News Archives

Time and time again, the hours in the day can prove to be elusive. Many of us may find ourselves asking, where did the time go? when we look up from our desk and suddenly see that the sky has darkened.

What’s interesting about this is, a lot of employees are now much more aware of how and where they spend their time. After years of a pandemic and lockdown, the value of our time and its finiteness has become a reality for many, and the importance of finding a work-life balance has increased tenfold. A recent Glassdoor survey proves this, as it found that 87% of employees expect their employers to support them in balancing work and personal needs.

But the biggest obstacle in the way of achieving this balance is the fact that there seems to be a complete lack of language around how to approach the topic of time. It’s a tentative subject, and for some reason it feels almost wrong to ask for certain considerations to be made for one’s personal life.

But why is that? There’s an undeniable awkwardness that permeates the subject, potentially even a feeling of guilt around asking for a better balance.

What’s interesting, however, is the fact that while employees may struggle to find the best words to start the conversation, the emergence of quiet quitting is an example of staff skipping the conversation altogether and taking immediate action. It’s no surprise that quiet quitting is a trend that has been noted far more amongst younger workers; they have entered the world of work as it’s going through monumental structural changes, and so from their perspective, setting boundaries around their work and their personal life is a normal expectation. Whereas for the rest of us who have been working for over a decade, all we have really known is this ‘always-on’ mindset being a requirement of a dependable team player. And a dependable team player regularly and willingly sacrifices personal needs.

Employers could therefore greatly benefit from taking responsibility for kickstarting this conversation with their teams. Learning to talk about time and to have an appreciation for their staff’s commitment to their business will demonstrate how much they value them.

And from a business perspective, starting this discussion around boundaries will help to mitigate the risk of burnout and exhaustion. According to a YouGov survey, 73% of Britons aged between 18-49 said that their tiredness had a great impact on their work. This is coupled with research from the Society for Human Resources Management which found that almost half (48%) of American employees reported being mentally and physically exhausted at the end of their workday.

Creating the space where team members feel safe talking about their personal needs can be key to the prevention of this exhaustion. This ensures that team members are remaining fully engaged and energized both physically and mentally, as well as being a deposit into the “sense of belonging” employee bank account.

To discuss how you can begin to approach this conversation with your team, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at marty@orgshakers.com

Dissociation is a way the mind copes with stress – and it is a way more common problem than most employers think, with up with to 75% of people experiencing a dissociative episode at some point.

In fact, even if you have never heard of dissociation, you will almost certainly have seen its impact on colleagues, and maybe even experienced it yourself!

There are a number of ways dissociation can manifest itself, and all of them have a negative impact on an individual’s performance and productivity:

Depersonalisation – the feeling of being outside yourself, watching actions, thoughts, and feelings from a distance.
Derealisation – the people and things around you may seem “lifeless” or “foggy”.
Amnesia – not being able to remember information, past events, or even a learned talent or skill.

The stress and trauma caused by the pandemic triggered an increase in the levels of dissociation across the population creating a mental health legacy which is now being felt in the workplace. And the problem with this is that many misinterpret a dip in productivity as someone doing less – when they may actually need support.

So how can employers prevent dissociative episodes from impacting productivity?

The best place to start is awareness. By educating leaders and line-managers about dissociation and how to recognise it in themselves and their direct reports, you can begin to understand the issue and how it might be affecting your organization.

You can also share some simple methods for coping with dissociative episodes, for example, breathing exercises, stimulation toys, or music. There are many different grounding methods for bringing someone out of an episode and back into reality, but what works for each individual will be unique to them.

Having these conversations openly will help those who may not know how to cope with their dissociative symptoms, as well as contribute to eradicating the wider stigma around mental health. It will see productivity and engagement levels rise again, all the while strengthening the relationships between leaders and their teams.

If you would like to discuss training around dissociation and preventing it from affecting employee productivity, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Managers who know when to have a laugh and not take themselves too seriously tend to be some of the best. Their joie de vivre makes for a happy workplace and fosters healthy relationships with their team.

We will all have experienced occasions, however, when a manager has inappropriately bookended a far from light-hearted message with quiet chuckles. This is what is known as laughter padding – and it can be far from funny!

Laughter padding is a very common reflex that its perpetrators use without even realising they are doing it.

Much of the time, this innate need to smile or laugh can emerge in managers or executives who have to discuss something uncomfortable, deliver unfavourable news, or ask something of someone they suspect that individual will not want to do. And the problem with this tic is that it may undermine their authority.

Now, it is not uncommon for managers to feel a bit out of their depth. A recent study found that managers significantly lacked confidence in their ability to talk about potentially sensitive issues such as work flexibility and employee wellbeing. These are the situations when the laughter padding reflex can kick in.

In their subconscious they are trying to ‘soften the blow’ of their words by padding them with laughter – but to the person receiving the message this can easily be perceived as the manager failing to take the issue seriously; ‘This is no laughing matter!’

This can lead to a range of communication issues with a senior member of staff and their team. The urgency of a request, or the clarity of feedback, will be at risk of falling flat, and these problems that could have been avoided are now being given the opportunity to snowball.

So, what can a manager do to prevent this?

A lot of the time, a person doing this habitually will probably be nervous to some degree. The fear of having to speak publicly, known as glossophobia, is a very common one, with up to 75% of the population being affected by it. In this situation, a management coach would be able to help them improve their confidence by guiding them in understanding why this laughter padding response is being triggered.

Interestingly, the reflex is believed to stem from humans’ instinctive need to gasp for air to oxygenate the muscles. We take deep breaths to prepare for an emergency or in the face of danger, and in these scenarios the ‘danger’ would be the possible repercussions of telling someone off or speaking in a difficult circumstance.

To combat this, a coach might suggest that if the manager knows they are going to have to have a conversation that they suspect may not be well-received, they rehearse what they are going to say. Practicing it a couple of times will make it easier to approach the discussion.

As well as this, a coach will help them to distinguish when it is and isn’t appropriate to laughter pad. The reality is, laughter padding in the right context is a great tool to increase managerial approachability. But the key to this is chuckling when it is more genuine, and fits well with the tone of the conversation. This way, when they are having to have a more difficult discussion and are not padding it, the person listening will realise that this is a more serious situation.

It’s all about finding that balance, so if you think you or your managers might be laughter padders, you can reach out to our team of coaches for help in turning laughter into a leadership asset – not a derailer.

At the beginning of January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed a new law that would ban the use of non-compete clauses, as well as rescind any previously signed agreements.

This may seem like a drastic change – especially with nearly a third (31.8%) of employers making all their employees sign a non-compete – but the banning of these clauses will very likely have a positive effect overall.

For one thing, non-compete agreements are notoriously US-centric. If you look at companies in Europe – as well as states such as California, who have not enforced these since 1872 – it is clear that the absence of these binding agreements has not hindered profitability.

And this is because there are many ways that are more effective than non-compete agreements to protect yourself as a business. The reality of a non-compete is that they are like threatening someone with a blunt hammer; they’re very difficult and very costly to argue in court, so usually won’t have much effect. But they hold weighty connotations that are enough to deter people from attempting to break them.

Instead, employers can hold employees to their duty of loyalty, which means that while they are working with them, they will not do anything that is inconsistent with the organization’s interests.

As well as this, the FTC’s new rules still allow for the recovery of reasonable costs of training, as well as the implementation of a non-solicitation clause so that a reasonable degree of confidentiality is still intact after an employee terminates their contract. So from a legal standpoint, you are still covered in the areas that you need to be, while also making room for an acceleration of innovation to take place in the market.

It will also set into motion the recalibration of retention strategies. For lack of a better word, a non-compete agreement is a lazy tool, and so with its revoking, this paves the way for businesses to focus on using more positive, people-centric strategies to promote retention. These will emphasize how a company values its team members, and with leaders demonstrating the trust they have in their staff, they will foster a healthy sense of loyalty without the need for it in writing.

What employers need to take from this proposition is that job mobility does not mean the free flow of confidential information. It simply means that the labor market becomes more flexible and competitive, and is an opportunity for businesses to gain access to top talent. But the companies that are examining their attraction and retention strategies and taking into account the changing needs of the workforce will be the ones who get ahead in this raging war for talent.

OrgShakers can help with this. With a vast amount of experience and knowledge on these subjects, we can ensure that the rescinding of non-competes is smooth and successful, all the while aiding in strengthening your retention strategies and boosting employee loyalty. If you would like to discuss how we can do this, get in touch with me at: elizabeth.huldin@orgshakers.com

Let me ask you something – if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, how many times have you had to ‘come out of the closet’?

The answer will always – always – be more than once. But why is that?

It might be a common misconception that once a person ‘comes out’ it’s a one-and-done and everyone is just suddenly in the know. The reality is that now, everywhere you go, every new job, you have to do a loop-the-loop back through those revolving doors and come out all over again.

But the problem with this is that research published by Vodafone and Out Now found that 41% of young people who were open about their sexuality before starting their first job went ‘back in the closet’ and stayed there.

And there are many reasons why this could have happened – one study found that US employers were more likely to view resumes from visibly gay or lesbian applicants unfavourably. Another survey reported that 53% of LGBTQ+ workers would hear jokes about lesbian or gay people, and Stonewall discovered that almost a third of non-binary people (31%) and one in five trans people didn’t feel able to wear work attire representing their gender expression.

The thread that binds all these findings together is a company’s culture. The truth is, when you identify as queer, you can immediately sense whether the environment you are in makes you feel safe to express who you are. The culture of an organization is an indication of overall attitudes, and so it is so important for businesses to ensure that they are creating a safe space where all feel comfortable.

So where to start?

Go right to the root – when you think about the metaphorical ‘closet’, it is spoken about as if people are born inside of it. The reality is, you are put inside, and then forced to come out of it over and over again for the benefit of everyone else. Understanding the homophobic, biphobic and transphobic microaggressions that are embedded even in such commonplace phrases is a great first step to knowing how to identify and eradicate them in your workplace.

It them comes down to management and leadership to set the precedent. Providing regular LGBTQ+ inclusion training, updating your policies and procedures, all the way down to using inclusive language (if straight co-workers also began referring to their husbands/wives as ‘partners’, this small but monumental change can make those in queer relationships feel comfortable sharing details of their own personal lives).

It is no secret that having a diverse workforce brings a wave of new business opportunities, and so if you would like guidance in seizing these opportunities and making your workplace the best it can be, get in touch with us here.

Zoom Fatigue refers to feelings of tiredness, worry or burnout due to the overuse of video calling platforms.

To help those who fall victim to this, we first need to understand what’s driving it.

It has become a norm for employers to ask their team to have their cameras turned on during a meeting.

Whether this is to mimic the feel of an office, to monitor whether people are actually paying attention, or to simply demonstrate an air of professionalism, the fact is that this is quite a common request being made in the remote and hybrid working world.

If we think about the practicalities of being on Zoom, it is essentially like being in a meeting with a mirror propped up in front of your face. Now, you have to speak to a whole room of people while also having to watch yourself!

This can be particularly difficult for those of us who suffer from public self-consciousness, which is the tendency to fixate on how others are perceiving you.

Research published by Social Cognition builds on this idea, as it found that when people see their own faces on screen, they spend more time looking at themselves and thinking about how they appear than they do focusing on the conversation being had.

Interestingly, numerous studies have suggested that women are more likely to self-focus and feel anxiety when they are in the presence of a mirror. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, to see that a recent study from Stanford found that 1 in 7 women feel very fatigued after Zoom calls compared to 1 in 20 men. And the reason for women being disproportionately affected was because of the increase in ‘self-focused attention’, which is the heightened awareness of how one comes across or appears in a conversation.

The research also found that introverts suffered from Zoom Fatigue much more, as well as younger individuals and people of color. Looking at it from this perspective, enforcing the ‘cameras on’ rule in the workplace may be doing more harm than good, and could also be deemed as a problem of inclusion, considering different types of people are affected differently.

Looking at our own research, which found that over a quarter of respondents (28%) preferred to have their camera’s off during meetings, it may be time for companies to begin taking this into consideration if they haven’t already done so.

So, what are the ways an employer can combat Zoom Fatigue?

Firstly, making people aware of the ‘hide self-view’ option available on Zoom could be a simple and extremely helpful solution. This means that the person’s camera will still be on and they will be seen by everyone apart from themselves, and this can help with growing feelings of self-scrutiny. However, this may not work for all, as the idea of knowing people can still see you but you now cannot see yourself can induce anxiety in and of itself.

The second thing it comes down to is trust. If an employer trusts their staff, then they will be flexible towards having cameras on and off during a meeting, as they should trust that even if they cannot see someone it doesn’t mean they are not paying attention.

And finally, companies could also look at ways of trying to reduce video calls. Make use of simple voice calls and the chat box feature when you can, and move away from this virtual presenteeism mindset.

If you would like to discuss how to approach this topic in greater detail, you get in touch with us here.

There has been a bit of a theme emerging in the world of work.

First it was the ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon that swept across the 2022 workplace landscape.

Hot on its heels came the trend for ‘quiet firing’ which emerged in response to workers quietly quitting.

And so, to the newest edition – ‘quiet hiring’.

The term has been coined by the leader of Gartner’s research team, Emily Rose McRae, who describes ‘quiet hiring’ as a way to address an immediate need for the company. The business could hire external contractors. Or, if money is tight, they might shuffle existing team members around to fill the short-term gap that has opened up.

The latter approach is, however, higher risk as uprooting people from their roles might just prompt them to begin quietly quitting! Add to that the danger of someone feeling their original role was not valued if it could be put on hold and you have a recipe for a host of unintended consequences further down the line.

The problem with having all of these ‘quiet’ approaches is that they are all being carried out, well, quietly!

Employees found themselves struggling to communicate their need for boundaries at work, and so began to quietly build them themselves. Employers were struggling with communicating with staff who they felt were underperforming, and so began to quietly push them away. And now we have companies who are trying to quietly repair skill gaps, which could result in more quiet quitting … which will, in turn, lead to more quiet firing.

It is a vicious, surreptitious cycle which could be avoided if employers and employees spoke up rather than clammed up about their mutual needs and expectations.

This means encouraging and supporting a dialogue between managers and their direct reports about their wellbeing needs, as well as managers knowing how to help employees they feel may be underperforming.

And when it comes to filling those short-term gaps, the best approach is to be open with your people about what the company needs to do – and how you plan to do it. Then sit back and listen to what they have to say, because a productive two-way dialogue is always better than the sound of silence.

To get in touch with us about any communication and culture needs you may have, head over to our contact page.

With the pandemic altering the fundamental structure of work, many employers have been wading through several stages of grief as they realize there is no “returning to normal” and remote/hybrid working models are here to stay. As we venture into a new year – three years after the pandemic began – employers appear to be entering the final stage of grief: acceptance. And this ‘acceptance’ can help organizations thrive with the introducing of a Chief Remote Officer (CRO).

According to the State of Remote Work Report 2022, 60% of employers in the US require staff to work remotely or in a hybrid capacity. Now is the time for employers to embed remote work into their foundations and use it as an organizational tool. Employers who are intentional about remote working strategies will be able to build, innovate, and leverage their benefits, and this means clearly establishing how remote work will fit into your company and its culture.

This is where a CRO proves incredibly valuable; having an executive leader dedicated to optimizing remote and hybrid workers ensures a business can create and accelerate opportunity. The CRO finds ways of leveraging remote work in a healthy, productive, and profitable way for employers and employees alike.

They also design policies and programs that remove an individual’s work location as a critical factor for success. With McKinsey finding over 90 million American workers now working remotely or in a hybrid setting, the need for a specialized executive to coordinate and care for this aspect of work has become even more necessary.

Many more responsibilities fall under a CRO – establishing the most effective communication protocols, exchanging and gaining access to shared data, maintaining the organization’s culture, and repurposing the workplace to meet today’s business and workforce needs. Expanding the C-suite to include this new role reflects how many companies’ dynamics have evolved since COVID. Employee needs have changed – people value their time, recognize its importance, and are largely in favor of a remote working lifestyle.

Establishing a role like the CRO allows an organization to move away from being constantly reactive to remote and hybrid work. It is a proactive approach to meeting today’s business and workforce needs. Now is the time to begin looking at how you can best leverage this organizational tool – whether that be from an economic perspective, a people strategy perspective, or to further your environmental, social, and governance agenda. To discuss this topic further, please get in touch with me at amanda@orgshakers.com

As we enter the new year, many employers are conducting end of year pay reviews for their employees. This year’s pay trends are likely to differ from previous ones due to a variety of factors which may influence how leaders and workers approach their compensation strategy in the coming twelve months. Considering that a recent study by Willis Towers has revealed that 75% of organizations are struggling to win over new talent, it is critical for companies to actively improve their compensation IQ in order to be a viable talent competitor.

As there is a clear need for employers to improve their compensation IQ in 2023, consider the following trends that are rising in the compensation space as your organization looks into how best to reward talent.

Salary Budgets are Rising – A recent report from Salary.com has found that the long-predominant 3% raise has been replaced by a median raise of 4% across all employee categories, breaking the more than 10-year trend of stagnant projected salary increase budgets. A quarter of employers even plan to offer increases between 5-7% this year, marking 2023 as a ‘banner year’ for compensation. It’s good to keep in mind the careful balance organizations will have to strike so as to meet the talent market demands to competitively compensate the workforce in 2023, all while striving for positive financial performance in a difficult economy.

Data Based Compensation Decisions – Those employers who have limped along without clear salary guidance or practices in past years may find it increasingly difficult to continue down the same path. Now is the time to put in the hard work to build a compensation structure if your organization has been navigating compensation without defined salary ranges. In a data-driven world, employers who leverage competitive salary ranges will find that making data-based compensation decisions for new hire offers, promotions, annual increases and other pay adjustments have an advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining talent while avoiding other pay-related issues such as salary compression and pay equity issues.

Pay Transparency – Across the board, pay transparency is becoming a hot topic, and if there was a single reason to establish salary ranges, as mentioned above, pay transparency is it. Employees want to work for organizations who are transparent about pay. With the UK’s launching of a pay transparency pilot program and pay transparency legislation beginning to be enforced in multiple US states, it is looking as if being open and honest about compensation is going to become more than an expectation but rather the norm. Doing the work now to establish transparent pay practices and guidelines will help you to, if not get ahead, at least not fall behind the curve of the burgeoning pay transparency movement. You will also be demonstrating to the talent market that your organization values pay equity and equality.

Pay Communication – How members of the organization discuss pay can be as important as the pay itself. Communication is everything. Now more than ever, organizations should be devoting time to train leaders about how to have effective compensation discussions. Being able to articulate why someone is receiving an increase and how the amount was determined is something that employees want and deserve to know. This means detailing the rationale behind data-based compensation decisions and knowing the difference themselves between pay adjustments, merit increases, lump sum payments, and so on, and why we allocate one over another depending on the circumstance. Educating your HR team, especially Talent Acquisition, is also critical to ensure the organization is painted favourably with fair offers and a well-articulated total rewards package. To be effective in bringing candidates in the door, recruiters must know how to effectively leverage salary ranges and formulate an offer based on the candidate’s experience and alignment to the open role, as well as understanding the current compensation elements someone may be leaving behind. Investing time in proper training helps to foster trust in new and current employees, and will demonstrate why your organization is an attractive place to work, while reminding those who already work for you why they want to continue doing so.

Geographic Pay Policies – With the rise of remote and hybrid working arrangements, geographic pay differentials are becoming a more prominent topic of discussion, and a highly complex component of compensation. It can be difficult to determine how to approach compensation for people who are performing the same work from different places or if it makes sense to differentiate compensation between remote and on-site workers in areas with different costs of living. Borderwork’s Geographic Pay Policies study found that of the 62% of organizations with existing geo-pay policies, 44% of them are considering modifying or have modified their policies due to the increase in full-time remote work. There is a growing need to develop strategies to navigate this in the coming year as inflation continues to impact the cost of living and the concept of how we work continues to evolve.

Getting Creative – Compensation is both a science and an art. Creative solutions to compensating the workforce are always worth exploring. Effective compensation programs require that you compensate the right people, at the right time, at the right level, in the right way. Creative solutions will be circumstantial but could include some of the following to effectively attract or retain the right talent: establishing new and innovative incentive programs, re-thinking employee recognition, improving leverage of sign-on and retention bonuses, offering sabbaticals, 4-day workweeks or instituting programs to emphasize your company’s commitment to making a positive social and/or environmental impact, just to name a few.

Making the effort to invest in improving your compensation IQ as an employer can be the differentiating factors when it comes to your talent strategy in 2023. Amongst the rising inflation rates, the cost-of-living crisis and changing attitudes towards work, understanding how to leverage compensation as a way of making you stand out will help ensure you are bringing in the right people. To discuss growing your compensation IQ or reviewing your compensation strategy in more detail, get in touch with me at alisa.cardenas@orgshakers.com

Recently, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg laid off more than 11,000 employees due to a drop in profits, and this saw shares in the company sink by almost 20%. This is all without mentioning the anonymous reviews being left by former Meta employees on Blind – with one of them claiming that “the metaverse will be our slow death”. Suddenly, after months of being told that the metaverse is going to be the next step in the working world, people have begun to question this sentiment.

The metaverse is being marketed as the saving grace of hybrid, remote and global working. A digital space where users can interact with a face-to-face element from the comfort of their homes, allowing for company culture to remain intact, as well as revitalizing the ability to socialise with colleagues. It’s great on paper – but the whole point of the metaverse is its paperless allure.

Which brings me to the question – do we actually need it? Aside from the new wave of HR-related issues that would have to be navigated, seeing the sudden drop in its financial potential has spotlighted the fact that the metaverse may be a solution looking for a problem.

When we look deeper into what it is offering, it is presenting itself as the next step after Zoom and Teams, but is it more of just a sidestep? Video calling allows for face-to-face communication and global communication with ease, and now, after lockdown, most people have been trained and come to terms with the ins and outs of remote work. Introducing the metaverse into the workplace – which does the same thing but sounds cooler – could bring on more confusion than it’s worth. It would require an entire new set of training for colleagues to understand how to use the virtual reality headsets, as well as the purchasing of said equipment.

And while avatars are meant to make interaction in the metaverse more personable, will they be able to capture the non-verbal cues that are just as telling as someone’s verbal communications? Or will it require employees to become fluent in Cybernese, the emerging non-verbal language of the digital world? On Zoom, we can still see facial expressions and, to a degree, examine body language, but would this be the case with an avatar that is mimicking your behavior, or would it require a new set of knowledge entirely?

There is obvious attraction for a digital world – and the strides that could be taken in more hands-on jobs (such as mechanical engineering and biomedicine) could be life-changing for the future. But in terms of office jobs, it may be pulling at the wrong lever. A recent poll that OrgShakers conducted seemingly confirms this, as 50% of respondents did not want to use the metaverse, 22% didn’t know what it was, and no one said they were excited about it.

And with products like Sneek – which allows remote workers to see their fellow colleagues as they work and jump into instant video chats with them – the concerns that hybrid work has brought are already being solved without the need to venture into a digital landscape.

As it stands, the metaverse’s integration into corporate life could go either way – but while up to this point I had been viewing it as a huge step forward in the way we work, I am now beginning to think that we all might be blinded by its hype.

If you are thinking ‘what on earth is Cybernese?’ you may be surprised to discover that it is a rapidly evolving language that we all need to become fluent in – fast. Because Cybernese is the non-verbal, online language we have all begun to adopt since the mass exodus from the office to remote and hybrid work.

In the physical world, the idea that body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice can communicate as much as the actual words coming out of your mouth is a familiar one. So, being able to ‘read’ people is an important skill which can give us valuable insights into what they actually think and feel about something (or someone).

With more and more interaction happening online, we are now having to interpret a whole new set of non-verbal signals – Cybernese.

For example, services like Zoom and Teams have become an integral part to working from home. And whilst now it is more difficult to decipher body language from just a person’s head and shoulders, there are other aspects of non-verbal Zoom etiquette which convey a whole new set of different meanings – intentional or otherwise.

Do you attend meetings with your camera off? A recent study found that 92% of US executives believed that employees who had their cameras off probably did not have a long-term future at their organization.

And what about the background you use when on a video call? What does it imply about you and the kind of worker you are?

It is no surprise that those who are already somewhat fluent in ‘Cybernese’ are Gen Z workers – they are digital-natives with an almost intuitive understanding of the internet and social media. Research shows that 98% of Gen Z own a smartphone, and almost all of them use social media in some form. For younger workers, myself included, understanding all the non-verbal nuances in the digital world is something that we just know how to do – partly because we were the ones who invented them!

Take the emoji for instance. Originally conceived as icons to help add expressions to your text messages, many emojis now hold hidden meanings that are much less obvious to those who have not grown up using them. If your manager is sending you an eggplant emoji to tell you they are having a veggie parmigiana for dinner, this may not quite come across as intended…

Pre-pandemic, ‘Cybernese’ existed primarily as a means for young people to communicate amongst themselves without the older generation understanding what was being said. This is not a new idea; in the Victorian era flowers were used to send silent messages, with different flowers holding different meanings. Similarly, in 1970s New York, many gay men would use a handkerchief code to signal to each other. So, having a hidden, non-verbal language is not a new phenomenon – but what is new is the sudden need for this language to be understood by almost everyone in order to avoid any potential mishaps.

‘Cybernese’ could open a potential communication gap between staff – especially those from different generations – and so introducing a new set of training for digital non-verbal cues would be a great way to ensure that employers and employees alike know exactly how to market themselves. And with Gen Z steadily flowing into the workforce, as well as remote and hybrid working becoming more and more popular, now is the perfect time to seize this opportunity.

To get in touch with us and discuss this topic further, head over to our contact page.

As we venture into this new year, none of us can be sure what the future holds. However, with ‘unprecedented’ events becoming commonplace this decade, there are sure to be more than a few surprises in store for employers over the next 12-months.

But the truth about ‘surprises’ is that very often we will have had an idea they were coming our way. So, whether it’s based on the extrapolation of an established trend or simply ‘gut instinct’ based on years’ of experience, we asked the OrgShakers to predict what will be surprising us in 2023.

Stephanie Rodriguez believes that many organizations will be wrong-footed by the increase in employees putting boundaries around their working hours. A significant proportion of business leaders and front-line managers still cling to the belief that staff ‘prove’ themselves by how long they work and their ability to always be available. With the rising popularity of remote working, it has become even more difficult to adhere to normal working hours due to the ability to work whenever from wherever. And so 2023 is going to see the misnomer that is ‘quiet quitting’ actually becoming a necessary step for the physical and mental wellbeing of employees. Learning to navigate this new attitude towards work is going to be a new challenge in the coming twelve months.
Therese Procter believes that businesses may falter due to organizational paralysis. Quite simply, the past 2-3 years have been so overwhelming that many leaders are struggling to identify a way forward. Therefore, she believes that we are going to see many more organizations reaching out to consultancies about people trends and how to navigate through difficult times. In addition, 2023 is the year of power skills for those in charge – she believes there is going to be a surge of leaders developing their emotional intelligence and empathetic skills, as this will help them to really understand the evolving needs of their team.
Amanda Holland believes that leaders may be surprised by the increasing importance their employees place on ‘making a difference’. The social agenda has been brought to the forefront in 2022, and now many people want to work somewhere that they believe reflects their values. Allowing employees to play their part in driving the social impact of the organization could enhance recruitment and retention result and accelerate collaboration and innovation in the workplace. She also believes there is going to be a rise in demand for remote work in the metaverse, as people seek a more realistic human connection in a virtual space.
Sayid Hussein agrees that there is a greater focus on the digital employee experience, adding that this may also accelerate the adoption of the four-day working week. 100 UK companies have already signed up for a permanent four-day week which he believes will act as a catalyst to propel this idea forward. Firms will, however, need guidance in navigating this new way of work.
Pamela Kingsland predicts that a surprise employers may encounter in the coming year is the rise of individualisation in corporate culture. The demand for flexible work schedules, tailored rewards and benefits, and personal development plans will continue to rise, as well as the emerging concept of individualised wellness. This would be data driven, and focus on people having customized gut biome treatments, individualised vitamins, and tailored exercises to a person’s specific metabolism, as well as neurological fingerprinting. Bodily health and brain health will play a big part in optimizing people to their full potential, not just as workers but as human beings.
And finally, one of the biggest surprises that Alisa Cardenas believes employers may see is the establishment of white-collar trade unions. There has been a significant rise in employee consciousness as we have emerged from lockdown. People have become more inclined to question the five-day, nine-to-five structure. Remote and hybrid work has introduced a new type of flexibility and being faced with a pandemic has caused a mass recalibration of what people value. We may see this begin to emerge through new unions being established in the corporate sectors.

What we do know for certain is that 2022 brought with it many unexpected surprises that had a great effect on the working world, and so as we venture into 2023, OrgShakers are ready to help employers optimize every opportunity that comes their way. To get in touch with us about your people strategy or organization dynamics, head over here.