All leaders must have employee mental wellbeing as the priority. Not one of many priorities but the priority.

Employers have been grappling with the prevalence of health challenges in the workplace for a long time.

The events of 2020, 2021 and in 2022 raised the stakes due to a greater awareness of the workplace factors that contribute to poor mental health. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to address the issue. Employers must connect what they say to what they do. It is time to get serious about employee mental health.

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What will happen when the inquisitive alien lands and demands “Take me to your leader.”

Where will you take them?

In response to your perplexed look, the alien’s request changes to “Take me to someone who remotely resembles a leader.”

As your thought process becomes prolonged, the alien impatiently says,

“LISTEN – this is what it should look like in earth-year 2022.

· They carry a telescope and a microscope

· There is a relationship built on trust

· They have ferocious resolve

· They choose courage over comfort

· They possess emotional agility”

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The “new normal” is not limited to Australia. As TOP10VPN reports: “The pandemic has led to a huge rise in the range and sophistication of surveillance technologies being adopted around the world and, as remote work looks set to continue for the foreseeable future, invasive employee surveillance may also be here to stay.”

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Organisations and its leadership must stop dictating when employees must be in the office.

There are only 5 reasons to return tot he office and each one of them must be worth the commute.

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The phrase “Lead From The Future” has appeared in my social feeds recently partly due to the 2020 publication “Lead From The Future: How To Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth” by Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz, which is getting some air play.

I find it interesting because I explored re-envisioning and the practice of back-casting initially in my 2010 publication “Balanced Diversity: A Portfolio Approach to Organisational Change” which I revised in 2020.

Therefore, I thought I would do so again in this article.

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Human resources leaders commonly assume that for a company to stand out as a great place to work, it must deliver competitive perks—everything from skills training to pet insurance to foosball. New research finds that this view is outdated: Engagement and retention don’t correlate with benefits awards. Employees have begun looking beyond material offerings and assessing how they feel about the company they work for—and that requires a different approach.”

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A lack of clarity about the hybrid operating model is causing anxiety and strife for employees. The time for clarity is now unless you want to be another statistic in The Great Resignation.

If you are not clear about the direction, employees will leave. Lack of clarity just says you do not care about your employees, so why would they stay with you?

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Employees are saying “I am worth more”, “I deserve more”, “I can find more.” Priorities have fundamentally shifted.

Employers need to wake up to the fact that employee expectations have changed over the past two years. There is no going back. Employers must build a culture that embraces flexibility, leadership excellence, employee wellbeing, and recognise that if they don’t, they will get left behind.

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The top ten reasons employees are leaving based on research from McKinsey. The result of the research is based on top three rankings from respondents to the McKinsey survey who left a job between December 2020 and December 2021 without another job offer in hand. These are the employees who had just had enough.

This week I explore number 6 to 10.

This is my take on each of the reasons and what I believe you can do about it.

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The top ten reasons employees are leaving based on research from McKinsey. The result of the research is based on top three rankings from respondents to the McKinsey survey who left a job between December 2020 and December 2021 without another job offer in hand. These are the employees who had just had enough.

This week I explore the top five. Note that compensation is nowhere to be seen so writing a big cheque will not resolve the problem.

This is my take on each of the reasons and what I believe you can do about it.

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This is potentially the greatest opportunity your organisation will be presented with within your lifetime. This is the chance to reflect, rethink, reimagine, and reinvent, but that must be led with a realisation that there is no going back to how it was before March 2020. The future of work is hybrid. Period.

I believe there is one key reason for the procrastination, and that is it the belief that it is just too hard. There is no doubt that moving to a hybrid operating model is complex with many implications and many stakeholders impacted by the change. But this is not a time for fear and uncertain to drive inaction unless you want your organisation to cease to be relevant. Conquer your procrastination by following the 5Rs.

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The events of 2020 and 2021 raised the stakes due to a greater awareness of the workplace factors that contribute to poor mental health. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to address the issue. Employers must connect what they say to what they do. It is time to get serious about employee mental health. Leaders of hybrid teams must be cognisant of the mental health and wellbeing of all of their team members as well as their own wellbeing.

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When many workers had to work from home for the first time, there was a mad scramble to acquire and utilise technology that would allow everyone to continue to connect, communicate, and collaborate across various locations.

Organisations now need a secure, long-term solution, that can support any number of teams in any location, whilst providing a single source of truth from a unified platform. Leaders should be investing in technology that helps, not hinders. Leaders need to be technology-savvy and enable their hybrid team.

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Bosses (note my deliberate avoidance of the term ‘leader’) who want to continue to believe that productivity can be measured by the hours someone sits at a desk and that the best ways to get results is through micromanagement, are on the verge of extinction.

Just like the dinosaurs who did not have the necessary characteristics to survive in a changed environment or adapt to a new one, these bosses will become extinct. The catastrophic event leading to their demise may not be an asteroid or climate change, but a change in the way we work – a hybrid operating model.

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Last week we looked at the leadership challenge and the response starting with defining ‘good leadership’ in your organisation. This positions you for hiring and promoting good leaders. I have classified the leadership capabilities into capacities and competencies.

We explored the seven capacities I believe good leaders possess. This week we will explore the seven competencies.

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In the third newsletter in the “Future of Work Redesigned” we are exploring the leadership point on the compass.

Most people become leaders in their mid-to late 20s, but most do not receive any formal training until their late 30s and early 40s. This is possibly two decades in which those in leadership roles within organisations have had little support, development, coaching, or training.

The situation is worsened when you think that this pattern has been repeated for generations upon generations of “leaders”, which means that the only role models these new “leaders” have had are the bad bosses that have gone before them. And so, the cycle perpetuates.

The challenge is to break this cycle and prepare leaders now for the future of work. Whatever skills leaders have today will not be enough to lead a highly performing hybrid team. As the saying goes what got you here, won’t get you there.

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The challenge is that there is a lack of strategy regarding the future of work in many organisations. There is no clear direction. Many leaders seem hesitant to take bold steps and are waiting for the dust to settle so they can see what a post-pandemic “normal” looks like. The issue is, we are nearly 2 years in from the onset of the pandemic with no clear idea of what a post-pandemic “normal” will look like and that cannot be a reason not to formulate a strategy.

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There are six points on my Future of Work Redesigned compass. These are the six directions in which you must head if you are going to redesign the future of work in your organisation.

Without a good culture in the organisation, the benefits of hybrid working will not be realised. Culture is critical to company success and has direct impact on effectiveness, revenue growth, talent retention and attraction.

The future of work is hybrid. Period. This is an operating model that has employees working from an office and remotely that makes business sense. There are many variations of the model and no one-size-fits-all approach.

This will mean a reconstruction of the company culture. The culture must embrace employees working in many different locations. Whilst this could be one of the biggest opportunities afforded to leaders to reconstruct the company culture but could also be one of the biggest challenges.

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As we move into 2022, I thought a little inspiration might be called for. Over the years as I have written about leadership, I have uncovered some inspirational stories that depict leadership as it should be. Often, it emerges from the most surprising places and circumstances. Some of these names you will know and some you will not.

In this article I share the second five of 10 inspirational stories.

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As we move into 2022, I thought a little inspiration might be called for. Over the years as I have written about leadership, I have uncovered some inspirational stories that depict leadership as it should be. Often, it emerges from the most surprising places and circumstances. Some of these names you will know and some you will not.

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