Change is hard. It is also neverending. Things change. The new technology provides new opportunities. Leaders should take responsibility to explain that to their people and highlight the opportunities that change can provide. Show them how it will benefit the business.
Then send them to training ready to learn.
All of these things are interwoven. The people who work for you are human, that’s how we are. We aren’t just a worker for eight hours and then everything else for the rest of our time. We are human 24×7 and our wellbeing affects us in the workplace. The workplace also impacts our well-being.
After years of blogging and writing newsletters just to share things I’ve been learning, I’ve decided to dip my toes in the paid-newsletter world.
What do I think is so valuable that I would ask you to pay for it? For the last few years, I’ve been working and diving deep into the Microsoft 365 platform, from the perspective of an eDiscovery professional.
Unfortunately, I do believe we are taught the opposite of this. We are expected to work harder and harder and then use our time off to rest so that we can go back and do it some more. It’s all focused on being a good worker, but this study seems to indicate that we are all better off focusing on other parts of our lives during the time we spend away from work. Maybe, just maybe, we are more than our jobs. Maybe when we spend the energy and focus on other parts of our lives enough to plan them out and be intentional about them, we’re happier.
What a concept.
This one is a little harder for me because letting people know what I’ve been up to sounds an awful lot like self-promotion. I’ve never been super comfortable with people who are constantly promoting themselves and what they do. I certainly don’t want to become known for promoting myself all the time. The difference between the two was actually the subject of two episodes of the Work-Life Podcast earlier this year, and I thought the discussion between Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry was a fantastic exploration of the difference between being ethically visible (I stole the term from them, it’s that good!)
You can invest in your people, keeping their skills up-to-date for the constant change they will be faced with in the workplace, or you can view all of them as a simple cost to be cut down to the bare minimum.
If you do, at least consider the cost of hiring a bunch of new folks year after year.
Because you will be.