Sunday, October 26, 1997

Workplace managers learning it doesn't hurt to be human

By Carol Kleiman / Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO -- Human relations in the work force sounds like an oxymoron to me in this time of continuing downsizing and lean-and-mean staffs.

But Hollis Chalem-Brown, who teaches courses on human relations, assures me it is not.

Chalem-Brown, a professor and the department chair of office systems technology at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Ill., sees a positive change emerging in employer-employee relations.

The nation's offices and factories are kinder and gentler places to work these days, she says. "Management is asking for feedback, information and input. Employers are showing they know their employees have value, that their decisions are important and that they are an integral part of the company."

This attitude, even though heads continue to roll, is an offshoot of the emphasis on teamwork, says Chalem-Brown, who has a doctorate in vocational, occupational and technical education from Nova University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and a master's in business education from DePaul University in Chicago.

"Good team players do well with managers who use participatory management, let others be involved and who are facilitators rather than dictators," she said. "This kind of management results in a more 'human' workplace."

The professor did a survey in 1997 of 20 large companies headquartered in the Chicago area. "All of the firms emphasize teamwork and, at the same time, helping employees develop their own goals," she said.

The new wave in the workplace, she added, is "management and employees working cooperatively, without management feeling threatened."

Further evidence of the change, Chalem-Brown said, is that "more and more companies are sending employees for training in technical skills and, to cope with stress, are offering employment-assistance programs, flex time, job sharing and even career counseling. That also creates a more humane place to work."

Chalem-Brown's teaching assignments also reflect the change: They prepare students to work in automated offices and include segments on human relations skills.

"Workers need to be prepared for change," she said. "One job leads you to the next and you might be involved in five to seven careers in a lifetime. Each is a stepping stone to the next."

Technology will continue to rule the workplace and bring about change. "But before we launch managers and employees into cyberspace, we need to ground them with good human relations skills," Chalem-Brown said.

Concern about treatment of employees is growing out of intense emphasis on productivity, which "is fully realized only when all of its complements are in place," economists Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison write in The American Prospect.

"The hardware has to work with the software," they said. "The skills of the workforce need to be upgraded. ... Old managerial routines that stand in the way have to be replaced. This all takes time, and now appears to be well along."

But it's also apparent that "old managerial routines" aren't the only things changing in an effort to humanize the workplace. Employees are too.

"Today, it is becoming increasingly clear that to survive in business you need to depend on your own skills and expertise for your identity and security, rather than on a company," write human resource consultants Susan Gould, Kerry Weiner and Barbara Levin in "Free Agents: People and Organizations Creating a New Working Community" (Jossey-Bass, $26.95).

"Companies are realizing ... they must change the way they run their businesses, manage their human resources and define their relationship with the workforce," the authors say.

Perhaps a tightening labor market and the growing attitude of employees that "I won't put up with this anymore," also are precipitating that much-needed human relations in the workplace.