The SJC management paradigm for the 21^st-century workforce

Leon the Huguenot introduces a new business concept for our time.

What do you remember most about life in a former workplace?  It depends on whether the experience was pleasant or unpleasant. Little things may surface in the memory from time to time, whether you had a tolerable time or not. 

You may remember its coldness – Summer and Winter; an air conditioning system that seemed more attuned to the inhabitants of Neptune than this part of the Earth.  You may recall the coffee provided, tasting more like reprocessed worm compost than any known product of the coffee bush. You may visualise the unusually large cockroaches that would scurry away if you chanced to enter the kitchen after hours. These cockroaches would be so large that their busy footsteps could be heard from the next room.

It may be the people you remember: the bearded chap who had memorised every protocol and procedure in the place and was turning them to his own, rather than the organisation’s advantage; the prim matron whose desk was as tidy as her mind, and as empty; the two members of reception staff who spent 90% of their time talking about boyfriends and the rest of their time transcribing dictation using unknown and unknowable rules of  grammar.

I remember with pleasure a workplace that provided freshly baked scones, jam and cream for morning and afternoon tea.  Nothing prevented your eating your way to a fat, cardiovascular death and enjoying every moment but the last, painful few. 

Nobody ever questioned the benefit of this expensive provision; it was the way things had always been there.  To the staff who munched or, better, wolfed their way through several kilograms of beautifully prepared scones a day, and ten litres of cream, it meant their employer loved them and was like a fussing, enveloping, protective mother. 

Remarkably, with great self-control, I restricted myself to eight scones a day with no more than half a centimetre of jam and cream on each portion but still gained weight.  I left that employer after one year heavier by 15 Kg; an excess that I retained twenty years later. The scone-driven staff morale was the highest I have seen in any organisation.

You read so many management books that talk about ways to achieve improved staff morale.  Many of these are from across the Pacific and the habits and attitudes mentioned are about as transferable to Australia as the mating rituals of Venusians (I shall describe those one day but not in this family-oriented blog).  The authors of such books relate all sorts of convoluted claptrap and coin ghastly neologisms. I shall not do that.

Leaving aside all calorie considerations, all you need for good staff morale is to send around a few kilograms and litres of scones, jam and cream twice a day.  You get a grossly overweight staff, but they are almost eating out of your hand. If I happened to have a jam and cream-oozing scone in my hand, then I have known staff to literally eat out of my hand. It is not an unpleasant experience so long as you wash your hands later. It is also great for bonding.

Despite all approaches to improving staff morale, if your company rents office space from time to time, the building caretaker or owner will show you who’s boss.  Combination locks may be installed on the toilets so that, despite any natural urgency, you still have to contain yourself and type in a ten character password changed randomly from day to day.  The toilets end up being more securely protected than the offices, and while you are bursting trying to make it to the plumbing, someone is helping themselves to your laptop. 

Perhaps the most powerful statement or gesture the building owner can make is to clean the air conditioning filters with solvent while the workforce is in the building.  This occurred in a ten story building where I worked during my twenties.  Even now nobody is quite sure what chemical was used to treat the filters but it had a stench that was unforgettable.  If you can imagine the normal effluvium of a garbage tip, combined with the sickly sweet smell that used to surround lolly counters in department stores, and the stench of horse manure you begin to appreciate something of what I and a few hundred other workers were exposed to that day.  Some vomited; many developed headaches; nobody could stay inside that building.

The building owner explained that it was far cheaper for him to clean the filters on a weekday rather than on a weekend.  He was not at all concerned about the lost productivity and illness or our employees.  He had shown who was in overall control. A thousand scones with jam and cream would not have made any difference on that fateful day (although that approach was never actually tested).

Adverse effects on morale can also come from fellow employees. One of the more enduring stories of my office life was the one directly involving a very close friend of mine – I’ll call her Mary.  She had her own IBM Selectric Typewriter.  These, at the time of their introduction, were considered the last word in typewriting and, truly, there was nothing else to match them.  The output of a Selectric was superb. 

She had just completed a long scientific paper using the Selectric, taken into the office for the purpose.  Now was the time to take it home since these typewriters were valuable and, despite their weight, were prized by office thieves.  Parking was difficult around the building, so I parked in a no-standing area (my usual practice) while she went upstairs to get it.

A very talkative, effusive male colleague – I’ll call him Anton - met her as she was struggling towards the third-floor lift with the weight of the Selectric.  He offered to carry it for her in the lift, and she came down to the ground floor to wait for him. 

After an inexplicable delay, the lift door opened at the ground floor, and Anton burst forth in fear, the typewriter no longer in his hands.  In his addled state, he told Mary the lift had exploded.  To Mary, the lift appeared quite unexploded, its only unusual feature being the IBM Selectric typewriter visible through the upper part of the door.

With great presence of mind, Mary asked Anton to stay where he was with the lift doors open while she climbed the stairs back to the third floor.  As she now expected, the power plug of the typewriter was still protruding through the closed lift doors on that level.  The device was hanging two and a half stories down the lift shaft by its now stretched lead.

She returned to explain the situation to Anton who, with great energy, told her to look after the lift on the ground floor while he retrieved the situation upstairs.  Such was the state of confusion that she did not think to ask him what he was going to do. 

Up on the third floor, Anton used his frenetic, panicking, male strength to pull the lift doors apart sufficiently to free the cord.  On the ground floor, the Selectric, now freed, plummeted to the floor.  Mary thanked Anton somewhat wanly for his assistance and brought the wreck of the Selectric out to my car.

Months later we were able to laugh about the incident, redolent of  Gerard Hoffnung.  After having it checked for electrical safety, Mary found the Selectric could still be used, but it was never quite the same again.       

As you look back, you remember the many fascinating clients you dealt with, the enthralling files to which you added your unforgettable notes, the smells, and the wonderful, freely-given assistance of colleagues like Anton.

But the only practical lesson one can give to have prospective employer – a person who is going to retain a faithful and happy workforce – is to feed the employees scones. These have to be freshly-baked, with the evidence of their freshness permeating throughout the building in a most delightful way. There must be access to liberal quantities of home-made jam and real cream – even double cream (as per James Martin, Yorkshire cook); none of the synthetics will do.

With what I would term the scone/jam/cream or SJC paradigm in place, there is nothing to prevent a happy, loyal and highly-achieving workplace. Even the periodic major cardiovascular crises can be plastered over with – yes – more scones, jam and cream.

We are now set for a new era of calorie-led productivity and you can be part of this.