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Premium Discourse Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or
sometimes previous / next navigation options. Economy


HAS YOUR BOSS FALLEN PREY TO THE NEWEST CONSULTING SCAM? HERE'S HOW TO TELL IF
YOUR JOB IS ABOUT TO GET A WHOLE LOT WORSE.


Angle down icon An icon in the shape of an angle pointing down. If your boss is
forcing you back to the office, obsessed with buzzwords like 'overemployment,'
or constantly scheduling worthless meetings, they may be in the grip of the
'Workplace Industrial Complex' Rachel Mendelson/Insider

Ed Zitron
2022-10-20T10:42:00Z
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It can be head-spinning to keep up with the sudden trends taking hold in the
workplace: Workers are "quiet quitting." They're also being "quiet fired."
Bosses were scared of workers spontaneously quitting their jobs to join the
Great Resignation; now companies are panicking about "cyberloafing" workers.
Managers and bosses are scrambling to try out various advice, tactics, dubious
solutions, and mind tricks to combat these nefarious developments. 

If all of this seems unnecessarily confusing, that's because it is. An entire
industry has spun up around dissecting workforce shifts and offering solutions
on how to manage employees. While this constellation of columnists, authors,
coaches, and consultants paint themselves as beneficial for both employees and
employers, in reality they've created a profound reality-distortion field around
the workplace. Rather than help to make our lives better, this
"workplace-industrial complex" only provides cover for bad bosses and obfuscates
the ease with which workplace conditions can be improved. By focusing on
tabloid-adjacent stories about "epidemics" and convoluted "solutions," this
self-reinforcing industry makes managers less effective and workers more
miserable.


OLD PROBLEMS, NEW NAMES

The perfect example of the workplace-industrial complex in action is the recent
freakout over "quiet quitting." The term was supposedly invented years ago by an
economist named Mark Boldger, but went viral recently on TikTok. The media
immediately jumped on the "trend," but besides the fact that the term itself is
pro-boss nonsense, the ground on which "quiet quitting" was built was shaky. A
Gallup story claimed that "quiet quitters make up at least 50% of the US
workforce" and tied that conclusion to its own long-standing poll, which began
in 2000, that asks Americans how engaged they are at work. While the percentage
of people that reported being actively engaged at work had declined and the
number of people who were actively disengaged was up, these changes were small
and within the normal range of the poll over time.

Despite the lack of evidence, the idea that there was somehow a new epidemic of
workers checking out was still catnip for the workplace-industrial complex —
which revved up to pump out stories around a specific, pro-boss framing that
implicitly (or explicitly) suggested that workers were bad and lazy. And then
the next phase kicked in: the paranoia that your workplace might be riddled with
quiet quitters "stealing" from the company. And that's how companies end up
hiring consultants who charge $10,000 to $15,000 a day to "help with quiet
quitting." It's the result of an unholy marriage between the $300 billion
management-consultancy and the multibillion-dollar executive-coaching industries
that inflates problems and produces no real solutions, but gives management
something to point at to pretend they care.

All of this to-do is couched in language about helping workers, creating better
managers, and ultimately making the company a healthier place to work. But in
reality, the workplace-industrial complex exists as a self-propelling
public-relations engine for the worst impulses of the management set. Articles
warn people that they will be "quiet fired" if they don't overwork themselves or
suggest that remote workers will be passed up for promotions — no matter how
efficient they are. Instead of doing the hard work to analyze why employees may
prefer remote work or investigate the rot at the core of corporate culture
that's leading workers to shift their priorities, the workplace-industrial
complex instead opts to drum up panic that reinforces the status quo, stresses
out workers, and gives disingenuous bosses the means to justify anti-worker
decision-making.

But the approach of the workplace-industrial complex makes sense when you break
down the incentives. American corporate culture has become so nakedly
exploitative that truly analyzing the workforce and what's happening would make
it clear that many workplace trends are bunk and many workers are mistreated.
Compare how much coverage "quiet quitting" received to the amount of attention
paid to the issue of wage theft — a real phenomenon that costs workers tens of
billions of dollars every year. But that's not what the executives or managers
who pay for subscriptions or hire consultants want to hear. It's easier and more
lucrative to placate a readership of lazy or old bosses and managers than to
directly talk to and write about what's happening to workers. It's a toxic
feedback loop where writers at publications ranging from niche, HR-focused trade
magazines to international business news outlets are all incentivized to
introduce concepts to managers and bosses who want to think they're both smart
and morally good, thus popularizing said concepts and making the publication
money. This self-fulfilling prophecy hamstrings the very companies and managers
it's defending.


SIMPLE ANSWERS, DIFFICULT SOLUTIONS

What's both confusing and annoying about the state of the workplace-industrial
complex is that it's helpful to no one. By justifying managerial paranoia and
reinforcing the perspective of incumbent bosses, the WIC doesn't just screw over
employees — it also makes things worse for employers and maintains a miserable
status quo. 

Take remote work: The dominant thinking from the WIC has been that "remote
workers will get left behind in the hybrid office." While employees report being
happier, more efficient, and having a better life, working from home is bad
because it doesn't let people have spontaneous moments of workplace genius. And
on the sidelines, "remote-work consultants" and "hybrid office experts" have
lined their pockets parroting meaningless platitudes or repacking stale advice.

This framing is on its face anti-worker by assuming that people can't balance
their own days and needs — but it also ends up coddling managers and hurting the
businesses it's supposed to be advising. By giving bosses cover to force people
back to the office, the narrative allows bad bosses to fall back on old habits
instead of doing the work to meaningfully evaluate and understand the workers
they're managing. It also means that businesses lose out on a more diverse
workforce, instead relying on workers who may be good at office politics or
eyewash that comes with being physically present.

And it's not just remote work — so many of the workplace changes framed as
"problems" actually have solutions that are, while difficult, pretty obvious.
Trying to shame or coax workers into doing more — or threatening to lay them off
— won't "solve" quiet quitting. In fact, trying to bully and guilt workers who
are already burned out will only make them less efficient and more depressed to
work for you.


THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM WITH THE WIC

So if the workplace-industrial complex is hurting workers, managers, and
companies, why does it have such a firm grip on our working lives? Because if
you start to pick at the status quo, then our whole relationship to work starts
to fall apart. If we start to accept that it's silly to force people to work in
an office, you have to consider that we've all wasted hundreds of hours
commuting for no good reason. If the solution to proximity bias is for managers
and bosses to find ways to evaluate employee's actual performance outside of
seeing someone in a physical space, we must then make the troubling assumption
that many businesses don't have any idea what the hell is going on. If we
actually try to get to the root of worker disengagement, the conversation would
deeply unsettle wealthy individuals that buy advertising space in business
magazines or speak at "Future of Work" conferences. Tackling these questions in
an honest and fulsome way, instead of just leaning on tired tropes, would tear
at the fabric of both office culture and employment itself, because it then
becomes a conversation about societal abuse and managerial greed.

This is why you never see anti-remote bosses questioned about how many hours
they've spent in the office — that would mean paying attention to the man behind
the curtain, breaking the facade that bosses are doing things because they "know
best." If the writers, consultants, and advisors who make up the
workplace-industrial complex do not reinforce our current employment structure,
then workers may realize that they are selling their labor for money, and that
business can be taken elsewhere. 

The workplace-industrial complex exists — deliberately or otherwise — as a form
of control. By not directly asking bosses to justify their half-baked ideas, by
blindly agreeing that concepts like quiet quitting are valid, by immediately
switching to the perspective that the worker is always trying to get one over on
the boss, they are speaking the truth that those in power want to read.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ed Zitron is the CEO of EZPR, a national tech and business public relations
agency. He is also the author of tech and culture newsletter Where's Your Ed
At. 

ABOUT DISCOURSE STORIES

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