By Stephanie Diana Eubank
There is a consistent leadership-focused narrative being repeated falsely in the media. The false narrative is that “People don’t want to work anymore”. To those who keep repeating this narrative and truly believe it the answer is, “no they just don’t want to work for you”.
In the past concepts like quiet quitting would have been viewed in a leadership paradigm as what is called disengagement. However, post-COVID that’s not what is truly happening. There is a quote in the Disney movie, “Remember the Titans”, that always comes to mind when talking about leadership in business. “Attitudes Reflect Leadership”. So, when employees rage quit or quiet quit these are reflections of a hostile work environment as COVID has taught the workforce that works should not become a person’s whole life.
Unfortunately, the media narrative has been that management is tightening the ropes and trying to force everyone back to the office to keep the abusive behavior going. This has caused a lot of companies to feel like there is a talent shortage. Which is just not true. The issue is that companies need to work on their goodwill or their reputation within the workforce. No one wants to work for companies that are continuing to do the following remotely or in person. So, let’s stop doing the following four things.
- Stop promoting abusive people into leadership!
- Unfortunately, there is a type that is consistently promoted in leadership as people who can push employees to do more. This recruiting method gives upfront success with long-term failure. We need to develop leaders who lead with empathy and have more of the teacher personality, not a bulldozer. This is even more the case in remote workplaces.
- Stop hiring leadership that thinks their job is just to lead.
- Especially in remote work the phenomenon of shared leadership develops. So, if companies want to keep to a traditional ladder method of design having managers that just manage is not doable anymore. We need leaders that are willing to roll up their sleeves and be in the trenches.
- Stop hiring Leadership that doesn’t understand business and leadership is a science.
- I have had my fill of colleagues, students, and managers who don’t understand developing quotes involves math and project management methodologies. Also, leadership that does not understand leadership science people are only statistically productive for 3-4 hours in an 8-hour business workday. The rest of the time is administrative and collaborative. So, when people take breaks that are part of work. People in the workforce cannot reasonably be expected to do the productive side of labor all day long. Having this attitude stifles creative problem-solving and increases burnout in the workforce.
- Stop perpetuating the attitude of overtime being a good thing.
- Wanting employees to want and do overtime work all the time is a bad thing. Let’s ignore the glaring fact that overtime consistently or as if it is expected is a big contributor to burnout. Baring that constant over time needed says two things to employees. One the company doesn’t value you enough to hire enough people to get the job done during normal hours. Two it tells employees that you see them as cheap labor and do not respect their time. Three it tells them that the company expects that the employee has got to give up having a life for the company. The days when the concept of workplace families and overall hustle culture is gone past COVID. They have been proven through research and experience to foster toxic work environments and kill company culture both in-person and remotely.
Now that we have talked about what businesses need to stop doing. Let’s talk about what they need to start doing. Aside from my usual advice on issuing a remote first workplace methodology to help promote a work-life balance the following 4 things we need to be started by companies to repair their brand with the workforce.
- Start developing more comprehensive leadership and followership training programs.
- This will help make the whole workforce feel supported and when there is layoffs or redistribution of talent companies and hire more from within. This also allows companies to not make it so only leadership gets salary bumps and feels appreciated.
- Start hiring leadership with a teacher/coordinator personality instead of bulldozers.
- Again subject matter experts and those who are more of coordinators or prefer support roles are the new type of leaders that the post-COVID world is demanding. Leaders let their team shine rather than use their team to reflect how they are as leaders. Teams are not power objects.
- Start developing a positive corporate culture of work/ life balance.
- Investing in an organizational culture that supports work/ life balance helps cultivate a happy workforce that doesn’t make a revolving door for new hires. It helps keep your organization together and have a more complex team. It also helps prevent burnout, workplace PTSD, and workplace violence.
- Star is upfront and honest with employees and helps cultivate the workforce.
- Often in businesses if someone complains about leadership companies try to find ways to get that person out of the company. Rather than asking why this person is complaining and looking at the behavior companies try to protect leadership. Instead, companies need to work to cultivate both leadership and workforce and investigate additional training needed. Otherwise bad work culture keeps being spread and the trust the workforce has for companies will continue to erode.
As business leaders, we need to remember that our teams are our greatest resource. And if we don’t work to strengthen the trust employees have in the companies they work at we will have no workforce. Trust needs to be earned and focusing on rebuilding workforce trust will help re-energize the workforce in this post-COVID world.
Dr. Stephanie Diana Eubank DBA Remote Team Research (AKA Dr. Bear) 