Look at it this way, if you’re a client of one of these companies, who do you want doing your work, the associate who hasn’t slept more than 4 hours a night in weeks, or someone who’s actually rested? Who is going to do a better job for you? Who is going to be most cognitively effective?
Why do we keep grinding away at the expense of our own cognitive abilities then?
You know, I think there is one thing that prevents this from being an even higher number. Health insurance.
If you’re young, looking for flexibility, and not really finding it, working freelance might look like a pretty attractive option. But, your health insurance costs might be pretty manageable, especially if you’re in relatively good health. Those of us who are older, or have some health issues that cause the price of getting a health insurance policy on our own to be rather high, might have a more difficult time making this decision.
I have had conversations privately, so some people already know this, but while I’m not necessarily for, or against, Universal Health Care, (I think it’s a really complicated issue that we refuse to talk honestly about, from both sides) if the US ever gets to that point, I will be planning my exit from Corporate America the next day.
Regarding technology flattening the organization, I would agree with Ed. Where I’m going to disagree is in assuming every workplace has figured that out and taken advantage of it.
Bad managers are still bad managers, even if they are remote. If the management style at your company is to measure work by, what Ed calls, the “appearance of work”, you’ve probably struggled with remote work. Or, you’ve got everyone in meetings, or at least available online all day, every day. On the other hand, if you’ve switched to remote work and also switched the way you measure your directs, you’ve probably been very successful and might even be willing to accept remote work permanently. It’s all about understanding that what we do with teams when they work in-person doesn’t work with remote teams and adjusting.
Remote work isn’t compatible with management that measures workers by the hours they spend at their desks or how many people like you. Those measurements kind of go out the window. So it would be best if you had new, better measurements. I’d argue that you need the measurement you should have always been using, but I digress.
Let me fix it for you, what JPMorgan is really doing, is weeding out anyone who might actually want to work differently than the way Wall Street has always worked.
It’s almost like they have no interest in actual diversity, employee mental health, or work-life balance. Of course, we know they don’t. Wealth Management isn’t about the people who work for you, it’s about how much money they bring in, period.
The research just proves that we already know from first-hand experience, right? We’ve all been in back-to-back meetings, leaving one Microsoft Teams or Zoom call just to click the link to another, and it’s obvious which team members have done that and aren’t mentally prepared for the current meeting.
We all know it. We all schedule our meeting to end at 25 or 55 past the hour so that we don’t make people do that, and then we still run to the top or bottom of the hour anyway. Sometimes even over.
Proving, once again, that we suck at meetings. And yes, I include myself in that.
t’s also about being respected enough to allow our work to actually fit into the rest of our lives, as opposed to having it interfere with the rest of our lives. Human beings have boundaries between their work and the rest of their lives. Numbers on a financial sheet are generally not provided that level of respect and concern. Which one would best describe the people who work for you in the culture you have created?
You might be very surprised to learn that it’s not what you thought it was from your view in the C-Suite.