Author Archives: Larry Janis

Turn the “great resignation” into the “great renegotiation”

by Denise Hamilton

Encouraging employees to approach you with their wish lists might seem counterintuitive, but it may just be the key to retention.

The events of these past two years have been like a tornado, throwing everything into disarray. Many businesses have been trying to get back to normal. But there’s no going back. Workers are leaving their employers in droves, seeking greater fulfillment and better pay, among other opportunities. This great resignation, though, could instead be a great renegotiation. Leaders have a chance now to redesign their organizations in a way that’s more exciting and fulfilling for employees.

Doing so requires businesses to rethink their fundamental ways of operating. It means putting everything on the table, including roles, schedules, key performance indicators, individual performance metrics, and more. It takes time, energy, and work. But the incentive is clear.

I speak regularly with people who’ve recently quit their jobs and to those at all levels of organizations who are considering leaving their jobs. Many tell me they would happily stay with their employer if they could work out some changes, whether in pay, hours, opportunities for advancement, the freedom to work from anywhere, or other diverse factors. One of the big challenges for employers is understanding that different people value different things; there’s no one-size-fits-all remedy. To find solutions, employers need to listen to their employees. (more…)

Beyond the Great Resignation, 7 trends that will shape work in 2022

By Brian Kropp and Emily Rose McRae

At the start of 2021, many of us expected the world to return to normalcy, including a large-scale return to the workplace for many employees. But 2021 proved more volatile than anticipated given the rise of new COVID-19 variants, a massive war for talent, quit rates at an all-time high and the highest inflation level in a generation.

The level of volatility is only increasing in 2022 as the world confronts new waves of COVID-19 variants, the continuation of hybrid work and the reality of real wage cuts for employees as annual compensation increases fall behind inflation. These realities will be layered on top of longer-term evolutions around technological transformation, continued DE&I journeys and ongoing political disruption and uncertainty.

Here are seven underlying trends that will shape the workplace this year:

1. Fairness and equity will be the defining issues for organizations.

According to our analysis of S&P 500 earnings calls, the frequency with which CEOs talk about issues of equity, fairness and inclusion on these calls has increased by 658% since 2018. Debates that have fairness at the core—around gender and race, climate change or other socio-economic, social and workplace issues—have become flashpoints in society. (more…)

Should Employees Be Allowed to Choose What They Want to Do?

 by Phanish Puranam

The degree of specialisation is the deciding factor.

As far as workplace trends go, several topics have dominated popular attention and discussion, from workspace design, digitalisation, Agile methodology, to the pandemic favourite of remote working. But there’s another important aspect of work that is being pushed increasingly to the forefront of organisation design: self-selection-based division of labour.

Essentially the process of matching workers with tasks, division of labour in organisations was, until recently, a top-down allocation exercise presided over by managers. These days, workers are increasingly empowered to assign tasks to themselves – a far cry from the pin factory labourers immortalised by Adam Smith. At software firm Valve and French auto parts maker FAVI, for example, employees select tasks as well as project teams based on their own perceptions of best fit. In fact, at many software firms and other less hierarchical organisations, self-selection has become the norm for its positive effect on employee motivation.

Yet traditional task allocation remains dominant and continues to flourish even in innovation-intensive sectors. Evidently, both methods of divvying up work have their merits and drawbacks. Knowing which to apply and when to apply it can have a direct impact on organisational performance and employee morale.

In our new paper, co-authored with Massimo Warglien, we looked into the conditions in which self-selection would outperform the managerial allocation of tasks even if there were no motivational benefits: when employees are highly specialised, the tasks are independent of each other, and employee availability is unforeseeable.

As self-selection becomes more mainstream, our findings could help organisations aspiring to this process assess whether it is the right choice, or how it could be modified for a better fit. (more…)

The New Rules for Finding Your Next Job in 2022

by Rachel Feintzeig

 

Candidates have more leverage. Conversations have shifted toward flexible hours and locations. How to ace your interview in this moment.

 

 

Workers are quitting in record numbers. Salaries are up, and flexibility is in. The rules for getting your next job have changed.

Leverage has shifted to candidates as employers struggle to find the talent they need, recruiters and management researchers say. Hiring processes now include more frank discussions about remote work, balancing job duties with family and staving off burnout.

Yet knowing how much to share with a hiring manager remains tricky. And in an era of virtual recruiting, it’s harder to figure out what a company is really like, and whether a boss is toxic—before you make a leap.

“It used to be when you went to interview at a company you could actually observe people at work,” says Greg Selker, a Cleveland-based recruiter. “Now you’re interviewing over Zoom.

Here are the new rules for job-hunting now. (more…)

The pandemic really has made your memory worse

BY ART MARKMAN

No, you’re not imagining things. Here are three reasons why the pandemic has been bad for your memory.

If you look back over the last few months, you may find that you have a hard time picking out specific things you did. What did you eat for dinner two nights ago? Was that one client meeting last week, or week before? What happened again on that last episode of Yellowjackets?

If you’re struggling to remember, you’re not alone. The pandemic has been bad for your memory in several ways.

To understand why, it is useful to know a bit more about how memory works. You encounter a lot of information each day, and your brain does not store all of it away. Forming memories is energetically expensive, because it requires you to grow new connections among the neurons in your brain. So, your brain is starting out by estimating whether a particular piece of information is worth holding onto.

Even after you do learn some new information, your brain is trying to figure out how likely you’ll need that information in the future, which can then make it more accessible. So, information you use often is easier to retrieve than information you only need in specific situations. Information you have used recently is easier to retrieve than information you haven’t thought about in a long time.

Finally, memories are retrieved based on the similarity they have to the situation you’re in right now. You want to be able to think about things that are related to what is happening right now. (more…)