Linked: Leadership Lessons from The Great Resignation
Go ahead and add me to this boat, I also believe the expectations around work have changed and they aren’t going back:
“People have a new vision of what work is and can be than ever before. Their expectations are higher and different, and with a ever more flexible workplace, the differences between their options will be larger and more obvious than ever. Organizations and leaders who lament this change and blame employees as disloyal or ungrateful, and who view this as a short-term economic condition are taking a large long-term risk.”
It really is a risk, and I truly don’t understand leaders who are simply waiting for things to go back. They aren’t. We now realize that that were far too many jobs requiring set hours with a butt in a seat in an office building that never should have required that. The same work got done from other places and the workplace got more diverse by opening up opportunities to people who couldn’t drive to the same office every day at the same time and put in 9 or more hours in that one location.
If you want to go back to that, you’re going back to limiting your employee’s options and limiting the pool of potential employees. We already know that many candidates are looking at some “hybrid” work environments now and assuming that is just a temporary stop on the way back to being in the office all of the time, and choosing to look elsewhere. They’re aware and making a job that fits into their lifestyle an important factor in deciding where to work. Good leaders are choosing to figure out how to make this work. How to make cultural, structural, and managerial changes so that they can provide a place where talent wants to come to work.
It’s going to be hard to compete for talent if you aren’t adapting. I don’t suggest you waste much time waiting for everything to “go back”.
Read more from Kevin Eikenberry on what you should be learning from this.
