Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately (and really, who could blame you?), this thing that’s been branded “The Great Resignation” has unleashed a slew of scary headlines and statistics. What’s a leader to do?
It’s enough to make the C-suite just throw their hands up and start a goat farm. But the truth is, it’s time for leaders to give up their egos and really listen to their employees.
The pandemic has accelerated, amplified and intensified a myriad of challenges already brewing before March 2020 exposed the cracks in society. We’ve been having a reckoning on race, wealth inequality, climate crises, gender and sexuality, crumbling infrastructure, politics, and health, of course.
But taking a wider view at the cultural history of moments like these sheds some logical light. Looking back at past global calamities reveals them as catalysts for enormous cultural, social and technological change: the Black Plague begat the Renaissance; WWI and the 1918 pandemic gave birth to the Roaring 20s, the Jazz Age and Surrealism; after WWII, youth boomed and rock ‘n roll manifested itself most significantly in Chuck Berry, Elvis and The Beatles.
The post-war era also gave rise to the corporate culture many of us children of the 60s and 70s came to understand as the “ladder of success.” But that in itself was a product of a paradigm shift in labor that had held sway since the Industrial Revolution. The rise of the 40-hour week, the current subject of contempt, was designed to be an improvement over lax and inhumane working conditions that included child labor and lack of safety regulations. If you remember how inhumane the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster and Upton Sinclair’s exposure of the meatpacking industry seemed in high school, that’s how “hustle culture” and the 40-hour week grind will seem to future generations: exploitative. Even finance, perhaps one of the most abusive industries, is embarrassingly seeing in-office mandates fail, even though (or because) banks broke their own records in the pandemic. Silent sufferers of the legendary, grueling working conditions are exposing all— via PowerPoint, Work Tok and personal tell-alls. The fast-track prestige of high net worth businesses is no longer attracting the kind of talent Wall Street feeds on — or keeping them.
Sea changes in cultural perceptions of work are a normal and healthy output of social evolution. To succeed in this paradigm shift, leader need to address the new conditions for the future of work. Here are a few suggestions, gleaned from many of the insightful pieces people have been writing over the past months.
- Stop talking about the past and commit to the future.
Eliminate phrases like “Return to Office” and “back to normal.” These set up unrealistic and unhelpful expectations that change is an aberration to business culture, when in reality, it’s been sorely missing. All of that time discussing equality and inclusion in the office has been happening because internal work culture has not kept up with fast-changing social mores, especially as younger generations hijack the larger cultural narrative. Going forward, CEOs must be the stewards who align internal culture with the external world as it evolves. Many high-profile leaders (recently, Bobby Kotick of ACTIVISION, Mark Schlissel of the University of Michigan) have had to face calls to leave because they’ve failed to do so, or hold themselves to the same standards that they espouse for staffers.
2. Move the center of power from the C-suite to the E-suite.
Leaders should be focused on aligning internal values with external expectations. The easiest way to do that is to prioritize employee voices in any process of change — instead of fighting it. Recent unionization efforts across workers from journalists and baristas and warehouse workers may be seen as bad for business — or an opportunity to right perceived wrongs. Some leaders have privately confided to me their fear that they would be held accountable for the results of employee surveys and demands. That’s a head-in-the ground recipe for losing valuable talent, and not a great way to attract new ones in a tight labor market. In order to make the workplace better, leaders of the future must prioritize ground-up processes to be employee-led, letting staff help set the company’s agenda for the C-suite.
3. People are re-assessing the role of work, and how they measure success.
One of the most interesting outcomes of the last two years has been how so many men have openly discovered that parenting can be a fulfilling and meaningful role. They learned that the goals of traditional (and toxic) masculinity — chasing wealth and stature at the expense of family — had less currency in a world of existential and collective pain. Plus there was that awful commute. Thanks to remote work, the Great Migration spurred families (literally) farther afield — whether to ride out the pandemic in an AIRBNB in Boise, or to literally buy the farm — all in an attempt to focus on more meaningful ways of spending their 9-to-5, often in less-expensive (or tax-free) regions. Because of this shift, hybrid work will continue to be the norm, long after the pandemic leaves our shores. Instead of thinking of the office as the place where the work gets done, reconceive it as a gathering place for IRL collaboration, building community, and forging stronger relationships. Work can happen anywhere, but humans need each other.
4. Gen Z values have hijacked the culture.
On top of all that, the anti-capitalist megaphone of Gen Z called attention to the radical inequality caused by companies focusing solely on their quarterly results.Today there are five generations in the workplace. Much like the 60s “youthquake” of the Boomers, culture today is dominated by conversations that matter to the youngest employable generation — who take a radically different view of “career” than their predecessors. Recent studies show that over forty percent of Gen Z (think teens through mid-20s) aspire to be influencers, or self-made through other entrepreneurial ventures. Roughly the same number say they’d rather give up the right to vote than work in an office. On top of that, pay is not keeping up with inflation. This is not simply youth rebellion, this is a wholesale rejection of the post-war structures and crumbling infrastructure that, in their opinion, have directly caused the woeful state of the world right now, and that they are saddled with reimagining and rebuilding (see Bitcoin and the Metaverse). Instead of brushing off youthful activism as a fad, leaders should tap the youngest staffers to architect the future of the workplace — embracing Gen Z input as the engine for transformation. What if your board carved out a seat for a Gen Z voice, just as many have done for women and people of color?
5. Empathize that employee burnout is real.
Both in-person and remote workers are suffering from crushing workloads and pace over the past few years. Ironically, leaders historically have resisted allowing work-from-home exceptions for fear that unattended staffers would slack off and be less productive. Ha. Studies showed that most remote workers felt more productive — and happier–at home. The pandemic proved that given the loss of commute, the tendency to book back-to-back Zooms all day, and the always-on expectation of home work have driven severe burnout, as well as the physical impact of computer-related repetitive stress (my tendonitis and torn rotator cuff being all the proof I need). This is even worse for low-wage workers who can’t work from home. It’s also well-documented that most employees are reluctant to fully use their valuable personal days, for fear of retaliation, or to hoard them for a big trip. To remedy this, companies are creatively experimenting with ideas like mandatory PTO, weeklong mid-year closures, monthly 3-day weekends, 2-week sick leaves, and offering sabbaticals.
6. Prioritize the working conditions for women, families, and other marginalized groups.
Studies show that women are bearing the brunt of pain during this pandemic era. On top of that, Latinas are leaving the workforce at higher rates than any other segment, mostly citing family needs. Pre-pandemic, the workplace-in-progress was already struggling with righting gender, racial and other inequities — and COVID just exacerbated the situation due to lack of consistent or accessible child care, flopping in-school learning, and deepening mental health issues (especially for people of color who had to deal with racial reckonings, hate crimes and exhaustion from having to educate their colleagues and friends.) To help alleviate this burden, companies are expanding their employee benefit programs — for example, Morgan Stanley is giving new parents at least 16 weeks off, 4 weeks of paid leave to care for a family member with a serious health condition, and a minimum of 22 weeks of paid leave related to pregnancy.
7. Hire differently.
The tight labor market has forced companies to rethink their hiring practices. Some are revising their criteria from 4- to 2-year degrees, naturally widening the diversity and skill sets of potential employees. Some companies look to emergent social platforms like Discord and even internal Slack and jobs channels to mine nontraditional talent from relevant conversations. And with remote work here to stay, candidates can live anywhere, provided time zones aren’t an issue. One CEO even offers new employees $5,000 to quit — as a pressure-test for fit. To source new talent, look beyond Indeed and LinkedIn to open up the field — and consider upping salaries across the board. To keep valued employees from heading to the exit, make it easier for staffers to find new roles inside your organization — even enlisting their bosses to help.
Above all, stay fluid.
No one knows what will happen next (and if they do, don’t listen). COVID uncertainty isn’t going away any time soon, at least until the end of this third year –or it will become endemic like the annual flu season, according to epidemiologists. Add to that new variants and shifting guidelines, on top of crushing mental and physical health issues, most remote workers (across all generations) are reluctant to give up their newfound autonomy. So CEOs are forced to constantly rewrite their own playbooks. When it’s hard to anticipate what’s next, it is not a time to create rigid structures, plans, and forecasts based on past performance and data. Instead, adopt new strategies for new times. “Shoot, move and communicate” is a military tactic that prioritizes forceful decision-making, a determination to keep pressing forward and maintain transparency. Instead of long-range planning, focus on 6-month cycles and quarterly sprints.
SOURCES:
FORTUNE: The Real Reason Everyone is Quitting Right Now
NY POST: How COVID Shook Up the Labor Market
BLOOMBERG: Morgan Stanley Increases Leave to Woo Talent
NY TIMES: CEO’s Are Forced to Embrace Uncertainty
NY TIMES: Wall Street Warms Up, Grudgingly, to Remote Work
NY TIMES: Only 17% of Workers Say Their Pay Has Kept Up With Inflation
BLOOMBERG: Reinventing Internal Job Boards to Fight the Great Resignation
FAST COMPANY: This CEO Pays New Employees $5,000 to Quit
REFINERY29: Latinas Are Leading the Great Resignation — Here’s Why
WSJ: These Workers Wanted to Quit. They Got Promoted Instead.
WSJ: American Workers are Burned Out, and Bosses Are Struggling to Respond.
NY POST: Most Remote Workers Say They May Quit Before Returning to the Office
