Oh Dear...
As Elon continues to make waves through leaked emails and virtual meetings over what kind of boss he is; and more and more stats come in as to how many people would rather quit their jobs than return to work, even under hybrid circumstances, one has to scratch their head and ask themselves, "what the heck is the deal with the people and work these days?"
Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not questioning if people WANT to work. Enough Gen Zs will tell you loudly that they do, but continue to struggle to find jobs, let alone well paying ones, out of school. But what's also clear is that the concept of "work" and what its significance looks like has changed among so many other things since the pandemic. And as a whole, candidates, employees and companies alike are grasping at ways to keep up with the evolution.
What Was Work in the Past?
Let's take a trip back in time for a moment. To a time in human history when work was literally what one did all day if they weren't sleeping or eating. A time when if you wanted to literally keep a roof over your head and you and your family fed (and depending where you were in the world, assumably weren't connected to some upper class that owned resources), you had to get up, get out, and do the tasks of hunting, foraging or later, farming for food. Or find building tools and materials to keep your home standing, let alone have one in the first place. I have no survey to tell me how much satisfaction those people found in living that way, but I do wonder if there isn't something that's become disconnected for many of us when it come to what "work" is actually for, why we do it, and what, in today's society, that needs to look like.
There's definitely many clues to choose from. Many of us here on LinkedIn continue to discuss how much we don't miss our morning and afternoon commutes. How remote work has offered so much more flexibility in being able to address our family commitments so we don't miss out on key moments. Studies are out there talking about how much time and productivity many of us feel meetings sap out of our day, while we conversely debate how effective and mentally healthy people can really be if they're not gathered together somewhere to do work. And let's not forget about those individuals for whom the possibility of remote working isn't even an option because the nature of their jobs just doesn't apply to it and perhaps wonder if the rest of us complaining aren't just spoiled. 😉
Change of the Present (& Future?)
As a business architect and someone who tends to look at the world through a capability mindset, I wonder if at the roots of all these concerns and challenges, what we are struggling to reconcile is that for many of us in Western societies, the idea of "work" has become too siloed. As I described earlier, there was a time that work was simply a part of the experience of living. You didn't retire from it, you didn't get promotions or pay rises or need to build job descriptions around it. It was what you did because you needed to live. And the ability to live necessitated the need to work.
I don't believe those needs have really changed, but their manifestation does continue to evolve. Just as the concept of the employee/employer contract changed after the 1980s, in that one could no longer depend on being with the same company for their entire career, I think we're also outgrowing the transactional way we've come to view work since, (as a VP once told me years ago "we're all free agents"). Could it be that we need to reconsider again that "work" isn't meant to be a compartment but an intrinsic living journey? And that in that experience, not unlike the much vaunted customer experience, renewed ideas of drivers, values, life stage, emotion and "reward", need to be reassessed and matured once more?
Or in other words, should we start creating more "Work Culture" Journey maps to figure out what we can do better as companies to attract, develop and retain top talent?
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Until next time.