The numbers are stark, sobering but sadly not surprising.
40% of the global workforce are considering leaving their employer this year.
67% of employees crave more in-person time with their colleagues
61% of business leaders are “thriving” and 39% surviving/struggling. Almost the exact inverse of their New Employees or Single Colleagues who rank 36%/64% and 33%/67% of “thriving” versus “surviving/struggling”
Collaboration and networking have precipitously declined while feelings of isolation and concurrent siloed behaviour has increased dramatically.
These results come from a recently published Microsoft Report entitled “The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work – Are We Ready” and channels data from 30,000 people in 31 countries. It echoes earlier insight that Microsoft shared about how COVID was impacting their organization at the deepest level. And, at the risk of this being a solitary view, similar insight from McKinsey on the Future of Work and Deloitte on the future of Human Capital.
In short, to paraphrase a COVID classic, we’re not all in this together.
Beneath the sobering and universal numbers, I see a number of worrying undercurrents that I think are being lost in the current tsunami of fatigue and angst all around us.
An increasing belief, or reliance, in technology as the ultimate solve.
A belief in expeditious, but ultimately cosmetic, refinements in how we create and build our organizations.
A belief that these cries from our colleagues and connections are some new and novel manifestation of the pandemic.
Those beliefs are dangerous and mistaken.
Here’s some realities that bear more scrutiny and leadership attention than the pie-charts and curve lines of these reports.
Technology will only ever be an enabler of the humans in our organizations. More varied types of collaboration platforms (Slack adding a Clubhouse-style voice layer) will not magically make collaboration flourish if our people do not understand the why and with whom collaborating is so critical.
Shorter Zoom calls, funky downloadable backgrounds and Meeting-free Fridays are just tactical Advil for the larger undiagnosed and unaddressed pain of working inside organizations without purpose, clarity and meaning.
Belonging, meaning, contribution, impact, appreciation, security, identity are fundamentals of the human condition that we could willfully ignore or subsume when business was flourishing, and lockdowns only occurred in Michael Bay movies. Perhaps the biggest question not answered in all these studies is why weren’t we exploring, and agonizing about, these deep-seated cries from our people before the pandemic? Would the 40% statistic quoted at the start be different if we’d been more conspicuous and conscientious about how we built our organizations from the start?
I often reference, and have long admired, the thinking and evangelism of Bob Chapman and Stan Slap on this topic. In Bob Chapman’s “Everybody Matters” he makes a clear and cogent argument that an organization’s responsibility lies in creating environments where everyone has clarity on where they contribute, the value and importance of that contribution and how that contribution accelerates the potential of those around them and, by extension, the organization. Sounds ominously like the feedback shared in the Microsoft report. Stan Slap repeatedly talks about the innate ability of a committed culture to achieve extraordinary results if it believes that it is both sane and safe to live their deepest held human values inside their organization; and not have to abdicate those beliefs 9-5 because they’re now “at work”. Even the most cursory scan of the Microsoft Report would suggest most organizations have not engendered the type of commitment Stan is talking about.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that agonizing over workplace distancing, workforce scheduling and enhanced collaboration technology aren’t urgent time-sensitive issues to resolve. I, for one, can’t wait to be tackling an empty whiteboard with five passionate colleagues, having a “collision conversation” with a team-mate by the watercooler or, shock horror, taking 20 minutes out to grab a coffee with a new employee to chat about the company. These aspects are important to address and address asap.
What concerns me is that when we get all those processes, places and protocols sorted we’ll forget the loud and legitimate feedback our colleagues gave us at this crucial moment. That the desperate calls for meaning, belonging and identity inside our organizations will somehow be overshadowed by the access to craft beer inside our funky new WeWork hybrid location. And, that the opportunity for deep introspection and legitimate recalibration of our workplace culture will be superseded by the collective sigh of getting back to normal or the next-normal.
Stanford economist Paul Romer is attributed with the brilliant line “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”
My fear is that if we don’t heed the clear unambiguous feedback from our fellow human beings outlined in the Microsoft report, and all the others before it, we’ll have completely wasted this incredible opportunity to do and be better.
Build better organizations.
Be better humans.
#PeopleNotPixels