National Clothesline

I have always been fascinated by the psychology and dynamics of the workplace.

I thought about it the other day when I read that the employees of Starbucks are called “baristas.” Employees of Walmart are called “associates,” as are employees of many other companies. The psychology, as I understand it, is that the term “employee” connotes less warmth and collegiality than associate or barista.

Titles have always been an interesting topic. At my firm, I am the corporate secretary, which does not connote any real authority. At many banks, the title vice president is shared by many people who are not really corporate officers. In the Teamsters Union, the secretary treasurer on the local level outranks the president.

It used to be that the president was the highest ranking corporate position, but you never really know anymore if the CEO, coo, chairman of the Board, or Big Barista is the top cat and, therefore, outranks the president.

I am a big fan of treating employees with dignity and respect, and with compensating them based on their value to the organization. I wonder sometimes, however, if calling someone an associate makes him or her feel better about punching a time clock, solving an impossible problem, or covering up a foul-up committed by a more senior associate.

From what I understand about human nature, giving someone a meaningless title he never expected has little effect on his positive feelings, but failing to give someone a meaningless title he wanted can be a very negative thing.

Legally, supervisory titles can come back to haunt an employer charged with legal responsibility for some rank-and-file employee with a title.

While normally a harmless “feel good” action on the part of an employer, conferring a title should never be done without some consideration of the effect the title will have on the other employees, as well as a judge deciding to hold the employer responsible for the titled employee’s actions.

The psychology of the workplace is something employers frequently overlook in making decisions. Even when they do, they often miscalculate how employees will react. When this happens, companies run the risk of an unhappy workforce, and such a workforce is never a good idea. The problem is that no one really can predict human nature one-hundred percent of the time.

There are, however, certain maxims of the workforce and human nature that all employers should keep in mind.

First, there are no secrets in the workplace. Employees have a way of finding things out, either directly or intuitively, and a company should not expect a secret to remain a secret very long.

Second, the only way to insure that employees get accurate information, and not rumors, is to give them the information yourself. Employers who communicate with employees, whether the information is good or bad, do better than those who do not.

Third, there are almost always unanticipated consequences of a managerial decision. That means that employers must thoroughly consider the impact of their decisions.

In addition, employers must try to understand human nature to make sure they fully appreciate the consequences of their actions. In study after study, people predict incorrectly how others will react to a particular situation. Recently, I learned of two such studies.

In the first, two individuals were separately interviewed by the same person, and one was critiqued harshly while the other was not critiqued at all. Both individuals were asked to read the critique, then report how they felt about the interviewer.

Surprisingly, the one getting the bad critique felt better about the interviewer than the one who just read the other person’s negative critique. To me, this demonstrates that employees may react better to being disciplined than the employees working next to them will when they hear about it. I would not have guessed that.

In the second study, people were asked whether individuals were happier following a major disaster or a series of minor ones. Most guessed that people would be happier enduring minor inconveniences, but they were wrong. The more severe the problem, the more the human brain tries to put a positive spin on it.

Now, that’s not the case for everyone, but in most cases, people try to see a silver lining inside a dark cloud. This phenomenon shows to me that employees might react better to hearing bad news all at once than experiencing a series of unexplained cut backs and belt tightening.

Getting back to titles, I suspect that most people would think they would be happier with a modest raise than a new, more important sounding title. I also suspect that studies would show that many people will, in fact, be happier in the long run with the important title than the modest increase. Why else would we have bank vice presidents and baristas?

While I would not suggest going back to school to take a course in psychology, I would suggest reading a book now and again on management techniques and human nature. It could help you consider all the angles and avoid unintended negative consequences. Your baristas and associates might be happier for it.