Nine Social Trends Affecting Employee Attitudes About Work

As businesses struggle to hire the employees they need for the Covid recovery, they are facing new employee attitudes influenced by months of divisive politics, social unrest, media hyperbole and disagreement over the basic facts of the pandemic itself. Although many of these attitudes emerged outside the business world, they will not remain there. The tendencies will affect employee thought processes and decision making in the workplace as well as in personal matters.

Employers need to recognize these attitudes when they see them and determine whether and how they may affect an employee’s analytical and social skills, objectivity and commitment to the company’s culture, vision and values. This is hard to do when evaluating a prospective new hire. It’s even harder when trying to decide how to manage existing employees. One thing is clear: Recognizing and managing the problems sooner are a lot easier than dealing with the adverse consequences later.

Two caveats: First, not all prospects have these attitudes. Second, the list below is intended to be provocative. The real-world examples may be more (or even less) nuanced.

Here are the nine attitudes:

1.     People can disagree about facts. Something is true if my social media sources and friends say it is true and I believe them. Opinions matter, especially mine.  

2.     Some things are obviously true, even though people may try to argue otherwise. Exaggerated truths and lies by omission are harmless if they serve to support things that are obviously true.

3.     Sound bites are more important than details. Just look at the alerts on my phone. They tell me what I need to know. I don’t have time to chase down the specifics and countervailing arguments.

4.     Debating issues that should be settled is offensive and can make people uncomfortable. Some answers are obvious. Cancelling bad ideas and bad people is more effective than robust debate.

5.     Demanding or celebrating excellence is outdated and unfair. Furthering social justice and equity is more important than excellence in many job-related decisions—as long as the decisions do not adversely affect me.

6.     Employees should be able to have veto rights over research, products and customers they disagree with.

7.     Employee attitudes about sociopolitical issues should drive the company’s public positions even if those positions offend large portions of the company’s customer base.

8.     Political advocacy at work is good—as long as it promotes positions I support. On the other hand, I should not have to be exposed to political advocacy at work about ideas I don’t like.

9.     I like working from home. I can live where I want and wear what I want. I have a lot more freedom. It’s a lot like social media and the apps on my phone. I can jump on or off when I need to. I don’t have to spend as much time collaborating with other employees. I don’t need to be social or justify my positions in a real meeting. I can set my own culture.

These attitudes will have different effects on different businesses. As we have seen, larger companies are already facing many of these attitudes from their existing employees. Some smaller businesses may never experience the more activist political attitudes.

I am particularly concerned about the attitudes that affect objectivity and the need to consider and competently assess and debate the pros and cons of alternative points of view. As many others have written, social media and the internet generally have reduced attention spans and all but destroyed the book reading of younger adults. While Google has placed a world of research at our fingertips, way too many of us are content to form our judgments based on social media posts, news alerts and the first page of search results. As the cable news networks, magazines and leading newspapers have become more politically opinionated in their news stories as well as their editorials, we have all struggled to find balanced points of view. While it’s easy to say follow the science rather than the conspiracy theory, particularly in political contexts, evidence abounds that politicians and the media on both sides are selective in the science they urge us to follow.

I have similar fears about tendencies to attack excellence as incompatible with social justice. Although it’s a topic for another article, America cannot maintain its place in the increasingly competitive geopolitical ecosystem by trading excellence for mediocrity. Every business faces a similar reality in its own sphere. We must continue to reach for social justice, but we cannot do it by denigrating excellence or discriminating against those who would excel.

Many of these employee attitudes involve huge sociopolitical topics that no single business can resolve. Some go to the heart of America's democracy and political process. While the solutions may be difficult, the first step is recognizing the issues and, yes, being willing to openly and honestly debate what to do about them.