A week ago, TCB reported on the state of employee well-being programs and the increasingly common practice of people taking unscheduled mental health days off from work. I question if tolerating the latter type of work behavior is a good thing, or if some organizations are setting people up for failure down the road.

I understand that the contract between employers and employees changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated staffing challenges, but I also find it confounding that any serious business leader accepts the lackadaisical attitude of employees who feel entitled to take an unscheduled day off work just because they feel like it. In a way, this reveals how disconnected many people are to the real world where there is a direct connection between effort and survival. I grew up on a farm, and if we didn’t work, the animals didn’t eat. This is how I was raised, and this was the attitude I espoused during my 30-plus years working in energy exploration, consulting, and manufacturing.

We are told that times have changed, but I’m grateful that my kids (who are now young adults working in hospitality and health care) take their responsibilities as employees seriously. I’ve met their supervisors and colleagues and seen some of the projects they work on. I’ve learned that their colleagues and employers appreciate how reliable my kids are and the seriousness and diligence they bring to their work commitments.

Normalizing haphazard and unreliable attitudes as acceptable components of an employee well-being program doesn’t make it acceptable in the eyes of employers and managers who have customers to satisfy, patients to serve, schedules to meet, things to deliver, and bills to pay. That is not how the real world operates.

The rules are changing

Rather than foosball tables and free smoothies, there seems to be a correction underway in the workplace as the economic climate adjusts to budget realities in Minnesota and the new administration in Washington, D.C., looks at a range of cost-cutting initiatives. With that as context, maybe now is a good time to share some insights from someone who has made many mistakes, but who has also gotten some important things right.

I was fortunate to work for an employee-owned consulting engineering company for a good bit of my professional career and I had a senior colleague who generously shared what he called “pearls of wisdom.” They were, essentially, folksy messages that he passed along to young staffers that, in hindsight, were brilliant life lessons. And one of the pearls of wisdom I learned from my senior colleague was to always use a business downturn to your advantage.

While this may sound Machiavellian, it really was a key to survival in the for-profit business world. And if you use a bit of creative thinking, these pearls can apply to nonprofit work and government service.

During heady times, employers relax their hiring standards to meet growing demands for products or services. But when employment markets tighten and austerity measures are implemented—as these things tend to happen periodically—leaders and managers who are facing economic hardships will make a range of decisions that will be in the best interests of their organizations.

I have been in this position a number of times during my career, and when I looked at the business challenges and my options, I sometimes had to make hard decisions such as closing or spinning off perennially unprofitable businesses; reducing non-essential travel, discretionary expenses and people’s hours; or, when no other options were available, terminating the employment of staff who were in non-core business units or who were not pulling their weight. No one with any heart or intelligence wants to lay off staff, but this is an essential duty at times.

Which leads to some important questions. Does anyone who is fighting for the economic survival of their enterprise hang on to people who are unproductive or are consistent underperformers? Will people who check identity boxes be kept over people who align with the company’s core business mission? Or will leaders and managers keep the hardest working, reliable and most productive employees? These are not trick questions.

Getting back to farm kids and their contributions to the workplace

Several years ago, I read an interview in a national business newspaper where senior executives from Fortune 500 companies were discussing employment and hiring challenges. One of the executives talked about the greatest problem they were having on the recruiting front was that there was a dwindling number of “farm kids” (kids who grew up on farms and then went into the military, trade school, or college to learn advanced skills) joining the workforce. As this executive explained, farm kids tend to be humble, they work hard, they need to be creative problem solvers, and they know that the workday doesn’t end at 5 p.m. These are desirable attributes regardless of the health of the business cycle.

Since that article, the number of farm kids entering the workforce has continued to shrink as the number of family farms contracts due to smaller families, the physical nature of the work, and challenging economics (low commodity prices, high costs of land and equipment and tight margins). Thanks to the application of technologies in agricultural production – including AI, data analytics, remote sensing and GPS for smart chemical and fertilizer application and irrigation, fine tuning plant and animal genetics, use of autonomous and self-driving equipment, and the use of sophisticated commodity hedging strategies – we are not facing a food production crisis.

There isn’t anything that employers, leaders, and managers can do to increase the number of humble, hard-working, creative and diligent farm kids entering the workforce, but they can communicate to all existing, new, and prospective employees their expectations, create a realistic and respectful work climate, and reward performance of employees who embrace a company’s mission and contribute in meaningful ways. And if a farm kid applies for a job with your company, seriously consider hiring him or her. Chances are pretty good that they will have good work habits and be tech savvy.

From my perspective, creating a work environment where attendance is not optional, engagement is not transactional, and loyalty is not fleeting makes difficult staffing decisions easier for managers when things get tough.

And if business leaders, managers, career coaches, teachers, professors, and mentors are not conveying these essential lessons to staff, they are doing all employees a disservice.

That is what the real world looks like.

Gregory Beckstrom is a semi-retired scientist/business professional. He currently serves on one corporate board and is on the board of trustees of a foundation of scientific society that focuses on STEM education. He lives in Minneapolis.