Today is World AIDS Day.

The HIV epidemic is mind-boggling; 33.4 million are infected globally.

In Australia, over 16,700 Australians are living with HIV, with an estimated 20 new infections daily. According to a research by LaTrobe University 54.7% of  people infected with HIV are in paid employment, with the majority in full-time work (37.4% of total sample). With the high incidence of HIV cases, it’s likely that workplaces will have someone afflicted with the disease.

Fortunately we have very few incidences of HIV related discrimination in our country. Hopefully, people infected with HIV will never have to face discrimination of any sort at work. Besides, employers have no choice, infected workers are protected under various laws (e.g. The Anti-discrimination Act (NSW) and the Disability Discrimination Act) against discrimination.

On this day dedicated to highlight the scourge of the AIDS epidemic, it’s worthwhile to revisit the issue of discrimination and the rights of employees.

• Employment Rights of infected employees
• Anti-Discrimination Board
• Discrimination in the Workplace 

It’s common knowledge that workplace disengagement is rife in organisations across Australia. What can an employer do?

Gallup recommends employees be asked 12 questions, as follows: 

• Do you know what is expected of you at work?
• Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
• At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
• In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
• Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
• Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
• At work, do your opinions seem to count?
• Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
• Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
• Do you have a best friend at work?
• In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
• In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

The argument goes – the higher an employee score on the 12 questions the better the performance.

The real meat of the argument is that questions be asked in the first place (‘how are you?’ works well with me). The act of asking encourage two-way interactions; any day that is better than a rigid ‘do as I say’ style. 

It seems to me that the answer to many workplace problems begins with asking questions and listening.

Are you asking questions?

Australians are a busy lot.

Majority (69%) admit to leading busy professional lives (second only to Americans).

As advances in technology continues unabated, the ‘always on’ lifestyle becomes more and more entrenched in our every day lives. Which, one would thought, would be viewed as a negative development. Surprisingly, a study by Frost & Sullivan found Australians professionals do not mind the 24/7 lifestyle. In fact, tools which rendered them to be always connected are credited for enhancing work-life balance, freedom, time-management and getting things done.

Titled ‘Meetings Around the World II”, the Frost & Sullivan study also found that Australian organisations adopt technology quickly in work environments. In fact, 59% indicated they are open to trying new ways to communicate. If you can read beyond the fact that the study is sponsored by CISCO and Verizon , two organisations who stands to benefit from increasing adoption of new collaboration tools, the study is actually a very insightful look at rapidly changing workplaces and individual work styles.

How has technology changed your work lifestyle?

87% of Australians are stressed. The main culprit – work!

A study by Lifeline found ‘73% of working Australians indicating they were stressed about work and 17% saying they were very stressed about it’.

Of course, it’s in employers’ interests to tackle workplace stress. A study by Medibank estimated stress related absenteeism cost the country $14.81 billion in lost productivity each year.  And, indeed it’s in every employee’s interest to manage stress levels.

Make sure you participate in the Stress Down Day.

There is a real disconnect between employers and employees on how they view social networks. A new study by Deloitte highlighted the following:

• 53% of employees say their social networking pages are non of their employers’ business
• 40% of managers disagree, and 30% admit to informally monitor social networking sites
• 61% of employees say that even if employers are monitoring their social networking profiles or activities, they won’t change what they’re doing online

It seems that an increasing number of people do not care about the consequences of their actions on social networks (refer graph).  Why is this? Amongst other things, I suspect two trends. One, social media and networks are deeply ingrained in our daily lives that it is almost impossible to separate personal affairs and work activity. Attempts at hiding or separating the two are increasingly useless.

Second, we live in an age defined by corporate failure, greed and in many cases outright dishonesty. Reputations are in tatters. The idea that employees are expected to be blemish free, when employers themselves are far from squeaky clean, does not cut anymore. My hunch is that the vast majority of job seekers, specially Gen Y, see the employee-employer relationship in a very different light.  The dominant thinking is nearer to ‘we both have flaws, let’s learn to get along’.

While I am not against drafting social network policies in the workplace, or the importance of proper background checks, obsessing on employees personal lives or behaviour on social networks is a waste of time and resources, and at times counter-productive.

My point is, we live in a hyper connected world, where barriers to information are crumbling rapidly. Inevitably, both employers and employees will increasingly know more about about each other. It is a two way street. While information about people are easily available, at the same time, more than ever, it is increasingly difficult to hide a dodgy service, a crummy product or a bad employer.  Rather than worry too much about the pitfalls of social networks, companies ought to spend their precious resources on delivering quality services or products, improve their ‘employer brand’ and obsess on creating workplaces that will attract good people. If I were an employer I would worry more about being googled than googling job seekers.