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This idea for the forum and conversation space was born out of sheer frustration with the gap between HR and other departments that we encounter in our work at People Not Tech and Verdant Consulting every day.
Duena Blomstrom first brought up the concept of HumanDebt and its associated workplace horrors and mental health crisis it creates in her book People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age and has since worked tirelessly to democratise the need for regular Human Work in the workplace but it wasn’t until our teams came together to build a Psychological Safety ISO add-on for our Human Work Team Wellbeing Platform we realised we are coming towards the Human Work but from two different directions. Us at PeopleNotTech from the Agile/DevOps/Tech side of learning about humans, neuro-divergence, hacking high-performing cultures, being experimental and risk-thirsty, eternally irritated by the slow change and the good folk at Verdant Consulting having arrived at the same frustration coming from the other side, the HR side, the side who was mean to set-up and encourage the Human Work to begin with.
The Secret Society of Human Work Advocates welcomes every professional from any industry and at any level irrespective of job title or skillset as long as they agree the Human Work has to be done in the workplace for the well-being of the employees which leads to the success of the enterprise
We are searching for people who agree that:
Office and organisational structures of old are no longer fit for purpose;
Most organisations have a lot of Human Debt (defined as the equivalent of TechDebt and comprised of a collection of toxicity and ailments that have resulted from years of neglect and of treating people as resources;
The HumanWork (increasing EQ, 1-on-1s, Psychological Safety and good team dynamics, changing leadership, learning autonomy, etc) are mandatory to be performed regularly in today’s environment of necessary collaboration;
Come and start building the future of humans in the workplace with us to the day when our Society will no longer have to be Secret.
Duena Blomstrom (00:02.134)
You want to go this time? You want to say hello to people?
Al (00:04.957)
Yeah, Hi everybody. Welcome back to our secret society of human work advocates, looking for ways to make more people centric and healthy cultures. I'm Dr. Alessandra Polizzi here with Duena Blomstrom and we are going to do a fun activity of going to our TikToks. We're both on TikTok and talk about some of the latest videos we've seen.
Duena Blomstrom (00:26.562)
Right. This is an experiment. haven't really worked it out. We're not very smooth. So if you're seeing this on video, which I hope you are, otherwise this particular podcast might be slightly harder to figure out. But ideally it still works on audio as well. It's because we have seen quite a number of things that we think are super relevant to anyone and we would like to share them with you. We also thought it would be interesting to do a couple of them on a blind react.
So again, maybe go and try and see this episode on video on our YouTube channel. But the reason we're doing this is because you probably have seen yourself that the world of HR has now slightly moved to TikTok and we are discussing the latest trends of what happens in the workplace over there. Sometimes there's some uncovering to be done. Hopefully that happens in these few videos that we're gonna show you. So let's get.
straight to it. And again, we warn you a couple of these are blind reacts. We don't know what's in them, but a couple of them, we are very aware what the theme is. So the first thing we wanted to show you today.
Al (01:30.033)
Yes. Hey, if people want to follow you, Duena, what is your handle?
Duena Blomstrom (01:35.273)
Right, if they wanted to follow me, that is Duena Blomstrom, believe. And if they wanted to follow you...
Al (01:41.111)
I'm your HR big sister. So HR big sister. Yeah, my big sister, energy
Duena Blomstrom (01:44.267)
a lot catchier.
Duena Blomstrom (01:49.684)
Right and useful and necessary. Let's face it we all need it and god knows I am leaning on it a lot. So let's try this thing. See where we get to if we are going to be showing you the first thing that has Kotarae. Right.
Al (01:50.855)
bossing people around.
to the next.
Al (02:13.275)
Okay, this is a great one. I picked this one before you hit play because there's a lot of talk about how the workplace is being impacted by Gen Z. For those of us who've been on this ride, we've seen same kind of freak out when millennials join the workplace, but also when Gen Xers like myself joined the workplace. I remember being in a magazine where they had a woman with a mohawk and a nose ring and it says, this your CAO?
And yeah, I wish that that journey had happened. So I think it's really interesting about, and then talking about how organizations are doing people dirty in different ways. let's watch.
Duena Blomstrom (02:57.377)
Right, and on your screen for anyone that's only listening to this and not seeing it, there's a lady that is going to be commenting on a Forbes article entitled, the 2024 great unbossing trending among middle managers careers in the workplace. So let's see what she has to say. Hopefully you guys can hear it just as well. I'm going to attempt to do some sound magic here. Let's see what she is telling us.
Duena Blomstrom (04:26.549)
Right, let's chat about this a little bit.
Al (04:27.529)
Okay, so yeah, absolutely. So one, one of my clients is a teal organization. So the self led teams concept is not new to me. However, in order to do that, you really have to have a very solid culture and psychological safety. Without it, this just does absolutely does not work. And there's been research done on teal organizations and what makes them
function and it is the ability to speak, speak up, ask questions, make mistakes, and all the things that make up a psychologically safe workplace. just doing this as a cost cutting measure to me would tell me that they are setting this up for failure.
Duena Blomstrom (05:13.132)
100%. We do have clients that are using PeopleNotTech who are Teal organizations. I think it's an incredible concept. I've written about it quite a little bit in one of my books. I think where it works and in the industries where that is done properly from the ground up with a mind to genuinely push culture in the right direction, it is spectacular. We've had on the show not long ago, I don't know if you caught that one.
The makers of Teal Unicorns, Dr. Cherry Vu out of Vietnam and her lovely husband Rob England have come and spoken to us about how they get those organizations to comprehend why they should drop structures. And one of the things that I took from that show is that their vocabulary and the concepts that they are
throwing out there to leadership would absolutely stop them at the door of many organizations that you can think of today in the sense that they talk about truth, talk about beauty, they talk about value of human things that would absolutely not hold water in a middle tier HR organization of today unfortunately.
Obviously, if you are capable to do that radical of a thing, exceptional. If you're doing it as a cost cutting exercise, as Al is saying, a very bad idea. That's a great.
Al (06:35.771)
Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that, and she mentioned this in the article as well, is that what are the downsides? The downsides are lack of development, disconnection from the business. We know that having a direct supervisor, and it can be a mentor, a coach, it can be, you know, movable team leads or different ways that you can create organization. But without that, people are just going to be floating around. And I've worked with enough executives to know
that when there's distance, there's disdain. And so if you haven't been across their path lately, then chances are they're not going to be invested in you. having this big span of control just means very little engagement. Now, I'm not arguing for people having hierarchical structures of command and control. We also know that that doesn't work.
Duena Blomstrom (07:31.691)
Mm.
Al (07:34.683)
We have to upskill our leaders to be able to navigate these situations in an effective way.
Duena Blomstrom (07:41.944)
I like that. think the organizations are ideal and it would be miraculous that they manage that. Obviously, the more command and control we have, the worse it is. But to jump from here to there, we need a whole change of understanding as to who's who and what's what and what matters. And obviously, another thing that maybe we haven't mentioned that's super important is to realize that
If you do want to do that, if you do want to do away with the existing structures, which we encourage if you do that smartly, you should do it consciously enough and deeply enough that you have realigned your values, have opened, you've busted that dialogue open genuinely, and then you have ring-fenced the business processes in a sense that will still give you the knowledge that you're
taking a long fine in terms of BAU without it completely bringing you 10 years back. And I think that's really critical if you're going to be serious about the hierarchization of organizations, if that is the thing, then you should probably take it back to genuine building blocks of what matters in your organization. Not against it, just not something that can be done haphazardly because we are finally sick of middle management.
Al (09:00.933)
Yeah, right. And let's talk about those building blocks and the role that this middle management role plays. Some of the social hazards come to mind like role clarity. Well, if we have just a flat, truly flat organization and then only senior managers knowing what my role is versus somebody else's role, how success is measured kind of goes out the door. When we think about workload and understanding
how the work gets done so that you're allocating the right amount of resources. Again, my experience at the top of the house is that they don't know what resources are taken to get work done. And so you increase the risk of burnout within your organization. So those are just two of the psychosocial hazards that I think are very clearly at risk in doing something like this.
Duena Blomstrom (09:51.474)
Right, but again, open it up, have those conversations that are smart with you. So just don't just jump into something because Forbes has to have gotten something. What is the next thing we're going to if I remember correctly?
Al (09:55.397)
Yes.
Al (10:06.279)
Maybe we'll talk about another kind of unbossing, which was the Gen Z response.
Duena Blomstrom (10:09.61)
Right.
Let's see about that. Let's see if I man this correctly this time. So the Gen Z responds to it all. Let's see.
Maybe we even turn him up a little bit so you can hear what he's saying. And then there, for anyone who doesn't see this, on the screen there's an article from Fast Company saying, are Gen Z and millennial workers descending the corporate ladder? And this gentleman is going to kind of walk us through this. Let's see what he has to say.
Duena Blomstrom (11:18.73)
Right. So that's the flip side that he's talking about to a degree, if you want to think about it that way. In the sense that he sees that as a reaction to people not wanting to go into leadership whatsoever. In particular, the younger they are, the less interested they are. But I think it's a much more nuanced topic in the sense that I see a lot of willingness to redefine life and work in the new generations. And I think
this lack of willingness to just become stuck in a corporate structure is not necessarily to do with climbing it, it is to do with remaining in that corporate structure for any length of time. think there's less and less of the new generation that would have as a life goal to retire with a watch or a plaque or a pen anymore. So I think that's part of it.
Al (12:10.299)
Yeah, absolutely. And the other part is how we've defined what it means to be a good leader is by definition is by burning yourself out, right? So, you you give, we promote servant leadership, which I support servant leadership to some extent, but not at the detriment of the mental health of the leader themselves. And we know from research, and this has been very consistent.
that the higher you go in the organization, the worse your mental health is and that being responsible for other people has been identified by the World Health Organization as a threat to your mental health. And it's funny because that's an area that we specialize in. And every time I share that, I have not had one person disagree. And so we're living in this context of accepting that that's okay.
If we accept that to be the only option, which it doesn't have to be, then yeah, they're opting out. I'd rather have my piece, right?
Duena Blomstrom (13:14.538)
That's a very interesting point and we might not talk about it enough as much as we would like because we kind of return to this it's leaders fault that organizations are non-generative and they aren't as open and as vulnerable and as empathic and as servant as we would like them to be and all that is a hundred million percent true. Nothing of what we're saying today contradicts the fact that we have a genuine leadership crisis where leaders are
unprepared for being the things they need to be for their people. That still stands, 100%. But in the situation we are in today, in the human debt ravaged world of business, the leaders we do have are burning out at a much faster rate than everywhere else. And the rate of suicide is incredibly high in the ranks of those people that are...
ceded a certain amount of power in organizations. know that obviously it's very hard to unpack that data and to figure out whether it just happens to be the life stage that corresponds and the gender, I don't want to name them necessarily, that corresponds to the higher suicide rate. But equally, we know it's not an easy gig. And when people look at it from the outside and new people look at it, they obviously will have a rejection towards it.
Again, I think this is not us saying, you know, we shouldn't have servant leaders and we shouldn't have people wanting to be empathic leaders and vulnerable leaders and leaders who apply themselves. We are just saying that there has to be a lot more resilience in these people and a lot more in-built adaptation for those that have taken on the leadership roles to kind of make sure that they take care of themselves. something that we say a lot, but I don't think it's said enough is the vast majority of leaders are not
The vast majority of leaders are people who have accidentally stumbled into people management of sorts, they have been given a team, they have been taken from their operational or technical role and asked to kind of deal with these humans. They have out of just the goodness of their hearts really applied themselves and attempted to do a good job. So it's very easy to see why they would suffer more. So obviously,
Duena Blomstrom (15:30.372)
coming into the workplace and seeing people suffering is not something that you'd want to aspire to. again, overall, do they even want to stay with the company? Do you believe that the younger generation has long term plans to remain employed with Amazon, Come Hell or RTO?
Al (15:46.781)
I mean, I think no, because of the last two things you just said, but I think if you have an organization that can help people grow and flourish and learn new things, that there would be no reason for them to leave. I think back to the preparation of managers. So I've been in leadership development for 20 plus years for a wide variety of companies. And our leadership development tends to be the equivalent of
handing someone who's been a passenger in a car the keys to go drive it. Just because I've seen it driven doesn't mean I know how to do it. But that's what we do all day, every day. And to your point, these are not roles that people necessarily sought out. It is how we compensate people and some companies have started to kind of change that. what we haven't done, and even with EQ, what we haven't done,
has been to have them look at the human behind the title. So making leaders aware that there are specific hazards to their mental health, like loneliness, and giving them the skills to navigate that. That's not a well-being strategy, that's leadership competency to stay healthy so they don't burn out, so then they can take care of their teams.
Duena Blomstrom (17:03.398)
100%. And in that same vein, I think it should be mandatory that most organizations provide leaders with one-on-one coaches. I think that genuinely has to become the norm. in that same vein, the younger generation understanding that there will be an element of body doubling, there will be an element of potentially job sharing. There are some models out there that are attempting that. I believe that if they think that the role becomes that,
more of a team than of an individual, that they will be a lot more interested in that particular bit of the gig. But again, that we will make them super excited about becoming corporate is probably very far-fetched.
Al (17:45.073)
Yeah, probably another stretch. While you're pulling up the next one, when I was doing research on my next book, I read an article about, actually it was a dissertation on AI as the perfect manager. I like the future of management because it's not biased, it knows how to provide feedback in a healthy way and it just was chilling.
Duena Blomstrom (18:10.138)
Right, it was cheating because it's very likely, isn't it?
Al (18:13.69)
hahaha
Duena Blomstrom (18:15.916)
Right, let's see where we go with that and let's see what this gentleman has to say. This is a blind react for me so we'll have to see where we get to.
Duena Blomstrom (19:22.328)
Right, that's exactly it. That's what we were saying, isn't it, at the end of the day. That's the feeling that people are getting. There's very little reward for a whole lot of pain.
Al (19:33.629)
Absolutely. I was sure I show when I teach this my burnout when leadership burnout class I teach I show this data that shows that like 60 % of managers don't take a lunch, they skip a meal every day because of their jobs. They don't take vacations, they don't sleep, they bring stuff home for work. And everyone is like nodding like that's just the job and that's it it wreaks havoc. The other thing is when you can see what burnout actually does to the team.
It decreases their psychological safety. It increases, I mean, 26 % their workload. And so the thing that leaders are self-sacrificing is not really working anyway.
Duena Blomstrom (20:14.598)
And the fact that we are putting human beings into those situations, it's quite immoral to put it mildly. And it is something we're doing readily as a society. But the burnout that you're talking about that exists at a certain level. And again, I know that people just shrug their shoulders and they like to point out at the fact that there are insane CEO remuneration packages out there.
But I'd like us to kind of take a second and acknowledge that first of all, those numbers that exist for a handful of individuals in the world are absolutely not reflective of what leadership gets paid on a day-to-day basis. In fact, if you look at the numbers, the difference between having a leadership position and not having a leadership position in the same kind of band.
is probably, it's really minimal. I don't remember the numbers exactly right now, but it's one digit percentage difference between someone who also has to do all the line management and to kind of go through the one-on-ones and ensure that they have the wellbeing of humans on their hands. And someone who doesn't have to do any of that responsibility simply delivers on their technical job. We will have to agree that that one digit percentage is not something that...
pays for that type of sacrifice. anyone out there who says, yes, but they are paid billions is really wrong. That's not at all what's happening at large.
Al (21:37.585)
rare exception and let me add to that. And if you're a woman in a leadership position within a male dominated field, the research shows that the likelihood of you being harassed increases when you move into a management position. So not only is the compensation relatively small, the risk to your mental health and to other, you know, threats increases as you move up. So it becomes kind of problematic of what's it worth.
Duena Blomstrom (22:07.524)
wish I had the numbers at hand, and I don't, and that's part of my eternal ADHD problem. But I have seen just last week statistics that said the average tenure for women in technology who are in leadership positions was, think, seven years. It's something miniscule. that is not the type of thing that anyone could be doing.
Al (22:21.053)
Yeah. Yeah.
Duena Blomstrom (22:32.464)
for a lifetime, it's a very short career, it's almost shorter than being an ice skater, is how long you're going to survive being a woman in technology. So I think that's something that we should all keep in mind and kind of try and work around. And these are terrifying statistics and I know we don't do anything with them other than kind of pull the signal here and attempt to kind of arm you with the knowledge that this is clear, but.
Al (22:42.693)
Thank
Duena Blomstrom (22:58.445)
to a degree where we're just so focused on making sure that this tribe of ours that's attempting to make change has enough of these levers of data in hand to kind of be able to stop those silly board meetings where these things are glossed over because they are this important.
Al (23:09.405)
Thank you.
Al (23:17.213)
Yeah, good point.
Duena Blomstrom (23:19.094)
I think we had a couple of other things. Let me see if I can get back to them. one of them, no, it's not as straightforward as that. not the technologist I'd like to believe I am. But I have been dying to see this lady. I've seen her talk about a couple of other things before. So let's see. So the title of this short video, everyone, is Generation Z. You have done what no other generation has done in the workplace. Let's see what this...
Genius thing is
Duena Blomstrom (24:30.462)
us.
Duena Blomstrom (24:47.97)
bless her, I think she's absolutely right, isn't she? She has a world of correct observation here because indeed this is a different world than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, isn't it?
Al (25:06.769)
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious, what did you, what is the key thing that you think that people should pay attention to with that?
Duena Blomstrom (25:16.31)
Boundaries is the keyword here and the fact that people have come in as a whole individual who knows who they are and believe that they need a certain amount of things. This is very basic adaptation, things that we didn't even know the vocabulary of, which let me tell you, boundaries is a new word to us. Adaptation is a new word to us. All of these things are brand new. This was not in the vernacular of business a minute ago. When you guys were just born,
when we were trying to make you happen and we were trying to get those IVF going, that was not a word that we had. But the fact that they exist now as a vocabulary for all of us and we can have these conversations under those terms are thanks to this generation, I would say.
Al (26:00.817)
Yeah, absolutely. I think what's interesting about boundaries is that you really only need to pay attention to them when people are crossing them. And so our generation, for sure, the one before us, especially ours, had zero. It was all hustle culture and, you know, think and act like an entrepreneur. And I was guilty of the same thing of like, you have to, you know, think about work.
constantly in order to be value add. And we gave up all those boundaries. And one of the reasons why I hypothesized that COVID had such a big impact on the world of work is it gave us the space to pause and look up and realize what we had been doing with our lives and that we hadn't set those boundaries.
Duena Blomstrom (26:50.604)
Very, very true. The moment of breath and of re-evaluating and of looking inside is what we collectively as humans needed. And this is being brought back into the workplace by this generation. I talk a lot about this in my other podcast called NeuroSpicy at Work, because the realization that one is neurodivergent and that one should be respectful of their existence when they come back into the workplace and they offer themselves to the workplace.
is something that's very new. Again, this did not read quite like this 10 years ago, that's for sure, or 15. But it is something that we have to lean into severely. We should make it into law really quickly. We should make it into policies in any workplace where we can. We should make very basic things such as
everyone coming in with readme, a workplace policy. I can't believe that this is not something that has become at scale, a process that every other HR department has taken on because it is incredibly simple to do and monumentally different for the lives of everyone that does interact with these separate readme. For anyone who hasn't heard the idea, it's really simple.
once you start in a team and when that team introduces themselves to you, there is an exchange of these mini documents if you wish to just explain how you function, what you know about yourself, which you're willing to disclose and what things you'd like to see happening within your potential construct of your potential workplace. What would be able to happen so that you are more accommodated and you feel like you're landing on your true self, you're giving yourself properly to work in a way that doesn't
cut over these boundaries that we're discussing. So if everyone just did this simple exchange at the very beginning of a team working together or anytime that someone new comes in, you'll have a very different world.
Al (28:46.959)
I've never heard of that. Read me, is what it's called. Interesting.
Duena Blomstrom (28:49.245)
Right. Read Me. So Read Me comes from the fact that every program used to come in with a little bit of a this is what it's meant to do, just a documentation. That same thing, but for humans where you might want to say nothing much. You might say, I'm fine. I work just like everyone else. I'm neurotypical. I don't need much of anything. But you might have a full page of, right, I can't be called. Please try to not call me. Call me if something's burning, but don't otherwise. Or
Al (28:57.691)
Hope it's not okay.
Duena Blomstrom (29:17.21)
I get mad RSD when you criticize me. Could you tell me some other way? As long as we kind of all enter with these presentations of your calling card of what you'd like to see happen in your work life. Ideally, you can put those together and the good manager and the good facilitator will be able to just kind of make a nice little play out of it. We have one in the software where people just sit down, read the various readme's, exchange kind of where they see the intersection, see how their work
days could be separated differently. And then going at it, the very feeling of I have been seen, have been taken into account, there will be potentially accommodation where possible for me is giving that team a lot more umph than otherwise. So think it's a really, really easy trick that anyone can take and implement tomorrow. You don't need budget for that. You don't need the CEO to agree for that. You just can start it tomorrow.
Al (30:11.303)
Well, no, that's amazing.
Duena Blomstrom (30:14.591)
Speaking of Gen Z, was one that we wanted you to see as well. I one more, think. Then there's one that we got to talk about a bit different, but it's not on the theme, but it's something we need to discuss because it's terrifying and interesting at the same time. Anyhow, speaking of what you were saying earlier, this lady on the screen for anyone not seeing.
Al (30:19.677)
We're doing another one? We're doing another one? Alright.
Duena Blomstrom (30:38.947)
is talking about how young Americans are finally ditching girl boss culture and gen Z is done with hustle culture. I have to say there are thousands of these going around these days and I've written about it multiple times, but I feel it in my bones having spent 20, 30 years kind of being at the top of companies and at the top of various organizations. It's a hard one to...
let go of, if you wish. Together with the unmasking of who we really are as leaders, as humans, as females, as neurodivergent individuals, that comes with it, but it hits right at the center of what we've built our professional identities on. So let's see what she has to say and learn from her.
Al (31:09.701)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Duena Blomstrom (32:16.626)
Well, yes and no, think she's a little bit contradicting herself there, unfortunately, because as she well puts it, it's really difficult not to girl-boss and not to hustle when you have to because you financially still need it. And yeah, and that's where the problem is.
Al (32:26.545)
Yeah, right.
Al (32:31.367)
Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that what's interesting about that is just how we define what work is and what it means to be employed. And I mean, we've had so much where people have identified as their job. I mean, I was guilty of that too. But this, I think the combination of a generation that had a traumatic event during their formative
brain formation and brain development called COVID and a gig culture, a gig economy that's continuing to grow, you have people who are easily activated and abandoning your job is one way that coping mechanisms from trauma can show up, which is flight, right? And so you've got, and then the opportunity around the gig economy. I think,
that there's this kind of melding together of those in an interesting way that's causing people to question, you know, what is capitalism? What is the purpose of money? What is the purpose of life? And let's toss in there the digital nomad concept. I mean, you and I both are not living in one place, right? So for me, I'm traveling every few weeks to different parts of the country, different parts of the world.
as a digital nomad because I can and I like seeing the places. So I'm not the only one doing this. This is something that a lot of people are doing that one, it decreases your costs because you can live anywhere and you get to really experience other parts of the world and other cultures.
Duena Blomstrom (34:16.317)
Right, it's a combination of many, many factors, some of which are really good and some of them are really, really sad actually, but they're still there. So where we are at is where there's a lot less emphasis, and this is positive obviously, a lot less emphasis on work being what should define us. You only have to spend five minutes on an episode of Downtown Abbey to know that we are not there anymore where we live and breathe what we do.
With that said, the in-between parts where we were all sacrificing life and limb to get to a goal and to really hustle hard, those don't necessarily disappear. And I think I would caution against us putting labels on what people do at the macro level, because it is more of an attitude to a day-to-day that is probably the culprit we should look at today in the sense that
if at all the new generation is going to help us keep these boundaries, the boundaries should be around how much of ourselves are we willing to give at any one point to whatever we are doing at that time. And whether we choose several of those endeavors or we choose one and we leave it often and so on, that might be a little less important. But I think what really matters is how much are we really spending of our emotional capital, of our intellectual capital.
and of our best years in the work realm. But like you very well said, thanks to AI, thanks to digital finances, thanks to a couple of the big things that have happened over the last 10 years, really, we can and should look at the economy and say, are we going in the right direction? Is this capitalist thing going to last whatsoever? And we know it's not. I if you look at the 1972 theories, if you look at everything
Al (36:10.781)
I'm done.
Duena Blomstrom (36:14.054)
that suggest we probably have another few years of this only. It's almost tempi passati to be discussing the economy as it is today, as those structures are not fit for purpose and they're crumbling as we're looking at them. But of course, anyone listening to this has lived through the same probably past that we have where, you know, from a very personal perspective, I never really quite understood why people would stay in one industry. I've moved industries three or four times over my life, moved from FinTech to...
Al (36:26.333)
you
Duena Blomstrom (36:43.886)
Agile and DevOps and from technology to the people business and back around, I never really comprehended the barriers between them really. And they don't make sense if you stop to think about them. And if you have a neuro-spicy brain, they make zero sense and there's no reason to have these delimitations between things. So I can completely understand the need that's a lot more pregnant today for people to kind of...
not job hope, but change and learn and evolve in different ways that is no longer bound by these constructs of industry or time or the very silly things we used to keep as markers of success before don't exist anymore. Companies are not more worthwhile if they've had the retention of 100,000 bums on seats. That's not what's going to be
the going forward marker of success, but more that you are efficient with however few people and AI you might be having and that those people you have that are working your AI are happy enough, have boundaries, have provided the AI with the readme and everyone's going home to have a relaxing evening.
Al (37:54.821)
Well, and I'm just gonna add one more thing to this, which is the other piece, you're painting a very interesting picture of the AI, which I do not wanna gloss over, is that research shows, this is common sense, but research shows that when you change jobs, changing jobs is the best way to get a pay increase, right? And so as long as we continue to understaff and under resource and not pay people living wages, then...
they're going to keep moving and pushing the market to go up and up and up because we haven't adjusted for inflation cost of living. Somehow we've allowed companies to have only those few at the very top making the bulk of the money and then everyone else struggling. So I think that's also part of the job hopping mentality as well.
Duena Blomstrom (38:46.757)
We should do an entire episode on compensation and whether that's fair at all, whether that's correct at all, whether we are compensating on things that are worthwhile or not. think that's good one. Yeah, that's going to be a good one. But speaking of jobs and so on, let's not forget that we are going through a horrible market moment in many economies and in many various...
Al (38:52.313)
I'm do short show of this right now.
Duena Blomstrom (39:11.449)
parts of industries, like in the technology realm, you have over 230,000 people who have lost their jobs over the last two years. There is an insane influx of individuals on the market. It's really difficult to now look at the market without noticing that there are really good names, really good heads that are struggling to find a good place. We've talked about this.
tangentially before, but there's a lot of the ins versus the outs when it comes to people that are in situ in jobs versus not. And I think a very interesting tie in will be this last one that we're going to let you see. And we will just give it to you without comment at first, because if what this gentleman has to say is even remotely the case in many places, then it explains what we're seeing in the job market these days.
We're just going to look at this one bit where there's a discussion about what's happening to jobs. And on the screen right now, a young man is talking about or has written that he has gotten fired from his second job because he wouldn't post a ghost job.
Duena Blomstrom (41:12.398)
you
Duena Blomstrom (42:35.779)
think we're going to leave it at that. He does go on to kind of talk about his particular issue. And I shudder to think how unresolved it remained. But we watched it so you don't have to. And if you are one of the people that have ghost jobs on their consciousness, we don't envy you. It must be horrible going to sleep at night because just the amount of hope and the amount of future
building in people's heads when they believe they're going to be getting a job that then ends up being nothing is hard to underestimate because the reality of it is anyone who I call this stiming with in apply on LinkedIn, it's a new term I was laughing with my team about the other day, which is essentially
people who will just in apply because they do match that potential description, but they do it more for a bit of a kick of, wouldn't life be nicer if I were to move to Malta or to Palo Alto and start this one job. But obviously that's not a great response to what the market is throwing at them either, but people do that because of that mini second of dopamine injection you're getting from imagining a potential alternative future for yourself. But if you extrapolate that to
Al (43:41.789)
That's not funny.
Duena Blomstrom (43:57.942)
The genuine effort of writing a cover letter, of rewriting your CV, of putting yourself in the shoes of this hopeful new life you're going to have should you be accepted for this job, only to be doing that for something that never ever existed is just genuinely despicable in my view.
Al (44:19.847)
Well, and I think, agree, and the motivation behind doing it makes zero sense. Well, one, if I'm posting jobs in order for my employees to work harder, I've already accepted that they're out looking at jobs, right? Like, client said that, well, when they search and they're gonna see there's other jobs like theirs, I mean...
Duena Blomstrom (44:38.935)
Bye.
Al (44:45.853)
I just, don't understand that logic because that would tell me, look, they're going to be resourcing more people. Like most people don't think that their job's being replaced. Now, having been in charge of recruiting before myself, we would post jobs that weren't necessarily specifically open, but more building a pipeline. So we had like, we always knew we needed salespeople. So we would post sales jobs and we would say approximately this region, we don't know 100 % sure because we wouldn't want to be empty.
Duena Blomstrom (44:48.183)
All right.
Duena Blomstrom (45:15.255)
Hmm.
Al (45:15.421)
But we were very transparent about that. We weren't posting it and then, you know, never looking at the applicants. But I, and I have seen people post jobs before there's an opening, but I've never seen them post a job with zero intent of ever hiring. That's just something that's very new, very new.
Duena Blomstrom (45:35.415)
It's near and horrible and it's terrifying. it's there's there's so many levels of wrong there. I like that response about that's not our problem. It's a child's problem. It's you know, I have a really big bugbear about, you know, hiring and recruitment being separate from the people business in many ways and what kind of interaction that creates. But also the fact that every company that is lowering themselves to to
to flooding the market with what looks like jobs and then that becomes a data point for how well your economy is doing. I do have to wonder whether any of the numbers we're seeing at all are in effect anywhere for it.
Al (46:13.725)
That's a fair point. Yep. That's a fair point. Sorry.
Duena Blomstrom (46:17.918)
Right, this is not a good thing to end it on, but if you're listening to this, what we covered today is that tier organizations are fun, ideal thing to strive towards. Ideally, we'll be working in places where we've exchanged the rhythmies and the hierarchical structure doesn't matter because they are generative. They don't have the human debt that's been knocking us down for as long as it has.
Again, ideally there would be no fake jobs in those organizations, but we've watched these TikToks and more so you don't have to and we'll talk to you next week about this and many, many more things, HR and people, human debt, tech debt and just individuals in the workplace related.
Al (47:06.715)
Yeah, thank you so much for joining.
Duena Blomstrom (47:08.96)
Thank you. Bye.