The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Work
Whether you want to talk about social media posts about “always grinding”, the never-ending side-hustle, etc. even in the midst of a global pandemic and the acknowledgement of the mental health issues tied to overwork, we still brag about how much we overwork. In the workplace, we talk a good game about employee wellness, and work-life balance, but who wins all the accolades at the end of each project, or quarter? The folks who put in the “extra effort”. (aka “hours”)
It’s as if we never really left that early Protestant environment, and it’s the same reason why so many people who have been successful have such a hard time accepting that things have changed. We still hang on to the belief that says good people work hard, and that hard work leads to success. Bad people don’t work hard, and this is why they don’t have success.… Read More
A Simple Story About Phishing
Truthfully though, I think this story shows a couple of really important points.
Recognize that mistakes happen
The importance of two-factor identification
The importance of taking action as soon as you realize the mistake
The importance of getting the technical folks involved immediately instead of hiding it… Read More
Linked: Can the ‘right to disconnect’ exist in a remote-work world?
Anything the government comes up with might protect workers from being required to work all the time, but the devil in the detail is how to allow workers to choose which hours they do work within that? It gets a bit messy, doesn’t it, and really isn’t that the issue with the government getting involved? It limits the possibilities by putting a defined “work” time, when what is really needed is the flexibility to figure out the best time, and location, that allows a worker to get what needs to be done, done, and still have a life that is outside of work. That’s going to look different for everyone, so there can’t be rules passed down from an outsider, there will need to be an understanding between workers, and management, on what works best for everyone, including when they will disconnect.
That does, of course, require some more effort and imagination. Are you up to it?… Read More
Maybe this is the Crux of the Employment Problem?
The headline from this Time article lays it out pretty simply:
The Pandemic Revealed How Much We Hate Our Jobs.
I wonder if all of the talk about laziness, unemployment benefits, toxic workplaces, etc. really all comes down to this. There are a significant number of people in this world working in jobs they simply don’t like. Or, to look at it another way, there are a significant number of jobs that give us no reason to not hate them. … Read More
Linked: Ongoing M365 Tenant Upgrades/Migrations
It’s not normal for us to be using a platform that works one way, then changes and works another way two weeks later, but that is absolutely the way the Agile development is going to happen. The decision to change will be pushed by the business case for making the change, eDiscovery will be a second thought, if a thought at all.
That means two things in my mind in addition to the things Greg lays out in his post below.
1. You have to test, test, test. Constantly. You have to stay on top of new features, old feature changes, undocumented changes, etc.
2. The legal industry as a whole is going to have to get a lot more comfortable with “good faith efforts” being a little more of a gray area as these changes get made. What we could collect easily before, may require a lot more time and effort today, or it may not be possible today because of a bug in a recent update.
It’s going to happen. Whether you want to talk about M365, Google, cloud document management, cloud review platforms, or even cloud backups. Things will happen beyond our ability to control them, and those things will impact eDiscovery. Are we going to be OK accepting that?… Read More
Linked: Long working hours killing 745,000 people a year, study finds
So let me ask you, is what you do at work worth taking years off your life? Research continues to indicate that long work hours do a lot more than leave us feeling burned out, they are actually leading to earlier deaths.… Read More
Linked: 7 Ways to Recover from Burnout
I do believe a lot of people are burned out, not just from work, but from everything else going on in the world, on top of work. Then they look at their workplace and ask a simple question, does this job make burnout better, or worse, and if it’s worse, what are my options for changing that.
Not continuing to work in that place, is one option that many are opting for.
Can we blame them?… Read More