Category: DigitalWorkplaceTrends

DigitalWorkplaceTrends

New Year, New Goals: 3 Goals Your Team Should Work Toward in 2023

The demands placed on teams and organizations are vastly different today than they were just five years ago. Between leaps forward in technology, pandemic-driven upheavals, structural shake-ups, and transformed customer expectations, the learning curve might be mistaken for a mountain.

However swift various changes arrive, teams need to be just as agile, if not more. And for business leaders, it’s essential to convey clarity, steadfast vision, and awareness of what’s ahead. As you structure your goals for 2023, resist the urge to load up your team with surface-level goals. Instead, drill down to the foundational work needed to help you achieve your most significant milestones this year and beyond.

1. Establish a Clear Vision with Storytelling

Teams come to work, they complete their tasks, but then what? Without an understanding of how their daily deliverables impact the organization’s whole picture, it’s tough for employees to stay engaged. Whether you’re leading a front-line contact center, development team, or marketing department, communicating how their expertise fuels success matters.

Take your organization’s broad goals and use them to develop a clear vision for your team. Say your contact center tracks average handling time and first call resolution rate metrics. These quantitative measurements may feel more like grades than a way to serve your customers. If agents do well, life is great, and if they fall short, it can feel like a losing battle.

Bring your goals to life by using storytelling to achieve strategic alignment between metrics, employee output, and customer experience. Your vision may be “customers feel heard and are supported when they need us most.” This vision is relatable across generations, roles, and styles.

Next, outline how your team’s specific work drives this vision forward. Break down your vision into specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely tactics that’ll help teams achieve them. This format, also known as S.M.A.R.T. goals, allows for accountability and clear measures of success. Without this time-proven structure, your well-meaning vision is at risk of falling short.

2. Improve Efficiency for Today’s Workforce

Distributed teams, different time zones, and allowance for varying work styles can provide employees with greater flexibility. However, when you shift from a standard 9-to-5 workplace, it also invites complexity. Assess your current work styles, technology solutions, and the known gaps and issues among them.

Interview colleagues across the organization to get a clear picture of problems known and uncommunicated. Use surveys, guided discussions, and open feedback to get a pulse on where the issues exist and to source solutions. Without a request for this type of feedback, many employees are hesitant to provide it. Once you’ve sourced feedback, keep your team up-to-date with what’s being done with the information. Even if there’s not an immediate solution, open dialogue and transparency will build trust over time.

Partner with relevant departments to make improvements for your team. Some updates will require cross-functional collaboration, like implementing a collaboration tool. Others can be successfully launched within your group, like a method for managing team workload or files. Newly distributed teams that regularly share documents for editing may be feeling the pain of version control. After assessing specific needs and success criteria, you may find that a cloud-based file-sharing platform will solve the problem.

By developing specificity for your efficiency initiative, you can ensure proposed solutions have higher odds of success. Launch change initiatives only after conducting user testing, providing training, and identifying a support structure. With checks and balances, your team will benefit from thoughtful and strategic efforts designed to boost efficiency without confusion.

3. Prioritize the Human Needs of Your Team

The business world’s obsession with work-life balance has been replaced with a more realistic, refreshing outlook: work-life integration. At first glance, this may appear to be a pre-approval to shed the boundaries between home and work. However, it’s really an acknowledgment that humans crave both flexibility and purpose for both work and life.

Forget for a moment the constraints of your line of work. Instead, get curious about what your team wants and needs without adding in qualifiers. Schedule exploratory conversations with your direct reports to share your desire to learn more about their lived experiences. Keep these open-ended and casual, focusing on “what-if” statements and listening more than you speak.

You may be surprised to learn about the challenges your team faces outside of their workload. Long commutes eat up valuable hours of daylight and add stress at the front and back end of their days. Their continuing education goals keep getting set aside because it’s hard to find the time. Take notes and listen to what’s not said as much as what is to get to the heart of the issues.

One conversation likely won’t be enough to identify the depth of the issues or the breadth of the opportunities. Integrate this type of conversation into your quarterly reviews to build a culture of communication that improves over time. Then consult with your leadership team to determine how you can improve your employees’ work life. Updates to policies, benefits, and practices can fuel a better employee experience that improves worker satisfaction and business results.

Nurture Your Goals Toward Success

Now that you’ve launched your 2023 goals, it’s time to nurture them toward their fullest potential. Make your qualitative and quantitative goals part of your organization’s vocabulary. Hold a kickoff meeting that lays out the goals, why they matter, and how the team can make a difference. With consistency, clarity, and steady leadership, your team’s results will take your organization to the next level.

February 26, 2023
Office Tech Trends that Will Dominate the Business World in 2023

It’s no secret that modern technology has been changing and reshaping the business world as we (used to) know it for quite some time now. New gadgets, hardware and software solutions are entering the scene seemingly on a daily basis, and what was considered “hot” just a few months ago may as well be rendered obsolete by now.

That’s why companies who are constantly looking to gain an upper hand keep their eyes peeled on up and coming technology solutions that will help them advance. Notably, while it is virtually impossible to stay on top of them all, and implement them all in your business operations, identifying the ones that will bring you the most value is where it’s at.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a peek at some of the most prominent office tech trends that are bound to dominate the business world in 2023 and beyond.

Increased use of smart office gadgets and furniture

To start off on arguably the most easily-applicable office tech trends, we’ll first discuss the implementation and use of smart office gadgets and furniture. More and more companies are starting to realize the importance of a comfortable working environment and they are now seeking smart solutions that will help them improve upon this.

That’s why offices nowadays are somewhat moving away from open office floor plans which, although aesthetically pleasing, didn’t really work for everyone. So, companies that have embraced this approach in the past are now looking to install wooden panels and similar dividers that will not only bring more privacy, but will also significantly reduce noise pollution.

What’s more, businesses are increasingly investing in equipment such as ergonomic office furniture, noise-canceling headphones and blue light blocking glasses, to name a few.

Greater emphasis on user-first data governance

Believe it or not, recent studies suggest that only about 21% of users trust established global brands to keep their personal information secure. However, if you consider the way in which data is currently being collected by the majority of businesses, this really doesn’t come off as such a big surprise.

That’s why more and more companies are now trying to improve this level of trust by implementing and offering user-first data governance. In short, this approach allows consumers to be fully in charge of the type and volume of their personal data that will be available to businesses to collect.

Not only that, but with this user-first approach, the users will also be in charge of who their data is being shared with, in which manner and how is it being deposed of once it stops bringing value. Needless to say, this approach will bring very positive results to businesses that choose to use it, as trust is still arguably one of the key factors of a successful relationship.

Greater implementation of adaptive AI

Of course, we simply can’t talk about innovative tech trends in the business world without mentioning artificial intelligence (AI) and the massive impact it already left on businesses of all structures and sizes. However, as you may already guessed, things have only continued to evolve from what the majority of us knew about AI so far.

Namely, one of the hottest new office trends is actually implementing adaptive AI to business operations. As the name suggests, adaptive AI has the ability to learn faster and in a more independent way. As such, it has the ability to basically learn on the go, which allows businesses to faster improve their operations. This, in turn, will allow them to offer far better customer experience, which is yet another key aspect of customer satisfaction and overall business growth.

Greater use of industry cloud platforms

Industry cloud platforms allow businesses to manage, connect and automate their processes far more efficiently than traditional cloud platforms. To put it simply, these platforms turn regular cloud platforms into business platforms, which not only greatly improves overall operations but leaves more room for faster and smoother scalability.

Since these platforms are a collection of software solutions they can take care of more industry-specific tasks instead of focusing on a single one. Therefore, it’s like basically having access to a business specific software solution that’s entirely customized according to your organization’s unique needs.

It’s no secret that businesses that stay on top of the latest tech trends and are quick to embrace them and adapt to them are the ones that are leading the race. That said, it’s crucial to recognize the trends that will bring the most value to your business and implement them first, to avoid overwhelming both their employees and their entire business structure. So, make sure you stay on a lookout but also recognize the areas of your business that will benefit the most from implementing some of the latest tech trends in your industry.

January 27, 2023
Upskilling the Workplace With Microlearning

Traditional ways of teaching employees in the workplace aren’t cutting it anymore. Jobs today don’t give employees the resources they need to learn how to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. On average, only 24 minutes are alloted for learning and many employees in the end are taught nothing. Nearly 60% of workers are entirely self-taught and receive little to no training from their jobs. The majority of workers feel that they could be doing more and aren’t achieving their full potential because of this lack of learning opportunities. 70% would consider leaving for a job that invests more time and effort into teaching their employees. 40% of those who don’t receive necessary training end up leaving that job within the first year. Most employees report that they don’t have the skills they need to do their jobs and only 12% are able to apply training to their actual jobs.

Training Doesn’t Always Work

Making sure employees know how to do what they need to do is vital for a business to function. Our current traditional training models are ineffective, costly, and slow. On average, it takes 7 clicks to reach information in a learning management system. Only after 3 clicks, learners see a massive jump in complexity and difficulty they aren’t prepared for. Organizers waste resources creating courses and classes that aren’t able to hold employee’s attention and aren’t able to actually teach them anything.

To create a 1 hour course, an advanced course with customization and gamification can take 466 minutes to produce. Even a small, one-time, in-person training event can cost over $40,000. With the average adult having a maximum of a 20 minute attention span, training sessions quickly become boring and monotonous as they aren’t able to hold the learner’s attention. These standalone training events don’t create lasting learning with up to 80% of learned information lost within just a week.

Introducing Microlearning

Learning bits at a time and going over previous information with microlearning instead of dumping a huge amount of information all at once has been generating real results. Employees are able to learn more and retain information much longer with microlearning as compared to traditional learning systems. Microlearning only takes a few minutes per day and costs hugely less time and money than setting up an entire event. It uses brief reading or written responses to foster more engagement with a topic. It asks questions about what’s being learned to test learning recall and to help employees retain information longer by going over previous knowledge. Microlearning can fit training into the workday without location and time restraints and boost collaboration, social learning, and employee engagement. This approach is much more engaging with employees and reinforces the learned information. It helps employees apply their new knowledge to their actual work.

In Conclusion

67% of Gen Z want to work for companies that invest in their learning. This helps them build skills for their careers. Learn more about how microlearning actually teaches what employees need to know while not wasting time below:

Source: Arist

December 9, 2022
What Will Jobs of the Future Look Like?

The scope of today’s job market is incredibly vast. Industries continue to specialize more and more as some die and others are invented. It then can be really hard to keep track. Even for those about to enter the job market, understanding what one is getting into is challenging. Before getting into the exact industries though, it’s important to understand the general changes to the job market.

Shift to Remote Work

COVID-19 and the pandemic that ensued were world changing events. Entire industries were born and died, daily life was completely morphed, and fear took hold. Remote work rose to popularity out of necessity at the time. And while today it is no longer needed, its popularity has not at all declined.

Suddenly people realized the value of remote work. No commuting, more time with one’s family, more time to work on what actually matters. For some businesses it just made sense to be remote. Today 91% of people are happier with flexible hours and the option to work remotely. It is a shift that wasn’t expected but that isn’t going away.

The other major shift to the job market comes in culture. Workers today aren’t looking to work 9-5’s, especially in menial conditions. Instead comfort, understanding, and flexibility are much more desired. Businesses are moving away from hierarchy, are moving away from harsh regulations. Instead wellness is being prioritized, treating workers as people and not just machines.

Industries and Jobs in Demand

Looking at the growing industries though, a somewhat different picture is painted. While some of the fastest growing industries are not surprising. Software developers and marketing analysts jobs being projected to massively grow, for example. Others are much more surprising.

Home health aides, for example, is the job with the most projected growth. Holding a median salary of only $29,430, health aides are predicted to have almost a million new jobs by 2031. Fast food workers, in comparison, have a median salary of $25,100. Although they’re only predicted to have 243,200 new jobs by 2031.

In general more menial work and low-skill jobs are on the rise. Things like freight and material movers, stockers and order fillers, these are all massively rising. There are some jobs with more qualifications, things like nurses, cooks, and operation managers. Although a very large percentage are these smaller menial labor jobs.

This goes against a lot of the larger scale culture shift. It also goes against a lot of the expectations of today. For many, the idea was fast-food, movers, even waitresses would be replaced by now. Automation is very pervasive today, but it’s not all encompassing. And even automation requires upkeep and quality assurance in many cases.

This puts the future of the job market in an interesting place. The subset of jobs growing the most are the ones people do not want. And while some high skill and high pay jobs are growing. Many of these fit within the same niche of being technology and operations adjacent. This leaves a lot of people stranded job wise. In a world where the 9-5 isn’t even respected, job diversity is king.

Bringing it All Together

The future of the job market ultimately lies outside of most citizens’ hands. What each person can do though is be aware, stay knowledgeable on the shifts and changes. Remote work, culture, job growth, these are all great things to know about. And they’re only going to continue to change, maybe even at a more rapid pace. This is the future of the modern job market.

Source: ExecutivePlacements.com

November 21, 2022
Web3 Promises to Improve the Future of Work Life Balance

It’s been nearly twenty years since we’ve seen an updated version of the web. Web2 came out in 2004, and it was a great improvement to Web1 as it enabled greater interaction and user participation with things like Facebook and YouTube. However, it quickly became the property of big tech, giving little control to the common user.

The Why Behind Web3

Web users (which is virtually the entire global population) are ready for a change to the status quo. The ideals behind Web3 seem like they would greatly benefit every user by putting the ownership back into the hands of the people. However, some are concerned that the payment for Web3 decentralized apps would effectively give control back to big tech anyway.

For instance, many of the Web3 apps being developed are paid for through cryptocurrencies owned by big tech. It stands to reason that whomever pays for the development of Web3 will hold the power over it. Nevertheless, it’s not all bad news.

Currently, 16% of Americans have invested in crypto of some kind. With the growth of crypto, payment for Web3 development will inevitably become more dispersed.

How Web3 Can Impact the Workplace

With any new technology, there are obviously concerns, criticisms, and challenges to work out, yet despite all of this the promises of Web3 are lofty and exciting to anticipate.

One of the most highly anticipated and appealing aspects of Web3 is the very foundation of its development; decentralization. This decentralization means that users themselves own and govern portions of the internet rather than everything being owned by companies like Google and Facebook.

Nobody Wants to be Tracked

Decentralization also brings back anonymity to users. Rather than tracking activity to a physical person and location, the activity tracked would lead to that person’s owned portion of the web. Another aspect of this lack of physical location associated with users is that users would be able to work from anywhere in the world for companies and individuals anywhere in the world.

Geographical borders are no barrier to getting or giving employment on Web3. While currently, in Web2, 85% of workers hate their jobs, Web3 would give everyone much more freedom to search the entire world for exactly the kind of job they want, and tech jobs would expand at a rapid rate. Adding to this the fact that there are more than 18 thousand borderless digital currencies. It’s easy to see how the possibilities for employment are virtually endless with Web3.

Overall, most people are very optimistic about Web3 and all the possibilities within it. In fact, 81% believe that Web3 will improve their happiness and wellbeing. The majority of Americans wish to be self-employed. It’s already a rapidly growing status, and Web3 creates many more avenues for doing just that.

In Conclusion

Naturally, there will be downsides and things that need to be resolved when Web3 finally launches. After nearly two decades, this web upgrade promises to be the best yet and solves many of the current problems associated with Web2. It’s exciting to see just how far Web3 will take us on a global scale. The wait may be over as soon as this year. Learn more about how the future of work goes hand in hand with Web3 in the infographic below:

Source: Opolis.co

September 20, 2022
Burnout, Dissatisfaction, and Employee Engagement in the Workplace

From the great resignation to quiet quitting, it seems that more and more employees around the world are throwing in the towel. Whether it’s from burnout, boredom, or not enough financial compensation for the time they spend at work, more people than seemingly ever before are reporting low engagement with their jobs.

High employee engagement is vital for productivity, with companies that report an above-average level of engagement coming in with 22% higher productivity across all departments. Yet, as more and more are expected of workers without further financial compensation, many are doing the bare minimum at work just to get by.

Over the past year, 77% of workers have reported feeling burnt out at work, with this only looking worse over the next few months. But, what exactly is going on in the world of work that’s caused such widespread dissatisfaction?

In this article, we’ll explore employee engagement, documenting its decline, marking the main signs of burnout, and touching upon how you can increase job satisfaction at work. Let’s get right into it.

Why Is Employee Engagement Decreasing?

Across the world, inflation is reaching peak figures, with the USA currently reporting an inflation rate of 8.6%. Employees that have been working for the past year without any form of raise to compensate for inflation are now doing exactly the same job for 8.5% less purchasing power. With the cost of goods and services on the rise, this leads to resentment, with employees deserving more for their work.

This isn’t to mention the vast difference between CEO pay increases and minimum wage increases over the last 50 or so years. The pay increase of an average worker grew by 18% between 1978 and 2020. When you compare this to the CEO pay increase, which clocked in at 1,322%, you can instantly see that those earning the most have enormously benefited, while the vast majority have been left behind.

Alongside the unfair financial structures in place, employees are also expected to be available almost around the clock. While a job is often advertised as 9-5, this is now rarely the case, with workers having to be on call or available after hours to keep up with deadlines. Especially considering the ease of connecting into work emails and instant messaging via a mobile phone, it’s almost impossible for modern employees to totally disconnect from work.

With all of this considered, it’s unsurprising that employee engagement is decreasing. People are expected to work more for less money all while having fewer prospects than those they’re working for. The average American corporate worker has a tough deal, with many rebelling against this by mentally clocking out from work.

What Are the Signs Of Employee Burnout?

● Decreased Output – While everyone goes through peaks and troughs of how much work they can produce in any given week, a noticeable drop-off could be a sign that an employee is starting to feel burnt out at work.

● Disengagement – A classic sign is a lack of enthusiasm or interest in the workplace, ongoing projects, or new developments in your field.

● Emotional or physical exhaustion – Often, the first signs that show up are physical, mental, and emotional tiredness. As employees pull late nights to finish more work, they’ll slowly become more and more tired, leading to physical and emotional burnout.

● Isolation – If employees rarely communicate with the team, they might have already reached the end of their cord in terms of how much energy they are putting into their work.

● Sensitivity To Feedback – If an employee is feeling an immense amount of pressure at work, then feedback can often feel like a direct attack on them. Increased sensitivity to feedback could be an indication that the employee is currently struggling.

If you begin to spot these characteristics within members of your team, then you should assess how much work they’re currently taking on. Although there is no instant fix to burnout, reducing the workload of that person can often help alleviate a lot of their problems and give them more time to focus on recovering their spark.

What Can Employers Do About Employee Dissatisfaction at Work?

Alongside lowering the number of tasks that you’re setting for employees, there are a range of ways that you can actively combat dissatisfaction at work and reduce the likelihood of burnout.

There are three common tactics that you should attempt to incorporate into your business structure:

● Communication – In your business, you should have an all-in-one HR platform that allows you to communicate and track your employees. Having this centralized location where employees can discuss their workload, their current mood, and how they’re coping with work can be a wonderful way of helping them to offload pressure. Whenever an employee is starting to struggle, a supportive HR team can help them get to the root of their issue, either delegating the work to more people or restructuring the task. Communication is the absolute best tool to help with dissatisfaction, and one that can preemptively put a stop to workplace burnout.

● New Tools – As the workplace becomes even more advanced and driven by technology, looking into B2B or SaaS solutions that benefit your business can be a fantastic way of lessening the load you place on your employees. Are there any tools that could automate a time-consuming part of their job? Talk to your team and see where they could use some extra technical support.

● Compensation – When push comes to shove, a bonus or raise is one of the most effective ways of improving the mood of any employee. This could be the extra push they need to reignite their passion for the role.

Using one or a combination of these three tactics will help to increase workplace satisfaction and keep your employees engaged while at work.

Final Thoughts

With the current economic crisis facing the majority of countries around the world, this era of workplace burnout is, unfortunately, only just beginning. But, as economic hardships increase, HR teams and managers can work to make their workplace as positive as possible.

To best support your team, focus on creating a workplace that facilitates easy communication. The ability to speak about feeling burnt out without shame or repercussions is vital when constructing a healthy work environment. Alongside this, focusing on incorporating HR structures that help employees at work can go a long way.

If all else fails, seriously consider the financial side of your business – as inflation continues to get worse, a blanket raise is a phenomenal way of keeping the peace.

September 18, 2022
Changing Remote Work With Digital Workspaces

The pandemic forced businesses into quarantined work environments. Online workspaces and communication applications have become essential for any digital business. Recent studies have found that remote work can actually have a negative effect on businesses. Many businesses struggle with keeping employees on task while working at home. Executives are constantly checking emails, notifications, and direct messages to stay updated on their workload, and studies found that employees use an average of nine apps to complete their tasks. This constant switching of applications leads to a 40% loss in productivity, with each interruption to a task requiring 23 minutes to completely regain focus.

The Wasted Time of Remote Work

Aside from balancing multiple applications, time is also wasted on video calls. 83% of employees report spending up to one-third of their work weeks in video conferences. With 77% of remote workers using some form of video conference, most digital employees find themselves wasting time on these video meetings. This digital interaction is even more stressful than in-person meetings, as reduced mobility, nonverbal communication, and a lack of personal space combine for more added stress. Nearly half of all virtual employees say that being on camera makes them more exhausted, and the mirror effect of the camera places more stress on one’s appearance.

Remote Work Isn’t Going Away

Even still, remote work will continue to be a process used by many companies across the world. And the ease of access to work is something employees want to continue taking advantage of, as 78% of remote workers wish to continue working from home for the rest of their careers. But nearly half of those employees miss in-person meetings and seeing their colleagues. So how do we transform online work into a more productive environment? To combat stress, fatigue, and inefficiency, companies are developing online workspaces to better reflect the convenience and personality of an office environment. As such, the online office space designed for “Web3 communities, online event providers, and startups” has been created to bring a sense of personality to the remote workplace.

The Rise of Digital Workspaces

Digital office buildings have real-world street addresses that are owned in the form of an NFT. Each building is composed of floors with different layouts and user permissions. Each room is also customizable. Rooms can be shared or individual, and others can knock to enter closed doors. Each floor in an office building houses a separate team of employees. Therefore, floors in each building can be customized for different areas of a company.

Each room has voice, video, and text chats to allow seamless communication while maintaining levels of privacy and professionalism. Digital media such as pictures and videos can be shared within rooms to discuss and change on the spot. The online office buildings even have a sense of security with each floor having its own security access badge.

In Conclusion

Remote work seems to be a norm in society going forward. Let’s prepare the online workplace to be less stressful and far more efficient.

July 6, 2022
Box for Salesforce Updated to Provide Box Sign Digital Transaction Processes

Box has announced an update to its Box for Salesforce on the Salesforce AppExchange, bringing Box Sign functionality.

Box is one of the leading cloud storage platforms and has been moving into the digital signature market with its Box Sign service. The company’s latest update brings the power of Box Sign to AppExchange customers.

The global pandemic greatly sped up the transition to digital documents, with remote teams needing a way to handle agreements and digital signatures. Box first entered the market in mid-2021, building its product on its SignRequest acquisition earlier that year. Since then, the company has been gaining customers and competing with existing players in the market, such as DocuSign and Adobe.

Read More: COVID Accelerated Digital Transformation, Says DocuSign CEO

“From streamlining customer relationships to closing deals from anywhere, we are excited to fuel growth for our customers,” said Diego Dugatkin, Chief Product Officer at Box. “The innovation we are delivering today helps end-users work more fluidly with their Box content right from within Salesforce and gives developers additional flexibility to support a wide range of business processes. We are only scratching the surface of what Box and Salesforce can do together for customers, so you can expect to see even more developments between our two platforms in the future.”

For its part, Salesforce welcomed the new update and what it means for AppExchange customers.

“We are excited that Box is continuing to innovate on AppExchange to help our hundreds of joint customers move their critical business process to the cloud,” said Woodson Martin, GM of Salesforce AppExchange. “Digitizing transactions is a critical step in the process and with Box Sign for Salesforce, Box is simplifying the execution of documents from anywhere in a cost-effective way. AppExchange is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our customers, and we love watching our partners evolve alongside us.”

June 7, 2022
How to Humanize the Workplace in a Startup

When it comes to the world of startups and entrepreneurship, there’s one thing that is certain – it’s not for the faint of heart. This lifestyle of hard work, self-starting, and brutal determination has huge payoffs, but also comes at a great cost. As much as there are highs, there are in many ways as many, if not more, lows. This all comes with the territory, and it’s always going to be seasonal, with certain seasons feeling victorious while others can feel numb, or even discouraged.

Among the many challenges and things to do with creating a startup, is setting a company culture. While some entrepreneurs may not be as wired to be excited about this as others, this is truly one of the most potentially satisfying, and gratifying parts of the job.

Why Is It A Privilege To Create a Workplace?

In order to properly understand how to humanize a workplace and create a culture of success, you have to have the right mindset. On the one hand, there will always be those things that you have to do. No amount of positive platitudes can change the fact that certain admin work and daily disciplines will never truly be a ‘get-to-do’ task, but will remain a ‘have-to-do’ task, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Some things are too necessary and important to not be done well, and regularly, but they don’t all have to have some kind of forced positivity over them. Where creating work culture, environment and space are different, is that it does take the same amount of disciplined work, and dedication, but it impacts two very important things: Your work, and your product. Humanizing the workplace involves understanding the fact that the people making your startup dreams happen are humans and have human needs.

On average, a person will spend one-third of their life in the workplace setting. Whether that’s remotely from home or their favorite coffee shop, or in a traditional brick and mortar workspace. This is an incredible amount of time that a person will spend during their life. The ability that you have in running a startup is to create a humanized workspace that empowers all of that time, and holistically improves the company and your employees. By focusing on giving your employees a workspace that has a positive effect on their lives, which will impact the other two-thirds they spend outside of work, you will create a workspace that pushes your business forward.

How Do You Make a Humanized Workspace?

So how do you create an environment where you and your employees will spend a third of their life well? What goals should you have in place and what will it take? Here are a few ways to create a workspace that creates employees that are healthier, happier, and more confident in not only impact the company in a positive way but their entire lives.

Empowerment

The number one way to create humanized enrollment is by empowering your employees. This comes down to see them as wholly human, and not just partially human. Their life experience, their talents, and their unique personalities all make them valuable. Yes, they may have different departments they excel in, but one way to empower employees is to bring them into problem-solving situations across your company.

This is often not effective when it is forced. An accountant will be using their time unwisely if forced to grapple with the problems from marketing. However, creating an environment where challenges are made known and participation is encouraged to solve those challenges can have a hugely humanizing effect. In essence, you are telling your employees that you value their thoughts, and who they are, even if they have an idea for something out of their field of profession.

Community And Listening

This goes back to the fact that your employees will spend a third of their life working for you – so create an environment where life can happen. Sometimes the lines between personal life and business can get a little blurred, or need redefining – that’s normal, and will happen. Allow your employees the chance to make work a part of their lives by structuring meetings, and interactions throughout the workweek around communication and community. Having proper conference rooms with conference room signs can go a long way.

Conclusion

The road to creating a workspace that is empowering, and fulfilling for your employees to commit such a large part of their lives is hard, but it has big payoffs. GR0 is an example of a company that believes in supporting each other, clear communication, always putting the other first, and giving the benefit of the doubt. This kind of strong comradery-driven work culture has created a start-up that has quickly become a top content creator.

While creating company culture is always going to be hard, consistent work, it’s one of the most important things you can do to create a business that will last the test of time. People are what makes a startup successful, and keep a business running, so investing in creating a humanizing workspace is one of the best investments you can make.

May 24, 2022
COVID/WFH Has Broken Big Tech
In a huge Twitter thread, a big tech insider reveals that COVID and generous work from home privileges are destroying the morale of big tech employees.

Top 10 Quotes:
1. Obviously insanely radically leftwing.
2. COVID/WFH has totally broken people.
3. Everyone is demoralized.
4. The Great Resignation is real.
5. Software engineers which haven’t written code in a year.
6. Slack bad-mouthing the higher-ups with no repercussions.
7. It’s very easy to hide and not work with WFH.
8. There’s no real accountability to anyone.
9. Bombarded with anti-white, anti-male, woke propaganda.
10. If Big Tech goes down, the world will probably be better off.
Hazzard Harrington thread in full via Twitter:

Obviously insanely radically leftwing. BLM/LGBTQ. Trans flags hanging in office. Pronouns stated before meetings. Special affiliation groups for everyone but white men. All that you’d expect. But COVID/WFH has totally broken people. They are fundamentally weak, often with no social support outside of work. They’re the people with no children, no spouse. Only a dog or cat for emotional support.

There’s constant talk, even now, about how hard things are for everyone. Often meetings start with going around the room to ask “How is everyone feeling?” Literally, everyone else went on sad rants about their lives. “I’m so MAD a white supremacist shot 3 black men in Kenosha!”

It’s toxic. When it got to me, I said “Good.” and then a (((lady engineer))) literally proposed that we should not be allowed to answer the question positively. I shit you not. I think it hurt her that I wasn’t as miserable as her. She made some arguments about “vulnerability”. These people not only want you weak, but they also want you to expose your vulnerabilities to them so they can exploit them. They may not intend this explicitly, but whatever twisted ideology they worship ends with this result.

So back to morale. Everyone is demoralized. This may surprise you since Big Tech is extremely well paid and has been able to WFH throughout the past 2 years. They’ve been given extra days off, extra stipends, bonuses, etc. They never had to fear being laid off. I have some sympathy and can feel some of this myself. It’s normal and natural to work with people in person. WFH can make it easy to overwork. You take fewer breaks, often work past normal working hours. You don’t feel connected to customers or celebrate success in person.

And as I mentioned, Big Tech is often the only social life for people. I fortunately never made it mine, but my company had all sorts of after-work activities. Sports leagues, game nights, different classes taught by employees. There was a rhythm and connectedness that’s gone. The Great Resignation is real. Many employees are leaving for better jobs. Remote work has (so far) resulted in more job opportunities for those working in Big Tech, especially outside of Silicon Valley. And so we backfill those positions or hire new people, all remote.

We now have employees who have nearly 2 years of tenure who have never met another employee in person, and live alone in some city away from where the office was. This would be fine for a normal person, but again, we’re attracting the family-less urbanites scared of even meeting up with their friends at a restaurant. The churn in jobs also has the major effect of constantly dealing with the overhead of re-assigning projects from people leaving, and onboarding new people. The new employees don’t get enough attention to succeed.

And the employees that stay end up with a load of work dumped by the former coworkers, plus the responsibility of onboarding the new ones. There are many software engineers who’ve not written a single line of code in the past year.

While the Woke agitation has slowed due to the productive employees’ ability to simply log off, in addition to the tiredness of the agitators, there is more and more open rebellion regarding pay and profits. “Bring your whole self to work” was the Big Tech mantra. Tell people about your cool hobbies, share your politics (if you’re far left only), share your sex life. This plus the feeling of distance an online-only presence creates has made people braver in speaking their thoughts.

You used to have the balls to knock on the CEO’s office door or schedule a meeting. Now you can fire off a nasty Slack message straight to her. People will openly write threads and comments throughout Slack bad-mouthing the higher-ups at the company. And they do nothing. It’s unreal what people will write, with no recourse. If it were anything remotely RW, I’m certain they’d be immediately fired, but so long as they’re sufficiently LW or minority (anything but straight white man), they can agitate, complain, do no work, and continue employment.

And so the entire company has devolved. We’re running on the code written in years past. No major new product initiatives are being launched. Workers complain that they’re understaffed and demoralized. People take constant sick days or don’t show up at all without a record.

It’s very easy to hide when WFH. With such a flux in employees/management and so much allowance for “mental health”, it’s easy to simply no-show without punishment. We hired a new employee and I pinged them at 1 pm to see if they’d join a meeting. They came 10 minutes later. Said they slept in because they didn’t have anything to work on.

It’s got to be mind-boggling for someone not in software. On a given day, managers (there are several in weird matrix structure) will say things like “What can I do to support you?” “Do you have enough to work on? Too much?” It’s like emotional support. And you can simply say, “Oh, I’ve had a hard week. Barely slept. Felt sick. Don’t think I can handle much more this week.” There’s no real accountability to anyone. Record profits at the top, because of existing code and product-market fit cruising along, so leaders don’t notice.

It’s utterly surreal to watch the deterioration. To see how quickly an organization can crumble. And I’m not productive either. I’m constantly bombarded with anti-white, anti-male, woke propaganda. We’ve even had explicit discussions of assigning less work to URMs (under-represented minorities), because “life is really hard for them right now.” This suggestion was from a lesbian white woman with cats. As productive as one person can be, you can’t add value when constantly thwarted. Nobody in IT doing tickets anymore to provision things for you large bureaucracy to gatekeep any actions (needs review by X number of committees including now DEI committees). It’s hard to feel unproductive. I’m not the type who feels great about getting paid to not work, but that’s essentially what I’ve been doing for the last year.

This problem is the worst in Big Tech, so if Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon Prime, or Netflix go down, the world will probably be better off. It’s not essential. I worry about this apathy spreading to companies that matter. Ones that write software for utilities.

We had a woman who worked for us who was just awful at her job. Could not understand instructions at all. Could not do the job. Barely spoke English. She wasn’t just not productive, she actually dragged the team down. I worked with my Director to finally get her fired after failing her Performance Improvement Program (PIP). HR told us they can’t fire her because she’s Asian and female and in California, that it’s just simply too hard. This was over 5 years ago.

You have a certain fire in your 20’s. Ready to reform and change everything. You get noticed when you perform. Promoted, bonuses, etc. But eventually, you keep hitting the same problems or gatekeepers over and over. I recall asking an older coworker (mid-thirties at the time) what drove him, and he said he just does it for the paycheck now. I’m at that point. Lost the fire for career and collecting my paycheck for other purposes in life where the fire has been rekindled.

I worked remote for 5 years at a prior job and this was never the case. There’s something special about this combo of remote and “your feelings are valid”.
January 19, 2022