Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #145
Return to the office or else! We choose "else".
Remember when Dell mandated that anyone who didn’t return to work in the office five days per week would be ineligible to be promoted? I said at the time that they were conducting layoffs without having to go through the motions of a layoff, but it looks like employees will force them to cut headcount if they want to reduce costs.
Linked - Dell said return to the office or else—nearly half of workers chose “or else”
This shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. For each issue, 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.
In the post I linked above, I gave several reasons why they might have chosen not to come back:
The path to a promotion might not even be available
They may not want to be promoted.
They see it as a way to cut costs, avoid a layoff, and understand the assignment —make them fire you.
Remote work is extremely beneficial to workers. Extremely. I've been remote since 2019. Do you know how much money and time I save just not commuting? Do you know how interesting and engaging my work is when I don't have to deal with being in the same room with people and trying to "look" busy? Do you know how boring sitting in an office all day is for me?
I wouldn’t go back to full-time in-office work either.
Careers and the Workplace
Linked - Return to Office, Return to Sexual Harassment?
What workplace hasn't already held a sexual harassment seminar? Is it making any difference? Not when you tell me that remote work was the most effective way to lower incidences of harassment. Essentially, keeping people away from each other was the only way we found to dent the overall statistics significantly.
Want to know what would make a dent? Fire people. On the spot. Publicly. The first time it happens.
This seems ridiculous, but I know it’s happening, including law firms where staff is expected to work full-time in the office, not lawyers. - Why Your Boss Isn't Coming to the Office.
Why Employee Surveillance Backfires — I would have thought there was an obvious answer: treat employees like you don’t trust them, and they’ll be less engaged with the workplace. It’s so much more than that, though. It’s taking management's failure to measure the quantity and quality of employee work and making the whole thing a technical problem that needs to be solved by the IT Department. That’s not going to make anyone happy at work.
Before we get to the AI section, this is an interesting question that I think is related to surveillance issues, where we are “solving” a problem by routing around it instead of solving it. - Is AI plastering over real-world business problems? The example from that article? Meetings:
The ad depicts a person asking a very simple question: can I be in three meetings at once? The answer seems to be that if you send AI, yes you can. But is this indicative of AI being used to solve a problem that shouldn’t be there in the first place? Yes, this is a useful feature for summarising meetings, but a problem is being plastered over here. Why aren’t meetings more efficient?
If it hasn’t happened already, it’s a matter of time. The scheduled meeting that everyone skips to wait for the summary that never comes because no one met.
Artificial Intelligence
I don’t have an explanation for this, but it is interesting and something to think about - Research: Using AI at Work Makes Us Lonelier and Less Healthy.
This is the biggest AI question - AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution.
Case in point - Google is also not Living Up To Carbon Emissions Promises.
Rather than decreasing the amount of damaging carbon emissions it releases into the atmosphere, its emissions have grown by 13% since last year, releasing approximately 14.3 million metric tons of Carbon Dioxide pollution, which is the equivalent to the amount 38 gas-powered plants release, annually. This is 48% higher than it was in 2019 and has increased every year since 2020.
Linked - The Real AI Revolution Will Be Invisible
That doesn't mean we won't make a mess of things getting there. Some employers will go through rounds of layoffs, hoping to replace workers with AI writers, photographers, coders, etc. Plenty of companies will rush to add something they can call "AI" to their products to look innovative, and everyone will stumble along learning what AI might be useful for.
Then, we'll end up using the AI built into all the same tools we use now.
Training and Development
This is a good idea. Mid-year is a good time to see if your current career and workplace align with the development you need to achieve your goals. Do a Mid-Year Review of Your Career.
It’s not going away. You might as well learn how to use it for your benefit:
How To Learn The Meta-Skill Of AI Prompting
The Future of Talent Development One Day at a Time
The future is unpredictable, which is a challenging reality check for talent development (TD) leaders aiming to be prepared.
Mental Health in the Workplace
I know this is advice I keep handy - How to Stop Your Anxiety from Sabotaging Your Success.
Interesting that while we’ve been scolding technology companies for harming the mental health of young people, they are using technology to get mental health information that no one else will talk to them about. - Adults Are Losing Their Shit About Teen Mental Health On Social Media, While Desperate Teens Are Using AI For Mental Help.
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
I have some links related to AI as Legal Tech that I wanted to drop in this section for those of us in the legal industry:
Also, I don’t know why any law firm would not already be using MFA, but maybe some aren’t. - Enhancing Security in Law Firms: The Imperative of Multi-Factor Authentication.
Going Mobile: Metadata Considerations with Mobile Device ESI - There’s some juicy stuff in mobile device metadata.
We keep coming up with better ways to locate and use the data we already have, but we should also consider how much of that data is terrible. - Information governance: The challenges of sprawling data.
This is cruel - This Malware Targets Those Looking for Work: Here's How
Speaking of scams and fraud, this will never end - Deepfake Technology Fuels Global Misinformation and Fraud.
That’s all, folks. If you found something interesting in this week’s newsletter, please share it with your friends. It’s the best way to help support the effort I put in each week to share this with you.