When Work Sucks: Calling Out the Grind and Leading the Change

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passion and price since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If you if we've not met before and you don't know me, I am a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto now help companies to enliven it and fortify their operations by building a dynamic high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. And you do know that inspired employees outperformed their satisfied peers by a factor of two point twenty five two one. In other words, inspiration is good for the bottom line. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at GUSTODESHNEU dot com or my personal site atliscoretes dot com. Getting into today's program we have with us Melissa Swift. She's the founder of Anthrom Insight and Innovative Organizational Consultancy, and her long and distinguished career has included leadership roles at Corner Fairy, capt Jain and I Mercer and Deloitte. Over the years, she has developed novel and market leading analytical techniques to better understand and address the human side of organizations.

2:10 She is letting large scale people transformation work across industries ranging from life sciences to aerospace to professional services. She's the author of Work Here Now, Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse. Workplace Today will be talking about that book. She joins us from New York City. Melissa, are hearty, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you for having me. I The whole thematic behind this podcast really resonates, So I am just super excited to be having this conversation. Delighted, right, you and I have I think we might be able to occasionally finish the sentences, maybe using different vocabulary. Yes, yes, Well let's just start with as I was saying before we got on air, and you're clearly a very busy woman gallivanting about the planet with lots of things going on.

2:54 You have a family, a very very big career, and now we're out writing books. So why did you write this one? Yeah? You know, so it's interesting. Work Here Now was born as a very different book. In my mind, that part of what I originally got interested in was just we do some stuff at work that I think is kind of kooky and strange. You know, everything from you know, agile rituals to hot desking. You know, we do a lot of things that have like a tiny flavor of the absurd. And so the book started off as this kind of you know, carnival fun house tour through the world of work, and then COVID hit and it suddenly just became so absurdly clear to me as I'm you know, trying to work and lead a practice at Cornberry and you know, teach my daughter virtual kindergartens. It kind of it was one of those moments where like the water got all pulled out of the lagoon, you could really see the rocks, and that's sort of where the what work here now became? You know, That's that's where it was born. Is this idea of can we really put language again what's wrong with work? And then like, let's you know, what would we do differently if we could name some of the problems in really clear and explicit ways.

4:08 And that kind of became my mission. Mm hmm. Well, I really appreciate that on a number of levels, in part because the work that I do helping develop organizations and leaders of course starts with as as you're saying, getting clear and making it conscious, just what's going on here and how people are feeling, how the leader is feeling, how you're relating to your people in the organization. If you don't have one consciousness about that and l language to use around it, it's really hard to start to address it. So I really like how you have put words very very interesting, I would say, creative words to why these problems exist. So what I would like to do, Melissa, for this conversation, for the benefit of our listeners and viewers around the world who are listening, is I want to just take.

4:49 And kind of jump into each one of your chapters. We won't get to all of them, and just situate a bit about what it is you're trying to put forward us, So what's problematic there? And then I want to just offer, because you offer nineties strategies in the book on an organizational or team level to start to address this stuff. So for each of these sort of issues, we'll talk about a couple of strategies that the listeners and viewers can start to use to address that. So as they recognize, yep, we got that problem, then we're going to immediately give them at least a couple of strategies that they can start to take back home and put to work. So let's dive on you're ready. I'm ready, Okay, right, chapter one. Let's just you know, the great work, unpack, understanding and fixing broken work. Yeah, it really is, right, I mean, And first, let me situate for you, Melissa. I am an organizational psychologist and do the work that I do because.

5:36 I believe in the wonder and power of work, and. It's it needs to be a more fluid, workable part of our lives, and it just isn't for so many people, as you so eloquently point out. So let's talk about just a couple of things that are related to that first idea of you know, maybe if we make the everyday experience of work subclass, maybe we would actually get more done. What a concept. Funny though, because we do a lot to avoid talking about the everyday experience of work. This is one of the things that really fascinated me in my career, and we probably seem manifestation in your work with leaders, I would guess is that we will systematize and framework eyes and do anything to kind of talk around.

6:19 What are people's working days like day to day and just treating kind of that everyday average experience would work as a data point, right, not getting weird about it and not getting emotional about it, and not saying it has to be what it has to be, because this is the ROI we need and this is what the stakeholders need, just taking a step back and saying, Okay, this is what people's working days are like. Are these all choices we would make to your point about anxiousness? Right, would we choose to step work up this way? And in general we absolutely would not, And by the way, the shareholders wouldn't want us to either. Right. It's not a win for individuals, it's not a win for the organization. It's not a win for anybody. But it requires that moment off you have to kind of almost like look right into the eyes of what people do all day long.

7:07 And that's a journey, it really is. And I love how you just brought that down to just like, let's just talk about what we're actually doing here. So let's talk about this. So if work isn't working, it sucks for a lot of people. Let's talk about a couple of strategies that you offer in the book. Just one of them is is you talk about the need and the opportunity to regularly re examine work for signs of being dangerous, dull and annoying, frustrating and confusing. Wow, if we were to alleviate those kinds of things, man, we would turn the world upside down right there. Yeah, absolutely, and again just treating them as data. Right, I've seen so many leaders and again I'm sure you have seen this too, where people are whiny and people are complaining. Well, no, when they talk about being bored, when they talk about being frustrated, that's work going wrong, right, that is not helping your profitability as an organization. Actually trying to tell you that they're giving you helpful data and you're disregarding it. The same with work being dangerous.

8:06 You know, you look at those those wonderful visualizations of what your brain looks like when you're on zoom calls back to back all day, right, you can actually see people's brains kind of subtly on fire. You know. You look at that, and you know it's like, well, people need to just tough it out. Well, no, that's not somebody at peak performance at that point. So it's like, just correct for those things that workers experience is problematic, and actually the whole operational machine runs better at that point. But you have to again kind of get past that psychological hurdle from their whining to their giving me neutral data and I can choose what to do with it. Yes, beautifully explained. Okay, another strategy that I'd like to offer for this just idea of working work sucking as it does for many people. One of your other strategies is don't take intensified work for granted, and don't be afraid to be to intensify. So first we've got to situate what do you mean by intensified work.

9:01 So intensified work is one of the most interesting concepts from the academic world that we don't talk about enough in professional practice. So I went down kind of you know, a rabbit hole and academic studies of work, just trying to figure out why. You know, I'm gen X and I feel like work has gotten harder in my lifetime, right, Like I have watched something happen and it's not just that, like I'm old at curmudgeonly, honestly, I was a curmudgeon at age twenty two. Right, like theudgeon. Curmudgeon is a constant across my life. But something has gone gone a bit weird. And it turns out that academics actually study this notion of work intensification, and it's got three aspects to it. Number one is too many tasks into little time.

9:43 Number two is excess interdependence. I love this one because any large complex organization, which is what all my clients have been like over the years, right, this business of I rely on this process and this process and this person. It wears people down. It's what you saw Jamie Diamond very upset about the seventeen committees. Right, He's complaining about interdependence. And then the third one is just excess emotion in the workplace. So that could be your customer service rep who gets yelled at, or that could just be your boss yelling at you. But all of those things I am the book that I'm working on now. I analogize it too. It's like carrying a bag of sponges versus carrying a bag of bricks. The sponges might be the same size as the bricks, but the bricks are so much denser and they weigh you down more So, That's why if you have an intensified work day, either too many tasks, too much interdependence, or too much emotion, that same ten hours, eight hours of work feels a lot heavier than it did before. Again, you know, we say, well, just work is work, and you got to grind, and oh no, if we've just convinced ourselves that we can do more tasks than we can actually do, that's again, that's just us doing it wrong. It doesn't have to be that way, and you can fix it, and you can fix it within your own working team. And I think that's where some of the power lies in record more intensification is you may not be empowered to fix it across your whole organization, but oftentimes you can kind of get some stuff done sort of local to yourself.

11:09 I got to believe right about now, LISTA, there's a few people listening in there going, oh my gosh, there's hope. I now she's helped me understand and put words in language of just what's happening around her, and even just that simple thing of what do you mean people don't actually have to scream at you at work that I don't actually have to experience that I'm sure that people are listening to that, going, Wow, what a different day that would be. Yeah, well absolutely, because we just we do a lot of myth making. You know, we have these myths of like screaming, passionate boss. Right, you know, are got it done? You know, it's it's just a myth, right, right. You don't have to believe in the Easter Bunny, you don't have to believe in Santa Claus, and you don't have to believe that that style of leadership is the most impactful and effective. And you know, folks like you and I who work with a wide array of leaders often see leaders who are wildly different from that and incredibly effective.

12:01 You know who can be you know, either quiet and introverted or very extroverted, but they don't have that sort of like yelling negative emotion thing going on, and it's unbelievable what they can accomplish. Oh yes, I encourage that kind of behavior, right and left. Okay, So your language in the book is so fun, Melissa. I knew you were going to be great gobs of fun to talk with because your language choices already are so fun. So part of what you talk about in another chapter is why don't we just get better at digging into the experience of work and fixing it. And then you talk about two monsters that are menacing the world to work. Let's talk about those two monsters. Yeah, so the first one, we've got the work anxiety monster.

12:43 And this is the little voice in your head that says, either people are lazy and people are slow, or you're lazy and you're slow, and don't underestimate the impact of these anxious thoughts. I mean, my god, I wrote about the anxiety monster. I think about it, and I still hit myself with those own and I have to correct for them on a day to day basis. Right, So, there is something about those anxious thoughts that drive a lot of really bad decisions at team level, at workforce level. You know, every time you assume that people are too slow and too lazy, you start you manage them in ways that, again a ton of research shows us, are actually not constructive or helpful. You know, if you harken back to the theory X and theory why management of the sixties, right, this is integrally related to that either you believe people will do the right thing properly empowered or you don't. I believe people will do the right thing properly empowered, and I think a lot of the research is on my side too. But to do that, you got to make the anxiety monster shut up.

13:45 Mm hmm. Well, and so to that end, one of your strategies is simply to unpack your foundational talent management assumptions and what decisions are you making on the basis of believing that people are lazier slow. So this is where it gets really interesting. Both of us works. I have to imagine I will go into an organization and start to help help organizations a mirror back the language they're using and so they can actually hear, Oh, they are telling people that they're lazy and slow or whatever it might be. Or there's a punitive relationship between the. Boss and the employee, the parent and the child, kind of thing they're not even not at all aware of. So I think this idea, how even the word using unpack is really important because it still speaks to They got conscious to it, and they got to understand how it's deriving their communication and their behavior. So I think that strategy is really really powerful, hard to do without some help, probably from a third party or somebody else.

14:39 Well, because part of I mean part of the issue here again is you know, to your point unconscious choices that you know, if organizations knew, for instance, they were treating their employees like arrant children, many of them, not all of them, but many of them wouldn't do it. But that moment of the aha moment where somebody reflects back to you, this is what you're actually communicating, and this is what your your choices and your decisions say. You know that it just sort of a simple example. You know, if you don't complete your training hours, we're going to dock your pay, right right. That's a classic one. I've seen that a lot of places. What that implicitly says is I don't believe you are intrinsically motivated to learn.

15:23 I believe you have zero intrinsic motivation to learn. Now, who's sat down the CEOs and most of those companies say do you believe your people have zero intrinsic motivation to learn? They'd be like no, no, no, no, I've all these great people. I really, you know, like they would express constructive, positive sentiments, But the policy doesn't say that. The policy communicates something else, and that's the journey that you know, you're taking organizations on, and a lot of us are like trying to be that helpful mirror to say, this is what you really communicated. You probably didn't mean it, but this is what you said. Yeah, And I think I see a lot of organizations that are using very very very outdated, archaic language like that that isn't suitable for today's times for what.

16:08 People how people want to be treated. They want to be treated with respect, with appreciation, with day to day and that sounds very very punitive and dictatorial. And so it's that kind of language that we have to start to learn how to fare out of organizations that aligns with your strategies as well. Okay, so we have to talk about the other monster again, really fun language here, and the other monster as president organizations that we need to address is the boss baby customer. Yeah. So this is a fun one for me because it's a great example of something not so hot coming out of like a really good, well intentioned place. So, you know, some years ago, organizations kind of got hipped to this notion of customer centricity. Right, We're going to really think about our customer as a person and center a lot of stuff on them, and up to a certain point, probo, that is fantastic, and I would not argue with thinking that way. But what happens is there's always, as in many of the things, this tendency to over rotate, and eventually you're treating your consumer like you know, they're a baby, but they're also in charge of every single thing you do.

17:08 And what happens when you establish that dynamic is you end up putting kind of unbearable pressure on your human workers. So you know, if you say, okay, we can ship in X amount of time and it's not actually feasible, right, but you're making that boss baby assumption of like, well they can't live without it for more than x amount of time. You know, a you end up with failures because you promise something that wasn't humanly doable. So you end up disappointing your customer anyway. But be what you've done to your employees, right, is you've created You've made your customer into a monster for them, and it's not again, it's not actually what you'd want really good customer centricity.

17:51 You'd want your employees and your customer to actually have this kind of symbiotic and catholic relationship where each under each group understands the other and they interact really positive ways that kind of generate a lot of value for both. But you've taken what could be a virtuous circle and really turned it into a vicious cycle. And I appreciate just to call that out for our listeners and viewers who haven't yet read the book as I have, that one of your strategies is to actually map out how your customer experience and your employee experience interact. And each time you change your customer experience, how is an employee experience impacted. I think that's really important to see. So I will comment more on that and when we come back from our break. But let's grab our first break. I'm your host, doctor Relie's Cortesz. We've been on the year with Melissa Swift. She's the founder of Anthrome Insight and Innovative organizational consultancy, helping organizations address the human side of organizations. We've been talking about a few of the issues that are really pertinent and invading organizations. Today, after the break, we're going to talk about one of the next ones, which is what she calls the organizational copy machine.

18:52 We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A Lise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

20:00 Pictures saying with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Realise core Tess. I am dedicated to helping create a world where organizations thrive because they're people thrive. They're led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business a betters in the world. I keep researching and writing my own books, so one of my latest came out it's called the Great Revitalization, how activating meaning and purpose can radically in life in your business. And I really wrote that to help leaders understand today's very diverse and discerning workforce at a different sort of take that Melissa has done. And then I provide twenty two best practices that you can be used to equip and embed them into your cultures to provide that for them. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site at leastcore tes dot com if you are just now joining us.

20:43 My guest is Melissa Swift. She's the author of work here Now Think like a human and build a powerhouse workplace. So before we get into one of the other issues that you've outlined in the book, I did want to comment on this notion of customer service and the notion of really creating a spiler around that with the employee experience. The other extra dream of that that I think is also maybe equally present. It's just a complete lack of customer experience a customer service. I'm amazed how many organizations make it impossible for you to contact anybody anywhere in an organization to talk about a missed service and miss deadline and misproduct. Can't. It's amazing to me. So lots of room for improvement here, yes, Melissa.

21:24 Yeah, absolutely, And you know, it's it's interesting because it's a version of the same thing we've been talking about in a weird way. It's just a there's I think, just a bad business myth about the less we see people as people, like, the more money we will make, you know, putting very stark terms, but what you're describing of because I had one of those experiences today, you know, speak to a human, speak to a human, No, speak to a human, right, And unfortunately, I think chatbot technology is making what you've described a lot worse. So we have the problem of kind of tech now layering on. But at the root this it's the same idea, you know, if we kind of fail to think about people as people, that's where we make business progress. And I just again I don't I don't buy it.

22:07 I don't either. I don't either. Well I'm not. I'm choosing increasingly to move away from the organization so that I can't actually connect with and I think I don't feel you know, the heartbeat of voting with the wallet is we like to say, okay, so I think this next idea here that you have in your book is really, really, really powerful. We want to bring this to life and help our listeners and viewers understand it. And that's this notion of the organizational copy machine. Let's talk about what that really means. Yeah, so this is interesting. So the deep roots of this idea, actually it came from I wrote my college thesis, my senior thesis on Dracula and using some of Freud's ideas to analyze Dracula and esctatics and seven Gothic tails.

22:50 And you know, one of the big Freudian ideas is this repetition compulsion, right, like we just can't stop doing the same stuff over and over. And it's a you know, it's a big and you know, obviously you're incredibly familiar with it, right because in therapeutic practice, right, there's a lot of focus on just pattern breaking. Let's stop doing the same silly thing over and over. So just like individuals do the same silly thing over and over, or families do the same silly thing over and over, organizations do the same silly thing over and over. And that's the organizational copy machine that left to our own devices in groups just just as in it, as you know, individuals will we will just copy paste the past right into the future, over and over and over and over.

23:39 And that's I think some of the sometimes the frustration I hear from you know, practitioners that work on organizational culture is like, oh my goodness, we just have to stop doing the same silly things over and over. And I think that's why this idea of the organizational copy machine is really powerful, because again, if you can name the patterns, and to your point earlier, sometimes you need an next a party to say, look, when you did this, it was just like this. It was just like that, and it was just like that. Name the patterns and you have a chance of breaking the patterns. But I think until we really confront the fact that organizations will just neurotically repeat and repeat and repeat, you know, we're going to be kind of constantly unpleasantly surprised by things that should not be surprising.

24:24 Indeed, indeed, so let's let's share a few of the shortgies to offer in the book. The first one I think is really quit quite quite interesting that I wanted to talk about, so listeners and viewers, just so you know what she's done in the book is for each of these issues that she said about, she then offers five organizational strategies and then five team strategies. And so I'm just focusing on the conversation for organizational for this for now. But the idea of creating a single account of truth on the workforce of your organization, however you employed them, and systems and processes to maintain it in real time, that's a really interesting idea. What would that look like, maintaining a single account of. Well, it starts from extremely basic basis. I mean, I will never forget the time I was in a conversation you know, you're talking about sophisticated human capital analytics and senior executive leans across the table with Melissa. I couldn't tell you how many employees be have I love have funny And He's like, no, no, no, I can't give you a number. I don't have that number accurate. And for me that was a little bit of a wake up call about how we in some ways need to rebuild the foundations of how we think about workforces, you know, and really say, you know, okay, right, we have this is okay, this is our activity group right, you've got a good account on those. But all those contractors, you don't employ them through HR. You employ them through procurement.

25:43 You may not even know how many of them there are, Like maybe you're counting badges, maybe you're not. And then as the types of work get more varied and diverse, which is general a positive trend, right, Like you want big workers and task workers, and it's a good thing that the ways you can engage with the workforce more varied. I'm actually hearing a lot right now about making the retirement clip, which I think is a fabulous idea, right completely, Why do we chuck all of that institutional knowledge out todoor all and once, like it's silly. So in general, it's fantastic that we can employ people in a lot more different ways and modes. But if you don't, again, how can you manage your workforce if you don't quite know how many of them there are. If you don't know you know exactly how you pay them? Right, Because again, if you got this whole group you're paying through procurement, you know, you may be paying them way more per hour for the same work or way lesser. You know, doing some of this basic math and then actually getting into some analytics on what are you paying people for.

26:44 So there was a wonderful study by some former mercer coworkers of mine where they looked at organizations stated strategies about what they compensated for versus what actually came out in their pay data. So all these organs are we pay for performance. Nope, you pay for tenure. People just have to stick around. That's what your data shows. And so you start to look at things like that, and that's where a single account of the truth is really important. You know, who do you employ, how do you pay them, what do you pay them for what? Again, back to the day to day, day to day what work are they doing? You know some of these basic basics. I think that's part of what actually again gets people working together really constructively, is that you may be treating people in kind of dramatically inequitable ways, again completely unintentionally, but also sort of you know, leveraging human talent in ways that's super inefficient. You know, you might be paying contractors to do really you know, sort of advanced vanguardish work that you should have FTEs doing or vice versa. Or you might be automating things that humans should still be doing, not automating things that you should be automating, et cetera, et cetera. But if you don't have that single account of the truth about what is the work, who does it, how do they get paid, et cetera, et cetera, you'll never know.

27:57 Yes, indeed, And I can imagine there's a few people that are listening to this right now going, oh, my gosh, that's me. I don't know. So that one of the other strategies which we sort of alluded to in the last bit that we were talking about here, that you have here related to the organizational copy machine is just, yeah, maintaining in periodical energizing the organization and the conversation about how work actually gets done. And this is something that I can say, even in my little small consultancy, we are constantly looking at how to revise how we can do our work more effectively and efficiently, just because we have technology that is showing up in different ways and so being able to look at how is work getting done on a pretty regular periodic basis, I think that's a really powerful strategy that you offer.

28:45 Yeah, and I think your point about technology is a great one. Because it's sort of like there's never been a better time to be constantly reevaluating, because if you think about some of those technologies, like I think of honestly chat GPT as one of my coworkers in my little entrepreneurial business, I think about co pilot as a different, less clever coworker, right, but co pilot is really good at certain things and chat chepps, but those underlying technologies change all the time. So to your point, even with my non human co workers, I'm constantly rethinking how the work gets done. But I think you know, in the current moment, there has never been a better time to do that. Yeah, And one of the other strategies you talk about, when there are many others as well, but I think this one is really important to talk about here, and I want to help more and more companies do this than I imagine you do too, and that is to reinvent HR on your organization's terms. And so I know that we have a tendency and it's just fac to the organizational copy machine. We are using policies back from the nineteen fifties, still sixties and seventies. It is insane.

29:50 So let's talk a little bit about what would that look like to reinvent HR. Well, you know, I think some of it is honest about what are your true HR needs as an organization, because there are all kinds of sort of fads you know, agile agile talent pools in HR, and you know the three leg and stool and all these different constructs and different pieces of them. They may or may not be, you know, terrific for your organization. But rarely does an organization really take a step back and say, you know, okay, this is the general HR template, but what do we really what do we need? What is the what is the ACH here? Right? Like forget kind of checking all these compliance boxes? What is super painful? And you know, and it might lead you in a different direction than you think. So as of for instance, you could say the ach honestly, oh my god, you know it's it's employee relations, right, we have a zillion employee relations complaints. That's a mess. Well is that a function of funky leader behavior? Perhaps, because that might lead you in a completely different direction where you really staff up with hrbps who are high powered and can face off against your executives and create culture change that then solves for what looks like a big transactional er problem. But I think you have to kind of go into it with your your detective had on a bit and that's you know, again, you could slavishly adopt all these different trends and you could augment your tech stack. I mean, there's been so much focus on HR tech, and tech's not really the issue. It's what's

31:21 the model and does the model serve your actual strategic objectives? And does the model? You know, are you actually kind of caring for the human beings in your organization? You know? I mean you wouldn't. You wouldn't treat the organization's external image this way in the marketing department. You wouldn't treat its money this way in the finance department, right, So don't treat your humans that way in the HR department. Well said Melissa. And it's just so simply stated and like, yes, let's just what's the I really applaud that and appreciate that. Grabbing our last break, I'm your host doctor really score Tees on the air with Melissa Swift. She's the founder of Anthron Insight and Innovative Organizational Consultancy, helping organizations to address.

32:06 The human side of organizations. We've been talking about a few opportunities here to really change and elevate your game as an organization, including really looking at how you've got an organizational copy machine that's running your organization. After the REK, we're going to talk about one of the other opportunities to look at your decisions about people and really make them addressed to for your people. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Courts has as a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A LISEE at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

33:37 Thanks for staying with us and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated through empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. If you want to learn more about how we can work together and learn about the Gusto Now Academy for leaders and individuals across various journeys alike, make your way to gustoshnow dot com and then navigate to the training tap and you can find the hav to meet content there. If you are just now joining us, My guess is Melissa Swift. She's the author of work here Now, Think like a Human and building a powerhouse workplace to me, Okay, so. Let's talk about this idea. This sounds again so simple and so eloquent, but if you could actually do this, what a game changer it would be.

34:18 And that is you have this notion of decisions about people for people. Yeah. So it's interesting I wrote this chapter because people kept, like everyone around me, kept talking about human centric decisions and I couldn't find anything about how. To do it. So it's one of those things if I can't find you know how to do it I'll figure out how to do it. And it's interesting because really making human centric decisions a lot of times comes back into kind of super operational practical reality. Right, So just you know, thinking about, you know, if I make this decision this way, what are kind of some of the scenarios that might result?

34:59 What are the actual human impacts? Is this decision sustainable? You know, is this something that human beings are going to be able to do in three or four years? Does this decision consider people as actual humans? So, you know, I'll give you an example that's interesting because it's a really neutral one. So a lot of the work that I've done has been global. Well, when you are trying to work globally, time zones are not your friend. I had one boss at one point from New Zealand who educated me and the entire team at great length about how hard it was to work from New Zealand, right and how they had calls scheduled at four in the morning, et cetera, et cetera. And you know a lot of times organizations will just say, well, we're working globally and you know you're going to be on the phone at two am or et cetera, et cetera. Well, it doesn't consider the sort of profound impact of sleep for human beings.

35:53 And that doesn't mean you can't ever schedule to call at two am, but maybe it means for that particular country. You know, the call can like rotate around, So it's two am for New Zealand this week, it's two am for the US this week. You know things like that where you know, once I say it, you're like, well, God, what an organization would do it any other way? Melissa? And the answer is all of them. You know, we make all of these kind of silly, boneheaded moves because we're just not thinking about, you know, kind of basic human stuff like when what when we killed lunch. I actually talk about this in the book that I'm working on right now. When we killed lunch and suddenly we've got all these people acting weird in early afternoon meetings. Well you know what, they're angry, right, basic basic basic human basics around eating, around sleep, all of those things, Like just bring it back into the equation and then think through kind of operationally these decisions that you're making, You know, can they really play out in real time in the long run without humans having to kind of like stretch to fill the gap, right, Like, Okay, we're gonna we're going to develop the software an accelerated timeline.

37:02 You know, Well, okay, if you don't have the technological tools that strictly speaking enable you to do that, right, then it's just humans staying up all night and probably producing an inferior product at the end of the day. Right. It's a good example of what's going to stretch into any system. It's going to be the humans. Well, and then what I would say to that, of course, for the practice that we serve for organizations, is well, now you have totally discounted that this person is attached to anything else in their life but you, the employer. They don't need sleep, they don't need to they don't have a family that they might actually want to see and engage with. They don't actually need to go out and exercise, they don't need to go out and buy groceries. They just need to hang out with you.

37:42 And of course I've had guests on before we talk about what a tremendous disservice that is to this one human being, the quality of their life and the extent to which they could ever realize their potential, and of course I have a problem with that. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And then at the end of the day, if I always say, even if you don't care about the person as a person, which you should, even if you don't taking away to your point all of that other meaning in their life, are they going to really do their best for you? No, No, they're not. They're not. So it's lose loose, right, You're not getting the best of that person, and that person isn't getting the best of their life. You know. It's again it's a vicious cycle where it could be virtuous circle.

38:26 Yeah. Yeah, So that brings me to just one of the strategies that you put forth here, number thirty four. I love that they all have numbers too, in very crisp names, and it's related to what we're talking about here. So it's this idea of make humanism an acceptable part of corporate discourse, in. Other words, make it possible to be able to have this kind of conversation inside your organization. Yeah. And it's interesting when you try to speak this way how quickly people will sometimes slap your hand. I mean, I've been in a few of those conversations in the last let's say three weeks where someone was like, oh no, Melissa, but ROI but stakeholders. But no, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. You know it just like it.

39:06 We cannot have a business discourse that does not allow for the human beings that actually create organizations. I mean, it's interesting. That's where the name of my company actually comes from. Is until two thousand and eight, biologists saw biomes and humans separately, so it would be like the tundra, and you know, people live in the tundra, and an anthrome was them acknowledging that when people live in an environment, they change it so fundamentally that the name should change. And I love that because that's like people that there's no people and organizations, right, it's one. It's one anthrome. And that's how with got to be thinking about it. And then we're like, I don't understand why productivity doesn't increase, well, because you couldn't understand what your organization was literally made of.

39:49 I love the thought behind you. The name of your company's I appreciate that when there really is thought to it. Ours is Gusta now because we believe in Gusto and I speak Spanish and Portuguese, and I got the benefit of being in those cultures. They taught me about the power and the enlightening and lightning agent of passion and connection and relational experience, et cetera. So I really appreciate that yours also has a strong thought behind it. Okay, there's so much more we could talk about, but I would be remiss if I didn't have you talk about your chapter on the intention of workforce combating the Great Resignation by managing workforce populations more thoughtfully, given that, you know, one of my books is called, you know, the Great Revitalization, which is about combating the Great Resignation.

40:33 So let's talk about what's going on there. What do you want to surface around that theme? Yeah, so I think the baseline data itself is super interesting, and again this gets to a lot of the thematics that you touch in your work that at any given time and this baseline has been the same across kind of a crazy long period of time. About twenty eight percent of any given organization that's thinking about quitting. That's, you know, to your point of two seconds ago about the role of passion, Right, that's almost a third of your workforce that's like, you know what, my passion's gone, right, I'm about two seconds from being out the door. And then the interesting thing is that percentage varies by different you know, demographic groups, so you know, depending on what you know, piece of the population you're from, you may be even more alienated than that or you know, And that to me is a fascinating concept because the Great resignation, I think again it is one of those like water coming out of the lagoon moments that shows the rocks.

41:34 I think it highlighted how there is this sort of long run slow burn, you know, and again a lot of us see in our work engagement crisis, it really is. And then and just also that your your mileage may vary. I think that's the other piece is that if you're the leadership of an organization and you come from one of the demographic groups that where the problems are not as pronounced, you're like, okay, everything's fine, Sunny's guy's happy days, and you don't necessarily until somebody kind of shows you the data say well, you know, look x percent of your coworkers from why group we're thinking about quitting every day. Like that's that's something. To combat right, And if they're thinking about that, we already know it's going to detract from their focus on their productivity and their actual work. If that's what they're thinking about, right, that's where their thoughts are, that's where the energy is. So there are three groups that you.

42:26 Identified in your book that I think are really important for us to talk about so that our listeners and viewers can start to consider how many of these groups that they might have this impact in their organization. And you talk about how these three categories are deeply dissatisfied and potentially looking for other jobs. All the time. So one of them is groups who've experienced demographically based discrimination. Can you talk a bit about what that means? Yeah, you know, it's an interesting one. This one really came to life for me, not even so much from the data. The data was already pretty bad, but when I went out and did some interviews and folks are speaking about once you've experienced kind of you've taken enough kind of slaps across the face in terms of just feeling like you've not been treated fairly. At that point, it's like your whole tie to work is just it's just it just loosens and so they said, you know, you would you might need a raise of x percent to lure away my other coworker who hasn't experienced what I've experienced. But it only has to be half of that for me because I'm just not as closely tied to this organization. And it's interesting because it transcends the actual organization. It might be that you haven't actually been necessarily discriminated against at the particular company that you're at at that moment. It's just the experience of discrimination kind of builds up in your psyche and you don't bond to organizations in the same way, which is a perfectly rational response. That's what makes it kind of heartbreaking, is you know, I see that, and I kind of go, yeah,

43:58 I get it. I get it that you wouldn't at a certain point, you just wouldn't invest in any employer. You wouldn't give your heart and soul in the same way. And that's that's sort of it's it's sort of super sad, and it's worth it's worth thinking about because a lot of times people say, well, we're a good company, we don't discriminate, But that's not the part that matters. It's that individual's experience over their lifetime that they are bringing into that job. And that's what you have to think about. Right, And I certainly look at you know that one precious life. This is somebody's precious child who deserves dignity, love and respect, and it's not feeling that. So it's related of course to the concepts of inclusive conclusivity or.

44:39 Not feeling like you belong or feeling passed over or that nobody sees me and all these sort of things. So we say discrimination and sometimes people are. Like, oh no, wait, we don't do that, We don't do that, right, but but it shows up so many other and other very slight ways that you need you are just not at all aware, but they serve they are. So I think your word heartbreaking is exactly the right word to use. Okay, So another group that you talk about that is deeply dissatisfied and potentially looking for other work are groups who are more loosely tied to their employers by virtue of life cycle or role. Say more about that. Yeah, so you know, this is the other interesting thing is you know, again we're employing people in more diverse ways, and you know, and also you go through different permutations and combinations of different kinds of jobs within the organization.

45:34 You know, you might be at a point in your life where your life, you know, to your point about there's all this other stuff in your life. You might be at a point where your life's just a little bit less about work. And again, we kind of apply this very flat lens of engagement to folks. Sometimes we're like, well, the bad people are less engaged. Well, no, I think that this insight is all about there are a lot of good reasons why you might not have that close tie to your employer at that exact moment. But at the same time, you know, it's a it's a watch out for the employer. You know. I think you see some of it with for instance, RTO mandates, Yes, really hitting you know, let's say, you know, women with kids, and it was a group that was again already not totally feeling it, and then you hit them with that and that was it, and people are going, wow, they just quit.

46:28 Yeah, your camel's back. Yeah. Absolutely. When the thread is already freed, it doesn't take a lot for it to snap. And I think that's how we kind of have to think about these groups. But you know, also again if you some of these little things about little nuances, if your contractors all were different badges in the cafeteria, you know, even little things like that, you know they again you can't vault them for having a different relationship to. The organization, right right, So, Ruth, because we're coming out of time here, But the last group really quick guard you talk about that really are feeling dissatisfied and potentially looking for other jobs or groups and industries with long standing structural issues that flare during the pandemic. Can you briefly speak to that, and then we're going to talk about maybe one strategy we can maybe address here.

47:13 Yeah, well, if you're in retail, healthcare, any of these things, we're kind of the model of really serving customers properly in a way that also works for employees has had a ton of friction. You're in one of those industries, right, you are, again, you are at risk. I mean, if I'm a hospital, I should be thinking about all my nurses in that category, just as a for instance. Right and just you know, we know how expensive it is to replace people, to train them and such. And then there's of course what they have to say to other people when they leave your organization. So just one strategy that you talk about to be able to address this issue here is figure out which employee groups are burned out and which ones are fed up, and design differentiated strategies to address each of these issues. It's probably really obvious too if you just start looking at this and you could just say a little bit about this strategy.

48:03 Absolutely absolutely well. Some of it is that you have to kind of engage with the concept of fed upness and fed upness is there's a structural problem, you know, so oh goodness, our software engineers keep quitting. Well, what is it about how you design software engineering jobs? What is it about how you manage software engineers? Right? You see these little data pockets? Right then you've got to say, okay, it's not you know, burnout is already bad, but this might be fed up. This might be structural, and I might need to make structural choices differently. Melissa, this has been amazing. It's gone by so incredibly fast, but I want to give you the chance. You know, the show's listening to by people around the world. Many of them are tuning in because they want to become better leaders themselves. They want to run their organizations in a better fashion, or they're just trying to learn how to be able to experience work in a better way for themselves.

48:53 What would you like to leave them with? Yeah, I would say I come back to the point that we started with, honestly, the everyday experience answer work. I think the closer you can get to the everyday experience of work, that's that's where the real insights lie. So just keep keep pressing on that simple thing. That is a fantastic, crisp way to close. Melissa. I'm really delighted to know you. I learned a lot in your book. That's part of why I keep hosting the show, and then I meet amazing humans. Like you, So thank you for coming on working on purpose. Well, thank you for having me. Frankly, I feel the same way. I feel so excited to have connected with you and the work you're doing, and I was really honored. To be on. I'm so glad. Thank you listeners and viewers. You are going to want to learn more about this amazing human Melissa Swift, the work she's doing it and throm insight in her new book Work here Now. So there's a couple of ways you can find her. One is by visiting her website. It's anthromeinsight dot com. Let me spell that for you so anthrom is A N T h R O M E and then insight I N S I G h T so anthrominsight dot com.

49:55 Or find Jo on LinkedIn. Last week, we missed the live show you can always catch to be recorded podcast. We are on air with Pritharage Childre talking. About his book The World Is Your Office, How work from Anywhere boosts talent, productivity and innovation. Next week will be on the air with Rich Davinnie talking about his book Masters of Uncertainty, The Navy Seal Way to turn Stress into success for you and your team. So you, then and together, let's lean in and learn together how to make workplaces that work for everyone and find ways to do business that in a way that betters the world. Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four C. Why Together, We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work on purpose.