TalentCulture #WorkTrends

In 2019, a United Minds and Weber Shandwick survey found that one in five employees reported experiencing a cultural crisis within the last year to two—a significant incident indicating troubling workplace attitudes and behaviors. Worse, 30% of employees expect a cultural crisis within the next two years based on their employer’s current behavior.  It’s more than just a bad attitude. It’s a toxic workplace culture that culminates into a dangerous trend for workplaces. Just look at the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, when workplace culture took an ugly turn.  It's time for employers and HR professionals to do better. It’s time to revitalize culture and create a work environment that strengthens you. It’s time for managers to develop a plan of action to make sure their workplace culture is engaged, attentive, and positive. That has to happen at all levels, and it starts with commitment at the top of every organization.

Spend any time looking at career and business magazines you’re probably familiar with this term: The Great Resignation. Or as I like to call it, And we thought we were in trouble before. The Great Resignation is the tide of employees leaving their companies — a massive, unprecedented disruption in the labor market.  What caused it? Upheavals in the workplace, a revelation among workers that they can work remotely and prefer to, a new wave of retirements that opened up new opportunities. Add a general tide of burnout and disengagement as companies undergo rocky digital transformations, and push production to gain traction in crowded marketplaces. And there’s the pandemic’s pressures, bearing down on already stressful roles.  Recent research from Microsoft found that 41% of employees are considering resigning from their jobs in 2021—compared to 15% voluntary turnover rates pre-pandemic (as reported by Mercer). The Wall Street Journal notes that the actual “quit rate” is four million people per month, the highest we’ve ever seen.  Today Meghan M. Biro talks to Morgan Chaney, Senior Director of Marketing at Blueboard, about how new approaches to recognition can help employers overcome this wave of departures, catalyze engagement, and turn this resignation ship around.

Gone are the days of working for one company for 40 years. These days, employees change jobs—and careers—all the time. And yet, many of us remain in the same jobs, even though we know we would love a career change.  The number one myth about career changes is that they’re simply too difficult. We think it will take too much time and effort, or that starting from the bottom in a new field isn’t worth the cost. In reality, changing careers will require some legwork, but it’s not at all impossible. You just need the right toolkit, and enough preparation to guide you through the process.  For one thing, relationships still matter, which means employees at all levels need to continue networking and cultivating work relationships. Employees also need to change their mindset, especially if they’re transitioning into leadership positions. And we all have a personal and professional brand to draw on—the key is to build it early and continue refining it. 

In business, uncertainty is the lack of certainty or sureness of an event. In accounting, uncertainty is the inability to foretell consequences due to a lack of knowledge on which to make predictions. And when people can’t make predictions about their workplaces, they get nervous, unproductive, and disengaged.  That uncertainty and disengagement comes with a high price tag—The Gallup Organization estimates that there are 22 million actively disengaged employees costing the economy $350 billion each year in lost productivity due to absences, illness, and other problems related to unhappiness at work.  In order to shift to a happier, healthier workplace, leadership and HR professionals need to shift how they manage uncertainty. Instead of shying away from uncertainty, managers need to embrace it and take charge of gray areas to drive understanding, open communication, and engagement. 

Workplace diversity is more than just a slogan. In the year 2021, businesses have come to understand that diversity is simply a good business decision. Diverse teams are more creative, more likely to re-examine facts, less prone to groupthink, and more likely to make good decisions. But in order to build those teams, you need strong leadership.  Strong leadership comes from a few key areas: having the right mindset, building trust, cultivating engagement, and encouraging employees to support diversity and inclusion. Leaders have to interrogate their own approach so that they can work towards the diverse teams they need—and for leaders who do so early and often, the results speak for themselves. 

The employee relationship to the workplace is changing. In the Baby Boomer generation, work was about collecting a paycheck and doing your time in exchange for retirement benefits. In the Millennial generation, work is part of your identity, and a big part of the Millennial identity is altruism and social responsibility. So when Millennials go to work, they want companies that align with their values.  There’s just one problem: less than half of Millennials think businesses behave ethically.  In order to attract the best talent, businesses need to change this perception. That means leading with values, demonstrating ethics, and showing that values translate into action. In the process, businesses can create a more positive work environment, strengthen their competitiveness, and set themselves up for future success. 

The COVID-19 pandemic radically altered the landscape of work. And as businesses shift into the post-pandemic world, they have to deal with new realities in talent management. Like the shift from the biggest work-from-home experiment in human history to...the new normal.  HR professionals will need to adapt to new technology to reflect a new talent acquisition environment and a new talent management environment. Hiring will have to reflect flexible labor, offering the right incentives for in-person work. In the office, HR professionals will have to learn how to manage both remote employees and person employees.

Since 2005, there’s been a 173% increase in remote work, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce and 47 times faster than the work-from-home population. Then COVID hit, and almost every employee got a taste of the work from home life. These days, 80% of employees want to work from home at least some of the time, and 3 in 4 employees consider remote work the new normal.  There’s just one problem: translating your work culture into your work-from-home culture.  In fact, culture is the hardest thing to transition to remote work, even though many managers believe that going remote is as sending a worker home with a laptop and a to-do list. You have to invest in your remote culture just as much as your in-person culture, which means giving employees signs that they matter, no matter how far apart you are. 

Whether it’s procrastination, overthinking, impulsivity, negativity, laziness, or just giving up, many of us find ourselves on the cusp of something big—only to shoot ourselves in the foot. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common phenomenon. We notice an opportunity for success. We build anxiety around success. And then we make our fears come true.  Learning how to recognize and rewire these behaviors is about more than just getting over the hump. It’s about changing your relationship to success, getting over your anxiety, and giving yourself permission to shine at work. Learning how to get out of your own way can radically alter your relationship to work in all the right ways. 

In The New, New Thing, Michael Lewis refers to the term “business model” as a term of art, essentially describing a business’s plan for how to make money. Yet your business model (and your inherent assumptions about your company) shape how nimble you are—and how good you are at making money.    In other words, what you think about your business shapes your business in the future. So if your assumptions are wrong, you have space to make your business stronger. Once you improve your assumptions, you can change the way you do business for the better. The key is understanding and interrogating your mistakes.