Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #103
Life, What a Waste of What Could be Productive Time!
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.
Like most Onion stories, it’s funny because there’s some truth in it. How many very serious articles have been written about how much time employees “waste” on personal phone calls, chatting with coworkers, looking at social media, or being distracted? Is this really such a stretch when there are CEOs talking about how young people should work 12-hour days instead of 8-hour days in order to learn the job 1/3 faster, (They won’t), or that anyone who truly wants to change the world won’t do it working less than 80 hours per week?
Just remember who truly benefits from you killing yourself to get more work done. If it’s not you, you’re just being abused.
Share your own story in the comments. What kind of ridiculousness have you seen in the workplace?
Careers and the Workplace
Failure to Communicate With Employees
Only 7% of US workers feel communication is timely, accurate and transparent.
How does anyone work like this?
Our best work is scarce. We shouldn’t waste it on jerks, selfish hustlers or those that don’t appreciate it. - Seth Godin
Linked - 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
"The companies that are seeing the most success with returning to the office appear to be the ones that are making decisions with their employees, rather than for them. "
Employees do not like being told what to do without any input.
Training and Development
This is a good question. We can talk about training and developing our team, but where are they going? - Are You Giving Current Employees Room to Move?
And if you can’t actually promote them, then what? -
Linked - How to invite introverted students to share their thinking in class
Over the last few years though, as the number of online training sessions and meetings has grown exponentially, I still see it though. There are a significant number of users who will use Teams or Zoom chat instead of speaking up in many forms of gatherings. We should recognize that the chat tool is a perfectly legitimate way for people to interact with a speaker and each other during online meetings. Many people, but especially introverts among us, will be more comfortable chatting like that during a meeting. As a trainer/speaker, it becomes paramount that you learn to pay attention to what is happening in chat or have someone in the meeting be responsible for keeping up with the chat. Otherwise, you're ignoring part of your audience.
The other interesting thing that shouldn't be overlooked is that beyond providing a message board to start the class discussion, it's also provided ahead of time. Those introverts who need a little time to process new information before providing any input are going to be much more likely to have something to add when there is time to consider the topic.
The folks at Offbeat are putting together an L&D salary database. Hopefully, they’ll get enough participation to do some solid analysis of salary data across the Learning and Development industry, but for just the price of entering your own data, you can get access to the entire list as well.
Mental Health in the Workplace
Retain and Engage Your Talent by Leading with Well-Being
A lack of well-being is a structural or cultural issue within the workplace—not just an individual’s problem.
That reminds me of this from a couple of years ago - Why “It’s Just the Way Work is” Doesn’t Cut It, Employees Didn’t Create The Busyness Mess
CPTSD and Career Development - Consider how trauma may impact some of the skills we take for granted when it comes to career development, like networking and emotional intelligence.
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
This isn’t surprising. I’ve watched Microsoft make business decisions like this over the last few years, bundling certain eDiscovery and IG tools with more expensive licenses. They will do what they do - How Microsoft is Using Copilot to Drive Customers to Microsoft 365 E5
A couple of eDiscovery resources worth checking out this week:
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.