Herstory | Four-Day Work Weeks | Layoffs | The New, Cooler Loveline

Welcome back to another edition of This Week in Culture. This is the third one. I hope you’ve been enjoying them. If you ever want to discuss a specific topic within the issues, just reach out here.?

Let’s get into this week.

Culture drives innovation: I wrote about this on Wednesday , and it is still a little bit surprising to me (and some of my colleagues) that this hasn’t been fully embraced yet by companies, especially three years post-pandemic, when culture became more relevant due to varied working models. You can read the full article at that link.?

The Gram and Women’s Herstory Month: I do about one original video on Instagram every day, sometimes every other day. This month, I have been doing more videos about female empowerment and the complicated picture of women at work in line with Women’s Herstory Month.?

For example: according to our original research, when women hold at least 45% of leadership positions, there's a significant boost in engagement, personal development, and clarity of results - which alone can improve your culture strength by a whopping 44%! As we celebrate Women's Herstory Month, let's continue to support and empower women to take on leadership roles and drive positive change in their organizations.

I am actually going to be on cable at 3pm ET on Sunday ( MSNBC ) to discuss female empowerment at work, if you're around.

The Layoffs “Plandemic:” Most labor market indicators seem OK right now, although some are confusing. Still, if you look at your LinkedIn headlines (right side of the homepage) each morning, there’s always more layoffs. As I was writing this, Atlassian laid off 500 full-time employees, among other big drops.

I was on CNBC a few weeks ago talking about the negative culture impact of layoffs:

I think most people understand that: layoffs are bad culturally. They sever employee bonds, and when there’s a lack of transparency around layoffs coming down the pike, they sever trust between employer and employee.?

One thing we don’t discuss is how layoffs tend to happen. The most common argument is that “someone mis-estimated their demand or over-hired and had to scale down.” That is common, sure. A bigger reason we don’t openly discuss is that many founders and executives of similar-type companies (i.e. tech, SaaS) run in similar circles and look to each other for guidance on their next move. When one big company lays off a five-digit number of people, the executive team at other companies looks around and says, “Hmmm… they got a nice stock bounce from that. I guess we could try…”?

It’s not quite a “Plandemic,” but it’s important for the world builder CEOs at the top of companies to do “the right business things,” and they often look to similar companies or peers for guidance on that. That can increase the scale of layoffs.?

At the micro-level, the only way to do layoffs any better is to be transparent, do it 1-to-1 instead of 1-to-many, and tell people all the time: “If you kick ass, there is a home for you here.”

What would make work more meaningful? We discuss “meaning” and “purpose” a lot around work. They are very important, but we also can’t ignore that millions of people predominantly only work because of a paycheck and their basic needs being met. There’s some work from 美国麻省理工学院 , updated across the last five-six years , on what makes work “meaningful” to people. Some of the terms used can feel buzzword-y, but the five qualities of meaningful work were:

• Self-transcendent
• Poignant
• Episodic
• Reflective
• Personal

Similarly, the seven qualities associated with non-meaningful jobs were:

• Disconnecting people from values
• Taking employees for granted
• Assigning people pointless work
• Unfair treatment
• Override people’s better judgment
• Disconnect people from potentially supportive relationships
• Physical or emotional harm

Sadly, you’re probably more familiar with the second list, and have more visceral feelings about that one. Even if you don’t know how to make work feel “poignant” as a boss, you should definitely avoid the stuff on the second list: don’t take people for granted, don’t assign them pointless work (especially in the age of automation), and don’t disconnect them from support networks. Avoiding the second list helps build productive cultures.

Two quick new projects: Remember the show Loveline? We are trying to do something similar for work with a show called (drum roll) Workline. We did a small pilot on Wednesday, March 8 (i.e. this past week). More details here:

We're also thinking about doing a quick-spin webinar on multi-culturalism vs. inter-culturalism, and how you can best manage those concepts around your work culture. More details to come on that next week.

The Four-Day Work Week Ongoing Discourse: Here’s the new study that is getting attention: Researchers at Boston College , think tank Autonomy , 英国牛津大学 and 英国剑桥大学 just wrapped up the largest research study to put that question to the test, with 61 companies and 2,900 employees in the United Kingdom participating in a pilot program for a four-day workweek.

The results were promising: More than a third of employees reported feeling less stressed, 48% were more satisfied with work, 46% had less fatigue, 40% got better sleep, and 71% felt less workplace burnout.

We’ve been talking about the four-day work week for over a decade now. Some companies “get it.” Some don’t. It does have benefits, but there needs to be guardrails around it:

• You can’t give everyone Fridays off because of client needs, so you need a rotating schedule logistically.?
• You can try no Friday afternoons except for one coverage person.
• 9 x 80, 4 x 10, 4 x 8, etc.
• Kill the fear mindset of managers – work can get done even if most people are only working four days.
• Some of this topic is tied to fears about “the new world of work.” We already have narratives that “no one wants to work anymore,” and some hear “four day work week” and think “The kids want to work less.” No. They want more balance. And while the government might need to get involved at some level, yes, this really is not a political thing at all. This is about employers doing right by employees.?

What else do you want to talk about next week?