by Kate Evert | Aug 10, 2021 | Economy, Future of Work, Hiring, Jobs, Labor Markets
“Nothing gives you better clarity than a near-death experience. It awakens you to the frailty of life and the importance of living with purpose and meaning.”
You might think that quote was from one of the residents of this London street in 1940, at the outset of the Blitz: lucky not be among those killed that day, but as one of the survivors surveying the randomness of the dropped (and exploded) bombs, wondering if there were any unexploded bombs, why their neighbor’s house was gone and theirs was still standing, and what would tomorrow bring?
Instead, the quote was from an article written by Jack Kelly in Forbes just last month, Read More Here and it was an insight that reinforced a hunch about the current labor market that had been nagging at me.
Nearly 40 years ago, I decided to study abroad because of my interest in events that had taken place 400 years earlier. Living in England just 40 years after WWII presented an entirely unexpected gift: eyewitness history from people who had survived the Home Front. I heard first-hand accounts of the London Blitz from people who had lived through it.
At the same time, both in Britain and traveling throughout Europe, I noticed a healthy respect for leisure time. A weekend was a weekend – no work involved. Vacation – usually double the American allotment – was to be taken and one did not check in at the office.
Eventually I connected the dots: while Americans had rationed, grown Victory Gardens, lost young men, when death happens on your doorstep, to your next door neighbor, without rhyme or reason, you realize that there is more to life than work.
Covid has been our Blitz. Those who have contracted Covid, maybe at the same gathering as others who did not fall ill, seems as random as where a Luftwaffe bomb fell. Everyone has heard a story of the perfectly healthy person who has died from Covid, not unlike the one house on the block that was flattened by a V-1, while all the neighbors’ homes remained intact. We might not have had to sleep in backyard bomb shelters or Tube Stations, but quarantining has given Americans plenty of time to pause to reflect on the meaning of life.
Is it any wonder that in the face of what seems like random death, with plenty of time to ponder, Americans are reassessing how they want to spend the rest of their lives? An article in last week’s Economist drives home this fact, “… recent research by Goldman Sachs … finds that “excess retirees” account for about a quarter of the decline in the country’s [labor] participation rate.” HR experts have been warning the C-Suite for some time now that employees are aching for meaningful work; Covid has them searching for a meaningful life.
by CHRC | Jun 22, 2021 | Covid-19, Economy, Future of Work, Labor Markets
We received an email from a friend sending her regrets for an event. She said: “still trying to get my sea legs” regarding the return to mostly normal in this mostly post-Covid world.
Who isn’t?
It’s as if we have all been on various desert islands, and now ships are arriving to take us back to our previous lives. Or so we thought. But some shipping lanes aren’t quite open, and others are overcrowded.
It is definitely NOT smooth sailing, and it is very hard to find your footing.
The seas roil as nearly all of us are entering the same markets at the same time causing quite a wake in the process. As a result of rushing to so many of the same places at once, it looks as though the water levels are rising around certain islands containing cars, lumber, housing, while some of the potential labor seems trapped on other islands. The port masters keep hoping some sort of craft will be able to ferry workers to the appropriate islands, but here’s the rub: everyone keeps using old charts of obsolete shipping lanes. Assumptions are being made that everyone wants to return to where they were in February of 2020.
This past week a few articles emerged with insights that defied all the economists: multiple months on a desert island make you re-evaluate your life. Sometimes you find yourself. Other times, you don’t want to be found. Sometimes you’ve thrown away the map determined to chart a new course. Other times you’ve taught yourself so many new skills, you want to get paid for those skills. And of course, there is the issue of the “real clothes” required when returning to civilization.
The real lesson that may emerge is that man may be a more rational actor than all the economic texts taught us. He may have found the meaning of his particular life and he is not willing to go back to the one he had before the Covid Tsunami.
by CHRC | Feb 2, 2021 | Covid-19, Future of Work, Human Capital, Inspiration, Pivoting, Productivity, Strategy
If Covid had a mascot, it would be the groundhog, at least in the United States. Various animals in different northern regions have stuck their necks out to foretell if winter is over. Every year on February 2, many cultures look for a sign that winter might end.
Recently, a podcast caught my attention; hadn’t hit start, hadn’t heard of the book, but who wouldn’t keep listening about a book called Wintering when it is January in the snowy North? The author, Katherine May, read a passage:
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt.”
Suddenly you recall an Aesop’s fable, of the Ant and the Grasshopper. One creature is busy storing food for the cold weather, one plays in the sun and does not. You probably first heard this tale at about the age of five, and Aesop wrote, or at least recorded it, 5,000 years ago.
In her interview, the author says she feels that Covid has been one L O N G Wintering. Many of us have forgotten how to winter—how to store away preserves in our cellars for the seasons in which the harvests are not plentiful. Companies either don’t retain earnings for a rainy day or are pressured to pay them out to shareholders.
This February 2, the groundhog represents us emerging from our Covid Hibernation, looking for hope, an efficient vaccine distribution system, some semblance of normal. As we all know we will have at least six more weeks of Covid Winter, but perhaps we can resolve to prepare a bit more for our next “wintering”—whatever it may be—so that we might be more prepared, like the ant, and not have to go underground, like the groundhog.
by CHRC | Jan 12, 2021 | Corporate Culture, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Future of Work, Human Capital, Innovation, Leadership Agility, Strategy, Work Place
By Lisa Aggarwal
Every day, I’m amazed by the innovation I have seen since the Covid-19 pandemic began. In order to survive, virtually every company has been asked to evolve and change the trajectory of its business. Every person has made changes to their routine and how they operate on a daily basis.
For those companies whose fiscal calendar begins on January 1, the traditional annual merit cycle is upon them. The good news: organizations who are managing to thrive despite a worldwide pandemic (i.e., not the restaurant and hospitality industries) are still planning on giving their employees raises.
Yet, the annual merit increase isn’t as “traditional” as you might think. Some of you might remember the days when you received a raise on the anniversary of your hire date. One of my colleagues recounts when moving to a yearly increase was unheard of, needing at least a year of change management for employees to understand why it would be any other way—or why it even happened this way in the first place.
As CHRC has been researching how companies are coping with this year’s cycle, the overwhelming answer is: it depends. According to a recent study by the Economic Research Institute, annual salary budgets remain around 3.0%, but many companies are only implementing actual increases around 2.2%. Some of that gap may be avoided by thinking strategically. Here are some questions to consider:
- Do you need to work on an annual review cycle, or should salary reviews only be done if revenue targets are met? Can that be quarterly, or can you wait until business recovers?
- Should you focus on promotions or retaining your high performers who, according to many reports, are still able to find new jobs with relative ease?
- Are your compensation programs and structures aligned with the external marketplace? Have any of your roles been affected by increases in your state or city minimum wage as of January 1? With remote working, do you now compete nationally for talent?
- What programs is your company implementing to address burnout and the around the clock work from home cycle? A recent study by AON indicated that the #1 concern when it comes to retaining female employees is not only childcare…it’s wellbeing. That concern doesn’t stop at the gender line. Do you need to think beyond Total Rewards to Total Wellbeing?
The more creative you are with how your financial resources are invested, the better you will be able to redeploy your assets. Are your merit increase cycles ready for a little innovation, or are they carved in stone?
by CHRC | Dec 8, 2020 | Corporate Culture, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Future of Work, Human Capital, Leadership Agility, Productivity, Strategy, Work Place
Photo by Christina Morillo, from Pexels
Back in February of 2018, our blog highlighted some best in class recruiting practices. We noted that companies like Microsoft had adapted their screening and selection processes to capture the needed talent of those candidates on the autism spectrum. In so doing, they were actually employing a more robust way of screening all candidates and predicting success within a role and a company culture.
As we all continue to navigate remote working, especially in a certain Midwestern city that has had really low level clouds for several days, what if you heard that there was a place to work where you started your morning with two questions:
- How “interactive” do you feel today?
- What’s your energy level today?
What if you also heard that this same company listed everyone’s preferred communication and feedback preferences? Versus, you know, waiting two days for a call back and then learning someone NEVER checks their voicemail?
A recent article focused the spotlight on Ultranauts, a tech company that has engineered itself not only for remote working, but for the diverse needs of its employees—many of whom are on the autism spectrum. This company’s practices are valuable for all of us right now. Not only because they allow the workforce to absorb information in the ways that they
prefer—but because it practices the key components of good employee communications:
1. Tell them what you are going to tell them
2. Tell them
3. Tell them what you told them
AND with technology to take notes, so that no one gets stuck being the scribe!
While Ultranauts developed this culture to accommodate the sensory-overload that many on the autism spectrum experience on a daily basis, in this current environment, these practices offer a great deal to all of us who are on so many different sorts of overloads and prioritizes employee-first communications, so that all succeed—no matter what.
by CHRC | Dec 1, 2020 | Agility, Corporate Culture, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Future of Work, Human Capital, Leadership Agility, Performance Management, Performance Reviews, Productivity, Strategy, Work Place
Our last blog shared insights on what activities will drive the workplace of the future. That concept of a workplace poses a huge challenge for many managers out there.
A recent podcast by GBH’s Innovation Lab addressed what organizations must build as they are dismantling cube space: management skills, competency assessments, and performance reviews to match the new workplace. Leaders having trouble coping with remote working will benefit from this program’s insights offered by experts, Professor Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and Liz Fosslein, head of content at Humu. Each organization will need to study and then tailor a return to work hybrid model that fits their organization.
Quite often when we start work on a compensation project, one of the first questions we ask is the state of the performance management program. Too often we get guilty looks followed by hemming and hawing. As Covid-19 began to shut down the world, CHRC probably had a better understanding than most as to why the majority of managers in the US would be very uncomfortable with a remote workplace. The reason many leaders fall back on MBWA (management by walking around) is either because their organization does not have a robust performance management system and/or they have never been trained to manage in the first place.
At the end of the day, remote work is here to stay, and even when it is safe enough to return to large office buildings, hybrid remote and in-office work policies must be developed thoughtfully, in conjunction with robust performance management systems, versus being allowed to regress back to the routines of the MBWA practitioners. For those who thrive working remotely, if the majority of their coworkers return to the office, it could be detrimental to their career and could have a disparate impact on certain groups of employees who gravitate towards working from home. Professor Bloom is emphatic that organizations be prescriptive about “days the senior management are at home,” to ensure that people can be in the office to truly collaborate and innovate, not merely to posture and curry favor with the boss, and “to prevent a promotional advantage and stress everyone out.”
