The Living Dead

According to recent research, employee disengagement is becoming a global epidemic. Only one in seven employees worldwide are fully engaged with their jobs and willing to go the extra mile for their companies.

According to David Bolchover, this isn't surprising. Trapped in large, inefficient, process-obsessed, soul-destroying corporations, most office workers are so bored, demotivated and poorly managed that they do everything they can to avoid actually doing any work.

Yet rather than address this vortex of low output, many organisations still cling to the belief that employees are fulfilling their life's destiny through their undervalued corporate existence.

"…many millions…go into a large office somewhere in the world every weekday, they go to their desk at the same time, they leave at the same time. And in between, they do pretty much nothing. Zilch. The Big Zero.

"…Their home lives may be happy and fulfilled, but at work they are the people that time forgot. They contribute next to nothing. They are the Living Dead."

"The Living Dead: Switched Off, Zoned Out - The Shocking Truth About Office Life" cites a raft of statistics to demonstrate just how widespread a problem this disengagement has become.

  • One in three people has taken class A and B drugs such as ecstasy, cocaine, cannabis and amyl nitrate at work
  • One in five US workers has had sex with a co-worker during work hours
  • 70% of internet porn sites are accessed during the 9 to 5 working day
  • One in three midweek visitors to a major UK theme park is pulling a sickie from work
  • In the UK alone, doctors receive 9 million (equivalent to the entire population of Sweden) 'suspect' requests for sick notes each year
  • 14.6% of US office workers surf the web constantly
  • Monday (23 per cent) and Friday (25 per cent) are the days most commonly taken off sick by UK employees. Wednesday is the most rarely taken (8 per cent)

A refreshing antidote to all those unremittingly positive self-development and management books, "The Living Dead" makes a powerful case for the need to improve the quality of middle management and to radically rethink the model that promotes purely on the basis of functional performance in favour of actively developing those who actually have some flair for managing people.

Of course, whether most organisations are ready to hear this – let alone act on it – is very much open to question.