Most American workers want to put in a good day’s work. There is a deep desire created in all people to be productive, creative, innovative, inventive, and to leave this world in a better condition. However, our American corporate culture is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of employees and has fallen far from the mark. Rather than working to win the hearts and minds of employees, corporations are driving a stake in the soul of the American worker.

After a two-year feasibility study, the non-profit organization Winning Workplaces identified in their Case Prospectus the cruel realities we face in our current work environment.

• The American workplace, a source of our nation’s strength, is also at the root of considerable burdens for many individuals, families and communities.
• Trust and respect in the workplace is breaking down, with less than 40% of employees believing or trusting their senior managers.
• Employees are feeling less control over their jobs.
• Opportunities are shrinking in the workplace.
• Employees are often forced to choose between work and family due to company demands.
• Workers are becoming more detached from their employers due to globalization and outsourcing.
• Work is dominating the life of the American worker.
• Employees spend, on average, 46 hours a week on their job, not counting time online at home or linked to a BlackBerry away from the office at night or on weekends.
• When jobs are satisfying and challenging, it invigorates employees in other areas of their lives.
• When the workplace deflates, frustrates and demeans people, workers are robbed of their energy and desires needed to optimize performance as spouses, parents and citizens.
• Up to 66% of employees say they regularly experience high levels of stress on the job, a significant and growing public health concern leading to drug abuse, mental health problems, accidents and absenteeism.

There is no better time than today to help companies create great workplaces.

Our citizens need great workplaces to be fully productive. Our children need their parents to work in physically and mentally healthy work environments to prevent toxic workplace residue from coming home. Our society needs great workplaces to reap the rewards of successful employees and organizations. Non-profit organizations benefit from the increased volunteerism that happens as a result of great work environments. The health of our nation depends on the creation of great workplaces where employees are treated respectfully. And business owners need great workplaces to survive global competition and enjoy long-term financial success.

Organizations where the employees have identified their workplace as a great place to work are far superior economically and socially. The Great Place to Work Institute has shown in its research it pays to provide a great workplace.

Win the hearts and minds of your employees and you will outperform your competition and increase the return to your shareholders.

There is an erroneous business idea that one must be edgy, short-tempered and tough to get things done. Here’s a news flash for those who have operated under this paradigm; jerks are out - nice people are in. Toxic workplaces are out - great places to work are in.

For a business to enjoy long-term financial success, leaders and employees must restrict their inner evil desire to beat people down in order to lift their egos up. Long-term success is derived from treating people kindly and respectfully. Work with others the way in which you want to be treated. We have known this truth since grade school but some difficult personality types have suppressed this right way to live and work.

I won’t return to a hotel where the staff is rude. Although I usually stay at a hotel for only one or two nights, I will not go back if one employee is rude to me. Yes, one employee!

A restaurant can have the best food in the city but if their employees are edgy or rude, I won’t go back. I don’t need the aggravation.

We avoid cranky people in the service business. How about when you are looking for an employer? When you are interviewing, researching and selecting a new employer, you may work for the company ten years! You want to know if that place is filled with friendly or angry people, don’t you?

In the very near future, it will be common for employees to avoid companies whose leaders and/or staff are rude. Toxic work environments will be measured and reported online. The dirty secrets that companies used to conceal will soon become public knowledge.

The work climate is changing in a positive manner because great workplaces are part of a healthy workplace component. Employee productivity is directly tied to environmental factors, including the toxicity of the culture. In the near future, jerks will find themselves out of business or unemployed.

Before going on vacation, my wife researches hotels and resorts by utilizing www.tripadvisor.com. This valuable site rates a destination’s hotels, from best to worst. The site provides actual guest photos and comments. The site has saved us from bad properties a number of times. It prevents us from selecting the wrong hotel. In many cases, TripAdvisor.com has helped us select the best hotel.

Similarly, in the distant future, job applicants will likely be granted access to a website that rates employers from best to worst. Why? The best employers need a place where their excellent qualities can be showcased. Companies who employ bullies and tyrants need to be made public so the best people don’t take positions in toxic work environments.

This will be a win-win situation. Great workplaces will win by showcasing the actual work experience of their employees. Employees will win by having the tools to prevent a job change to a toxic work environment.

One by one, a long line of unsuspecting recruits accepted, and eventually quit, the marketing assistant position. The problem was the department manager. Although clever and politically connected, her devilish ways wreaked havoc on her people. Each time the position opened up, recruiters would search for the right candidate with Teflon skin and stone-cold emotions. Most victims, however, transferred to another department or altogether quit within a few short months.

It didn’t usually take more than a week or two before the next new recruit would schedule their first meeting with our employee relations manager to solicit advice in dealing with their bully boss. With a leadership blind spot the size of Nova Scotia, the marketing manager was convinced each new recruit was a complete idiot. She never accepted individual responsibility for her own department’s revolving door.

Then there was the employee who had a nervous breakdown during the lunch hour.

After just a few weeks on the job, the assistant had to be hospitalized in a mental health facility after she was found by police, dangerously parked on a busy expressway. Apparently she mentally shut down after experiencing weeks of severe anxiety trying to cope with the maddening manager.

As the HR director, I expressed my deep concern to the president that it would be completely unethical to hire one more potential target for this inhumane manager. Her evil management style literally caused the employee’s nervous breakdown.

You think this decision would be a no-brainer, right? Wrong! Although she was the queen of caustic culture, the president felt she was technically competent and too valuable to terminate.

Why do companies put up with bullying managers? According to the 2007 Workplace Bullying Institute-Zogby Survey, bullying is inhumane but not illegal. Results of the survey showed the following reasons workplaces continue to employ health destroying bully managers.

• Forty percent (40%) of targets do not come forward.
• In 80% of cases, bullying is legal.
• Sixty-two percent (62%) of employers either do nothing or worsen the situation by retaliating against the target.
• Seventy-three percent (73%) of bullies are managers - senior managers and HR reflexively side with management when disputes arise.
• Bullies derive 73% of their support from executives, peer managers and HR.
• Executives are afraid to act. They have a disproportionate fear of lawsuits brought by the bully if they dare investigate or sanction the bully.
• Bullies invented their reputation as indispensable high-performers in case they were ever exposed. Target complainants are then not believed.
• Employers don’t actually know how to stop it. They forgot the lessons learned from having to correct and prevent illegal discrimination.
• Employers don’t recognize bullying as violence in the workplace. The problem is erroneously defined as “conflict,” and the wrong solutions are applied.
• Our society is highly aggressive and competitive. Bullies embody these two popular tactics. Hostility is more normative than the exception. So, bullying, abuse and psychological violence at work is positively embraced more often than despised.