More than a Paycheck: Why Dignity, Respect, & Community Matter
As I watched one of the two major party’s national conventions, a few words from one of the live speeches reverberated in my mind.
“A job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about respect. It's about your place in your community.”
Is this merely political rhetoric? Or is there something to it?
In the introduction to my book, “Building up without tearing down,” I highlighted that year’s Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, which revealed a larger-than-ever decrease due to a significant decline in U.S. citizens’ Purpose Well-Being.
I then pointed to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, in which less than two out of every ten employees are thriving in the workplace.
Taken together, these two data sets demonstrate that our groups, organizations, and teams are failing to connect our work with our own larger sense of purpose.
The impact cannot be understated.
A 2008 research study of 130,000 people over the course of several decades revealed that individuals bounce back more readily from the death of a spouse than they do from a sustained period of unemployment.
Meanwhile, our workplaces are not always better for our health and well-being. In 2018, Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, published a meta-analysis that showed “workplace environments in the United States may be responsible for 120,000-excess deaths per year,” making workplaces the country’s fifth leading cause of death.
Organizations and workplaces suffer, too. Employee engagement declines, while absenteeism, performance, and turnover increase.
Which brings us back to dignity, respect, and our place in our community. It is undeniable that work is more than a paycheck; the impact on our health and well-being proves it.
At the end of the week, I completed a certification in the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety. As Dr. Clark discussed the fourth and final stage of psychological safety, he observed that less than 8 percent of work teams in the world have sustained the highest stage, Challenger Safety, which welcomes disagreement and dissent when anybody in the group thinks something needs to change.
Eight percent.
The beauty of the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety model is that it not only provides a diagnosis for destructive, dysfunctional, and toxic workplaces, it also provides a clear, understandable prescription to heal and strengthen organizations, beginning with Inclusion Safety, the first stage in which groups, organizations, and teams invite people to join them, accept them for who they are, and satisfy their basic human needs for belonging and connection.
Dignity, respect, and a sense of community are not empty campaign rhetoric, they are vitally important for our health and well-being, both as individuals and organizations.
