Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #93
Job negotiations should include your lifestyle.
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. I write this weekly newsletter so subscribers can see some of the things I’m writing and sharing without depending on social media algorithms to show them to you. Each week I’ll share information about careers and workplace culture, mental health in the workplace, talent development, and important information about privacy, security, and legal tech.
You can find out all about me here - Mike McBride Online.
This week, I came across a post I wrote in 2019. I shared an article along with my own thoughts on the topic of negotiating your lifestyle.
With the constant refrain about how to get people back into our offices, and many people’s unwillingness to go back, it might be time to go back to these thoughts:
When someone tries to negotiate, or look elsewhere, for more money, we hardly raise an eyebrow about it, but somehow we don’t feel like everything else is negotiable. It is, but you may need to be willing to make a change to get it.
Are you?
And are you willing to negotiate in order to keep good employees, or just continue to watch them leave over things that you could easily change, that might require a bit more work on the organization’s part?
In my current job search, I keep coming back to two ideas that I know I need to consider.
What do I want to do next?
How does that fit into the rest of my life?
I have certain things I’ll negotiate on, and certain things I won’t. I also realize that I’m a bit privileged in not needing a pay check immediately, so I have some freedom to negotiate that not everyone has. I’m certainly not advocating for anyone to go without who needs the money, but once you’re out of that situation, it might be worth considering what your career goals really are. Maybe climbing the corporate ladder isn’t for you. Maybe it is.
Most importantly, can we all just agree what our goals and desires for how work fits into our lives will be different, and design a better workplace that allows for that?
What is non-negotiable for you?
Also, if this is part of your workplace, just go away. 🙄
Careers and the Workplace
Charter Research Suggests Mentorship Matters No Matter Where Your Team is Located
If you want to provide quality mentorship for your junior employees create and support a program to do that. Period. End of discussion. Where they are located is not relevant.
7 Questions Tough Job Candidates Will Ask. Be Prepared - on the flip side, if you're interviewing, get answers to these questions.
Ethical Visibility for Remote Workers
This one is a little harder for me because letting people know what I've been up to sounds an awful lot like self-promotion. I've never been super comfortable with people who are constantly promoting themselves and what they do. I certainly don't want to become known for promoting myself all the time. The difference between the two was actually the subject of two episodes of the Work-Life Podcast earlier this year, and I thought the discussion between Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry was a fantastic exploration of the difference between being ethically visible (I stole the term from them, it's that good!) and bragging.
4 Ways on How Flexibility Attracts Top Talent - having some flexibility in your hiring process can greatly widen your net for attracting top talent.
Training and Development
Linked - To Stay Competitive, You Must Overhaul Your Workplace Training
I've written before about the tragic consequences of not training folks, and I'll add that this is no different. You can invest in your people, keeping their skills up-to-date for the constant change they will be faced with in the workplace, or you can view all of them as a simple cost to be cut down to the bare minimum.
If you do, at least consider the cost of hiring a bunch of new folks year after year.
Because you will be.
The ATD conference wrap-up is also something you might be interested in reading to find out what’s new and important in the L&D area - ATD '23 Recap: Talent Development and The Future of Work
Mental Health in the Workplace
This was a good listen, and if you don’t follow Kara on LinkedIn, you should - Mental Health & Finding Meaning at Work - with Kara Hardin (CEO, The Practice Lab)
This one is for everyone going through it right now, including me - Managing stress and maintaining mental health during your job search
A couple of comments on how good for our mental health it could be if we just worked less.
A Better Argument for Working Less - what I especially like about this is that the better argument is not that we’d be more productive, which we would, but that we’d simply be better people and a better society.
Here’s a pretty comprehensive resource for you to consider - Combating Stress and Burnout in the Workplace: A Comprehensive Approach
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
New Email Rules, MFA Bypass Are Top Hacking Tactics So Far in 2023 - I wonder if we should be training our users to keep an eye out for inbox rules they didn’t setup? In all the phishing and security awareness training I’ve had over the years, I’ve never been told to look for that.
Since Amazon is in the news for the fines they’ll be paying due to eavesdropping on users, it’s a good time to drop this link from a few years back. - Just How Much Does Your Smart Home Know?
Linked attachments in eDiscovery are going to be an issue for a long time, aren’t they? - Want a Great Example of How to Plan for Hyperlinks as Attachments in Your Protocol? Read On.
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