Authors Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas join the pod to discuss diversity, engagement, talent retention and much more.
Will your organization focus on the needs of employees?
Burnout is being talked about openly and honestly in business now, and that's a significant improvement.
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Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman, hosts of HR’s most dangerous podcast, welcome back Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas, authors of “Move Fast. Break Sh*t. Burn Out.”.
The title of their book’s a clear play on Facebook’s internal motto for employees in from early days, and positions its authors as seasoned future of work commentators, with the experience of significant stints at Microsoft, Cisco, and Vodafone under their belts.
They don’t come across as disillusioned but they do know that change needs to be made for organizations to navigate the future with any kind of certainty. It’s another great discussion that covers disruption, employee wellbeing, the climate, talent retention, and a tonne more topics. It includes two of their signature concerns, Catalysts and Workplace Whiplash. Could you be a catalyst?
Question: should we even be using the term ‘human capital’ anymore? The podcast guests don’t think so.
Over to Shannon Lucas: “…Economic science would never have predicted the Great Resignation from the bottom of the economic scale to the top of the economic scale. Blue-collar workers to senior executives are saying, I refuse to work under these conditions anymore, even though the unemployment rate is ridiculous.
“And so there’s this huge pause as people are like, okay, life is short, the pandemic has taught us that I want to have meaning and impact. The leaders that are going to win the talent or are the ones that are going to do this pivot fastest, which is say, we need to show up as human beings…We need to provide the support and recognize they’re not just cogs in the wheel, they’re not human resources. They are actually people in our organization that are making up these organizations.”
Over to Tracey Lovejoy: “…the World Health Organization has classified burnout as a thing, a diagnosable thing, [and] in 2018 it was added to their identifiable list of issues that we can experience. And it was tied to the workplace.
“It was tied to a feeling of dread in getting up and not wanting to do work. It was tied to a sense of reactivity. It was tied to not feeling like you have support from your management.”
The conversation continues around burnout before moving to remote work and how it affects the dynamics of D,E&I (diversity, equity and inclusion). There are some unfortunate upsides to remote work as Joel Cheeseman points out:
“So where do you think we’re going? In terms of diversity, inclusion, equity, you’ve been pointed to an African-American woman who feels more secure working from home, but you could also argue that everyone being in their own little silo is not necessarily good for all of us getting together and learning to sort of interact with each other.”
Shannon Lucas counters: “Is this the time that we actually get to where we should be in terms of leadership and organizational structures and how we’re showing up as humans? I hope so. I don’t think there’s another choice. You can’t treat all employees the same at any given day.
“One of the companies that we highlight in the ebook (Their new book ‘The Catalyst Innovator’s Guide to Thriving in an Uncertain World) would have regular check-ins with people throughout the company [in] kind of a feedback system so that when one person was experiencing their own personal, traumatic experience throughout the pandemic, they would engage with them at that moment right there.”
Check out another cracking podcast above for the full conversation.
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