Are you worried about your job security? The company you're working on may want to make you feel that way, but staff worried about what the future holds for them will be worse off in the long term, says journalist Alena Desic.
Are you concerned about late receipt of your salary? Anxiety may make you worse off in your career. The anxiety of being dismissed from work and the sense of helplessness caused by changes in workplace practices and the lack of clarity of your career are all factors that can affect your performance and even ruin your morale.
However, creating a deliberately unsafe work environment is a method used by some companies by imposing additional demands and putting pressure on staff to do more. These companies mistakenly believe that this will stimulate performance.
There are various forms and forms of this kind of mismanagement, including the rule used by Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, which calls for the separation of 10 percent of the staff with the weakest performance.
Another form is known as "rise or fall", a strategy used by some companies in the field of law and consulting, which requires the removal of poorly performing employees who do not advance in their jobs or do not get promotions to rise the career ladder.
Former GE Electric's legendary president, Jack Welch, has called for the use of a separation base of 10 percent of the most vulnerable employees, a system also known as the "Wards" class.
But by keeping employees in this state of constant vigilance and instilling workplace insecurity, employers often do more harm to their employees, rather than motivating them, says William Schumann, president of the Mitters Trading Group, a research firm. In management in Somerville, New Jersey.
"When companies use job security to threaten, instead of using stimulus, it's counterproductive, because staff lose their sense of commitment," says Welch. This method can destroy confidence in the workplace.
The threat of losing a job is not welcome at all. But, is there an optimal level of concrete job security that can make you do your best at work? Is there anything you can do if it's just part of the mechanism? The answers to those questions involve some complexity.
Decode functional security
While many employees are concerned about job instability, how and why these concerns are due to personal experience.
Work-related anxiety depends on the nature of your occupation, your role, your financial position, and even your location in the company. For example, workers in Europe have strict protection in terms of employment reduction compared with their counterparts in the United States.
In Belgium, employees who have spent three years at work should be given notice three months before any termination of their services compared to nearly two weeks in the United States.
For workers, the lack of job security refers not only to the threat of dismissal, but also to concern about the future role of the job, which is called a lack of quality job security, said Tin Vander Elst, a psychologist at the University of Leuven Catholic in Belgium.
In Belgium, for example, Van der Elst found that while only six percent of workers expressed concern about losing their jobs, 31 percent of workers feared that negative corporate changes would affect their working conditions. All these concerns can affect performance.
Anxiety in small doses
There is no doubt that the prospect of job loss and job uncertainty cause concern. But small doses of anxiety about job security may give workers an additional incentive to improve performance in the short term, says Schumann.
He adds that some concerns about job in times of downsizing, for example, can make people work more seriously and efficiently to prove their value to management. "If employees think they can get the job done, they will make a real effort," says Welch.
While there are no scientific studies of this phenomenon, some research suggests that stress in the workplace can help you in some cases to focus better on tasks and increase efficiency.
However, very stressful working conditions are not at all good for long-term performance, says David Kreilman, a human resources consultant in Toronto, Canada.
"You should not put someone in such circumstances if you can avoid it." People with severe stress are more likely to have a kind of mental or moral retardation and are harder to deal with as members of the staff than those who do not. Such pressures.
Long-term problems
The lack of job security affects not only health and performance, but also physical problems that can last for years after leaving the job, says Vander Elst, who in a recent study indicated that workers who reported suffering from high levels of job instability They felt depressed for about three years.
"The suffering from these high levels of job insecurity was a turning point for depression."
Even if some people do improve with little suspicion, those who feel insecure at work are in a completely inappropriate situation, she says. So the notion that a certain level of insecurity can make employees more productive is a misconception.
For workers who want to feel more comfortable at work, Schumann suggests finding companies and managers who focus on the principles of equity and transparency in the workplace, which can help you work even better in times of uncertainty.
"Regardless of where you work, you're going to be associated with working better if you feel that your employer treats you and treats your colleagues equally," says Sheiman.
Ultimately, there is no guaranteed way to make you feel safe in your business. If this affects your performance, it's time to write down your feedback on that topic.