January 2023 – Live an Untethered Life

Did you make your own personal resolution for 2023? Lose weight? Exercise More? Tik Tok less?

For Profit Corporations are supposed be treated like persons also. Albeit soulless and immortal. Perhaps they could make their own resolutions. And I don’t mean the type of resolutions appointing auditors for the new year. I mean resolutions that can cause real positive change.

After working in the not-for-profit charitable sector for over 32 years, I am hoping Corporations might do their own bit and work more for the social good.

Allow their own staff to volunteer for charitable organizations.
Incorporate real ESG goals into their financial reporting.
Internalize external costs to the environment. If you are damaging the environment in some fashion, then step up and stop foisting these costs onto society at large.
Stop greenwashing. What goes around comes around. Trying to artificially green up your brand will eventually cause your credibility to take a major hit. Eventually.
Embrace the low carbon economy. Eventually, high carbon economics will be phased out. And an innovative company would not want to be stuck on a high carbon intensity business plan and stranded on a slowly diminishing iceberg. Literally and figuratively.
Focus on reducing the rate of climate change instead of focusing on mitigating the effects of climate change which simply allow business as usual.

So, here’s looking forward to 2023 instead out looking for 2023.

This sounds like a relatively new phenomena where employees simply do the bare minimum. But the quitting part sounds like employees are not fulfilling their job description or their objectives. Quiet Quitting Employees (QQE’s) are not actually quitting anything it seems.

Instead, this describes a lack of engagement with their organization. This issue sounds like the same issue organizations faced for generations.

Back in the day, the solution we told our children was to follow their bliss as suggested by Joseph Campbell. Before this concept, those in HR departments recommended Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where self-actualization was rated the top need. And even before this Jung suggested individuation which is to self-realize with the aim of moving toward psychological wholeness.

At least to me, QEE does not sound like a new problem. But there have been various new causes such as COVID which broke apart the social structures of countless organizations.

For 2023, here are the top five methods to increase employee engagement by increasing:

Efficiency. Better technology and project management can reduce wasted time which increases frustration.
Communication. Not more communication, but information that can draw staff in further.
Recognition. This captures the standard advice of catching the employee doing something good.
Work Flexibility. Virtual work is the way to go COVID. Employee expectation now includes the partial ability to work at home.
Intrinsic Motivation. The above extrinsic motivators work towards the gold standard of intrinsic motivation.

Have a great 2023 Everyone!