WORK2LIVE MAGAZINE

FOUNDERS’ MESSAGE The Launch of Work2Live Magazine

DEB PHILLIPS AND LORI SOKOL, PHD, are thrilled to welcome you to the inaugural issue of Work2Live Magazine. The reason for creating this publication is clear: This is not our parents’ workplace anymore. Now EVERYONE wants a job that provides an equitable salary, comprehensive health and wellness benefits, meaningful work, a supportive workplace, and time for relaxing, recharging, self-care, and spending more time with family and friends.

During the COVID pandemic, essential workers from all industries, job classifications, income and educational levels, including police, fire, healthcare, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) researchers, manufacturing, energy, military service members, grocery and retail workers, transportation and delivery workers, and the national guard continued to work in traditional ways to keep our economy and businesses running, while many workers in other industries, including education, were able to pivot to remote work. According to a report by Owl Labs, 44% of companies do not allow remote work of any kind, and 59% of respondents said they would be more likely to choose an employer who offered some remote work compared to those who didn’t.

As the world is learning to live and work with COVID, workers are pushing back on the traditional employer/employee contract in favor of more equitable work environments and benefits for all members of the workforce to feel valued, appreciated, supported, and respected. In fact, remote working, or working from the comfort of your own home, is no longer considered just a perk that a handful of companies are providing to those in office jobs. Workers are pushing organizations to not only consider but to implement alternatives to in-office work and flexibility and autonomy to

manage work and personal responsibilities.

In this “new normal”, we are witnessing the transformation from traditional work environments to non-traditional ways of working. According to a survey conducted by Upwork of 1500 hiring managers it is predicted that 36.2 million workers, or 22% of Americans, will be working remotely by the year 2025, an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels. This trend has resulted in an entirely new glossary of terms to describe nontraditional work options, from the ‘Shecession’ to ‘Quiet Quitting’ to the ‘Great Resignation’. For companies that understand the importance of the new normal, like Nike, which recently closed its global offices for ‘Wellbeing Week’ to encourage employee mental health, they are already witnessing benefits of increasing employee longevity, commitment and productivity. But for those companies like Tesla, which have refused to incorporate long-term workplace flexibility by requiring employees to return to the office, an uptick in employee resignations have since followed, instead choosing jobs with more flexible workplace policies.

This has also led to the compilation and publication of new lists featuring the best countries and US cities for remote work. Regardless of age or generation, workers (from Baby-boomers to Generation X, to Generation Z and Millennials) are redefining what ‘success’ looks like by re-evaluating their jobs and career paths.

Work2Live magazine’s mission is to therefore provide the latest news, trends, analysis and resources on all of these evolving issues, with a look at the past, what brought us here, and what the future may hold. As founders, we bring decades of expertise in this field. Lori Sokol, PhD., is an organizational psychologist and coach, former founder/ publisher of WorkLife Matters magazine, co-author

of Flex Primer for the New Future of Work (2011), and the current Executive Director of the award-winning global news organization, Women’s eNews. Deborahlyn (Deb) Phillips has over 40 years of experience in the work/life field, providing direct services to working families and developing programs for organizations, is the founder of Inclusion Equity and WorkLife Consulting LLC, former president of WFD Consulting, and former owner of Sharing & Caring Family Child Care. Additionally, our Editorial Board and Advisors consist of some of the most reputable and long-serving experts in the field, including Ellen Galinsky, Ted Childs, Fran Rodgers, Christine Carmody, Nick Fletcher, Lesli Marasco, Phyllis Stewart Pires, James Donadio, Julie Nuter, and Sara Kashima. Our inaugural issue is reaching tens of thousands of readers throughout the world including members of the Work2Live strategic collaboration partner organizationsthe Work and Family Research Network, World@ Work, The Families and Work Institute, the Boston College Workforce Roundtable, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the College and University Work-Life-Family Association (CUWFA), and other professionals in the non-profit and for-profit worlds. And most importantly, we are interested in including employee and service worker voices to provide input on what “working to live” means to them as we advance through this important transformational change together.

We welcome you to the pages of Work2Live Magazine, and the new world of work. Throughout the magazine readers are invited to join in the conversation.

Look for this icon and share your ideas, thoughts and insights.

To contact either Lori Sokol or Deb Phillips directly, please click onto the email addresses below.

deb@work2live.net

lori@work2live.net

In the Upcoming Spring 2023 Issue: Special Focus: Time, Technology and Resources

New Section: Work Life Solutions

Forum: Readers’ Responses

Dear Employer of the Future (Part 2)

Latest Work Life Trends

Don’t miss an issue: subscribe here for free.

Deb Phillips, Co-Founder

Lori Sokol, PhD. Co-Founder

The Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN) organizes virtual and face-to-face interaction among academic work and family researchers from a broad range of fields. The WFRN welcomes policy makers and workplace practitioners as it seeks to promote knowledge and understanding of work and family issues among the community of global stakeholders.

WFRN members can:

• Participate in-person and virtual conferences

• Join and engage with a global community of work-family scholars

• Be listed among experts on work-family, increasing visibility, prospects for media engagement, collaboration and consultation

• Receive Weekly News & Events Feeds, information about work-family concerns in the media

• Receive customized Research Feeds, information on the newest scholarly research

• Assume leadership roles as elected officers and serve on committees

• Join networking communities and special interest groups

• Lead WFRN initiatives, including new positions as content development leaders

• Vote in WFRN elections

We invite you to join the WFRN at https://wfrn.org/become-a-member/.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Founders Message

Why We Are Launching Work2Live Magazine

The Global Pandemic: A Worldwide Inflection Point for Working and Living

Looking Back to Move Forward: As We Transition to a New Way of Working and Living

An Interview with Ellen Galinsky and Fran Rodgers

Combatting Disengagement and Quiet Quiting: It’s Time for a New Employee Value Proposition for Working and Living

Two Decades of Learning About Workplace Flexibility

An Interview with Amy Richman, Ed.D.

Dear Employer of the Future… Insights from Four Students at Morgan State University

Look to the Future: Transforming the Way We Work by Taking an Equitable and Humane Business-Based Approach

PAGE 22 Work/Life Trends

PAGE 26

Work/Life Glossary of Terms

ADVISORY COUNCIL MEMBERS

Senior Advisors

Advisory Council Members

Christine Carmody

Jim Donadio Nicholas Fletcher

Sara Kashima Executive VP, Human Resources Diversity Coordinator Associate Director WorkLife Service & Information Technology SODEXO Morgan State University Health Information Coordinator Eversource Energy Chevron

Lesli Marasco Head, Global Benefits AbbVie

Julie Nuter

Phyllis Stewart Pires Sr. Director Associate VP Chief Human Resources Officer Human Resources Argonne National Laboratory Stanford University

Ted Childs, Jr. President Ted Childs, LLC

Fran Rodgers Founder Work/Family Directions, Inc.

Ellen Galinsky Founder Families & Work Institute

THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC: A WORLDWIDE INFLECTION POINT FOR WORKING AND LIVING

by Deb Phillips

The boiling frog story is a metaphor used to caution people about gradual changes, often called the slippery slope, that may lead to undesirable consequences in what is considered ‘normal’.

Applying this metaphor to combining working and living, workers have been dangling on the slippery slope of disengagement since the early 1990s. Stress and burnout, coupled with an inability to manage work and personal responsibilities due to overwork, have blurred boundaries between work and personal time. This has resulted in less time for self-care, including health and wellness, interpersonal relationships, hobbies and community involvement. Although workers worldwide have continuously shared their feelings and experiences with employers about how tired they were, how they don’t have time to take vacation and other paid time off (PTO) benefits, how organizational resizing and downsizing has added more work without additional pay or recognition, how too much time is wasted on meetings, and how meetings are often scheduled outside established work hours, the pace of change has been slow.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the world suddenly found itself grappling with a global pandemic and the slippery slope became unmanageable. Essential workers were forced to mask-up and continue to work to keep the economy, food, shelter, healthcare and security services functioning, while most other industries and organizations transitioned to remote ways of working. COVID revamped everything we knew about how we work and how we live, causing world-wide transformational change. This pandemic put immense stress on community and

government services and systems that the workforce had previously relied upon to help manage work and personal responsibilities, forcing people to reflect on what they value most, both personally and professionally.

Since 2020, a plethora of research studies and articles

Eve Smerczynski ©12/2022

have been published on how COVID has disrupted work and personal lives. During the pandemic, many companies reached out to its employees to gather insights, and included their responses in decisions about pressing policies and programs to enable them to work more efficiently, as well as support their health and wellness which included feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression. Increasing attention was also paid to enhancing technology and systems to increase productivity, support professional development and maintain relationships with colleagues and friends. In the beginning, people and organizations assumed the pandemic would be short-lived and rallied in a “we’re all in this together” mindset. But as the pandemic dragged on, and patience began to wear thin, employees adopted new work norms and expectations for how, when, and where they were able and willing to work, and organizations were finding it difficult to return to long-held workplace practices that were previously in place.

The chart below, republished from Gartner’s 2021 Hybrid and Return to Work Survey, reveals how the pandemic changed perspectives about work and life

Further, in September 2022, Work2Live’s one-question survey sent to a representative sample of the U.S. workforce, found that employees want more time and flexibility in when, where and how many hours they work, to feel valued, and to increasingly build their personal and professional relationships.

These findings, along with data from recent studies conducted by organizations such as Gallup, PEW, and the U.S. Surgeon General, reinforce the importance of riding this transformational wave to provide strong and healthy solutions for employees, organizations, and society to thrive. Collectively and individually, we have formed new work and personal habits causing us to reassess what it means to work and live. Unlike the frog who stays in the tepid water without recognizing its own peril, workers are finally choosing to jump out of the pot. They are not willing to go back to the pre-COVID workplace that condoned and supported overwork expectations, inflexible work schedules and insufficient paid time off benefits, including vacation and sick time.

According to Gartner, over 4.27 million Americans left their jobs in May 2022, and approximately 58% of Europeans were considering quitting by the end of 2022. The task today, and for the future, is to understand the root of these actions and what systemic changes are needed to get our work and personal lives on track.

Using the Work2Live pyramid as a guide, our challenge is to engage with workers, service members, organizations and communities to gather input, ideas and solutions to create sustainable, systemic change that brings fulfillment, purpose and a sense of value in the work we do, and in our personal lives. We need to put aside assumptions we held before the pandemic and

Work2Live Survey of U.S. Workforce – September 2022

recognize the need to understand and create a paradigm that supports our new reality. We are no longer balancing work and life as two separate entities, they are now blended into one. The pandemic, coupled with evolving technological advances, have both required and enabled us to think and behave differently with respect to the decisions we make, including how we want to conduct our lives, interact with others, and perform our work responsibilities. It’s well past time for a new Employee Value Proposition (EVP) built upon respect

WORK2LIVE HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

and equity, regardless of the person’s job or role, that recognizes the value, contributions and unique situations the whole person brings to the workplace, instead of simply being labeled an “employee.”

We invite you to join us in “being that change” by creating workplace cultures that “walk the talk.” You may begin sharing your thoughts by clicking the link to our Employee/Service Member/ Employer Forum and respectfully sharing your ideas and perspectives about all aspects of our Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid. •

Collectively and individually, we have formed new work and personal habits causing us to reassess what it means to work and live.

Looking Back to Move Forward As We

Transition to a New Way of Working and Living

An Interview with Two Leaders in the Work-Family Field: Ellen Galinsky, Founder of Families & Work Institute Fran Rodgers, Founder of Work/Family Directions, Inc.

Deb Phillips: I am honored to have the opportunity to speak with both of you about the evolution of Work/ Life and what you believe is needed in order to transition to a new way of working that allows people to work and live. As we begin, what do you want people to know about you and your Work/Life journey?

Fran Rodgers: My interest in this field started when I was 20 years old and just graduating from college. I had this realization that I was really interested in the feminist movement and in the status of children. At the time, the women’s movement wanted to make the point that women were more than mothers and the child development field was focused on what was good for children without recognizing the challenges and needs of working mothers.

That was my motivating factor then and it’s been my motivating factor all along because it was very clear at the time, and even now, that women can’t, and to some extent, men, can’t achieve their full potential without a society that cares about what happens to their children.

Ellen Galinsky: I would want people to know that you can change things that don’t work. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy. It doesn’t mean that it’s

quick. It doesn’t mean that you get the kind of changes that you envision. It’s a long slog, but both of us, sometimes together, sometimes separately, saw things in the world that weren’t working, and each of us in similar ways and in different ways made an effort that I think has resulted in substantial change. I know when my daughter was looking for childcare and we went to one crummy program after another, she turned to me and she sarcastically said, “Have you done nothing in your life?”

Ellen Galinsky: They have no idea how much worse it was. It’s not enough change for sure, but yes, we have made progress.

When I began to look at this issue, it was because I did a study about how parents grow and change and then I did another study about exemplary childcare, and every parent whom I spoke to thought that they had this problem managing their family or their personal life and their work responsibilities, and they thought that somehow the neighbors down the street didn’t have a problem. They thought it was only their children who were not getting ready to leave the house in the morning and it was only their children who were throwing things at

each other at dinner, and it was only they who were falling apart because it was just a house of cards that they were trying to put together to take care of their children and to work.

I think one of the changes that we’ve made is that we gave a name to these issues and created systematized solutions. I’ve recently spent the day with the son of a colleague in Germany who I worked with in those early days who talked about what childcare is like in Europe today. There has been progress there too, but Europe is not without problems either.

For me, the motivation was recognizing there were real issues that stood in the way of raising our children the way we wanted to or being able to work and have a family and succeed at both in however we defined that success. It was almost impossible to do it, and so we set out to bring about change.

Fran Rodgers: It’s interesting, Ellen, because you said that the problem of feeling you couldn’t do well by your children and your career was something that had no name. In fact, the whole issue of women in the workforce and the things that were happening to women were not being recognized or named. It was actually a double whammy because women who were at work, even those without children, were experiencing the same things, thinking the issues they faced in the workplace was only their problem. The

Fran Rodgers

Ellen Galinsky

work we’ve done to bring these work and life issues together and naming them helped a lot of people, even those without children, recognize that they were not alone.

The work wasn’t always easy, but thankfully we were not alone because we had each other and a handful of other people who cared deeply about these issues. When we started, people thought that work and family were on two separate planets. Without each other, and Dana Friedman, we might have thought we were crazy to try to do something about these issues. As others became involved, even though we weren’t in the same place or doing the same work, we all took comfort from the fact that we had each other to lean.

Ellen Galinsky: And when things got crazy, we could call each other up and laugh or cry, often laugh, and get re-energized to keep on working toward change and to try to figure out what the best strategies were. We were pretty strategic in how we addressed these issues.

For me, one of the issues was that work research and family research were completely separate and no one had any idea about how work affected family positively or negatively or how family affected work positively and negatively. And yet, there were rampant assumptions and those assumptions needed to be tested.

It was important to figure out, through research, the reality of how our work and life systems fit together. Could we begin to measure them and could we begin to share those data as one way, not the only way, but as one way of making change?

Deb Phillips: Fran, it’s making me think about the work you did through LifeWorks, collaborating with the Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies to support working families. They were all separate community-based entities that working parents weren’t always aware of.

Fran Rodgers: Right. childcare was in no-man’s-land. The early childhood

field existed, but I think, to some extent, people still believed at the time that childcare was custodial care and even people in the field weren’t so sure it was okay for women to work. That’s been a huge change.

Ellen Galinsky: Yes, I remember a meeting at Bank Street College in the 1970s, when Susan Beresford, who went on to be the president of the Ford Foundation, brought together a group of women. They were women who were collecting information in their local communities on index cards about where the childcare was in their community. It was the first meeting that ever brought some these people together.

These people knew each other, but it wasn’t an internet-connected world. They knew of each other, but they had mostly never met each other. It was like a meeting where, when you walked in, the energy was on the ceiling because this person in San Francisco and this person in New York and this person in Virginia were doing the same things with their boxes of index cards in their kitchen. And that was one of the beginnings of the Child Care Resource and Referral field.

These were inventions of necessity that largely women took on to help other women. And you’re so right about the early childhood field being anti-childcare. I tried to start an onsite childcare program for my son when he was born and only 24% of women went back to work in the first year my son Phillip was born.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but at the time, leading people in the Day Care Council of America told me that if children were in childcare, it would destroy babies’ brains and that I shouldn’t put my son in childcare because it was only for people who had to work. But I had to work. My husband was a student. The only money we had was the money that I brought in at that point. And yet, I was being told that if I created an early childhood program at Bank Street, which presumably would

be good, that I was going to be destroying baby brain cells.

Fran Rodgers: In the early days, I always felt like a therapist. I had taken training as a therapist even though I had never really functioned as one, but when I started to meet with people in companies to discuss the issues facing women in the workplace, usually people in relatively high positions, and occasionally a CEO, I had to sort of talk them off the ledge that getting involved in corporate support for working families wasn’t a bad thing because all of them had wives who stayed home.

They would always question whether it was really okay for children to be in childcare? How do we know it’s okay? I think sometimes it feels like not enough has changed, especially when you keep having to justify the need for high-quality childcare.

Ellen Galinsky: When we started to collect data and asked the question about women working, people thought it would be better for all involved if the woman took care of the home and family and the man earned the money. It was a legacy question from the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey that we continued to ask it in our National Study of the Changing Workforce. We could actually watch the responses change throughout the years, particularly among younger people because by then people did have to work and wanted to work.

But in the 1970’s, when I was told that childcare would destroy baby brain cells, I said, “There has to be good childcare out there.” I mean, there just has to be good childcare. And I went back to Susan Beresford at the Ford Foundation and got a grant to go around the country and look at what people thought was exemplary childcare at the time and worked with the Day Care Council of America.

I said, “Okay, you are the Day Care Council of America. What do you think is the really best childcare?” We looked at the Resource

and Referral Agencies, we looked at family childcare, we looked at corporate childcare, we looked at a lot of different types of childcare programs. This is in the ‘70s, and we found there was some really good childcare.

Based on our research and what we learned, we published a book called The New Extended Family, Day Care that Works. I wouldn’t call it “day care” today, but back then it was the term people used. I remember my publisher saying, “You can’t name a book about childcare called The New Extended Family.” And I said, “Oh yes, I can, and I’ll change publishers if necessary because that’s what we found.” Ultimately, they accepted the name, but it reinforced the perception that childcare was warehousing kids and it wasn’t like a family.

Fran Rodgers: Well, think about the more recent backlash when Hillary Clinton said, “It takes a village.” I mean, that was an incredible backlash. Working families know nobody can do everything and nobody succeeds at any of this alone.

Deb Phillips: Given this conversation, I feel like there’s a whole group of young people who don’t understand how far we’ve come, especially after the childcare challenges since the COVID pandemic.

Fran Rodgers: I think what people don’t understand is that there were things we would’ve liked to see happen, that we tried to make happen, that just didn’t happen.

For example, we always knew from the very beginning that childcare was only one piece of the picture for women and families to succeed at work. We always knew work had to be more flexible. We always knew that people had to be judged by their results, not by their time at work. We always knew that if you were a

parent and you had to take more time, it didn’t mean that forever more you should be punished for taking parental leave.

The things that were more cultural and embedded within company culture and practices did take longer and still are the things that need work today. But this is the part that people don’t understand, it’s not that we didn’t know these issues were important, it’s that we had to be strategic about what companies and organizational culture would accept. And maybe, at least I feel personally, I’m disappointed that that we didn’t make more progress on these issues.

Ellen Galinsky: It’s challenging because childcare is basically an unsustainable industry. Parents can’t pay what it costs for good quality childcare. We worked on the economic issues for years and economically it just doesn’t work. The figures of the cost-benefit didn’t happen by chance. They happened because a group of us funded studies or talked to people who wanted to do studies to understand the economics.

Ellen Galinsky: And I’ve seen it during COVID where you would think that everybody working at home and trying to care for children would change people’s views, that you can’t be productive at home without childcare.

Fran Rodgers: But I think we’re at a really important oint because of COVID.

Ellen Galinsky: I do too.

Fran Rodgers: Because COVID broke all the paradigms about not having to see somebody to know they’re working. I think that this next period is going to be seminal on the issue of trust. Trust in employees to get the work done and trust in managers to measure whether people are getting the work done.

If we ensured adequate, affordable, quality childcare and more people were able to have flexibility to work from home, we would be making enormous progress that we’ve been trying to make for many years.

Deb Phillips: Let me piggyback on your points about COVID and transformational change. I remember after the 9/11 tragedy there were a lot of organizations that put in hoteling and hybrid work, and it lasted with that level of intensity for maybe a year and a half, then organizations began to go back to traditional work. I agree, it seems like a seminal moment, but how do we capture the opportunity and not fall back?

Fran Rodgers: One thing is you hope that this generation of workers makes their voices heard and insists on change or leave their employer and go to an organization who understands the importance of trust, productivity, health & wellness, engagement and flexibility.

Ellen Galinsky: That’s what is different now. Everyone has been impacted and there’s a sense of, “I don’t really want to live the way I was living before.” When I was talking to my colleague from Germany, he was saying that that’s true in Germany too. I don’t know what will happen because life is quirky, but the conditions are certainly there for sustainable change to happen.

Fran Rodgers: It’ll happen if organizations give up their real estate, which is so expensive. I think a lot of businesses are now socked into long-term leases and buildings and they can’t stand the idea of having the buildings and having nobody there.

Ellen Galinsky: I know, which was so crazy because prior to COVID, employers knew they had people who were not physically together and were able to collaborate in a global team, but they didn’t want to see it in their own offices. And that’s why perception is so interesting and it’s easier to just fall back on the way things have always worked.

“ I want people to know that you can change things that don’t work.

— Ellen Galinsky ”

Fran Rodgers: Ellen, have you seen any research that says that people who worked at home weren’t as productive?

Ellen Galinsky: No. There will always be some people who aren’t productive working from home, but I always think of the CEO of Levi Strauss who said to me once, “In every barrel of apples, there are a few bad apples, and there is always going to be some issues with anything you do; work in the office, work at home, whatever. But you manage those as management issues, not as global edicts about a way that people work.”

Fran Rodgers: And let’s not forget that there are a lot of jobs that require people to physically go to work and cannot work from home.

Ellen Galinsky: You’re correct and I think there’s more awareness about the cost of a toxic workplace, which is independent of where you work but has a huge impact on health and wellness and the employee experience. MIT did a study sometime with Glassdoor that showed that people were walking out of toxic workplaces. This is an important moment to tie how organization’s treat people and work and family life with how they treat people as workers. If we could stitch those two together, we would make real progress.

Ellen Galinsky: If we enlarge the lens, I think the work environments matter. Is it a place where relationships and the kind of relationships you have are important? I think if we start to recognize basic human needs, that people need to feel that they belong, they need to feel respected, they need to feel that they have some autonomy, those sorts of things which we’ve known forever are linked to health and wellbeing, we can begin to think about how to create work as a better environment for living and living as a better environment for working. That has to be part of the next phase of all of our work.

Fran Rodgers: But I don’t know that employers in general would change unless young people demand it.

Ellen Galinsky: I agree. Fran Rodgers: I remember when we were first starting out, one of the things that always made me so upset was that people didn’t speak up at all. I mean, I knew they needed to speak up. It was hard for any individual to speak up. If 10 people spoke up about something, that was a big deal. People listened but everybody was afraid to speak up.

I just hope that people aren’t afraid anymore. If people vote with their feet, it’ll happen more quickly. Organizations don’t change unless they have to.

Ellen Galinsky: I think my biggest accomplishment was listening. I didn’t know the words for it then. Just like we didn’t have a name for work and family life, but it was civic science. I would’ve picked up this issue in my own life, but it was by listening to the voices of parents and the voices of children that I knew how urgent it was. And it was by listening to them that we could shape the questions we ask in the studies that we did and the work that we did with employers or with governments. Bringing a civic science perspective, which is based on putting together the best of science and the best of people’s life experiences. I think that would be what I would be most proud of. We need a society where we can have joy in raising children, in working, and in living.

I’m writing a book on adolescence now and when I ask adolescents about one thing they want adults to know about people their age, is not to put down teenagers. We live in a society where we put down teenagers where we don’t value kids. The kind of discrimination that people of color are facing is also true in the way that we treat people with children, is the way we treat teenagers. Back to the point I made earlier, if we could begin to think of communities and workplaces and schools as places where people feel like they belong, where people are respected, where people feel supported, those are basic needs

like food, water, and shelter. Those are not trivial.

I’d like to see schools begin to assess themselves on whether the kids feel that they belong, and workplaces to assess themselves on whether or not workers feel that they belong. We found in the National Study in the last analysis that we did, looking at people who had experienced COVIDlike events, whether or not you felt you belonged and were a part of the group that you worked with, really did affect how badly COVID experiences affected you. This is not just about productivity, this is about living and dying.

Fran Rodgers: I agree. It’s about supporting younger people. People have to believe in change and believe that they have the power to do it and to the extent they belong to collective bodies where they need to really get involved to voice their opinions and make change.

What we learned at Work/Family Directions was that the key to change in the workplaces is to show different ways to address workplace issues and still get the same results. You can do things differently, not hurt the employer and still support the purpose of the organization. No generation accomplishes everything it wants, but to be healthy organizations we have to focus on who comes next and how they think about success, personally and professionally.

Deb Phillips: I’ve learned so much from both of you. What advice would you give me and Lori as we move forward with Work2Live?

Ellen Galinsky: When you’re working toward change, when you’re in the change business, you need a “possibility” mindset. You need to be realistic about the obstacles but focus on the possibilities.

Fran Rodgers: And it’s important to find champions who are willing to work with you. It’s not dangerous to try things even if they don’t work. You have to take some risks and believe in change.•

DISENGAGEMENT AND QUIET QUITTING:

It’s Time for a New Employee Value Proposition for Working and Living

Quiet Quitting’ is trendy, but it is not a new phenomenon. It is the latest term to describe workplace behavior whereby workers do the bare minimum required by their job without expending any extra energy or effort. Simply put, they are disengaged, and depending on their level of disengagement, which can vary from quietly keeping their head down to loudly voicing their dissatisfaction, their behavior has significant consequences for everyone they interact with.

It is fair to say that work environments have always included disengaged workers who often flew under the radar screen and found ways to ‘look’ busy without stepping up and taking on additional work to help colleagues and the organization. In fact, organizations have spent years conducting employee engagement and opinion surveys to identify challenges and implement solutions to increase employee engagement.

Over the past 25+ years, research has been conducted to identify the drivers of engagement and implement strategic solutions to support high performance. As evidenced by an important study conducted in 1998 by Work/Family Directions, Inc., The Drivers of Commitment Study1, seven workplace drivers of employee commitment were identified. These data resulted in the development of validated engagement survey indices for each of these seven workplace drivers:

Further, as published on Gallup’s website, over 2.7 million workers across 100,000 teams were studied, including over 50 diverse industries, which culminated in their 12-item engagement survey, referred to as the Q12 survey. According to Gallup, “the following 12 items collectively indicate the level of employee engagement at any organization and individually, they reveal which employee needs are not being met, pointing to clear opportunities to move the needle forward on engagement:

Q00. Overall Satisfaction

Q01. Knowing What’s Expected

Q02. Materials and Equipment

Q03. Doing What You Do Best

004. Receiving Recognition

Q05. Someone Caring at Work

Q06. Someone Encouraging Development

Q07. Opinions Counting at Work

Q08. Mission/Purpose

Q09. Commitment to Quality Work

Q10. Best Friend at Work

Q11. Talking About Progress

Q12. Learning and Growing

More recently in 2020, when the workplace was forced to change systems, processes, technology tools, and work locations due to the COVID pandemic, employees displaying disengaged behavior became much more visible, resulting in additional stress and burnout for managers and colleagues who had to pick up the slack, as well as creating unsatisfactory experiences for internal and external customers. As the pandemic continues to drag on, employees and managers who tried to provide increasing support and empathy are now finding themselves exhausted and depleted, while their own

Support

7. Career Advancement

1. WFD Drivers of Commitment Study (1998) authored by Amy Richman, Ed.D, Barbara Nobles Crawford, Ph.D, Charles Rodgers, Ph.D, and Hal Morgan, MBA of WFD, Inc.

engagement levels are fraying.

According to Gallup’s ongoing Global Employee Engagement data republished from their website, the chart below shows the changes in global employee engagement between 2009 and 2021. As you can see, the percentage of employees who are actively disengaged started trending

and what they need outside of work, the EVP is now evolving to increasingly focus on the employee perspective. In exchange for the skills, capabilities and contributions employees bring to the job, they now demand monetary and non-monetary salary and benefits that provide them with a clear purpose, manager/supervisor support for career development, recognition, empathy and support for self-care and personal responsibilities. Further, they are seeking more productive work and less meaningless busy-time, as well as transparent communication in order to feel valued and achieve their highest potential.

upward in 2019, then leveled off since 2020, whereas the percentage of employees who are actively engaged has remained lower than its peak in 2019.

Additionally, in the republished data from Gallup’s Q1 2022 U.S. Working Population data, the chart below illustrates the percentage of engagement, stress and burnout by generation. Although engagement, burnout and stress are important measures throughout an employee’s career life cycle, these data are particularly troubling because

Although this comic strip may at first seem silly, employees report putting their personal wellbeing, selfcare, and family relationships and responsibilities on the back burner, as work expectations continue creeping into what used to be protected personal/out-of-work time, contributing to the current trends in quiet quitting, resignation, job-switching, and reflection on what is most important in life and work.

While well-meaning employers often try to engage employees in social activities, both in-person and virtually, to develop relationships and keep connected, employees are increasingly refusing to participate in these ‘forced fun’ activities because they take too much time away from their work responsibilities and deadlines, thereby forcing them to work later into the evening in order to catch up and encroaching on personal time.

As people continue to engage in personal reflection about work and life, the following quote from Steve Jobs seems particularly relevant, regardless of who you are or where you are on your career path:

Gen Z and Millennials make up approximately 46 percent of the full-time U.S. workforce, but account for the highest levels of stress and burnout.

Aside from the pandemic’s impact, the employee/ employer value proposition (EVP) has been eroding for quite some time. Prior to the pandemic, an employer typically defined the EVP as monetary and non-monetary employee salary and benefits provided to an employee in exchange for the skills, capabilities and contributions they make to the employer. However, with a growing number of employees rethinking what they want from an employer

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

We invite you to join us in identifying what defines an ideal employee value proposition for achieving high potential and satisfaction at work and in your life. You may begin by clicking the link to our Employee/ Service Member/Employer Forum and respectfully sharing your thoughts and perspectives about what you are expecting from employers to keep you engaged, motivated and productive. •

Two Decades of Learning About Workplace Flexibility

An Interview with Amy Richman, Ed.D.

Amy Richman was a Senior Consultant at WFD Consulting with more than 35 years of consulting and research experience in business and academic settings in the U.S. and globally. She was a principal contributor to WFD’s groundbreaking investigation of the drivers of employee engagement and was a main contributor to the 2008 special issue of Community, Work & Family on the impacts of workplace flexibility. Amy was the main author of the 2009 Innovative Workplace Flexibility Options for Hourly Workers and also a co-author of Business Impacts of Flexibility: An Imperative for Expansion, which assembled for the first time quantitative data from 28 large U.S. businesses to demonstrate the impact of flexibility on business outcomes and senior author of When the Workplace Is Many Places: The Extent and Nature of Off-Site Work Today, a national study of off-site workers in medium to large companies in the United States. Prior to joining WFD, Amy was a research associate at Harvard University where she managed cross-cultural studies of women’s education, parenting and child development in several countries. Amy received her bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, in the field of Measurement and Evaluation.

As we (Lori Sokol and Deb Phillips) launch Work2Live we recognize the importance of understanding the evolution of workplace flexibility, including the successes and challenges, right up until 2020 when COVID threw the world into a state of societal and workplace stress and chaos. We are grateful to Deb’s longtime colleague, Amy Richman, who worked for Work/Family Directions, better known as WFD Consulting, for 35 years and developed much of WFD’s research in the areas of women’s advancement, workplace culture, diversity, commitment and engagement, and the impacts of flexibility for sharing the history of workplace flexibility and her perspective on the experiences employees and employers are currently working through to create a new way of working that embraces flexibility in all its iterations:

DEB: Amy, I am so excited to have you share your knowledge and perspective with our readers. In addition to the research you conducted with organizations within the United States and globally, you also measured the impact of the flexibility initiatives implemented, which had, until that point, been ignored in much of the human resources research. Many of our readers may have been quite young in the 1980s when the struggles to combine work success with personal priorities became something organizations started looking at as a way to recruit, retain and engage talent. Take us back to the mid-80s and paint a picture of what it was like for working families.

AMY: Back in the mid-80s, when women were entering the workforce in larger numbers, WFD recognized that there weren’t many resources in communities to support working families with children, so we worked on a national level to increase the supply and quality of care for children and to make that information easily available to employees and employers. But we soon discovered it wasn’t enough to have a supply of childcare, we had to look inside companies at the way people were working, the way they were managed, the culture of the workplace and the attitudes of leadership if we were going to make a difference at the nexus of work and family. And that led us to flexibility.

The downturn of the late 80’s led to major changes in the employer-employee compact. When the economy picked up again and businesses expanded there was intense competition to attract and retain talent but the factors that would influence employees’ decisions about jobs and careers were changing. There were still deeply embedded assumptions about how and where work had to be done that were enormous barriers to people being able to actually bring their whole selves to work, to be as productive as possible, to have career opportunities and more. We did extensive survey work in companies, talked to employees through focus groups, and interviewed leadership at all levels; and we learned that things had to change about the culture of work if companies were going to achieve the results they wanted. We developed some groundbreaking

work on the drivers of commitment and engagement, where we measured not only what were considered the main drivers of employee satisfaction and retention, things like compensation, manager effectiveness, and advancement opportunities; we also included the measurement of work/ life, flexibility and diversity – factors that had been ignored previously. We found that work/life, flexibility and diversity were just as powerful predictors and drivers of commitment, engagement and retention as the traditional narrower focus on compensation. Further we found, that when employees worked for companies and managers who were supportive of work/life and had the flexibility and control they needed they had lower stress and were more likely to stay with their current employer. We continued working with companies to implement flexibility, develop flexibility policies, and train managers so they could think differently about how best to get work done. But oftentimes, what was left out, was a focus on people who were in non-exempt and hourly jobs. It was much easier for managers and leaders to implement processes to negotiate on an individual basis with professional level workers, than to figure out how to provide flexibility for people in hourly and non-exempt jobs where constraints due to the nature of the work or team dependencies might require different approaches. Some leading employers in industries heavily dependent on hourly and non-exempt workers who faced difficulties in filling openings and quantified the costs of turnover began to experiment and measure the impact of implementing flexibility practices for their hourly workforce with startling results.

DEB: We know that COVID flipped everything on its head, with a lot of focus on hybrid work, but that option doesn’t work for a significant number of employees in service oriented and operations positions. What did you

learn in the past that could be leveraged today?

AMY: Like 2023, the competition for talent in the 1980s and 1990s was intense. Companies were realizing that unless they figured out how to attract and retain women and young employees, they weren’t going to be able to achieve their goals. The other problem was high levels of turnover. And again, like today’s quiet quitting, it wasn’t enough to bring people in the door, organizations had to figure out how to engage them to maximize their contribution and keep them. Especially in hourly and non-exempt jobs, the level of turnover is quite high; depending on the industry, it can approach 100% annually, but it’s generally high across the board. Our recent experience with Covid demonstrates that we are totally dependent on our essential worker positions, and employers and employees are struggling with the same issues and challenges we faced a number of years ago, only now there is the additional stressor related to health concerns.

We studied several different professions and industries and found that managers and leadership had very narrow definitions of what flexibility meant. But when organizations began thinking more broadly about flexibility in terms of control and choice, there were many formal and informal options, such as a compressed work week (e.g. working four, ten-hour days) shifting the employee’s start and stop time, allowing just-in-time time-off on an occasional basis, that were highly effective forms of flexibility that gave people the ability to have some time during the traditional work week to take care of doctor’s appointments, repairs at home, go to children’s important activities, deal with financial or legal issues, get their cars repaired, etc. These are three easy, very effective examples, but there were various flexibility and time-off solutions that gave workers more

control over their work schedules and aligned with when and how the work needed to get done.

We also know, even today, that a huge percentage of people who work in hourly jobs don’t work a typical 9:00 to 5:00 day. They work second shift, third shift, they work weekends, especially in businesses that operate on a 24/7 basis, so the traditional 9:00 to 5:00 hybrid mindset doesn’t work and the solutions have to be broader. Unfortunately personnel policies which are often put in place to catch the few people that are abusing company policies do not allow innovative, out-ofthe-box solutions, but companies can change inflexible personnel policies and managers can become more aware of the fact that rigid policies have a differentially negative affect on hourly workers who need flexibility and control when personal situations arise. In addition, for hourly workers, supervisors are the conduit for access to and information about flexibility even more so than for other workers.

Unlike the disparity hourly workers experienced, exempt workers were able to negotiate individual arrangements with their manager. But what we learned, similar to the reality we are experiencing post COVID, when employees are part of a team, individual arrangements and “one-size-fits-all” policies don’t work. A team-based approach is necessary to achieve an effective, efficient, productive, supportive, and equitable working environment.

DEB: The importance of teambased solutions is definitely important because many employees work in project teams and are interconnected. When we look at 2020 - 2023, for many reasons there is tension between organizations trying to bring people back to the workplace and their employees who are resisting a return to the office. One of the unintended consequences of the way the pandemic forced society to distance and organizations to implement remote work has been that those

who had to go into the office often took on job responsibilities for those who were not physically present. Early on, employees jumped in to help out, but as time elapsed and those behaviors became habits and expectations, we are seeing issues with role confusion and disparities in workload, which in many situations is leading to disengagement.

AMY: There definitely is tension currently between employees and employers because the infrastructure that we depend on to support our childcare, health care, community services and education hasn’t returned to where it was pre-COVID. In addition, we continue to have health-related concerns. People are doing their best in what still feels like a very chaotic unsettled time of change. Organizations have to understand and be concerned about the level of stress that exists for people at work and at home. Whatever companies can do to clarify roles and job expectations about when people need to be physically present, reduce the work and personal stress people have to deal with, or at least not create policies that contribute to inequities and stress, is going to help in the long run.

DEB: With the recruitment, retention and engagement challenges we face, it seems like employees want flexibility to be “fair” but in our consulting work we’ve always talked about equity, not “fairness” or “sameness.”

AMY: Flexibility can’t be the same. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but there needs to be equity for all types of work situations. Equity has added importance for the hourly workforce which is typically more diverse than other sectors of the workforce. There are more women, more young people, more people of color, and people at different life stages. We know the disparities that exist in our society for people in some of these groups such as in income and education, which can exacerbate inequities where flexibility is

concerned. For example, we have technology which enables flexible scheduling, but by and large it’s been used for the convenience of the company for lean staffing, which puts more pressure on employees. But we learned from the research that flexible scheduling can be implemented successfully to allow employees to have more control over their work schedule. When employees get a schedule two weeks in advance they can arrange their lives accordingly, but when companies change schedules or require forced overtime with very little notice, employees are in a bind. Just imagine being a parent and being told a couple hours before the end of your work shift that you have to work an extra two hours. Who is going to pick up the kids? Who is going to take an elderly parent to a medical appointment that’s been scheduled months in advance? Employers have it within their capabilities to implement systems in ways that benefit the business and benefit employees.

Another important similarity between 2023 and the 19980s and 1990s is that the employee experience depends in large part on the direct manager, this is even more true for hourly workers. Managers continue to feel pressure to deliver results but may be poorly trained or have limited understanding of how to implement and expand company policies regarding flexibility in an equitable manner. The outcome is that the current reality of hybrid work may not be applicable to a significant number of their individual workers and teams; and can contribute to overwork, inefficiencies and feelings of being under-valued. I think many employees are using every tool and resource they have in order to work smarter and be productive in the current environment but it can feel like spinning their wheels at best.

DEB: We have the tools, collaboration technology is improving rapidly, and we know work can be done more efficiently and effectively, so I’m thinking this isn’t just about flexibility

in the way we’ve thought about formal and informal options it in the past, it’s also about our long-held assumption that full-time means 40 hours. Does it have to be 40 hours?

AMY: Over the years, progressive companies have extended benefits to people who work at least 30-hours and some have even extended benefits to those who work fewer than 30 hours. This approach helps bring untapped talent into the labor force which could be a good solution for today’s current labor shortages and to meet the needs of business with other than 9 to 5 operations. Companies can use flexible work practices as business tools to recruit, develop and retain high performing employees at various stages of the lifecycle – from young adults continuing their education to parents who may want to cut back on hours for short periods for family reasons to mature workers interested in part-time or part-year positions. For example, the majority of people who go to college in the US take longer than four years to get a degree and many Americans are combining a full-time job or a 30-hour job with college courses, allowing them to have a work life, an educational life and a personal life. It could make a big difference if employees can have a meaningful, satisfying and sustaining job at 30 hours a week and get the benefits they need. Other countries have full-time jobs that are fewer than 40 hours a week, so we know it’s possible.

And for many of the jobs that require people to be onsite, and are not just 9:00 to 5:00, five days a week, such as retail, food service, customer service, production and manufacturing, security, healthcare, seasonal work, etc., thinking more broadly about how the work is done and when it’s done, would give employees more flexibility and control to manage work and personal responsibilities, which in turn would improve recruitment, retention and engagement in all industries and sectors. •

EMPLOYER OF THE FUTURE… Insights from Four Students at Morgan State University

by Deb Phillips

AFUNDAMENTAL GOAL OF WORK2LIVE

magazine is to gather insights from all types of workers, at various stages of their careers. “Dear Employer of the Future” will therefore serve as an ongoing series where young people who are entering, or preparing to enter, the workforce, the military, or any type of job or service position are provided with a platform for expressing their priorities when considering a future employer.

On December 10, 2022, I had the privilege of interviewing four students for the inaugural Work2Live “Dear Employer of the Future” article. The students are at different stages in their journeys toward earning a MBA from the Graves School of Business at Morgan State University. Each shared their childhood perceptions about work, their personal work experiences during high school and

college, and what is most important to them as they consider their future career and personal goals. Although each of these individuals grew up with different parental work experiences (one in a single parent household, one in a two-parent working family in a corporate environment, one with a father who worked and a mom who stayed-at-home, and one with one self-employed grandparent), several common themes emerged from their perceptions.

WORK CULTURE THAT SUPPORTS RELATIONSHIPS AND FRIENDSHIPS

Jason Clark received his MBA with a concentration in Marketing in December, 2022. His background is in digital communications media, and he is currently working for Apple.

Desirae Christie is a final semester MBA candidate, is interested in the Human Resources field and is in year six in the Army (first four years in active duty and two years in the reserves). She has accepted a position with Deloitte as a Human Capital Consultant.

Bashirah Moore is working on her MBA concentration in Marketing Management. She has a Master’s degree in Health Science and a Bachelors degree in Community Health. She currently works in pharmaceutical sales as a Senior Hematology Consultant with Bristol Myers Squibb.

W. Corey Moore is a second year MBA student, planning to graduate in May 2023. His background is in finance but is looking at a career shift from finance to human resources.

Three of the four mentioned that their parents and working adults in their lives developed work relationships that became close family friends who could be relied upon to help out at home. They acknowledged that when they were growing up people tended to live in the same communities where they grew up, and this sense of community was a bridge between work and family. As Jason Clark says, “I can remember my father always had one person, at least, who would become a close family friend from work, coming to dinners, occasionally babysitting us.” As they’ve matured and entered the workforce, people now tend to move from their childhood locations, so they are looking for a company culture where work provides a place to build and foster relationships with people you can laugh, joke, have fun and be authentic with, regardless of the type of work they do.

SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND NETWORKS

Along with supportive cultures that build relationships and friendships, the notion of a sense of community and purpose was also something they all valued. Christie says, “My mom had to rely on community because we didn’t have anyone else. My dad passed when we were young so when it came to community, they did everything.” Corey Moore also shared that his parents always made sure he was raised by a “village,” which provided him with access to opportunities and connections through his parents, which helped him gain experience in finance-related jobs.

WORK BOUNDARIES THAT PROVIDE TIME TO ENJOY LIFE

Bashirah Moore, Corey Moore and Jason Clark talked about the importance of separating work and personal time, a priority they are seeking in their current and future employers. Jason says, “My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my father was a nine-to-fiver. But what I appreciated was that the nine-to-five didn’t get in the way of his life. He would make it home to be with us, coach our sports teams, etc., and as a kid that separation was something I definitely appreciated.” Bashirah, whose parents worked in a corporate setting, says, “Sometimes they worked late hours or early mornings but there was some flexibility. I would definitely say the flexibility to enjoy the fruits of my labor is very, very important to me.” Desirae, who had a different experience regarding work boundaries, says, “It was seven of us in the house and one mother, we didn’t have work-life balance,” but she summed it up best by adding, “I want community, I want the balance that I didn’t necessarily have, but I also want my work to have intentionality and purpose.”

FEELING VALUED, TRUSTED, AND HAVING A SENSE OF PURPOSE

Additional recurring themes include the importance of having a sense of purpose in both their work and personal lives, and employers that create work environments where employees feel supported, valued and trusted. As Corey pointed out, “We are passionate about our jobs and need to feel our voices are being heard when changes need to be made. Millennials and Gen Z are ready to come in and make an impact, which requires flexible and adaptable workspaces.” Additionally, Bashirah pointed out that employees entering the workforce are now pushing harder to be included in decision-making about their jobs and have their voices heard.

Bashirah also spoke about the importance of being trusted to get the job done, rather than being micromanaged, “When you meet someone in an interview the employer steps out on faith and says, ‘Okay, this person seems like they can get the job done.’ So, once we’re hired, employers need to trust that the employee can do what they are being paid to do.”

For my final question, I asked each of them if there was anything else they would like to share with employers. These were their responses:

• It’s important to have intentional employers who understand the importance of treating employees like human beings. Once pensions went out the door, 401Ks let employees move like NBA players. It is really about treating employees like people with lives, not robots.

• If companies really stand behind the word ‘culture’, there must be accountability, so everyone feels included and valued, regardless of what they wear, who they are, or what they look like.

• There is no one-size-fits-all career/work situation where you get a job and stay 30 years. Work is a relationship between an employee and employer, and there needs to be clear definitions of what the relationship looks like and what’s in it for each side.

• Work needs to be defined, measured and compensated for, regardless of where it is done or how long it takes. There is pushback to go back to work in the office but why do I need to waste two hours of my day in traffic? And when there are holidays the expectation is to get 40 hours of work done in 32 hours, but when employees figure out how to be more efficient and do more work in less time, the question becomes, what makes 40 hours a magic number? Are you paying me for the work or are you paying me for the time?

• When it comes to working and living, Gen Zs are coming into the workforce in greater numbers. They are choosing to live and thrive and will make personal life situations a priority. Benefits are great, but if we don’t feel valued, we don’t have to stay.

• Continuous learning and developing transferable skills are important to keeping the work interesting and having a sense of purpose. Investing time for learning and development creates engagement. • Work2Live magazine welcomes additional input from employees newly entering the workforce, in service positions, or changing careers about what they want organizations and leaders to know about their needs, challenges and goals for working and living. Please join the discussion by clicking the link to our Employee/Service Member/Employer Forum.

A Look to the Future

Transforming the Way We Work by Taking an Equitable and Humane Business-Based Approach

By Deb Phillips and Lori Sokol, PhD

AS THE SAYING GOES, “necessity is the mother of invention,” and that is certainly true today as the world navigates the changes we have had to adjust to in how we choose to work and live. For more than 30 years, businesses either provided policies and procedures to control the implementation of workplace flexibility, or chose to remain silent, with one-off accommodations afforded to a select few. Employee opinion surveys and academic and business research studies continually reported on the positive connection between workplace flexibility, employee engagement, reduced stress, and enhanced business and shareholder outcomes for exempt and non-exempt employees. But organizations, even progressive ones that supported workplace flexibility, continued to be cautious about how flexibility was defined, how much autonomy and control they were comfortable affording, and what their perception of “fairness” was by creating one-size-fits-all policies and procedures. Then COVID disrupted the way we work and forced everyone, except essential workers, to remain in their homes and figure out a different way to work and live.

Organizations had to react quickly to the new reality of how and where work would be conducted. They realized that conventional teleconference meetings were not going to be effective for remote workers, and they needed to embrace virtual meeting technologies, which had been available since 1999, but was used inconsistently. To address the immediate need to work in a new way, the technology industry worked feverishly to improve meeting and collaboration tools such as Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, while organizations and employees put systems, procedures and access to technology in place to support remote work and maintain relationships, collaboration, and connections. While it was chaotic and stressful in early 2020, research firms such as PEW, McKinsey, and Gartner, reported that employees’ felt as productive or more productive when working from home and, for the most part, the contingency plans companies put in place regarding remote and hybrid work were successful in allowing business to continue.

But the way we work is not just about hybrid

work. It requires a business-based, strategic transformation. Advancements are being made in virtual and augmented reality which are already impacting how business is done, and how individuals engage with each other through mobile phones, tablets, televisions, laptops and desktops, gaming apps, retail experiences and purchases, transportation, personal and professional relationships, hiring practices, housing purchases, medical interventions, manufacturing and production, and many more. These innovations are quietly changing how we live and work, and present a promise for the transformation of how working and living will evolve in the future.

But in order to create a new way of working that both supports business needs and employees’ expectation to have control over where they work and live, organizations and employees must look past the narrow lens of remote and hybrid work to collaborate on a mutual understanding of how work is currently done and create an agreed-upon vision of the ideal way to work in the future. The first step is to cut through the external noise primarily focusing on where employees want to work (remote and hybrid) and broaden the conversation. The second step is to engage employees, technology experts, the next generation (Gen Z), facilities/real estate, and other key stakeholders that support the organization in building a shared understanding of the organization’s business requirements, goals, values, and employee needs. And the third step is to implement strategic benefits, policies, programs and practices with humanity, equity, intentionality, and transparency.

This is the foundation of a business-based, WIFM (What’s in It For Me) approach to transforming the way we work. To be successful, there must be inclusive input from all stakeholders, and clarity about what is expected with regard to accessibility, responsiveness, deliverables, participation, professional development and advancement opportunities. Collaboration, innovation, resolving challenges and conflicts, and the integration of new technologies to improve performance and efficiency and reduce low-value work, are equally as important.

It is critical that transformation to a new way of working must be communicated by leadership as a business imperative for sustainable organizational change, not just a policy for hybrid/remote work, with clearly stated outcomes and metrics for measuring success. With leadership direction, thoughtful planning, consistent communication and messaging, implementation of emerging technologies, clear guidelines for acceptable and undesirable behavior, and accountability for everyone in the organization, we can move away from a narrow focus of where we work, and instead transform the way we work into a win/win for employers and employees, that includes the agility to modify how we work as business needs evolve. •

Work2Live magazine welcomes further input about the best and promising practices for taking a business-based approach to develop new and more effective ways of working.

Nike Again Closed its Global Offices to Encourage Employee Well-Being

“If you’re looking for me next week, I’ll be enjoying some much-welcomed R&R and sunshine with my family. Our global offices will be closed for Well-Being Week — which is quickly becoming one of my favorite Nike traditions,” Nike Inc. EVP, chief human resources officer Monique Matheson wrote on her LinkedIn account.*

In addition to the closure of its global offices, Matheson also confirmed that its three Air MI [Air Manufacturing Innovation] locations — which has a combined workforce of roughly 1,500 employees — will be closed next week, and Nike will give its retail store and distribution center staff a week’s worth of paid Well-Being Days off that can be used at their discretion. Nike first closed its offices for a week to avoid employee burnout and stress in August 2021. The company closed all of its offices for a week of rest and recovery in advance of its planned fall return to the office. In May 2021, Nike revealed it would bring employees back to its Beaverton, Ore., headquarters in September with a “3-2 flexible work model” that allows for remote work up to two days a week. Amid Omnicron concerns, that return was delayed to May 2022 when the hybrid schedule eventually took effect.

*Source: Fast Company

Innovations in New Mental Health Benefits

Soap company Dr. Bronner’s offers its employees psychedelic therapy. Media company Hearst’s benefits include divorce support. WD-40 bestows upon its altruistic workers “Mother Theresa Awards” for dedication to community projects. Cambridge, Mass.-based tech company Akamai has offered pet therapy, employee scavenger hunts, a multiweek sleep improvement program, and Qigong workshops— all coordinated by its on-staff Wellness Program Manager. *

Cisco — whose CEO Chuck Robbins sent his 75,000 employees an email about prioritizing mental health in the aftermath of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain’s tragic suicides — offers a comprehensive benefits program that exceeds industry standard. It includes explicit support for parents of children with developmental disabilities like Autism, paid time-off when employees become grandparents, “Caregiver Concierges” who help source, train and place providers of child and eldercare, college counseling sessions for families with high school students, and a mandated 10-day end-of-year shutdown that requires employees to actually take their vacations; there’s no chance of working through the holidays, because Cisco’s North American offices are all closed. It is also ongoing practice for the company to have licensed mental healthcare providers attend its employee meetings, if the circumstances or attendees require professional support. (Cisco has also incorporated Goat Yoga into its corporate events.)

American Airlines not only offers employees 24/7 access to a helpline, but also installs licensed mental healthcare providers on site at major airports from coast to coast and encourages employees to call upon them.

Major companies like Lyft, Dropbox, Chipotle, British Airways and Live Nation — to name a few — have outsourced the design and delivery of mental health benefits packages to subcontractors. These smaller companies serve as all-inclusive wellness platforms and portals, connecting employees to a vast array of counseling services and calming digital content.

Some of the more well-known include: Modern Health, Aduro, Unmind, Vida Health, Optum, Noom, and Caravan Wellness. Their core purpose is to enable employees to access (on a voluntary basis) a network of international, licensed mental healthcare providers. Workers and their dependents usually get a limited number of free, one-on-one, virtual therapy or coaching sessions.

This counseling can be culturally-centered and delivered via text or video call in myriad languages from — and to —anywhere in the world. With Modern Health, for example, the wait time to be matched with a therapist is typically less than 24 hours. “We are really proud of our ability to connect people to care within a day,” said the company’s vp of professional services, Sam Hanna.

Many of these companies also offer professionally-mediated group therapy. Modern Health facilitates virtual “Circles” on specific, culturally-centered topics like “Combatting Anti-Asian Racism” which takes place on Sept.22. Talkspace recently hosted a grief webinar on behalf of a municipal fire department client which lost a firefighter in the line of duty, providing support to the impacted service members and their families. The platforms may also partner with crisis helplines, so employees can access emergency mental health or substance use disorder support 24/7/365.

*Source: Work Life News

How Corporate Job Ads Are Evolving

Job ads are fast becoming the best barometer for tracking evolving workplace trends. And the tumultuous events of the last few years have spurred some interesting adaptations in how employers advertise their vacancies.*

Last January, a spike in job ads with the requirement “candidate must be fully vaccinated” now serves as a sharp reminder of what was top of mind for workplaces, and indeed society, at that time. The plethora of job ads which now have “remote-only,” “hybrid working model, and “work from anywhere” policies are another way to see how the tide has turned. Today, job seekers may notice yet another addition: a section labeled “physical demands” for corporate job posts.

On Amtrak’s recently posted job listing for a corporate social media manager, it included a breakdown of the work environment, including both physical and mental demands. For physical demands, it listed: “Frequently sits, stands, or walks; may lift, carry, push, or pull objects of various weights; may reach, kneel, crouch, bend, or twist in order to in order to perform administrative tasks (e.g., filing, retrieving materials from desks and bookcases, moving in an office setting).” For mental demands, it listed: “Frequently resolves problems with conflicting priorities in cognitively demanding situations” and “Frequently acquires new knowledge, skills, and tasks, both complex and simple, in order to maintain effectiveness in position.”

Amtrak is not alone in adding this to a job description. Tourist company Visit Seattle’s listing for a senior

operations coordinator describes the physical demands as staying in a stationary position for prolonged periods, vision including far, color, peripheral view, depth perception and focus adjustment, picking up and moving 50 pounds and staying stationary at a desk for up to eight hours per day. The Hill posted a job for director of state and local affairs and described its physical demands as being “regularly required to sit and use motor skills.”

It’s a trend that is picking up: job postings that list physical demands rose 31% between January 2020 and January 2023, according to jobs site Indeed.

Listing the physical demands for more physical jobs, for instance, truck driving or factory work, has been a given for years. But listing them for desk-based jobs is more unusual, and signals some important mindset changes when it comes to how employers and employees now view working conditions.

During the throes of the coronavirus pandemic when all employees globally were forced to work from home, the toll that took on physical (as well as mental) health became starker. Not only that but with so many people now starting new jobs without having physically experienced an office, listing more about the physical demands and working environment is more important than it was when all desk-based jobs were in the office.

“I’m not surprised [physical demands are being added to corporate job ads] given how the role of the workplace has changed,” said Vicki Salemi, career expert at job search and resource company Monster. “These job listings are getting more specific, and it’s a good thing because job seekers can know what it exactly entails.”

When interviews happened in the office, the potential job candidate would be able to feel out the work environment then and see what kind of physical demands it might entail, whether it is a loud, noisy open environment floor plan or bright lights. It was something that could help them make a decision on if the job was for them or not. If a job is hybrid but the interview process is done fully remotely, listing the work environment and physical demands is important.

“The more information and the more transparent an employer can be, the better it is for everyone involved to save time and energy,” said Salemi. “The job seeker might want something quiet with enclosed environments. With virtual interview, there are fewer visual cues the job seeker has to go by.”

*Source: Work Life News

Which US Cities Prefer Remote Work?

To identify the US cities which love and hate working from home, VoiceNation sourced data from Radarly, which revealed the number of positive and negative conversations around the topic of remote work in the past 30 days. Those with the highest number of positive conversations were deemed as being most pro-working from home, while those with the highest number of negative conversations were considered the most pro-office.

New York City

With 1 in every 38 people in the United States calling the Big Apple home, New York City topped the list of US cities that love working out of office the most. In fact, over 71 million positive conversations were had about remote work – by far the most out of all US cities.

But, looking closer at the data, we can see that New Yorkers are in fact split over working from home versus the office. While a larger proportion are positive about the changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, there is still a significant 47.9 million citizens who prefer working from the office. Of those, a combined 1.1 million live in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

San Francisco

Next, jetting right across the country to California, San Francisco, the hub of technological innovation and a hotspot for startups, is the second-biggest supporter of remote working. Despite the city’s uniquely heavy concentration of tech employers, which makes them particularly vulnerable to remote work, over 34 million positive conversations have been shared.

Los Angeles

Sticking in California, in one of the most culturally diverse destinations in the world, Los Angeles comes in third place for preferring to work from home, with more than 4.1 million positive conversations. There could be multiple reasons for this, potentially relating three of LA’s thorniest challenges: housing, transport and the environment. Perhaps residents see remote work as a magical solution to all of them.

Unbound by an office and a daily commute, employees are now able to move further from their jobs to cheaper homes in the suburbs. Meanwhile, fewer people commuting means there’s less traffic and fewer carbon emissions. So, is it really surprising that the city is overwhelmingly in favor of remote work?

Manhattan

By contrast, Manhattan places top as the strongest supporter of office working, with over 10.8 million negative conversations being had around out-of-office work. This is surprising given that Manhattan is the most densely populated city in the state of New York and yet New York City was the most supportive of working from home.

Manhattan is valued as a centre of advanced business services, so the move to remote work during the pandemic likely reduced this perception. With more and more workers choosing to pass up on the office, businesses are unable to make these spaces more efficient and, in the long term, benefit the city’s economy. Perhaps many of Manhattan’s residents recognize this and so favor a return to the office.

Brooklyn

Also among the US cities that don’t like working from home is Brooklyn – another city within the state of New York. Again, the reasons for this are likely much the same as those for Manhattan. Both Brooklyn and Manhattan are central cities that are perceived as huge business centres –working from home is likely damaging this reputation. New York City, by contrast, encompasses a much more diverse mix of people – many of which won’t benefit from moving back to the office.

Which European Countries Prefer Remote Work?

To identify which European countries love and hate working from home, VoiceNation sourced positive and negative Twitter sentiment data for each country from Linkfluence.com over the past 12 months. To do this, they used the native term in each language for ‘remote working’, in addition to the English term.

Iceland

Topping our list of European countries that love remote work is Iceland, with 22.3% positive sentiment. Iceland, similar to other Nordic countries such as Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, offers an excellent working environment, with generous social services for its citizens, income equality and paid parental leave for mothers and fathers. So, what is the reason for Iceland workers wanting to work from home following the pandemic?

Perhaps it’s the fact that, unlike its neighbors, Iceland has much longer working hours. Being a relatively expensive country to live in, Icelanders are used to working long hours to maintain high living standards. Maybe it’s the case that such long hours have started to take their toll on workers, leading them to want a break from the office now and then. In fact, even before the pandemic hit, there had already been conversations around four-day weeks and hybrid working models.

Latvia

Despite being a rather small country with a population of just over 8.1 million, Latvia has the second highest rate of positive sentiment around remote work. Latvia was fairly strict when it came to working during the coronavirus pandemic, even introducing a law that allowed businesses to fire workers who refused to either get a COVID-19 vaccination or transfer to remote work. Therefore, it is reassuring to see that the overall feeling around remote work is positive.

Ireland

Not too far behind Latvia on the pro working-from-home scale, we have Ireland with 17.1% positive sentiment across social media. This is interesting, given that prior to 2020, less than 4% of workers in Northern Ireland worked from home, suggesting a significant shift in attitudes and behaviour since the ‘work from home’ mandates were introduced in April 2020.

Romania

Romania recorded among the highest rate of negative sentiment about working from home. This might be down to that fact that the Romanian COVID-19 pandemic lockdown was one of the most restrictive in the world, with people even being forbidden from leaving the house.

Consequently, it makes sense that Romanians are reembracing the daily commute into the office over being stuck at home. Rather than becoming the new norm, as it has for many other European countries, it seems that for Romania, workers continue to crave the office environment.

Luxembourg

With the cost of living in Luxembourg being one of the highest in the world, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that residents here might be keen to save on commuter fees, the daily morning coffee, and the office lunch. But Luxembourg has surprised us by coming in second place with the next-highest rate of negative sentiment around working from home.

Spain

Finally, Spain ranked third on our list of European countries that prefer working from the office. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home was fairly uncommon in Spain, and, as we emerge from the depths of the pandemic, unlike many European countries, negative attitudes towards it seem to have returned.

In particular, the new remote working set-up appears to be particularly unwelcome by employers, rather than employees. They seem to believe that the law passed by the Spanish government in September 2020, which regulated remote working, has limited the flexibility available to firms and requires them to cover costs that not all are happy to undertake. The result is that working from home is already losing momentum in Spain

Our Work/Life Trends Section will be included in each publication, highlighting current trends from trusted media sources and research.

WORK/LIFE GLOSSARY OF TERMS*

HENRY: Stands for “High Earners, Not Rich Yet,” and refers to anyone with a high income but low net worth. It is often used to refer to some millennials.

Quiet promotions: When a manager assigns a bunch of new responsibilities to an individual, but without a pay increase or title change.

Quiet firing: When a manager avoids the discomfort of firing someone outright. Instead, they will use a bunch of different passive-aggressive tactics that have the same goal: they make the employee want to quit themselves.

Quiet constraint: When someone withholds invaluable information that would benefit a colleague’s output.

Social engineering: The manipulation of human factors to gain unauthorized access to resources and assets. It’s the active weaponization of your human vulnerabilities, behaviors and errors.

Social loafing: Refers to someone who piggybacks off the work of their coworkers to avoid having to do any work themselves, particularly in a group setting like a meeting.

Career cushioning: Starting the process of looking for the next job and preparing to move on (just in case) before leaving a current role.

Gaslighting: Causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator. In the workplace, it is a form of emotional abuse that can occur between co-workers, both on the same level or from their bosses.

Holacracy: A form of organizational structure that decentralizes authority and empowers individual contributors to make decisions based on their roles.

Quiet quitting: A recently coined term that refers to the push back on hustle culture and longstanding working norm of going above and beyond at work. Instead, a worker will fulfil the core requirements of a job, and stick to contracted hours to maintain their work-life balance.

WFA: Means work-from-anywhere and is an increasingly common workforce strategy where a company will allow its employees to work remotely from a location of their choice.

100:80:100 model: Now used to describe the four-day week working model, being trialled by companies globally. Literally means employees get 100% of the pay (meaning five-day-week pay) for 80% of their time in exchange for a commitment to maintain at least 100% productivity.

Asynchronous working: An increasingly popular method of working, in which teams can work closely on the same project but aren’t required to do so at the same time or at fixed hours.

Bedmin: Doing admin work in bed. Could be because you’re sick, or simply not understanding when to stop working. Or maybe you’re just having a bad hair day.

Biophilic design: A style of design that centers around merging natural greenery and outdoor vibes – plants, lighting – with indoor, that’s become popular in modern offices (Check our Google’s new Bay View campus in Silicon Valley to see an example.)

Digital nomads: People who have unplugged totally from their former physical workplaces and travel wherever they want, with families in tow or by themselves, with all the tech they need to still complete all their work requirements.

Employee engagement manager / director: People tasked specifically with ensuring people’s return-to-office experience is positive, as well as those working remotely.

Great resignation: The term coined by economists to describe the mass resignations that began happening in 2021, prompted by factors ranging from safety concerns, the restrictions the pandemic put on people’s lives and the need to care for relatives, to people’s light-bulb moments that life was too short to be unhappy or overworked in their jobs.

Great reshuffle: Describes what many who did resign, did afterward: sought better paid, more flexible jobs or switched careers entirely.

Hotelling: Desk-booking apps that have been adopted en masse by the corporate world so staff can book their desk for the days they plan to be in the office.

Hybrid meetings: When a team has a meeting in which some of the attendees are in the same room in an office, and the rest are joining remotely.

Hybrid meeting moderators: People tasked with ensuring everyone who is joining a meeting remotely, gets to speak to ensure there is parity between people in the office and those who aren’t.

Hybrid working: Describes the newfound flexibility employers are offering instead of the traditional 9-to-5 schedule. There is no singular blueprint, but it refers to working models where a certain number of days or hours can be worked in the office, with the remainder worked from home or from other remote locations.

3:2 or 2:3 model: Often bandied around in the business world to refer to how many days an employee will be in the office and how many they will from home, as part of a hybrid setup.

Light headquarters: With so many companies revamping their physical office to reflect the way employees use the office these days—for team collaboration, onboarding, coaching and strategy sessions—some businesses are dumping their huge headquarters in favor of smaller spaces.

Jobfishing: A tactic that opportunistic fraudsters are increasingly using to trick people hunting for remote jobs into working for fake companies which tout flexible benefits, and fooling them into working for free or giving up payment details.

Midweek mountain: The tendency for hybrid employees to go into their physical office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and work from home on Mondays and Fridays.

Neighborhoods (or zones): As employers rethink their physical office space, they’re redesigning them to reflect what their staff needs when they come into work. That includes quiet zones, collaboration zones and meeting zones.

New normal: Refers to life after the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. Includes anything from transformed working practices and work-life balance to long-lasting mental health and trauma-related issues and how they affect people’s job and career choices.

Pleasanteeism: The sense that we always have to display our best self at work and show that we are OK regardless of whether we’re stressed, under too much pressure or in need of support.

Polywork: A rising trend, particularly among Gen Z and millennials, in which people have multiple jobs at once.

Proximity bias: The latest inclusivity challenge. It refers to the (somewhat inevitable) bias of managers toward staff that are physically near them, aka in the same office, and those who remain remote due to personal choice or requirements. That bias can lead to promotions and favoritism.

Psychological safety: A term that’s been around for a while and refers to work environments that encourage people to feel confident enough to speak their mind (constructively) without reprisals. It’s had a second wind thanks to the coronavirus, which has expanded to include non-work issues and divisive topics like mask-wearing.

Quittagion: When quitting becomes contagious at companies.

Rage quitting: People who have walked off the job in anger, with little or no notice given.

Remote working: When a person never visits the office but works remotely — not just from home but from any location.

Reverse mentoring: With digital natives entering the workforce in increasing numbers, companies are pairing them with seasoned professionals so they can teach them the most efficient ways to use technology. The established workers mentor the new hires in areas like company culture and workplace etiquette.

RTO: The now commonly-used acronym to describe the return to the office, after the easing of coronavirus pandemic restrictions.

Shecession: Refers to the notable rise in the number of women who had to quit their jobs during the pandemic, to take care of children while schools were closed, causing a sharp u-turn on many of the gains made by women in the labor market.

Shybrid: A term that’s been used to describe how employers have continually pushed back return-to-office dates, but without informing employees of any concrete hybrid (or otherwise) plan. This “shyness” to explain a hybrid strategy, is leading to widespread confusion.

Toxic positivity: A continuous effort to focus on positive things and feelings while ignoring negative ones completely. Intended to help people see the positive side of any situation – no matter how dire, but can often lead to a grating, forced positivity at work, where the employee feels pressured to maintain a consistently positive mindset and crush any other concerns.

Virtual culture: Describes how businesses have attempted to maintain company culture in enforced remote-working environments needed throughout the pandemic. And will remain a high priority as the bulk of organizations opts for a hybrid work model.

Workation: When someone embraces the work-fromanywhere trend — that arose as a result of people’s changed attitudes toward work-life balance — and heads to an exotic location for a vacation, from which they can still work remotely (therefore stay longer).

Zoom bombing: When someone outside the company hijacks a Zoom video call.

*Source: WORKLIFE.NEWS