So, best practices?
– use complex passwords.
– use each complex password on exactly one website. (Do NOT reuse).
– use a password manager to keep track of all those passwords.
– Use multi-factor authentication when available, as an extra step beyond your password.
Of course, the real question is will hiring managers also shift their perspectives and hiring practices? All the LinkedIn details for a gap in the world won’t change the culture if hiring managers immediately toss any resumes with one before even trying to understand why it’s there.
Hopefully, that is coming. There are a whole lot of really talented folks who’ve been forced to take a gap in their employment in the last couple of years. Good organizations have the opportunity to scoop them up while all those bad managers are turning up their noses at “employment gaps”.
It’s not so much that everyone wants a four-day work week, we just want something other than what we have now, and ultimately, I think most of us would much rather work around the rest of our lives as opposed to living the rest of our lives around work.
This is something that many of us older folks don’t get, but we should be thinking about much more. I think many of us who work in the technology, legal, or eDiscovery sectors can lose sight of how demanding careers in these industries are. We are quick to scoff at the idea that we should maybe figure out how to make them a little less demanding, or at least more friendly for diverse candidates who can’t simply work all night, or be on call 24 hours a day for our clients because that’s just the way it’s done in our industry. We tend to think that because all of the jobs in the industry are like that, we don’t have to worry about competitors offering something else to our employees.
We are not considering how many people we drive out of the industry completely, especially young people. There is a staffing shortage in these industries, and the companies struggling to find enough talent are not losing out to some other mysterious company in the industry who can pick and choose, we’re all in the same boat because the boat is leaking people every single day. People are making the choice to do something else because what we offer isn’t cutting it.
One way that I can see this being helpful that wouldn’t require much effort at all is to have a group of people who have been in touch with your EAP and navigated the maze that it can be, available to talk with other employees and assist them with that process. That can be the simplest, and yet most effective, way to start peer-to-peer support. There is much more that can be offered but if you’re struggling to know where to start, that can be one option.
However, to even get there we need to stop the secrecy, shame, and stigma surrounding mental health.
This makes sense. How often do your coworkers send you something in a Teams chat and you simply click on it? Have you considered the possibility that it wasn’t actually your coworker but someone who was able to gain access to their account?