Like many, I have pretty strong opinions about this whole situation. However, I bring it up if for no other reason than to state this fact – Octomom’s got nothing on HR.

It may not be surprising to learn that corporations and their HR departments have been birthing thousands of helpless employees that they are now ill-equipped to support. Please note that I’m not speaking of layoffs. Instead, I have a growing concern regarding the infantilization of today’s workforce.

According to the world renowned Corporate Leadership Council (CLC), there is growing speculation that an incessant focus on employee engagement has contributed to what they called “learned helplessness” among employees. Per CLC Managing Director Todd Safferstone:

“[Leading HR executives] posit that the frequency of engagement surveys and heavily communicated engagement-improvement projects (with their near-exclusive emphasis on the employer’s responsibility to create stimulating, meaningful work environments) may lead employees to assume that the organization alone carries the burden for their engagement.”

So what’s the impact of this problem on a workforce facing unprecedented instability?

“Employees abdicate individual responsibility for their own engagement, instead expecting that engagement is an outcome that should be provided to them by their employers. This infantilization trend, if true, proves especially ominous in challenging economic environments, which require individuals to creatively adapt to changing and challenging circumstances.”

In his 2004 book, Personality and Organizations, author Benjamin Schneider viewed the source of this baby boom through a different lens:

“By the establishment of rules, procedures, and demands on workers that treat them like children, workers then conceptualize themselves as children and then behave like children, reinforcing manager behavior that treats them like children – and the cycle continues.”

Much like Octomom’s newborns, employers are now trying to get employees off of the corporate incubator as quickly as possible. CLC called this process a “return to individual resilience”.

I, for one, would like to know which organizational fertility doctor is responsible for implanting so many embryos in the workplace. What’s more troubling is that HR departments are underfunded and ill-equipped to deploy entirely new communication strategies and expect them to take hold in today’s economy. Employees will view these changes as a continued shirking of responsibility counter to the oft-professed statement that “employees are our most important asset”.

In turn, employees need to mature and take control of their own fate. Maternalistic organizational strategies are largely a thing of the past and this idea of a “return to individual resilience” is a necessity of both corporate and employee survival. Employees must recognize the fact that they are largely on their own and not expect an HR safety net to catch them when they fall.

Like Nadya Suleman, HR will continue to fall under ongoing scrutiny. As a result, the opportunity to communicate your new expectations starts today. This is going to require a highly focused effort to recondition and retrain, but a failure to try to do so may adversely effect employee relations for years to come. Please share your thoughts and let’s keep the conversation going.

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