How to Get and Keep Talent in the Midst of the Many Workplace Crisis

In a world that’s crying out for heroes and feel-good stories, it’s little wonder someone like Elon Musk is capturing the imagination of so many and I was indeed expecting yesterday’s article to be unsavoury to them. What I didn’t expect was for their objection not to be encompassed in a defence of Elon but in them pointing out that there’s a sense of doom and gloom in the tech industry, in general, as more and more layoffs are announced.?

While they are correct and a lot of people have been cut from most Silicon Valley darlings and many more may be laid off still before mid-next year, the fundamental difference between those cuts and Elon’s PR disaster is the way they went about it. I never contended that it was a mistake to let people go, -in fact, in my opinion, most enterprises are unimaginably bloated and of gargantuan size for no good reason and everyone could easily get by with half of their workforce everywhere-, I simply said, and I will repeat it, that it was neither humane nor intelligent business-wise to publicly disrespect people and traumatise them when there were ways to avoid it.?

In this video, we go over that again but we also discuss the relationship between internal culture and a feeling of safety as well as how mobility in the tech industry affects us overall

This tweet from Jack seems to corroborate what we were saying yesterday and the fact that Twitter had a decent and strong internal culture hasn’t mattered when the speed of growth and the eventual sale came about. This means that we will never be able to feel safe and protected by good culture before we can be sure everyone else externally also shares and adheres to the same moral imperatives.?

Here’s the thing - many more layoffs are to come as most giants see their models turn to the need to show profitability over network effects and growth and much mobility is to follow as many of the tech companies are left having to hunt for the next best thing or reinvent themselves in light of the economy and the new height of consumer expectations so what will make the difference between companies will be how they show up during these times of unrest.?

• Have they been elegant like Stripe or uncaring like Elon’s Twitter??
• Have they genuinely made their people feel valued, heard and important or did it feel like lip service??
• Does "flexible work" truly mean "outcomes-based, life-not-work-led flow-ensuring work" or a stiff regurgitation of hybrid work policies adopted elsewhere?
• Were they capable to rethink command and control, hierarchy, team autonomy, emotional and behavioural work, learning, EQ and the safety of the team in the new hybrid world?
• Did the work feel fun and satisfying truly, were they invested in the employee's happiness?
• And, perhaps most importantly - was the purpose evident and joint??

These are some of the questions that employees will evaluate past and future opportunities by from hereon and unfortunately for all companies - any of their faux pas will be resoundingly public and they will distort their potential candidates' view and their internal ability to be authentically invested in the genuine and complete wellbeing and happiness of their employees will be painstakingly evident to the ones they already employ so there will be nowhere to hide if their heart is not 110% into putting people first.?

Is your enterprise in with a chance if the name of the game is “lowest HumanDebt and smartest current player that genuinely puts their humans above anything else wins” now or are they going to wonder where they started leaking from when the boat starts sinking?

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At?PeopleNotTech?we make?software?that measures and improves the wellbeing and Psychological Safety of teams, come see a DEMO.

“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt?.”

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link