Article: Danna Beal: Building an Extraordinary Workplace

Furthermore, with budget cuts in arenas such as case management, agencies need to increase productivity requirements while being more selective in choosing clients one can take to meet shorter time frames for service requirements and thus lessening the drain on limited budgets. Thus, those with the deepest needs get frozen out of services.

Therefore, it is critically important to build a workplace culture where worker's and client's needs are met. It is there that Beal's work is imperative. In some cases, supervisors might reform and begin to see their role as facilitators for the workers to do their job with the public. In other cases, workers must independently establish and express their own self-respect and respect for their coworkers and clients, thereby changing the workplace culture from within more subtly, but also effectively. In yet other cases, the best intentions of either management or workers are thwarted by the economic and legal power of our larger mega-culture.

For example, a mental health agency may indeed wish to develop a healthy environment for its case managers, but is restricted by the demands of the current top-down insurance system which places strict limitations on services in accordance to cuts in insurance by the state and federal governments. This state is furthermore fostered by corporations and the privitization of services. These drivers then effect how the employees of that agency are treated at supervisory levels due to increased productivity requirements that are based on a financial bottom line that protects the agency from going bankrupt.

Thus, trauma occurs at all levels, including agency management. This then effects the people who are in need of services which then increases drug use and crime that is committed due to psychological stress and/or poor decision making. These factors ultimately could result in a psychotic break or an increase in drug and alcohol addictions. When one piece of the web is changed, it affects everything else. Thus losing the treatment of mental illness and addiction means increases in accidents, suicides and criminal behaviors, which then effects both the reader and writer of this article.

This creates a vicious cycle where the actions of the macroscopic economic powers influence the more microscopic powers which then effects the macroscopic health and welfare of workers and the general public. Building a healthy work environment is, simply, that important. We are all impacted by work environments, which is why Beal's work is so important.

Building healthy work environments is crucial to building a healthy planet with healthy people. At this point in our evolution and journey on this planet, we must begin seeing ourselves as working with the planet instead of being Lords and Masters over. In the same sense, we must build healthy work environments where the parts (i.e., the employees) are seen as instrumental to the functioning whole. No longer can they be deemed resources, benefits or assets. They must be treated as sacred beings living on a sacred planet.

As Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis states, our planet is inherently interactive. Thus it took all of us, all the animals and plants alongside all the physical processes to create a habitable planet. Life in essence built its own environment from the ground up. In similar fashion, the workplace must see all employees as working together in making a successful business. Thus, the individualized ego standing at the apex of the pyramid must realize that all it takes to get a new leader at the apex is to turn the pyramid on its side. But what good is this if it just means we get a "new boss" who is the same as the old? A pyramid is a pyramid no matter which corner is at the top. We need to get rid of the pyramid scheme while realizing that the Earth is round, not triangular. Thus the top 1% are not the epitome of the Earth. Nor is the lion the "King" of the Jungle. Indeed, a small microscopic bug that causes a disease can bring that great "King" down.

There are no Kings nor Queens in Nature. Nor is the mind the King or Queen over the human body. If the liver decides it's going on strike, the entire body is affected, no matter what the egotistical brain says. Only when employer and employee are locked arm-in-arm (as in a cooperative business rather than a corporate one) is the business truly sustainable and resilient. Respect and information must flow in every direction throughout the network.

This world is created by all of us for all of us. The creation of this world is our deepest Labor. No longer shall Eve (Labor) be ruled by Adam (Management). Nor shall She have painful labor. Rather, She will learn to breathe and relax into the labor pangs. And in so-doing a new marriage will take place between Adam and Eve and that new marriage will consist of the meme that "we are all in this together." Thus, in knowing our comradeship with all people, all creatures, all plants and the entire planet--from the dirt to the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans--a new world of peace will emerge.

This, my dearest Eve, be you in the form of a man or a woman, is your deepest labor. Yet, we must realize that our labor entails an allowing. The fertilized egg, this new world that lies inside the womb of our Psyches, creates its own body. You are an incubator for that new life, and you will nurse it into becoming what it may be. But, you must not seek total control over that new life, for it is going to create itself in relationship to everything else. And it's that being itself in relation the the All that you need to accept in order to bring forth your best creation, your best offspring, your best self, and our best Earth.

Thus, in the "new world order," we all, not the apex of the pyramid, will be creating the new world. The top-down pyramidal order of the senior Bush's "New World Order" will fall under its own weight. Order in this regard will unfold naturally, unfolding from center to periphery from within, and not at the externalized hands of the "Man." No slaves are needed to move the stones building the new edifice. It is only when we no longer have a weakened and subsidiary Labor Class, disempowered and economically dependent Homemaker, or Eve, that we can enter into a life of peace and empowerment.

Danna Beal by Danna Beal