The Revitalization of Human Skills | The Necessity of Infertility Benefits

Hey all. Hope this week is going great for you. For many, Q1 ended and then Easter took place and for some families (especially in the Northeast), you had spring break there as well. That’s a lot of opportunity for thinking about what matters: how work is going, how faith is going, how kids are enjoying life, etc. It’s a season of new considerations and evaluations. I wish you the best. If you ever need to talk about anything work-wise, feel free to reach out to me on LI.?

Let’s go through some topics that got my attention this week.

What makes a “great place to work?” I wrote about this earlier in the week. Honestly, the more demographic data you see about people living longer (minus the effects of COVID) and people having children later in life (the average age of first maternal birth has risen to over 30 for the first time in U.S. history, for example), the more you think that the primary focus of “great places to work” in the future will be flexibility. Compensation is nice, and important. Benefits are too. Psychological safety is obviously crucial. But if you’re caring for a child and one of your parents simultaneously, and child care costs remain high, you need an employer who can let you be flexible as long as you’re productive. That seems to be the long-tail of what we will continue to value about workplaces and organizations. I am also high on “purpose,” at least in terms of aligning organizational purpose to individual purpose, but I realize some employees would be OK with limited purpose, a paycheck, and the flexibility to meet all their needs.?

The revitalization of human skills: As the new wave of “AI Wars” heat up and it’s seemingly all anyone wants to write articles about, it’s worth asking: What uniquely human skills are most important for the future of work? The first one that comes to mind is “empathy.” I’d also say “active listening.” Connecting with others. Providing context and psychological safety around projects. All these things are things robots are decades away from. Task work? Running complicated Excels? Finding patterns? Yes. If that’s all you can do, I would maybe be worried about job prospects in 10-15 years. Automation and machine learning will do well with that. But uniquely human skills will become more and more important as a result.

Which uniquely human skills would you call out?

Infertility benefits: I actually didn’t know about this until recently, but Amazon offers infertility benefits, including covering one round of IVF procedures. Some other companies cover IVF and infertility treatments, but it’s not many; I’m not even sure it would be a triple-digit number of companies. I was thinking about this recently, though: an initial round of IVF costs somewhere between $13,000 and $19,000; it can vary by state – and can be way less if you try to do it abroad, although that is logistically challenging. Now, $13,000 is not a lot for some companies – many spend more than that on a marketing automation suite across the course of six months. What if you did offer this to employees and a round of IVF worked? You just gave an employee potentially the greatest gift they could receive – a child – and it cost you less than a few months of an email marketing suite. That is truly showing up for employees and engendering loyalty while doing the right thing. And yes, some people may say, “Well, I don’t want to pay for a costly fertility procedure and then have them leave immediately after it works.” I understand that notion, and if you need to lock in a time frame after you use that benefit, that’s fine. The bigger picture here is that it’s OK to take care of employees, even in unconventional or perceived “expensive” ways, because there’s an inherent value in companies showing up for people. It resonates far and wide. People over profitability prevails.

All that said, let’s talk about “love”: I’ve been kicking tires on some content themes around “love” at work. On Thursday morning, I was on the HR Digital Summit North America panel entitled "The Gen Z Revolution and the Future of Hybrid," with Girish Ganesan of S&P Global , Toni Harris Quinerly of Netflix , and Tope Sadiku of 亨氏 . The other panelists were also discussing "leaning into love" and how important it is in workplaces.

How do you see love showing up in your workplace? Not familial or romantic love, but the idea of agape love - willing the good of another.

How to do layoffs: I got mentioned in The Washington Post last week in a new article about the best way to do layoffs, which is similar to my appearance on Squawk Box the week before about the McDonald’s layoffs:?

I am still bullish on giving employees space and grace to process layoffs, as opposed to the old mentality of shock-and-awe and the HR perp walk. I see no value in those things anymore. Interestingly too, on layoffs, my CEO at CULTURE PARTNERS , Joe Terry , sent me an interesting newsletter about whether layoffs were a “badge of honor” for executives anymore. Remember when we lauded Jack Welch in the 1980s because his rounds of layoffs boosted GE’s financial performance? Then, when Welch sadly passed away, many of the obituaries referenced how his layoffs gutted communities GE operated in – and didn’t set GE up for longer-term success. Layoffs are as common now as they were in 1989, but I don’t see them as a “badge of honor” anymore.?

Vacation context: One of my employees at Culture Partners was on vacation this week, in Fiji. First thing: he probably could have done this as a “hush trip” and just gone and not told us and it would have been fine minus the time differences, but he told us and I appreciate that. Build two-way trust on a team. I didn’t need to talk to him a lot during the week – just here and there. But I respected the time difference, and he got back to me when I had questions and needs. He actually said a few people at the resort were doing work (of course, it was mostly the Americans) for one hour a day or so. I’m not sharing this anecdote to tell you to ping your employees on vacation. I’m saying that work is a part of life, and some people do enjoy working and find purpose in their work, and if you need them for a smidge of time here or there while they’re gone and you frame that nothing is urgent, it’s all good. If you badger them while they’re on approved vacation, that is – obviously – very not good.?

Less denial: Culture Partners EVP Eric Fraser had this great LinkedIn post about one benefit of working with us – less denial. Check it out, and check him out on LinkedIn too. He always has great shares.?

Quick CNN hit on return-to-office: I talked about the negative signal being sent when employees want to work from home, at least periodically, and senior leaders say "No, absolutely not." You're seeing this square-peg, round-hole RTO in a lot of places recently.

Couple of other media mentions/hits/discussions:

• The 12 best times to switch jobs, in U.S. News & World Report
• Are your Gen Z workers going to quit?, in The Dallas Morning News
• What's the proper cadence for having co-workers' personal phone numbers?, in Newsweek
• The insanity of the gender pay gap, in Verify This
• Are work friendships a good idea?, in Quartz
• "The Great Regret," in HR Morning
• Can we cancel hustle culture? -- in discussion with Drew Gerber on Medium

Reach out: If you want to talk about culture, work trends, keynotes, or anything else – don’t hesitate to reach out! Until then, have a great week and we’ll be back next week.