The question opens Olivier Truong and Paul-Marie Chavanne’s La bienveillance en entreprise: utopie ou réalité (Eyrolles). In today’s quest for well-being in the workplace, the notion of benevolence has become an integral part of corporate discourse.
” The experts from the business world have spoken. The solution to the contemporary phenomenon of disengagement in the workplace is called benevolence.
What was once a simple human quality is gradually becoming the modern management mantra of the 21st century. A new ” paradigm shift “, as the phrase goes.
However, the concept remains vague in practice, as situations and requirements vary from sector to sector. In the “muddle” of management advice, Wilo brings you a series of 3 articles on professional benevolence.
Part 1: the return of benevolence.
THE DISEASE OF THE CENTURY : DISENGAGEMENT AND WORK-RELATED STRESS
The growing presence of benevolence in corporate discourse is a response to the growing disengagement affecting modern economies.
According to the annual barometer of quality of life at work (Malakoff Médéric), presenteeism – doing attendance for attendance’s sake – rose from 9% to 16% between 2009 and 2018. The source of disinterest is a job that is ” nervously tiring ” for 70% of those surveyed, and a ” lack of sleep ” for 51% of them.
The reasons for this work-related stress have been well known for some years: a brutal transformation of work organization due to the arrival of new technologies, a context of ultra-competition in a majority of sectors, and increased quantification of performance targets.
I’M NICE BUT I TAKE CARE OF MYSELF
Faced with these upheavals, corporate management has taken an authoritarian turn, focused on increasingly quantified objectives and increasingly dematerialized relations.
The authors of La bienveillance en entreprise call this managerial drift ” the shredding machine “. Sometimes hypercentralized, sometimes hypercompetitive, internal organizations have sacrificed certain psychological limits of the human being on the altar of results.
This sacrifice has been accentuated by the emergence of a “virile” pro-entrepreneurial discourse, where formulas such as “go the extra mile” and “don’t give away anything” must be applied literally in order to “succeed”. In this modern reinterpretation of the self-made man, benevolence seems out of place. Even deleterious.
This cult of results has produced some edifying moments, such as a French CEO declaring ahead of his redundancy plan, ” I’ll make the departures one way or another, through the window or through the door “. And there’s no shortage of examples, from Donald Trump to Elon Musk.
THE RETURN OF BENEVOLENCE
But like all trends, hard or fast management has run out of steam. Burn-out, disengagement, turnover… the upsurge in psychosocial risks has prompted entrepreneurs and managers to change their strategy to ensure a certain stability in their teams while maximizing performance.
A semantic shift has taken place across the Atlantic, particularly among start-ups, where management’s benevolence towards its employees has become an increasingly common element of language. Slow management was born.
With a host of events, workplace design and relaxation facilities, tech companies have opened up a new field of thinking in the corporate world: that of mentally unburdening employees.
The question of the attention paid to employees has also been the subject of development, with a multiplication of points between managers and employees. The discourse, both internal and external, has placed “fulfillment” at the heart of modern corporate concerns, riding the wave of CSR policies. ” Putting people back at the heart of the company ” is the credo of the modern manager.
This benevolent management approach has been the subject of numerous books and articles. We recommend reading at least two of them: The Progress Principle and La bienveillance en entreprise: utopie ou réalité (quoted above). The former is characterized by its methodical approach, aimed at managers, while the latter stands out for its empirical analysis of benevolence (and its absence) in the workplace.
AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER…
On paper, slow management offers all the keys needed to respond to the malady of the century. A qualitative approach to work, non-hierarchical human interaction, flexible working environments… all the ingredients are there to ensure a healthy, efficient work rhythm.
But reality has caught up with the promoters of benevolence. While they spearheaded the movement, tech companies found themselves in the headlines for their bad practices: Apple won for paranoia, Amazon for drudgery and Google for sexism.
Beyond the GAFAs, the entire startup nation has come under fire. In early 2017, The Economist published a scathing piece entitled “The other side of paradise”, denouncing the cynical gap between a discourse that had become ultra-benevolent and practices that were still archaic.
A few months later, Mathilde Ramadier threw a paving stone into the French pond with Bienvenue dans le nouveau monde, a testimonial drawn from her four years of startup experience. In an interview with L’Usine digitale, the author explains her approach:
” I wanted to liberate the word of those (…) whose story is rather one of failure, in this great story of success that startups stage. “
Next week :
Ep.2. Is benevolence a communication lever or a performance factor?
Further information
Corporate benevolence: utopia or reality?
TEDxAtlanta – Teresa Amabile – The Progress Principle
Benevolent management: those who talk about it the most, do it the least
Does benevolence at work really exist?
The book that exposes the dark side of start-ups
