Randstad recently released their Employer Brand Research Global Report 2024. The survey had over 170,000 respondents and included 6,084 companies worldwide. It aims to help employers shape their brand to attract and retain talent.

The data revealed that 17% of respondents globally switched jobs in the last six months of 2023, and 26% intended to change in the first six months of 2024. This highlights the need for employers to address the challenge of talent attraction and retention amidst the rising levels of labour turnover.

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Productivity anxiety used to be a fear of not being enough when it comes to being productive. It could arise when you feel you are not progressing or getting through your to-do list.

It has now taken on a new meaning. It is the fear that despite how hard you work, your manager will not perceive you as productive.

The productivity paranoia of bad managers and supervisors is driving productivity anxiety.

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BambooHR has just released a report, “The New Surveillance Era: Visibility Beats Productivity for RTO & Remote,” that contains damning results for many organisations.

The report released in June 2024 contains the results from a survey of 1,504 full-time US employees, including 504 human resources professionals, which set out to understand what they think about return-to-office (RTO) mandates, working-from-home, and hybrid/flexible models.

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HR know there is a problem with the RTO mandate. They know they will lose employees including their top talent and be unable to replace them.

One critical step HR can take to get the C-suite to alter course is to show leaders the costs of current practices and illustrate the value of human capital.

This article crunches the number$.

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Adding the “B” to DEIB recognised that a sense of belonging improves employees’ personal feelings of positivity.

Belonging must be part of an overall strategy to deepen inclusion, diversity and equity. Whilst belonging has always been the end goal of the DEI movement, many organisations have fallen short. Therefore, B was added to spell it out and emphasise the importance of DEIB values within an organisational culture.

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The next grey swan could be right around the corner. We know what it could be, we just don’t know when. It could be a black swan, and we have no idea what that could be. Are you prepared? We need to have resilience as individuals and as leaders.

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Those who say that employees working remotely are not connected to their colleagues and experience long periods of loneliness do not have a remote problem. They have a leadership problem. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how leadership needs to evolve to have a thriving remote culture.

Connection must be intentional. I could go into a busy office, surrounded by people, and feel isolated, lonely and certainly not connected.

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Many things influence your organisational culture. A return to the office is not one of them.

You can only have a thriving culture when you hire for culture add, have excellent onboarding methods that make everyone feel a sense of inclusivity and belonging, and provide growth and learning opportunities for all employees.

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You can only have a thriving culture if you have good leadership.

Those citing a loss of culture if employees do not return to the office do not have a remote problem; they have a leadership problem.

The world of work is fundamentally different today than it was before March 2020. Leaders must have the courage to unlearn and relearn to embrace what the future holds. I have often said that we are being presented with the greatest opportunity to rethink the way we work we may ever get. Leaders with the courage to unlearn and the integrity to admit they were wrong will be our organisations' victors, frontrunners, and heroes

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There is much debate about where the workforce should be located. Unless achieving business goals requires a certain location, you should be able to work where you get your best work done.

Work is what we do, not where we go 

There are so many benefits to both the employer and the employee. At Atlassian, employees saved ten days per year in time they would have previously commuted. That’s nearly half a billion minutes of saved time for the entire workforce since 2020.

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There is a Culture Club forming that cites culture as the reason people need to work in a building. I challenge every member of this club to find a definition of culture that refers to a location, a building, or an office. You won’t find one.

This will be a Culture Club series of newsletters as we explore what needs to be eradicated and replaced to build a thriving culture in a distributed workforce.

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There is a 39% increased likelihood of outperformance for those in the top quartile of ethnic and gender representation versus the bottom quartile.

 Despite the resounding business case and many organisations attempting to improve DEI, there has not been much progress.

The problem is mistrust, fear and a lack of education.

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The value of curiosity in the organisation is at an all-time high. It gives the employees and the organisation an edge in problem-solving, creativity, teamwork, and forming valuable connections. It is the mindset of outstanding leaders.

It’s a game-changer for fostering team unity and sparking innovation. For any company, large or small, no matter the industry, having a team always asking "why" and "how" can lead to game-changing ideas, streamline operations, and ultimately, increase financial performance.

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Through digital technology and remote work, many employees can participate in a city's economic life without actually living there. They can keep their jobs in one city whilst working most of the time in another.

These employees live in the “Meta City” – a web of cities.

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The latest workmonitor: the voice of talent in 2024 from Randstad has just been released.

The Randstad Workmonitor, now in its 21st year, explores the views of working people in 34 markets across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. It aims to provide an inside look at their attitudes, ambitions and expectations as the world of work continues to transform 

One theme is screaming out from every page for me: employers must start talking to their employees and really listen to what is being said. This is an imperative for organisational survival.

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There are implications when 73% of knowledge workers do not have a healthy relationship with work.

The most alarming implication is thatit is impacting employees’ well-being. When work has a negative impact on employees emotionally and physically, employees eat poorly, exercise less, toss and turn at night, gain weight, struggle with their mental health, feel like failures, feel isolated and more.

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HR know there is a problem with their company's return to office policy. 73% say it is a problem for employee retention.

“Working from home is unlikely to completely go away, but many employers believe working together and in person is a huge factor in creating workplace culture. This creates a tension employers and employees will have to navigate.”  

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Over two years since the end of the pandemic, the debate over the return to the office still rages, and the divide between employee and employer is now a chasm across which it seems impossible to build a bridge. The problem is that both sides need to build that bridge together.

Adding fuel to the fire is media commentary on the situation, which is so contradictory it astounds me.

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In my first newsletter of 2024, I want to reflect on the utter travesty of 2023 for so many employees. I can only hope for common sense to prevail this year.

Of course, I am talking about the return-to-office mandates being issued by so many organisations.

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I thought the quote from Tom Peters was a good title for this newsletter. If you are paying attention and reading all that is being written and spoken about the return to the office, then you will be confused.

It is contradictory, concocted, and controversial.

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