A few years back the trend in HR was to bring your whole self to work. We promoted being psychologically safe at work and not hiding our true selves.  While there is still some validity to this notion, the new emerging trend as many of us return to the office, is to leave part of ourselves at home and only bring our best, professional self to work.

In recent issues of EPTW we’ve covered quiet quitting and quiet firing, and now I’m hearing about the newest recruitment trend – quiet hiring.

Recently a CEO’s post on LinkedIn stirred up a bit of controversary over calling one’s work a family. The post by Daniel Abrahams read, “Stop calling your company a ‘family.’ Parents don’t fire their children for poor performance or lay them off to cut household costs when they’re struggling to put food on the table.”

For those of you close to my age, do you remember as a child thinking about what the year 2000 would be like?  I envisioned us all living like the Jetsons.  I even had my own personal robot.  But as we got closer to the actual year 2000, it didn’t feel that different. Yes, technology had advanced, but we weren’t the Jetsons!

I hear a lot of talk around remote and hybrid work for employees, but not as much about leading from a remote location.  While there might be some unique challenges in leading from afar, great leaders can lead from anywhere.

My summer reading list just keeps getting longer, and I just stumbled upon this list of seven New York Times bestselling business books that all professionals should read.  I’ve only read one of them, so I guess my list just grew by six more books!

Burnout has become a negative trend in the workplace today.  It seems more common today as workplaces deal with the pandemic and a potentially impending recession.  Leaders are trained to identify and manage burnout in their employees.  But who is looking out for them?

Elon Musk recently met with the staff of twitter and during that meeting he talked about his 7-word rule for working remote – “if somebody is exceptional at their job.”

I'm sure by now you’ve seen or heard about the Elon Musk memo leaked on Twitter telling his senior staff that all employees must report to the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week.  When another Twitter user asked, “Any additional comment to people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept?”, Elon’s response, the Tweet heard around the world was, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”

In my last blog I wrote about 4-day workweeks. Since then, I learned about another option some organizations are implementing – the 4 + 1 workweek.  A week like this reserves one day per week for training and development.

Does your organization offer summer hours, otherwise known as summer Fridays, to staff? Some organizations do, and it seems to be becoming even more popular. With summer quickly approaching, this is a good time to look at the pros and cons if you are considering this flexible working option.

Presenteeism refers to the lost productivity that occurs when employees are not fully functioning in the workplace because of an illness, injury, or other condition.  While employees mean well when they work while ill, it can have negative effects in the workplace.

Since the pandemic, the U.S. has experienced what is now coined The Great Resignation.  The nation’s quit rate reached an all-time high this past November.  However, the national unemployment rate is now at a low 3.6%.  So, while employees are resigning, they are not resigning entirely from the workforce as many initially assumed.

Have you ever been in a meeting and thought to yourself, “this could have been an email”?  Short-form video might be the answer.

With the recent time change we were all reminded to check the batteries in our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms.  But there is one alarm that many of us might not have or think about, and that’s a toxic culture alarm.  How are we warned if our organization’s culture is becoming toxic?