2023 who?

I really can’t believe we’re almost halfway through 2023 and I’ve alluded to this before but it feels exquisite to be feeling every moment of every day. It feels amazing to be awake, out of autopilot and finding my squad worldwide.

There seems to be an epidemic of authoritarian leaders stepping forward during the changing of the guard and we’re in for some sort of reckoning as amazing humans continue to leave the workplace in droves.

A lot of this has been fueled by the false sense of humanity that many larger organizations portrayed over the pandemic, a very “come as you are”, work whenever and wherever you’d like - in the spirit of camaraderie and humanity to the point at which everyone took them up on that! Only to say in 2023, ok, remember all of that work you did to redesign your life to live optimally for yourself and your family, ok forget that and come back to the office because we need to be together.

Lies.

There are so many complex reasons as to why the workforce is demanding you come back - 1. egos, many of those in charge are from the Boomer/Gen X era and they’re treating the situation like they were expected to show up in their day forgetting that they could actually set a precedent and change for current day 2. real estate of the campuses is posing a problem, if they don’t have butts in seats then what will they do with the sprawling buildings? 3. if they allow people to work from wherever, well that’s a big tax headache…it’s mostly about money. They genuinely don’t care about how productive you were over pandemic, it doesn’t matter.

While Gen X and Boomers are joyfully coming back, millennials are maybe groaning a bit but coming back and Gen Z is saying - nope, bye. I love how unapologetic they are about it too. What has ended up happening, though, is neither camp is necessarily interested in what the other has to say so there will come a time where there will be a massive gap in the workforce if there isn’t compromise.

Active listening, let’s give it a try ;)