“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” ~Henry Ford

The pure satisfaction of doing something right, providing a good service, sorting something out thoroughly the first time.  I can really relate to that, maybe you can too? So why do we exist in a world where someone is constantly looking, that constant scrutiny regarding the quantity, efficiency and profit? How much profit is needed before staff productivity is traded for staff wellbeing?

Public services like education and healthcare are there to provide, and yes they need to be efficient and value for money, but no more than that.  They are not a plaything, a business opportunity or a hedge fund.

If we run a gas boiler or a car to its limits, we expect there to be wear and tear.  The cost of running people to their limit, putting people under constant scrutiny or overworking them to ensure profit and dividends is to stress our communities, our society.

Paul Gilbert’s ‘The Compassionate Mind’ puts it best.  We reduce staffing, ask for more productivity and wonder why people are stressed, exhausted and in work poverty.  Those same staff then rewarding themselves privately with something to temporarily excuse feeling the way they feel e.g. binge a series, shop, overeat. In essence, there has to be SOME payoff if I’m working so hard! That’s the silent transaction we find ourselves in when numbed by a stressful work environment - ‘I deserve this <insert reward for having done nothing but work all week>. Actually, to have something left at the end of the day because we are not understaffed, means we can be better connected with ourselves, have the resources and resilience to be better friends, parents or partners. To work at a steady pace and have time to connect with colleagues as human beings…

To be able to simply say, ‘I have done exactly what my role demands and my work is high quality’ - that’s the best feeling and a place I not only want to work in, but a place I can support as a customer. If you feel as if your workplace expects you to be a dedicated martyr in order to complete more than your contracted hours, then maybe you are also one of the people left rewarding yourself at home just to make things seem worth it?