Reinventing the Workplace
Imagine a workplace where every twist and turn is as smooth as a roundabout, with no abrupt stops or stifling structures. That's the future Sara, Karen and I are visualizing as we tackle the monumental task of reshaping the modern workplace on today's episode. We're not merely adjusting the sails to the changing winds of employee expectation; we're building a whole new ship. Embark with us on this journey as we confront the alarming levels of disengagement and dissatisfaction in the workforce head-on, challenging the very nature of management and its role in either anchoring us in the past or cruising into future success.
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
“Reinventing the Workplace”
Original Publish Date: 3/19/2024.
Hosts: John Broer, Sara Best, Karen Schulman
John Broer: Welcome back to all of our friends out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation to this new installment of the Bosshole Chronicles. This is John Broer, happy to have you here, and we are going to be talking about something actually with Sara and Karen. I've got them coming in to have this conversation today about reinventing the workplace. For those of you that follow us either online or LinkedIn, you have seen that we have been talking about reinventing the workplace. We've spent the last few years talking about reinventing the manager. Now we are really elevating that conversation to reinventing the workplace, because it is absolutely time for organizations to rethink how they view the workplace. I think that begins with even the word workplace and our interpretation of that. The workplace is different, it feels different, it's got to be different and it has to respond differently to those people that are out there that want to work, and the workforce is changing. The expectations, the needs are different. So let's welcome Sara and Karen and dig into this topic.
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. So it is really awesome to be back with Karen and Sara. How are you both doing?
Sara Best: Woohoo.
JB: Doing great. We have a cheer and a thumbs up from Karen, awesome. So listen, everybody out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation, this is a pretty- this is a really interesting theme and topic that I wanted to explore for this episode and that is the idea of reinventing the workplace. And let me provide some context, because something's wrong in the workplace and all of the data that we see and you know, all of our listeners out there understand that we are all about objective data because it helps us make better decisions around people and business practices and so forth. According to Gallup, as of their study last year, disengagement in the American workforce was at a nine-year high. I just got this article from SHRM that indicated employee satisfaction right now limited for the third straight quarter in the last months of 2023, reaching a four-year low. According to new data and I can get into some specifics as we talk about this, what's going on in the workplace, Karen? What do you think is wrong in the workplace? Why are these numbers so bad?
Karen Shulman: You know, I seem to always go back to one of the primary focuses, which is the manager. You know, if you really look at the statistics, why do people leave their jobs? Because of their manager typically.
JB: Okay.
KS: The focus of this podcast is making sure that managers stay out of the Bosshole Zone. So I think, probably a huge contributing factor to why people are more disengaged, why it's at a nine-year all-time low and why employee satisfaction has plummeted. I have to believe that the way our managers are operating is probably not the best way in terms of helping people. Fair enough and let's acknowledge this is not exclusive.
JB: This is not at every organization. We have tons of clients that understand that the workplace needs to look different. You know moving forward and we're having great success there, but there are enough. I mean, these statistics would bear out that there are a sizable number of organizations in the United States where people are disengaged and dissatisfied and unhappy, and I've heard some managers say you know, I just don't get this new workforce and people you want to be, you want me to be responsible for your happiness. It's like well, if you, to your point, Karen, managers play such a significant role in the lives of other people. Yeah, to a certain degree. The answer is yes, I can't own somebody's happiness, but I sure don't want to contribute to the unhappiness because I'm a Bosshole or I don't understand how to develop people. Sara, what do you think?
SB: Well, I do think we are in very unique times.
JB: Okay.
SB: We cannot have this conversation without acknowledging, you know, the state of things in the world. You know there's war happening, there's social unrest there is. You know, in some cases industry is booming and others there are massive layoffs. So the scope of industry and the market is continuously changing. There's still uncertainty about the economic future.
So, if we go back to, you know, 2020 and work our way forward from there, something that we've at least acknowledged in our country but haven't really done anything great to address is leader burnout. There's manager and leader overwhelm and burnout and we just have to acknowledge that. So you could have all the tools in the world. But if your dynamics at work in the world, your dynamics at work and the workflow and the workload and just your mental ability is not there, it's going to be difficult for a manager or a leader to want to develop or be interested in the success of others. It's not because they don't want to. Right, right. So I think it's important to note that. You know these are the most unique working circumstances, a variety of dynamics at play that have ever emerged in our lifetime. That's for sure.
JB: Oh yeah.
SB: And they just keep getting more and more interesting. The political challenges and dissent, all that stuff makes it really difficult to show up every day and do your job.
JB: I think that's great, I think that's very insightful because, you know, at Real Good Ventures, in our work on the podcast, but also with our clients, we talk about the old model giving way to the new model. You know, oftentimes we like to use the metaphor or the analogy of a stoplight intersection versus a roundabout and again, we give full credit to Aaron Dignan for giving us that imagery because it's so powerful. When you talk about the pressures of the world, okay, and I think a few years ago we started to see a reduction in civility, just general civility between people, you know, I mean outside of work. Well, you have political unrest, financial concerns in civility, and then the old model of work, the workplace was you leave that stuff at the door. Remember that. I remember those days. You know you leave your personal life at the door. You come here, I got you for eight hours. That's the old workplace and I contend that the word workplace is still viewed through an old lens. You know people say well, we think about the workplace, that's where you go to do your work and you are there from eight to five or seven to four or whatever that, whatever your shift may be, and there's a manager and there are people. That is gone. So when we think about reinventing the workplace, we have to reinvent the way we even think about the workplace.
How, what was the last time the three of us had an actual office outside of our homes? It was years ago. So if we said, hey, guess what? You know, Karen, Sara, what do you think about Real Good Ventures? We're going to buy a building and we're going to have a central- Okay, I can see Karen's going, "Nope, not going to be for me, Of course not, Of course not. In other words, our workplace is totally different that it was three years ago, five years ago, 10, certainly 20 years ago. So I think what we are still struggling with is organizations and leadership that I don't think they're refusing to. I think they're having difficulty thinking of the workplace in a more current context. How does that strike you? What do you think about that?
KS: What strikes me is the model of when you work with people. When you hire people, you're hiring the whole person. When you describe the workplace of old, where people left things at the door, they didn't talk about what was going on in their personal lives, what was upsetting them, whatever, whatever. Nowadays, people do bring that to work and you really do have to manage the whole person. I think that some of the burnout that Sara describes is attributed to. I think there are a lot of managers that just feel like they are very ill-equipped to handle all the different things that are going on in their employees' lives that perhaps don't pertain to work. Yet they're bringing it to work.
JB: Yeah, they're probably thinking I didn't sign up for this as a manager and, trust me, we've all been in management and leadership positions and we know that you get everything. People that aspire to getting into management, I would say my advice to you is if you really truly want to develop other people, if you have a passion for coaching and mentoring, by all means you should do that, because that's what a manager is supposed to do develop other people. If you think you're going to do it because of, I don't know, title, notoriety, you're going to get more responsibility. You may make some more money, but, my goodness, you just exponentially increase the amount of responsibility with not just work stuff, but the whole person, all those people that walk through the door. Karen, I think that's great and again, I'm sure managers and supervisors that are listening in think why does it always fall to us? It just does, and in Sara, your point. I think that's why they're experiencing historic levels of burnout.
Well, let me share it, if I may, from this article that was published by SHRM. Bamboo Hr had contributed a lot of their research to it and this drop in satisfaction which continues and I know I mean our hearts go out to those managers out there, because we know that you are nobody. As we say, nobody is born to be a Bosshole. Nobody goes into the office. I would hope they don't go into the office thinking, "how do I make the members of my team miserable, how do I push down on them and crush their spirits? People don't do that. But, karen, I think you make a great point. I'm just ill-equipped. I don't feel like I understand how to deal with all the things that are impacting these people. But it said, the article said, the satisfaction drop is driven by factors including inflation and financial woes. Sarah, there you go. Absolutely Inconsistent return to office policies. We have had multiple episodes on that and we continue to see articles out there in the marketplace where organizations are saying we're going to mandate that people come back to the office or at least for a few days a week. I just don't see how you can take that strong of a stance given all of this stuff that we're seeing.
Another aspect evolving employee expectations. Layoffs, Sara, once again and another aspect of it is well over half of employees, 57%, are experiencing at least moderate levels of burnout, according to a recent report from Aflac, and meanwhile employees' confidence at how much their employers care about them has declined significantly. In 2023, 48% said that they were confident that their employer cares about them, down from 56% in 2022 and 59% in 2021. And then one other thing from the Bamboo HR research employees surveyed agreed. They said that more regular feedback and time with managers would make them feel more supported. Right there it falls back to the manager. The amount of time and support, feedback, interaction that they have with their direct reports absolutely would be a variable in increasing that satisfaction in the workplace. But the three of us see all these leadership programs and all these different things available to managers and yet we continue to see this declining. What's the light at the end of the tunnel?
SB: What I often think about, and what we certainly believe, is that a cohesive leadership team at the top is an important foundation to have if you're going to be able to appropriately diagnose all these different challenges or even pinpoint hey, if we do have turnover, if we do have low employee satisfaction or engagement, to what can we attribute those challenges?
I have had occasion in the last year to work with several leadership teams. One in particular comes to mind. I know they believed in what they said when they were together building a cohesive team. I know they walked through the exercises bringing their whole selves but their operating system, which wasn't necessarily command and control, it was more of a collaborative kind of approach. It was just so overloaded and there were so many competing priorities and the pace was so frenetic and the workload so hefty and it's almost like the leadership team kind of joins together around this idea that, oh my gosh, this is so hard and there's so much going on. So I think about there's always the opportunity to start at the leadership team level and say are we telling ourselves the truth?
Are we being honest, are we noticing how we're responding to each other, how we are behaving, uh and and does that have any bearing whatsoever on the the dials that we're watching in our organization? Hopefully, people are watching those dials.
KS: What is?
SB: Our engagement? What is our turnover? What is our ability to promote from within? How are we equipping people? How are we onboarding new hires? How are we giving managers the tools they need? So I think that's one piece I think about.
JB: I think that's really germane to all of this. And again, I want everybody to know we've we've seen some incredible success stories and we're blessed to be part of those success stories with organizations that have realized work today cannot look like work did a year or two years, three, five years ago. They're going oh my gosh, this is different. So that means in our world I like to refer, refer to it as our version of ERP engagement, retention and performance. Those are the three things that every organization needs to be tracking. Engagement, retention and performance all of which can be measured, but those are supported by reinventing the way you hire, recruit and promote people. You know, you hear us talk about job fit all the time and how critical it is. The other part of that is reinventing the manager, which we taught, we've been talking about for years and that's what this podcast is all about Karen to your point, reinventing the way we think about managing and developing and growing and coaching people. It cannot look the same. Reinventing teams, I'm still, you know we will talk, I will.
I just talked to an organization this week and I said how do you know that this team is actually designed to do the work you're asking them to do? And they said I don't understand. What are you talking about? I said we can actually measure the design of a team. They may not be equipped to do what you're asking them to do, but that's not their fault. So it's again, it's a way of recalibrating and thinking of oh my gosh, I never even thought about that. How do we, how do we reinvent our teams? And then, ultimately, what results is you have reinvented your culture, but I go back to. I go back to the point that we need to reinvent even the way we think about what the workplace is, how we view it, and I'm going to make a really bold statement it's never going back to what it was, and anybody who is clinging to the hope that it will go back to the way it was, it is unrealistic, it's completely unrealistic.
KS: Well, I just think that a lot of what we're talking about especially, Sara, the example that you gave about the company that did all the right things to try to develop a cohesive upper management team and yet the demands of their, their work, took them back to old habits. There was a lot of stress, and that's what happens when we have stress responses. What do we do? We typically go back to our old habits and try to make that work. Doesn't work. What do managers do if they?
You know, managers will try to manage people by trial and error. Well, let me try this. And then sometimes it doesn't work. Let me try this, let me try that. I think, when we talk about reinventing the workplace, rather than trial and error, rather than allowing ourselves to fall back on old habits, I think we need to start gaining some insights from tools that maybe we have not done before, we have not tapped into before, that provide us with the objective data to help us understand. How do we manage teams, how do we manage ourselves as a management team? How do we stay on track? How do we avoid falling back into old patterns and old habits?
JB: Yeah, and how do we maintain that alignment across the enterprise? You know, rather than guessing and, Karen, I think you bring up a great point rather than it feels good, I think we're all on the same page, you don't have to do that anymore, and so it is completely plausible to ensure that, hey, we have absolute alignment about around our strategic execution at every level of this organization. We have great confidence in that. That's a new workplace. It absolutely is.
SB: It's like all the pieces and parts are there and they're known. They just may not be deployed consistently or effectively or at all. The other thing we didn't mention, which we probably should, is, you know, we we do have five generations in the workplace. Oh, good point. I firmly believe that generational, you know, ideas about people can apply, but before I think about who they are in relationship to their generation, I need to know how they role as a person Like. What are their natural behavioral drives? What are their needs, cause I think those can be unique within any generation. I saw a graphic recently that you know. It kind of spells it out how many. 2% of the traditionalist, those are the people that were born before 1943. 5% Gen Z, you know, those are like my 20 something kids. Okay, 25% of us baby boomers make up the workforce now, 25%. So we've been heavy into that retirement of the boomers. That's still happening, right? 35%. The biggest population is that Gen Y, also known as millennials.
JB: Okay.
SB: You know they're growing up. Now they're, they're stable and steady in the workplace. And then Gen X. Actually I'm Gen X, John. You're probably a boomer at 33%. As we think about that, I don't hear leaders complain like they did maybe five years ago. All those millennials you know. I think they're. I don't know the degree to which that influences you know some of these challenges that require us to rethink and reinvent the workplace. But I do know managers. Are we fitting managers to the role? We hire people based on the role.
Are we defining the role for a manager, cause it could be different, given you know what department you lead. Are you on the floor, roll up your sleeves, kind of manager? Are you providing oversight? But clearly, setting people up in a role that can draw from their natural drives and use their superpowers makes so much sense, but it continues to be kind of a gut feel. So reinventing the workplace would say. You know what. We take care to fit people two roles and onto teams so that they're going to be successful.
I've had several conversations in the last couple of weeks. You know helping either an HR leader or a leader in the HR team diagnose. You know what appears to be a performance issue with a particular employee and we can look at their behavioral data and say this shouldn't surprise you, Like this is exactly what you would expect from this kind of a level of formality, for example. It is imperative that organizations and leaders break out of that tendency toward well, it's the fundamental attribution error.
You know they make a person's performance and bad performance more about their character, or you know it's an internal cause. They're just they're not good enough for the job. Versus looking at the circumstances, because that's what we do when we attribute performance. Like, hey, you have no idea, I was waiting for information from this person. I couldn't control that. You know it's the circumstances, not me, so I think those factors come into play. But, John, you referenced this operating system idea. You know, are we a stoplight mentality? Do we operate that way? Are we more like a roundabout? It doesn't take much for an organization to assess its operating style. Just ask yourself questions like what are the criteria we use to promote somebody? Do we promote from within or do we cultivate leaders and managers inside but then have to go outside to find the people who can actually do the job? Those are. There are questions that I think organizations could be asking how do we handle giving feedback and keeping and maintaining regular dialogue with employees?
So I was talking to somebody this week. There was a challenge with someone meeting an objective on a task and they were given feedback. They shut down. Did you follow up? I mean, I'm sorry that was difficult for that person to hear that feedback. That might have been the first time they got critical feedback. But do you just back away? Or in your operating system, do you maintain a level of communication and connection to that person for their benefit? Mm-hmm so they're just so, this very, very complex thing that we're talking about here.
JB: It is and at the same time, I think to your point and you make some very salient points is the data, the dials or the indicators are out there. I mean, if we pay attention to the data, the objective data, and stop guessing and allow the old model to just phase out and realize that there is technology, data, even people, science, that will help us navigate this more effectively, because people are amazing, wonderful, complex beings. But this doesn't have to be a guessing game, whether it's at an individual level or a corporate level. So I really appreciate being able to broach this conversation or this topic with both of you because of the amount of the tremendous amount of respect I have for you both and the work that you do. But here's what I'm realizing is that the reinvention is already underway because, quite frankly, we are part of that.
I believe that the work we do at Real Good Ventures is part of that. As a talent optimization consultancy, we are, I believe, on the front edge of reinventing the workplace in different ways. But there is a tension building and I think the data the disengagement, the active disengagement, the dissatisfaction data proves this out. At some point it's going to break. It's going to break, right, Karen.
KS: Well, I think that change is messy. So we're kind of in messiness right now. We know where we've been, we have some idea of where we probably need to get to, and we're in a state of utter messiness right now, which is kind of normal in the change process.
JB: It is for sure, and I think about using our analogy of a stoplight intersection and a roundabout, when the roundabouts started to appear in your neighborhood and you're pulling up and you're going wait a second, what the heck's going on here? Where's the stoplight? I have no, I'm in charge now. I have this autonomy to do this. Yeah, and it's not an abandonment of the stoplight intersection, it's just a movement away from it, that it is not dominating the way our workplace operates. So I want our listeners to be paying attention, because we are looking to add episodes with subject matter experts to help us understand what a reinvented workplace looks like, because it is already happening. And if it's not happening in your organization, you need to figure out why, or ask those questions that Sara brought up and figure out how do I play a role in reinventing our workplace? And if this is not a workplace that's really willing to move forward the way it needs to, maybe I need to find a different place to be.
SB: I'll just reference the Chad Gono episode a week or so ago. If you have the privilege and the opportunity to have a CEO who can devote 50 to 60 hours of his time a week to creating that reinvention and solidifying it every single day, that's amazing. But that's a choice he made. I think if you haven't listened to that episode, you should listen and investigate that. He has proof, bottom-line proof that his efforts toward creating a healthier, more employee-centered workplace and really defining what leadership should do to create that has tripled the size of their company. So it gets results. It does.
JB: Sara, you just gave me an example this morning. You were talking the other day to a client of ours, a CEO, and this is somebody that you had coached. And he said well, you know what, when I went from 1.0 to the 2.0 version of myself, that's when everything changed my self-awareness, my emotional intelligence. And this company is a very established company and it is still flourishing. And you said what about the 3.0? And he said that's a great question. That is an evolving leader right there.
SB: Yeah. I said are you 3.0 yet? And he said I'm working on it. Make sure you get some feedback from your people. Yeah, and he will need to look like yeah, for sure.
JB: Well, for sure, this was great. I really appreciate it, and I want to encourage our listeners to be courageous, to be bold, to think about the workplace differently. Many of you already have, many of you have already created your own new, reinvented workplace.
SB: To your point, john, even reinventing a process or reinventing an approach, doesn't mean you have to dynamically change your whole organization. But there are things. I think there are things that we could be rethinking and reinventing every day, including conversations we have with direct reports, all the stuff we've been talking about. So maybe just think of it in a bit of a smaller scale, to start.
JB: Well, thank you both. This was great. I really appreciate it. Karen, Sara, always wonderful having a chat with you.
SB: Yeah, thanks.
JB: Good work.
SB: Yep, Sorry.
JB: Karen go ahead.
SB: Say that again.
KS: Thanks. It was great to be here and wonderful for the three of us to do a podcast together.
SB: Yep, we should do this more. See you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles.
JB: We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bosshole Chronicles and if you have a Bosshole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, we'll see you again soon.