Performative Work; Tattoos; Mindfulness, Psychedelics, and Leadership; WFH Productivity; Financial Wellbeing
A cross-posting from Bob Merberg's LinkedIn digest for professionals creating new ways to work. To avoid duplication, this post was not sent to Heigh Ho subscribers.
✍️ Fresh Ink
“If you are discriminating in the labour market against those with tattoos, you’re going to be left with a pretty small labour pool.” — Michael French, chair of the department of health management and policy at University of Miami, quoted by Pilita Clark in Financial Times.
☠️ He Who Is Without Kryptonite...
We all complain about toxic co-workers and toxic leaders, but nobody identifies as one. Ever think we might each be someone else's "difficult person"?
"Make the work environment better by limiting toxic people..." — A Work In America survey respondent
An unexpected finding from APA's survey: 13% of remote workers described their current work environment as toxic. ☢️
🥱 Working Hard (Not Hardly Working)
Employees in India, Japan, and Singapore spend more time doing "performative work" compared to other countries, according to some analyses of Slack's State of Work 2023 report. Does this jibe with your observations? Is it a good use of data?
Many commentators interpreted performative work as employees "pretending" to be busy.
But Slack cites "meandering meetings, a deluge of email, and busywork" as examples of performative work and positions it as an organizational norm employees navigate around.
We found no direct correlation between employees feeling pressure to be seen doing performative work and real, measurable gains in what’s being produced. — Slack
There's a lot to unpack about performative work.
🧘🏼Lead Here Now
What do you think "it" is? 👇🏼
It made me examine myself and the world around me in more compassionate ways while recognizing personal complexities that contribute to effectiveness and productivity in a work setting. — 31-year-old executive.
...One of many (positive and negative) testimonials from the recent study, Altered States of Leadership: Mindfulness Meditation, Psychedelic Use, and Leadership Development. Read a layperson's summary in PsyPost.
🤷 I Dunno How WFH Affects Productivity, and Neither Do These Guys
Media outlets and return-to-office b̶l̶o̶w̶diehards had a field day when Stanford's usually pro-Work From Home Institute for Economic Policy Research proclaimed, "Fully remote work is associated with about 10% to 20% lower productivity than fully in-person work."
They didn't mention that their estimate of #productivity shrinkage was based primarily on only three studies of distinct populations: One US-based Fortune 500 company, IT workers at an Indian tech firm, and randomized data-entry workers in India. No way is this solid ground to make sweeping statements about productivity.
Otherwise, the report's a lovely rundown of the state of remote work, hybrid arrangements, and return-to-office.
👌🏽 “I’m Okay; The Economy — Not So Much.”
The gap between Americans’ perceptions of their Financial Wellbeing and their perceptions of the US economy more than doubled between 2019 and 2022, from 25 to 55 percentage points.
(The Autonomy in the Economy: Fed survey respondents were also asked about autonomy... "Nearly 6 in 10 said they often or always chose how to complete tasks, compared with 37% who said they often or always chose which tasks to work on." Autonomy was lower for Black and Hispanic workers.)
🌈 Winner of the Glass Almost Half Full Award
No one'll accuse Gallup of suffering from ToxicPositivityariasis, with its (what seems like) hourly updates on the dire state of employee engagement. But they buried the lead in this chart (below). I'm thrilled for the 35% of workers who are "Thriving in Life." But shouldn't the chart title be "Almost Two-Thirds of Global Workers Are Struggling or Suffering"?
In the US, "thriving workers" are at an all-time low (since Gallup started measuring) of 52%, while "struggling workers" are at an all-time high of 45%. Visit Gallup for data and their analyses.