and its near-term prospects.
2. Start talking about what the future improvements will look like. Don’t make hiring promises that you won’t be able to keep.
3. Start to plan how you’ll do things differently from and better than your competition.

Librarians can also help this burnt out workforce by preparing them to search for new jobs or explore new careers via Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter or LinkedIn.  Perhaps even some of these newly learned Web 2.0 tools could help them in them become more efficient in their current jobs, making their life just a little bit easier, while at the same time adding some valuable skills to their resume.

Hopefully corporate America will become sensitive to their employees’ plights, and take sincere actions to improve, or at the very least acknowledge, their employees stressfully overloaded situations. Companies not addressing these potentially hazardous situations have a very short sighted stance, and are endangering everyone’s future by ensuring an overburdened and burnt out workforce.

References:

Wittmann, A.. (2009, August). ‘I’d Rather Work Anywhere Else’. InformationWeek,(1239), 46.  Retrieved November 18, 2009, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1862293081).