The low pay of aged care workers has recently aroused a wide response. The care of elderly relatives after they are incapable of caring for themselves at home touches all Australians at some time in their lives, whether contemplating our own future or working with relatives. The discussion is also of broader importance because it invites us to question how we think of the way we care for the aged and do business.
In our care of the aged, not only their health and security are at stake but also their self-respect and dignity. The carers who help them with their private bodily functions are called on to show deep respect and gentleness. It is impossible not to sympathise with the argument that the high skills this requires should be better remunerated.
The way this argument is formulated, however, is tailored to an audience that rewards measurable skills but disregards the intangible qualities that underpin respect. Respectful care implies a benevolent relationship. Cold or hostile nurses may be skillful, but the way they use their skills will be experienced as invasive and disrespectful. Good care is experienced as a gift, and gifts must express love as well as skill. In the serious business of business and remuneration, however, love is the skill that dares not speak its name.
That is anomalous because companies, even banks and manufacturing companies, rely on the quality of relationships between the people who work in them and also on the relationships between members of staff and suppliers, customers and the wider public. They rely also on the quality of the relationships of workers with things — on their respect for processes, for tools, and for their environment. In enterprises that offer personal service, the quality of the relationships will be central.
In companies, as elsewhere, good relationships cannot be purely contractual. They entail mutual gift. People chip in for one another, work beyond the call of duty when required, are given occasional time off, give themselves more fully to clients than required, take time to sit with workmates in distress. Managers try to keep people employed even when this causes short term loss to the business. The lubricants of any good business are also gifts: a smile, a kindly word, encouragement, flexibility.
Like relationships, companies can never be fully codified in contracts that state what one party owes to the other and make their performance measurable by empirical criteria. Just