“This is all wrong…How dare you!”

WOULD A GRETA THUNBERG BE WELCOME IF SHE SPOKE AGAINST A TOXIC WORKPLACE CLIMATE SCENARIO?

I’ll start with a disclaimer — Not all workplaces are unhappy employees sitting shoulder to shoulder in rows spread across an open floor. The workplace may actually be reflective of real bonding and raw energy with teams buzzing with ideas, innovations and innate happiness — what it should be, ideally!

Yet there are numerous workplaces where something silently simmers below the sheen.

Imagine a Greta Thunberg at one such workplace. She stands up to the man-on-the-top and says, “This is all wrong…How dare you!” She challenges the status quo. She hates the inertia where people wear smiles on the face but seethe within. She demands the demolition of mediocrity that plagues the workplace. In essence, imagine her as a vocal crusader for climate change at the workplace so that it becomes more equitable, happy and importantly, human.

Now ask — how will her organisation react? Who from her set of colleagues will stand by her? Those colleagues who’ve engaged in vigorous corner conversations lamenting workplace woes and the need to demand change? Those who care but have given up long ago? Or those who never bothered in the first place? No one can tell. Surprises can spring up at the last minute — because you never know who will take a seat at the centre-table when the time demands

And what will business leaders from other organisations who hear of her ‘heroic’ say? Probably, in our times, some will portray that they want to listen to her. Some will stress the need for more individuals like her in organisations across the industry. Some may even entertain her over chai and cookies, and term her ‘courage’ as ‘inspiration’.

REALITY CHECK — In reality, do workplaces and leadership really care when a Greta-like personality rises passionately in their fiefdom? Will they label what they see as ‘inspiration’ when it happens to other organisations as ‘impudence’ when it hits them? Will courage be seen as brazen outspoken-ness? Will it be hypocrisy at its zenith and empathy at its nadir?

The above are only hypothetical questions and scenarios. But it is worth pondering over because many workplaces are toxic — toxic physical conditions, toxic processes, toxic people, etc.

But that is too not the essential problem. The essential problem is when we become accepting of such scenarios. Metaphorically put, we stop questioning the quality of the air we are breathing in with the view that, at least we are being allowed to breathe. How much more wrong can it get?

And woe to the young ones, the fledgeling ones — who dare to question. But they are the ones who do not have an iota of doubt in their belief to build a better place. They never have this thought of — ‘When you are the lowest in the pecking order, does your voice have to be the lowest too? Or is silence better?’ In ways, it is a demonstration of democracy at its best irrespective of age and work experience when they speak up.

What’s more is those hollow ideas, pointless executions and empty words that so many organisations and leaderships exhibit is something that the Greta-kind of people in workplaces will refuse to buy — at least after a threshold.

So I won’t be surprised if — to rephrase slightly Greta’s words at the UN in the corporate context — tomorrow’s business leaders will have to listen to:

“We are at the beginning of a mass burn-outs, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal growth. How dare you!

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions?

You are failing us…”

To sum up, with technology, voices like Greta become powerful. And it is a blessing that mother Earth has got voices of support against the climate change afflicting not only her but something that will hurt us as humans. Corporate climate change, too, needs its voices. The reason is only one — We are human. Work is essential. Happiness, however, is crucial for survival (and sanity).