Is your company a 'burn-out-and-replace' machine?

Francis Wade, Sunday Business COLUMNIST

In prior columns, I argued that local companies suffer from a lack of productivity because their employees give too many "blighs." However, at the other extreme, a few firms have established "burn-out-and-replace" cultures in which employees are treated as expendable objects. Where does this come from?

These companies are often emergency driven, and employees are expected to work overtime and around the clock to fix dramatic breakdowns. As one human-resource professional puts it, "There is an expectation that if you accept a promotion and the Blackberry that comes with it, that you must make yourself available 24/7." She's referring to the unspoken and unwritten rule that you, as a manager, need to be available to respond at all times, or else.

The combination of never-ending emergencies and complete and total availability is stressful for the employee, but executives who create such cultures have trained themselves to see workers as replaceable factors of production. To them, every HR problem can be fixed - by a good headhunter with the right search strategy.

More often than not, this reality was never intended as an established policy. Rather, companies have unconsciously evolved their way to a set of expectations that produce short-term results and long-term damage. In the short term, these expectations produce a company that's good at dispatching emergencies. The troops know how to show up for a Sunday morning breakdown with little notice, ready to pull out the stops and produce miracles. However, when regular work is displaced by an emergency,

which is then abandoned because of another emergency, there is a problem. Overlapping emergencies are a sign of neglected structural problems. No one has the time to attend to them.

Companies that don't recognise this dynamic are doomed to repeat it over and over again with machine-like regularity. Unfortunately, people aren't machines, and you can't simply order a dramatic, save-the-day effort every fortnight. People burn out. You'll know your company is on its way to creating a burn-out-and-replace culture if you see:

1. Simplistic Demands

If your firm routinely asks employees for more results in less time but never provides the productivity training or tools to get it done, then it's well on its way to creating a burn-out-and-replace culture. Repeatedly requiring staff to do the impossible without increasing capacity is a recipe for failure.

2. An Always-Interrupted-by-a-Crisis Mindset

If your firm doesn't allow employees enough quiet, uninterrupted time to do deep work, expect them to be not only unproductive but also dissatisfied. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes offices that are more like emergency rooms than operating theatres - exciting, but ultimately dissatisfying, because the same problems keep cropping up only to be attacked with the same approach each time. Our best work is done with quiet, reflective focus, not frenzy.

3. No PushBack

If the CEO's latest idea preempts every other project (including his pet project from last week) and no one calls a time out, then everyone is in cahoots, unwittingly acting in ways to keep the environment hectic. Before long, people start to ask themselves, "What's the point?" Leave the question unanswered for too long and you lose them.

4. Great People Leave

If great employees leave in spite of the fact that they are producing results and love the work they do, it's a sign that the culture needs to be examined. They can't all be wrong, but burn-out-and-replace companies ignore the collective message they send and instead busy themselves looking for an army of replacements.

Outside the company, a poor reputation develops, as evidenced by a friend of mine who recently thought about applying for a job in such a company. "I'll suffer for two years and then quit to join a normal company. Maybe the extra pay will be worth it. That's what everyone does."

It's so easy to treat people like robots; just another part of the corporate machinery to replace when it breaks. When a burn-out-and-replace company never adjusts its thinking, people start to see the company as a "taker" - one that claws as much as possible from employees while it gives little in return. In the short term, the burn-out-and-replace system might keep companies afloat; in the long term, it will puncture their reputations and sink them.

Francis Wade is president of Framework Consulting. Send feedback columns@fwconsulting.com