Morale. I think maybe I need to order me some of that. I have been feeling a little peckish and out of sorts lately. What with the endless pandemic and all the negative news that’s been going on? Also, by the sounds it, the GNWT should order several truckloads of it. Some for the staff at the hospital, some for the legislative assembly and a whole bunch for the civil servants because one hears a lot of rumors about seasonal discontent.
One of the problems with morale is that if it isn’t cared for and nurtured properly, it can go bad over time and turn sour or rancid. Then it can be darned hard to revitalize it. If a truck load of morale magically appeared for the government, I hope it comes with a user’s manual because it would appear they don’t know how to look after the little they do have left.
Apparently, morale building is not something universities bother to teach our future managers, bureaucrats, leaders, and politicians. That could explain why they are not so good at it. So maybe the GNWT needs to teach an in-house course to all politicians and bureaucrats before they assume their positions. Imagine if senior bureaucrats got half their pay as their base salary and the other half was dependent on the morale rating their staff gave them. You can bet they would suddenly take the morale of their employees a whole lot more seriously.
Morale, not to be confused with morals or morel mushrooms, is basically how happy people are with their jobs, their workplace and management. The better the morale the more productive people tend to be and the better they do their jobs. Bad morale can lead to people quitting, being angry, sullen, and unproductive. In extreme cases it can even lead to things like sabotage and vandalism.
You learn a lot about it in bush camps because you are isolated. There was a big camp out on the barrens run by a program manager who had the reputation of being the most despised party chief in the North. He apparently said he didn’t care about his employees and whether they liked him or not. Morale was their individual responsibility, and none of his concern. He had a job to do, and he would do it regardless of what people thought of him.
Apparently, he and one of the contract helicopter pilots, who was about to leave, had a long-standing personality clash. In the morning, the pilot was packing up his helicopter and about to leave when the boss went to the outhouse to do his morning meditation. The pilot lifted off, took the helicopter behind the outhouse and with his skid pushed it over onto its door with the now screaming boss still inside. Several members of the camp who witnessed this event, disappeared but eventually a few who remained, did stand the outhouse back up again, trying not to smile while they did it.
That’s the sort of thing that can happen when morale gets really, really low.
There is a quote by Albert Einstein I quite like, “Stay away from negative people, they have a problem for every solution.” I like that quote because often those in power seem to dither around inventing excuses, why nothing can be done.
Not only is an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure but big problems are often made up of a whole bunch of little problems that have been ignored and need fixing.
We used to have a saying in the bush that also applies to most bureaucracies. There are five phases to a project. Enthusiasm. Disillusionment. Search for the guilty. Punishment of the innocent and finally, reward for the non-participants. So, I think the GNWT and the political powers that be, need to order a few truckloads of morale and start fixing problems rather then just creating more. It could even be their Christmas present to their staff. A truckload of morale, delivered ASAP.
