Turns out workers aren’t all that motivated by posters plastered in the halls that bid them to "Dare to Dream," "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" and "Rise Above the Ordinary." They're just hoping for less lofty feats like burned out light bulbs to get changed.

Yes, they still want to be paid fairly and to take pride in their work. But first they’d like to be able to see what they're doing by getting a light bulb changed in a timely manner. They'd like to have a computer to work on in an office where they're not freezing their butts off. But getting some of those basic things done can mean wading through a bureaucratic chain of command that dilutes productivity and satisfaction, according to one recent study.

The study, commissioned by newScale, a management software firm, found it takes an average 3.3 people to change a burned out light bulb in a large company. One employee who put in a request for a light bulb change at their company said it took six people six days to have the burned out bulb fixed. It took someone to verify the outage, someone to put the work order in to order the bulb, someone to order the bulb, someone to receive the order, someone to install the bulb and someone else to verify completion of the job.

Besides light bulbs, respondents gave what’s commonly known as workplace support services, poor marks when it came to adjusting the heat, computer and network access support and accommodating employees who move their offices.

One of my clients in Columbus, Ohio, who started his new job six months ago is still waiting for his office. For now he's sharing space with another executive. Another client who got a promotion has only been waiting a month for her new office. But in the meantime she spends hours every day shuffling back and forth to get to meetings in the building where she's supposed to be housed.

"It's a political thing," she told me. "My boss is vying for the same office someone else wants." In the meantime, both employees are wasting time as they lie in wait.

When it comes to getting a computer fixed, one worker from the survey said they sat around reading magazines while waiting three days to get the hard drive replaced. Half that time was "waiting for three layers of approvals to have it fixed."

Another employee made three phone calls to the company’s support services department before anyone showed up. And then "within five minutes 11 people showed up to do a two-person job."

Fifty-five percent of surveyed workers estimate they lose less than one hour a month getting computer, phone, lighting or temperature control problems fixed. Twenty percent said they lost one to two hours per month tangled in corporate red tape to get things done. Other areas they say companies could improve in is in getting ID badges or access keys and ordering kitchen supplies.

Economists all around us are saying worker productivity is at one of its highest levels. But it doesn’t seem to have made its way into the corporate bureaucracy. Perhaps creating a less cumbersome system that only involves one person to change a light bulb is a good place to start.

© by Andrea Kay