It’s YOLO time for all of us

The past year and a half since the global pandemic broke out has upended life and work for millions. Many previously loyal office workers and professionals have begun to question their purpose in life, wondering whether the jobs they hold can fulfill the dreams they cherished back in college or high school, whether what they do can help them become who they want to be.

We are witnessing employee attrition creep up in many corporates. Some who decide to opt-out of a stable corporate life have jumped ship and taken on bigger roles at small but fast-growing startups. Some have launched their own companies, with the promise of freedom and independence from the corporate 9-to-5 and, potentially, the riches of an IPO. Some have chosen to just hang up their suits and trade them in for t-shirts and jeans, moving away from expensive city centers and into quieter, more remote, and more affordable parts of the country.

Underlying this new attitude is what is often referred to as “YOLO”—an acronym popularized by Canadian rapper Drake meaning “You Only Live Once”. In some sense, it is a mandate for people to seize the day, live life to the fullest, and make the most out of their lives.

The impact on companies is only just starting to be felt, with waves of departures leading many firms to offer new perks, retention bonuses, and other goodies in efforts to hold onto their people. Yet, as the YOLO mindset sweeps across the corporate landscape, I predict that the trend of mass attrition is not likely to slow down.

I see two types of YOLO that you’ll need to deal with as a leader. One is more obvious and pressing, and the other, as I’ll explain in a moment, is less intuitive, but perhaps equally as urgent.

First, there’s the YOLO attitude that leads to increased attrition and employee restlessness. What can you do as a leader to listen to them, to what they are really concerned about, and then try to align your company’s mission—and your day-to-day operations and actions—with their sense of mission and values?.

That’s not an easy question to be sure, but one that every company leader will need to face head-on and solve—or see more of their best and their brightest walk out the door for more attractive opportunities. Other perennial topics, such as making jobs more interesting and fulfilling, better career paths, retention incentives and rewards, are all levers that should be considered.

But what if you as a company leader were to take another, very different approach to this whole YOLO phenomenon? What if you were to adopt that mindset at your own company, to how you make decisions, to how you get things done? What if you were, in other words, to try a little dose of YOLO yourself?

If you “only live once”, what pivots would you make in how you work, where you would spend your time? What’s not working at your company today, what are the biggest pain points? What is it in your company culture that is preventing you from achieving greater heights? Why are we waiting to try new things, to fix things that are not working, and perhaps, God forbid, to take a bit of risk while doing it?

YOLO, in other words, can mean much more than managing Gen-Z attrition. YOLO is about taking a stance, trying something different, rekindling passion, finding meaning in what has grown a bit stale. YOLO is about unleashing potential and not wasting opportunities. YOLO, in the end, is about courage.

Maybe a little dose of YOLO could provide a welcome wake-up call for today’s executives. Perhaps it would force them to question whether they’re lacking the conviction and ambition that they see their young employees embracing. Perhaps it would wake them up to the fact they are too deeply ensconced in their comfort zone, too afraid to take the risks that they once took when they were younger and more entrepreneurial.

Perhaps a little jolt of YOLO could go a long way for all of us.

What do you think?