This post is part of the Bible and Business series on Christian ethics for Christian Business Owners.
In this scenario, an owner expects the employees to work sixty, seventy, or even eighty hours each week without additional compensation, such as bonuses or stock options, for working longer hours.
Description of the Problem: Some owners naturally work sixty or seventy hours weekly. They enjoy their work, and they cannot imagine doing anything else. These owners willingly miss family, church, or community events to do emails, read contracts, meet with customers, or assess a new vendor. These owners have few friends outside of work relationships and take family relationships for granted. Social plans are rarely made, and when such plans exist, these owners often uncommit at the last minute because of a “fire” or “pressing issue” at work.
These owners save on payroll costs by expecting employees to work as hard as the owner. Selfless dedication is the unwritten expectation for all employees to the company and the owner. These owners “routinely overload their subordinates, contact them outside of business hours, and make last-minute requests for additional work. To satisfy those demands, employees arrive early, stay late, pull all-nighters, work weekends, and remain tied to their electronic devices 24/7. And those who are unable—or unwilling—to respond typically get penalized. By operating in this way, owners pressure employees to become what sociologists have called ideal workers: people totally dedicated to their jobs and always on call. The phenomenon is widespread in professional and managerial settings…In such places, any suggestion of meaningful outside interests and commitments can signal a lack of fitness for the job” (Reid and Ramarajan, 2017:41).
When owners drive their employees to the point of the employee having little work-life balance coupled with an expectation of complete allegiance, then the owner is receiving the productivity of more than one employee from one employee. This payroll cost savings benefits the owner at the expense of the employee.
Type: This type of ethical decision is a Moral Temptation and Ethical Trade-off
Filter: Demanding sixty or seventy hours per week of work from an employee week after week is stealing from that employee by robbing the employee of personal time. In an indirect sense, it is also stealing from another person who could have been employed to perform the current employee’s overload work. The owner’s demands are an unloving act toward the employee, and it is a form of coveting what another person has to wrongfully make it your own and use it for your own purposes: personal time.
An owner who creates a high-intensity workplace and demands full allegiance to the owner’s whims supplants the role of Yahweh in the employee’s life, which is a form of creating a god (the owner) before God. Finally, when the owner drives employees this hard, the owner’s drive betrays a lack of contentment of what God has already given the owner and a lack of dependence on God to supply the owner’s needs. As a result, the owner fails to fulfil the owner’s stewardship role before God.
Correct Decision: The correct ethical decision is for the owner to hire enough staff to (reasonably) distribute the workload across enough positions to create a healthy work-life balance for each employee. The owner should cease being the organizing principle in the employee’s life and encourage primary allegiance to God rather than the owner and the business. The owner needs to learn to be content with lower profits and higher payroll costs.
Bill English, Publisher
Bible and Business
Sources:
Reid, E. and Ramarajan, L. 2017. Managing the High-Intensity Workplace. In: HBR’s 10 Must Reads for New Managers. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press
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