When you look at the survey results, you see things like this numerically. What people want from work and how they have decided work should fit into their lives is not only different than it was 2 years ago, but it’s different for each of us as individuals. “The tragedies of the last two years…
There is more at the link that you may want to read and consider, but the big point is that what workers want is sort of all over the place. As we all stop and consider what role or work should play in our lives, we are making a number of different choices. Leaders who simply assume they can make everyone do the same thing are going to appear out of touch, and that is also exactly what we are seeing. Flexibility sells when it comes to hiring and retaining talent, lack of it just makes you look callous and distant.
Wouldn’t it be a better choice to locate candidates with some of the skills you’re going to need in a position and know that you have an environment that will help them grow and learn to become exactly what you need to be? Wouldn’t that practice become a way to attract really smart people who want to grow and learn by coming to work for you? Doesn’t that sound like a better option than simply leaving your open jobs unfilled and lamenting the fact that no one wants to work anymore? Unfortunately, there are too many organizations that simply won’t consider this. They aren’t interested in growing the people who work for them, they only want to hire people who can come in with no effort on the organization’s part and do the work starting on day one.
I think they are short-sighted.
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”.
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.
It can be very easy to lose sight of this on Social Media but it can also be easy to lose sight of this in the workplace or in our own careers as well. When we reward certain measurements people respond by doing more of that thing. This makes sense if your goal is to simply attract more attention to yourself. For social media maybe that is your goal. If you are representing a brand on social media, yeah that is probably what you want. However, as an individual, I think you have to ask yourself if getting more eyeballs this way causes you to actually undermine your own goals.