JR Afternoon with Chris Renwick
The Great Detachment
It's a story we haven't talked about a lot. We'll get into it at 335, but there is some news on the Daniel Penny case where the jury has come to a decision. They've alerted the judge. I'll tell you what it is coming up because it's consequential, certainly, and now it's got prosecutors rethinking things, so we'll talk about it. In the immediate post-time of COVID, we saw the great resignation, where people were just fed up, they were done, it put things in perspective for a lot of people. If they were just working at 9 to 5 to pay the bills and they didn't want to do it anymore and go find something that they like to do or enjoy doing, it put a lot of businesses in a really tough spot. And now, we've got a new shift. It's called the Great Detachment. Gallup has done a study and put out a new report and what it means for many people who are frustrated with their jobs, frustrated by the companies that they work for, frustrated by the management structure. And they are wanting to leave jobs, but they can't. There's nowhere for them to go. Gallup looked at a couple of different things, rapid organizational change, hybrid and remote growing pains, new customer expectations, new employee expectations, and broken performance management practices, all things that certainly management and leaders of companies have to take a look at if they don't want to fall victim to the Great Detachment. Let's check in with Steve McClatchy, he's an author and advisor to Fortune 500 companies and athletic organizations about improving employee performance. Things changed for companies all across the board, whether it was trying to figure out the best way for their employees to get their work done, whether it was to be in office, whether it was to allow them to work from home or some sort of hybrid model, and it led to the Great Resignation, but now in this ecosystem, in this climate, where people are just tired of what they're doing, but they can't go anywhere, it can, I feel like kind of poison the atmosphere or the environment that a lot of these companies are trying to create. And the data is pointing right to that, and that's what Gallup is collecting, is what is the detachment and what's causing it, what's creating it, I mean, it's the problem that needs to be solved, and yeah, I mean, COVID did a number on all of us, and it changed a lot for a lot of people, and at the end of the day, we examine, are we learning, are we growing, I mean, the customer wants quality and speed, and we have to arrange our organizations in such a way that we can deliver that quality and speed better than our competition. And some we learned remote work can do it, and you can figure out ways of getting that done, and with other departments within the same organization, some can be hybrid, some need to be in person, when innovation is driving that business, often you have to be in person, you have to have those quick exchanges, it can't be a delayed, you know, communication. So trying to navigate all of that and figure out what can be hybrid, what can be remote, what needs to be in person, what are the benefits, what's the quality, what's the speed, timing problems. I mean, that's where we are, and we're trying to figure it out for this day, and it's a big challenge. So what do companies need to do in this case, to make sure that the morale of their workforce is in a good spot? Is it just looking at what they're offering to their employees, or is there something more serious and more in depth that leadership needs to look at? Yeah, if you want a silver bullet, right, I mean, just, engagement is such a big buzzword today. And engagement is measured in discretionary effort. So when you do more than you're paid to do, you are considered engaged. So if you do your job and you do it well, you're considered disengaged. It's a brutal metric, Chris. So how do you drive engagement, because it's very valuable, right? These are people doing more than they're paid to come in early, they stay late, they work on the weekends, they help other people with their jobs, and that's not their job to do that. They're doing more than they get paid. So what drives that? Well, if you were looking for a silver bullet on a scale of one to five, if you give your boss a five that you strongly agree that your boss emphasizes your strengths, then your engagement goes from a national average of about 13% to over 67%. Wow. So, I mean, if you're looking for one humongous, when people feel valued, appreciated their celebrated, they're recognized, and it's genuine. It's authentic. It's not fake. It's not in front of the whole group. So you can feel like you've done something. Some people don't even like to be recognized in public like that. So when you sincerely believe your job is being played to your strengths, and then you're appreciated and valued for those strengths, it's the number one indicator that grows engagement. So organizations need to get better than that, but when's the last time, Chris, you heard you did a great job and you didn't get a but at the end of the sentence, and then they unleashed all the things you needed to improve, right? So if you do that, you're really killing the purpose of it and the value of it and what employees want is to feel valued. And every one of us wants to know that our effort, our grit, our determination is appreciated. And if you're going to go above and beyond and do more than your paid and it's not acknowledged, it's going to go away. Well, and then of course the tightrope that these companies have to walk, and you mentioned it earlier, it's like you want to make sure whatever the product that you are delivering to people, to your customer base is expedient, it's fast, it's right, it's on point, that's all very important, particularly to the bottom line. But when you don't have a comfortable group of employees, you don't have a comfortable workforce, it can create problems on the profitability end. So they have to walk this tightrope, and I'm sure whether it's that engagement or whether it's money or whatever it is, the realities are, it's a very tightrope for them to walk. And exactly, you can put the problems that an organization is going to have into two categories. An individual in a job is going to have a problem in two categories. You either have a people problem at work, right? If you don't have a problem, it's going to fall into people or task. I don't have to do it, we've got a problem, we don't have to solve it, which is going to be a speed and quality issue for the customer. If it's a people problem, now we get into conflict resolution. What's going to kill engagement? What's going to prevent you from going above and beyond? When someone makes an agreement with you and doesn't follow through on it, and then they don't apologize and we act like it never happened. Boy, is that going to create a resentful toxic work environment. So, you know, swallowing the ego, being able to say you're sorry, making a commitment that it won't happen again, we're human beings, we dropped the ball. But if we don't address workplace conflict, and at the root cause of all conflict, there's a broken agreement, you didn't do what you said you were going to do, or you didn't do it the way you said you were going to do it. And you can't acknowledge that and how about your boss is breaking commitment to not apologize. It's going to, now they want you to go above and beyond and do more than your paid. It really creates resentment in those areas. So leaders have to walk the talk and lead by example. And then when it comes to relationships, we have to be transparent. We have to be able to apologize and swallow our ego and create an environment that is free from hostility. Then we need the upside of it. And that just makes an environment not bad. It doesn't make it great. It just means there's no problems. Then we need, again, the appreciation. We need feedback. We want to know our skills are advancing, that we're learning, we're growing, we're requiring new skills, gaining new experiences, growing our network. When we feel progress in our role, we're engaged, that we feel right, don't momentum and excitement that things are getting better is what each individual wants. I mean, we don't want it all the time. You can be in a job where you just kind of do the job each and every day. But if you stay there for too long, the word we use is burnout and the solution to burnout is progress. We feel like we're standing still for too long. So if you're a boss, you need to start understanding if someone's been in the same place for too long. And coaching, what are their goals? What are their aspirations? If there's a gap in skills to get them where goals are, then let's start giving them the experience they need to close those gaps and get them that experience. I want that employee to feel progress again and that certainly will engage them into the work that they do. Steve McClatchy, thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. And the companies that do all of that, the best rise to the top. Thank you, my friend. I hope we talk again soon. Great talk to you. Yep, you got it. You hear all that, Brian? You hear that? Positive affirmation, positive affirmation. That's what I need. That's all I need. That's how we get ahead here. Let's just get the work in there. 800-859-0957-800-859-0WJ are also coming up, some breaking news on the Daniel Penny jury deliberations. We'll give you the background on it and we'll give you what the jury has told the judge. News this afternoon. We'll cover next year on J. R afternoon.
December 6, 2024 ~ Chris speaks with Steve McClatchy about a new Gallup report that says people are tired of their jobs, but with no jobs available, they're just not doing the jobs that they already have.