99: A.I. Secrets at Work, Tech Email Leaks, PLUS What to do when you want to give up, & More! – This Week in Work 21st May 2024

Welcome to This Week in Work, where dive into this week’s hot topics in the workplace, and answer your burning questions!

News Roundup

AI in the Workplace: A Hidden Revolution?

Chat GPT continues to make waves across industries, with many employees quietly integrating this tool into their work processes. A recent Forbes article highlights a Microsoft report stating that 52% of workers using AI prefer not to disclose it to their employers, fearing it might render them replaceable. Should companies encourage an open environment where AI is viewed as a tool for enhancement rather than a threat?

Internal Tech Email Leaks: Amazon’s Operational Secrets

An intriguing leak from the ‘Internal Tech Emails’ Twitter account reveals Amazon’s meticulous meeting templates, shedding light on the tech giant’s operational efficiency. Despite criticisms of its corporate culture, Amazon’s systematic approach to meetings could serve as a blueprint for other organizations aiming for operational excellence.

What Workers Want: Shifting Trends in Work Perks

A HuffPost article, backed by a survey from Open Study College, delves into the evolving preferences for work perks among the UK workforce. The survey reveals a strong preference for flexible work arrangements and meaningful benefits like robust pension schemes and professional development opportunities over traditional perks like office parties and desk beers.

**Special Segment: Football and Management**

As the Premier League season wraps up, we reflect on Jurgen Klopp’s final game as Liverpool manager. Klopp’s parting words resonate with leadership and change management principles, emphasizing belief, support, and the continuous push for excellence. His approach provides a masterclass in managing transitions and inspiring a team towards future successes.

Workplace Surgery

We tackle some pressing workplace issues:

• A listener shares the challenge of unexpected resignations despite offering great benefits and a positive work environment. How can companies better understand and prevent these surprises?

• Another listener confesses confusion over the concept of employee engagement. We’ll break down what employee engagement means, why it’s crucial, and how it can be enhanced to benefit both employees and the organization.

• A weary business owner expresses fatigue from constant firefighting and contemplating giving up. We discuss strategies for managing stress and refocusing on business growth rather than just problem-solving.

Resources

All the links mentioned in the show.

Connect with your hosts

• Connect with Al on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn
• Join the discussion about this episode on LinkedIn
• Email: podcast@TruthLiesandWork.com
• Follow us on Instagram @truthlieswork
• Chat with us on Twitter @truthlieswork
• YouTube channel for the podcast @TruthLiesWork
• Check us out on TikTok (LOL!!!) @truthlieswork

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Leanne Elliott: Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award winning psychology podcast brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I’m a business psychologist.

Al Elliott: My name is Al. I’m a business owner.

Leanne Elliott: We are here to help you simplify the science of work.

Al Elliott: Yep. Don’t forget Tuesdays. It’s Leanne and I, we are just talking about the, uh, what’s going on in the world of work. And also we have the world famous weekly workplace surgery. And then Thursdays, we go, we go back to the interview style where you’re going to have, we’ll bring experts in who are going to tell you all kinds of cool things.

Leanne Elliott: But as this is Tuesday, we start every Tuesday episode in the same way. It’s my favorite time of the week, and I hope it’s yours too. It’s time for the news roundup, Al, cue the drum roll.

Al Elliott: Okay Lee,

Leanne Elliott: so what have you got today? chat to Jupiter, chat GPT. She continues to be everywhere. Doesn’t she? I was, I was back in the UK last week.

You might’ve heard. Um, and a friend was telling me how they’ve actually been using chat GPT in their job without their boss really knowing, um, and how their boss has just been bit a bit mind blown by the work that they’ve been knocking out recently. Um, so No names, of course. Um, but yeah, but it turns out this is a bit of a trend.

So there’s an article in Forbes, um, this week that found a recent report from Microsoft, 52 percent of workers using AI at work feel hesitant to disclose it, fearing it might make them appear replaceable. Interestingly as well, the report LinkedIn and direct software usage and found a preference among workers to use their rather than relying on those provided by their employers, perhaps substandard.

I don’t know, but it’s been dubbed as B Y B Y O I A. Oh, I

Al Elliott: like that.

Leanne Elliott: No, B Y O A I.

Al Elliott: Yes, I knew what you meant. B Y O A I.

Leanne Elliott: I like that. Um, so yeah, Microsoft have, um, have come up with that. Um, so yeah, basically it means that workers are opting for publicly available tools like ChatGPT, which they integrate into their daily workflows.

And on their own terms, let’s be honest. We all do it. We all use AI tools for whether it be drafting that sales email or perhaps even a podcast show note. Not us. Um, it’s efficient, you know? Um, so that is the question. Should we be worried about sharing this with our employees? Is it going to impact our job security?

Or should organizations in 2024 be of the mind that fostering an environment where AI is seen as a good thing for enhancing productivity, efficiency, and supporting innovation? Does it simply return human time to more value add activities? Our thoughts.

Al Elliott: Big fan of, uh, of AI, as you know, um, everything we do here is got some kind of AI element in it.

Um, and I’m not a big fan of when you say, right, let’s go write an article and let’s go right. Don’t do me an article on Sunset because you’ve seen on Twitter and X or whatever people say Delves. And that’s and I does use the word delve all the time. But in terms of actually just things like Um, here’s a headline.

I used it for a, um, a thumbnail recently. I uploaded the thumbnail I created. Didn’t like it. YouTube. Didn’t like it. Uploaded it to chat with GPT and said, do me a favor, sort this out. This is not right. And they came back and they said they came up with some really, really good advice on how to change it, which I did change.

And I think it’s a lot better. The other thing, which, um, if we’re talking about Microsoft is that, uh, Bill Gates, I believe it was Bill Gates. It might not have been him originally, but Bill I’m pretty sure that I heard him talk about it. He wants people who are innovative and lazy because those are the people who are going to make a massive difference to the organization.

If you’re like me, innovative and lazy, then rather than sit there and do the work, you might spend 10 hours creating a system, do the work, but then your work can be done in five minutes. And if you’re doing that because you want to kind of like, all right, well, I’m going to go off to the park with my kids.

Fair enough. But at the same time, I think I should be augmenting your work. It shouldn’t necessarily be replacing your work. If it does replace your work. Yeah, quite right. That’s something to be concerned about. But actual fact, if it augments your work and it helps you to move up the level in terms of you think about if writing an email is, um, skill level one and then strategy is skill level six, it allows you to move up the scale a little bit and just be a little bit more, I suppose, precise with your thinking, deliberate with your thinking and.

Just come up with hopefully better ideas.

Leanne Elliott: Nice. Nice. So what have you seen this week, Alistair?

Al Elliott: Well, Alistair, you’ve full named me. Am I in trouble? Liao accused me of being grumpy before, but you know, you have one of those days where you’re just a bit like. Everything seems to go wrong. Like I tried, I reached out to my computer and then my keyboard stopped working.

I’m like, I don’t know what to do. It’s a Bluetooth keyboard. How do I log in? Anyway, Leanne fixed it for me. So there’s a great Twitter account called internal tech emails, which have now they supposedly leaked emails from big tech, but I think, I think they’re just, they’re just emails from big tech stuff that is in the public domain.

Um, a recent tweet recently was talking about a document from the house judiciary committee of 2024. It sounds very fancy. Um, but I’m guessing it was some kind of legal thing where there was some disclosure required. Um, and it was for Amazon. Now, regular listeners will know that Amazon isn’t really our favorite place for workplace culture.

We think there’s a lot of things that could be improved there. One of the things Amazon are really, really good at though, Um, is, uh, creating like, Systems for doing things. So, for example, I think we’ve talked before about rather than having a presentation saying this is what the project is going to do.

They just create a spreadsheet which says these are the metrics that we will measure. This is what we expect. Um, and then they just do the project and measure it against the, um, against the, the, the

Leanne Elliott: Metrics.

Al Elliott: The metrics. That’s the word I was thinking of. Thank you. So that was quite interesting. This one is about meetings.

Now, um, there is a big sort of, it’s like a thing on Twitter where you say meetings could be emails and emails often could be DMS and DMS often could be just shut the Hell up. Just don’t even bother me because I’m busy, but this meeting template is very specific about the purpose. So I’m going to read it for you.

It’s got, and you’ll see this in the show notes. You’ll be able to see a link to this, this particular thing was only really got sort of like six questions asks. First of all, it says, what’s the meeting subject or agenda. Then it talks about the duration of the meeting. That’s quite important because a lot of people set a meeting for half an hour.

And they think they’re going to fit the half an hour. And I don’t know about you, Lee, but I’ve tried that before when I’ve spoken to people and it’s been a half an hour meeting on, on zoom and I’m done after 12 minutes. And I feel quite rude going, okay, well I’m done, but. Yeah. Anyway, moving on. Um, and then the third one is critical attendees.

So it says who has to be there and then additional attendees who might want to be there. Fair enough. The fifth one is the context of the meeting. This is where it gets interesting. It’s either decision based, it’s to inform, or it’s to get input on something. If you’re having a meeting that doesn’t fall into one of those three things, It’s not

Leanne Elliott: a meeting.

It’s not

Al Elliott: a meeting. You shouldn’t be having it. And the final one is if it is decision based, so if the if the previous thing says to decision based, then what is the decision number one, number two, who needs to make the decision? And number three, is it a one way door decision? If yes, why? Just a real quick note about that, because that’s that’s, I think it’s a Bezos ism, if that’s a word, where you’ve got, it’s called a two way door or a one way door.

A one way door is when you make it to make a decision on And you can only go through it, you can’t go back, well you can but it’s really painful and expensive to go back. A two way decision is where you try something and you can just roll it back if it doesn’t work. I thought it was a really good way to structure the meetings and also just a way to constrain them and stop them just turning into just, as my father would say, gasbagging.

Leanne Elliott: Yeah.

Al Elliott: Thoughts Lee.

Leanne Elliott: I like it. I like, do you know what? Do you know what comes down to L? What? Intention.

Al Elliott: Yeah.

Leanne Elliott: And I think that’s really important in everything we do is as, as leaders, as employees, as, as, as, yeah, professionals intention. I like that a lot. And I like the thought as well of kind of who’s critical, who’s not.

It gives people permission to go like, Oh, do you know what? I’m interested to hear the outcome of that meeting. I’ve got it. Yeah. more important things to do. Um, so I’ll check in. It’s smart. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me. Um, that Amazon come up with, um, as you say, they’re very good at processes. I think sometimes they just forget that there are sometimes humans behind those processes, but in that case, I like it.

Al Elliott: Yes. What else you got, Ling? Anything else you’ve seen?

Leanne Elliott: Yeah, Hoof Post, I was looking at this week, they have reported on work perks, um, and what people actually want. We hear lots of, lots of ones flying around, don’t we? In terms of, um, fancy office complexes, especially in these times. Um, but it was basically a survey from the Open Study College of 2000 people in the UK.

So quite a chunky survey. And I uncovered some interesting insights into what people actually see as a valuable work perks, like a benefit. Um, and I’m sorry to tell you Al, but it does look like pizza Friday is officially lame.

Al Elliott: I think we all knew that.

Leanne Elliott: Yeah. Um, I mean the standout preference among employees, maybe it’ll be a surprise to you.

Maybe it won’t. Um, but the standout preference was for flexible and hybrid work. Working arrangements. A study from Chicago university also supports this preference and indicated that employees who engage in hybrid work, uh, report high levels of happiness, reduced burnout and increased energy largely due to decreased commuting times.

So there you go. Other perks that seems to do quite well was a robust pension scheme, opportunities for training, training and development and early finishes on a Friday. Um, and not to mention extended maternity. And paternity leave. Um, and then others were discounts for local activities and dinings. The ones that used to be quite popular, maybe five, 10 years ago, office parties, desk beers, pizza Fridays, even pet friendly offices are losing their appeal.

So it seems as though the tide has turned or perhaps the tide has matured and people are looking for perks that actually enhance their life and work satisfaction. Interesting, interesting, interesting. I thought. What do you think, Al? Yeah,

Al Elliott: totally agree. I mean, that makes perfect sense. Everyone, this whole RTO mandate, return to office mandate, just seems a little bit weird and perhaps a little power hungry for some people.

I don’t really understand what, what this, especially people like Zoom, who are basically, they’ve made their money during the Flexible Worthing, and now they’re going, everyone has to come back to the office. I mean, to be fair, some of these stories are reported very much as, I kind of, if in the UK, you’ll know what I mean, a daily mail style headline where it’s, it’s just taking the worst of it and it’s not really telling the full story.

But

Leanne Elliott: yeah, well, I mean, in terms of telling a bit more of that story, then the survey did also highlight another trend amongst job seekers. And I think you’ll like this one. Apparently scrutinizing company culture, either through social media. or speaking to existing employees before making employment decisions is now a common practice.

Al Elliott: Well, we’ve all known this about these, the younger generation that, that how people do things is very, very important to them. And also a brand, whether it be, um, whether you’re buying something, whether you’re taking a job, the brand is really, really important. And they find that they take someone like me, Gen X, we’d be like, okay, what’s the, what, how much do we get paid?

Where do we have to work? Is it a good job? And then, you know, Millennials, Gen Z, very much looking and saying, well, yes, but is it a good brand? Is it a good company? Are they doing good things in the world?

Leanne Elliott: Absolutely. So yeah, the advice, the advice that was summed up in that article from the CEO of Open Study College, Samantha Rutter Bryant, if you’re interested.

Al Elliott: Love those names. Yeah,

Leanne Elliott: another good name. Uh, that basically recommended that organizations need to tailor their benefits, they need to make sure people engage with them, and they need to, um, undertake ongoing employee engagement surveys To actually be able to show off the awesome things about their workplace culture sounds familiar.

Call me crazy.

Al Elliott: Yeah. And I think the tide is probably turning from when it was, the power was definitely in the recruitees hands and now it’s maybe becoming, you know, a bit parody now, but still, if you want to get good people. Then you need to give them what they want. And this is what’s so, so important.

One of the reasons I come from a marketing background, um, Leanne obviously is the expert in workplace culture, but there’s so many parallels of just saying, find out what they want and give it to them. And you’re going to get happy customers and happy employees.

Leanne Elliott: So anyway, there you go. That is, that is this week and work.

That is this week’s news roundup. If you see an article that you think that we should be reporting on or commenting on, get into it, just drop us a line, let us know and we’ll include it in next week.

Al Elliott: The links are in the show notes or just search LinkedIn for Truth, Lies and Work and you’ll find one of us.

Leanne Elliott: Yeah. So before we move on to the workplace surgery this week, I thought, I saw, I saw something over the weekend that I thought was worthy of a little, a little chatter, a little chit chat, Al.

Al Elliott: Yes. Let’s go for it.

Leanne Elliott: So yeah, I mean, football fans, or sorry, soccer fans for our American audiences will know it has been a pretty big weekend for the Premier League.

Uh, the season came to an end, Man City won again, um, And Jurgen Klopp, God bless him, oversaw his last game as the Liverpool manager. I did watch some of the, the coverage. Um, And I thought it provided a bit of a masterclass in management and succession. And I thought you’d quite like this because I’m not sure if you saw any of the coverage of Jürgen Klopp’s last game.

So the end of the Liverpool game, there’s a presentation and Jürgen Klopp gave a speech and this is what he said. I would love, I would love your thoughts on. I have paraphrases slightly because Jürgen Klopp, if you don’t know, is, is German. English is a second language. I’ve changed some of it just to make sure you understand through the, the medium of audio only.

Um, and shortened it a little bit because, you know, we haven’t got 10 minutes. So what Jürgen Klopp said is. Is. It doesn’t feel like an end. It just feels like the start. I saw a football team today full of talent, youth, creativity, desire, and greed. That’s one part of development. That’s what you need. Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten too much attention.

It feels really uncomfortable, but in this time I realized a lot of things. doubters to believers. That’s not true. Believing is an active activity. Act and you have to do it for yourself. I just said, we have to, you did it. That’s a big difference. Nobody is telling you to stop believing this club is in a better moment than ever.

We have this wonderful stadium, this wonderful training center, and we have you, the fans, the superpower of world football. We decide if we are worried or excited. We decide if we believe or not. We decide if we trust or don’t trust. And from today, I am one of you and I keep believing. Change is good. You just never know what to expect, but if you go with the right attitude, then everything will be fine.

Imagine the next season starts and you’re not waiting. No, you go full throttle into it. You welcome the new manager. Like you welcome me. You go all in from the first day. When it’s hard, you keep believing you push for the team. You don’t wait for the goal. Be on your feet before we start. We, because I am one of you now on my jumper.

It says, thank you, love. And I will never walk alone again. Thank you for that. You are the best people in the world.

Al Elliott: Oh, wow. That was incredible.

Leanne Elliott: Now what I loved about this so much bearing in mind that this guy. Is, is so iconic in terms of, I think world, world football, world soccer right now, but in terms of Liverpool, he’s, he’ll go down in like the history books with Shankly and Dalglish.

Like he is major in terms of Liverpool for a man to say that he wants to take a break because he’s basically burnt out. that he’s not retiring. He’s just decided that his job at Liverpool football club is done. And to say, and actually start a chant for the incoming manager and to say, you know, I am passing the baton on and you, I’m relying on you to, to make this transition as successful as it can be.

And I just thought what a wonderful, what a wonderful, What a wonderful sentiment in terms of any outgoing incoming manager, um, and how to manage that transition and that, that succession, I thought it was very cool. And actually there was a few different masterclasses over the coverage. We also heard from the Man City manager, um, and, and his, um, healthy rivalry and competition with Jurgen Klopp and what that now means potentially for City.

I just thought it was brilliant and I thought I’d share it. A little self indulgently as a Liverpool fan, of course, but I also thought, what a really nice message. How much more effective would your organization be if you considered this kind of passing of the baton, this transition when you have an incoming and outgoing employee, especially in, in terms of, of new manager roles, what do you think?

Al Elliott: he’s always been a masterclass, it seems. I mean, I’m not really into football. I like watching it, but I don’t really follow it like, you know, like Leandro’s, uh, but it’s, he seemed a masterclass in, in, in, in managerial skill from almost from day one. He’s you see that, um, I’ve seen quite a few clips, particularly I watched the Beckham deck, uh, documentary recently.

Um, and, um, the manager there, Alex Ferguson was, he seemed to get very, very angry when players missed opportunities. Whereas if you watch Klopp, when he misses an opportunity, he gives a massive grin, claps, and then sits back down. And I think there’s just that, does that not just tell you everything you need to know about the man and the culture that he’s built there?

Um, there’s another, there’s a saying by, I think it was Churchill who said that success is the ability to go from, you Um, uh, what’s the opposite of success? Something that doesn’t work. So go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Um, and that’s something which it seems that, you know, the last six, eight weeks, six weeks ago, it seemed like Liverpool might do it now.

Obviously they haven’t, but no loss of enthusiasm and just love for the next person. And I think that this is fantastic and it’s a great, Even if you’re not into sports, it’s a brilliant way to look at someone who’s an excellent manager, who’s built a great culture. And as you said, we’ll now be, people will tell stories about him.

Leanne Elliott: They really will. And if you are interested, I would also recommend looking at Pep Guardiola’s press conferences, some telling signs in that in terms of I’m seeing burnout, I’m seeing a lack of purpose and meaning in one’s role. And I’m seeing the loss of a, of a, you know, you know, how you have that, that.

that mate in work that just makes it worth it. I think he’s just lost his mate. I’d go back. It’s, it’s interesting. It’s worth breaking down. I’m sure some clever people on Tik TOK already are.

Al Elliott: I’m sure they are. We’re going to take a very short break and then we’ll be back with the weekly workplace surgery.

Welcome back. This, I don’t know whether this is the bit that you’ve been waiting for, whether it’s the bit you just turn off at. Let us know. I’ll be interested. I’ll be interested. If you’ve never heard this segment before, essentially, I’ve got three questions, uh, that I’m going to put to Leanne written by, could be a manager, could be an employee, could be a leader.

Um, and Leanne’s not seen these before. So I’m going to basically throw them at Leanne and she’s going to try and catch them and give you a coherent response, which so far she has. So, um, I was

Leanne Elliott: heavy as a ting. I believe you said in last week’s episode, I’ll

Al Elliott: be fair. I don’t edit. What you say is just that because you you’re an introvert, you do like to think about things.

So often I ask the question and then there’s about a 30 second gap where I just have to cut that out. Let’s start with question number one. Are you ready?

Leanne Elliott: Yes.

Al Elliott: Okay. So this person writes, we recently lost another long term employee who we believed was loyal and engaged. Their sudden resignation caught us completely off guard, and it’s not the first time that this has happened.

I’m guessing not with the same person, I’m guessing with other people. We provide great benefits, a positive work environment and regular feedback. So I’m struggling to understand why these, where these unexpected resonations are coming from. How can we find out what’s happening and prevent this from happening again?

Leanne Elliott: Well, there’s one common factor in this friend. Um, and that’s you. Um, I don’t, well, well, I don’t mean it to be harsh. I think there’s a few things here. I mean, if it, if they’re long term employees, you don’t say how long term is long term, but there’s being, being realistic about it now, you know, two to three years is probably the maximum tenure you’re going to get out the majority of employees.

They’re hitting that, that point. It’s just time for a change. If you don’t know, have you asked them? Um, you know, you’re used to giving feedback, do you accept feedback the other way to understand why people might be leaving? Maybe they do just want a new challenge. Maybe it’s something within the organization that, that just gets to breaking point after, after two years.

I don’t know, but they will. So go and ask them. And if you are uncomfortable, you can engage, um, an independent expert such as myself to run exit interviews for you. Um, so I’d recommend looking at that. The other thing I’d say is that it might just be that this is a case of natural attrition. And I think it’s worth differentiating between the two.

You know, we have voluntary turnover and we have natural turnover. Voluntary being people are probably leaving for a reason and natural being people are just ready for the next challenge. Again, Pep Guardiola, I know we talked about him quite a bit this episode, but. You know, one of the journalists like mocked and was joking with him and said, do you feel like you’ve completed English football?

You know, it’s job done. I’ve won the game. Maybe people just feel, feel the same. Um, so I, I don’t, I can’t tell you why, but I would, I would suggest that by the sounds of it, either something, there’s some kind of itch that’s, that’s hitting it at a certain point in time, or people are just ready to move on either way.

Ask them, you know, I think that’s all you can really do. The final thing I’d say is that really you shouldn’t get any surprise resignation. You should always, if you’ve got this relationship with your team, you should always have a sense of, of people not being as happy or shifts in behavior or changes in performance, even as subtle as they might be.

That you’re going to pick up on and you can almost predict in time, whether somebody’s going to hand in their notices. I mean, the other thing as well, if you want to be an extraordinary manager, is actually having these conversations with people in terms of what are your long term goals? I don’t imagine you’re going to stay in this organization forever.

Of course you’re not. So where’d you want to be in five years? And what can I do to facilitate that? Journey and that transition when, when you’re ready and when it’s right, let’s be honest, it’s sad when we have great talent leave our business, but it’s the disruption of, of the not knowing the blind side of it.

That’s what’s, that’s what’s frustrating as a business owner. It’s not, you know, accepting that somebody wants to move on to another opportunity, it’s the disruption it causes to our world and our remaining team. So whatever we can do to see that coming, even if you know, um, I, you know, my member of staff wants to completely retrain and they’re only going to be here for a maximum of three years to save up the money they need to go back to do that qualification that they want to do.

Cool. They’re going to be absolutely committed to your organization for the next three years, you’ve got the time to think about succession plans, you’ve got the time to carve out that role and what you actually need to be in your business. I think it’s just a case of, there’s a lot of fear, I think, from employees to be honest about these things, because they’re afraid that, you know, you know, businesses are just going to sack them off or performance manage them out.

And I think that’s a really naive way to think in this world where skill shortages continue and the fight for talent is still real.

Al Elliott: Totally agree with that. Um, it’s, I think it’s Virgin who says something now I’m going to butcher this, but it’s something like, um, train them. So train them to leave, love them.

So they stay or something that doesn’t mean anything to you. Yeah.

Leanne Elliott: Train them, train them so they can leave. treat them so they don’t want to, or something like that.

Al Elliott: You know, you’re making it about yourself and then don’t be unkind. You’re making it about yourself and you’re saying, how can I, Oh, I’m devastated.

All these people. Well, yeah. All right. If you start to see a trend from the answers you’re getting and get, and get someone else to do it, don’t get, you sound too much into it, go and find someone else to ask these questions. Um, and so they can be honest and then feedback to you. And it might be, it actually literally might it might be that people are leaving you, which, which is going to be hard to hear.

But that’s your problem. So then you know what to fix. Are you ready for the next question?

Leanne Elliott: Yes.

Al Elliott: Okay. Now this one is anonymous, and I think you’ll see why I have a little bit of an embarrassing confession to make. This is this is going to be like headlines. I’ve never had one like this before. I’ve heard a lot about employee engagement, and I know it’s supposed to be important.

But I honestly don’t really understand what it is or what impact it has on business. Everyone keeps mentioning it in meetings and discussions, but I feel lost whenever it comes up. Can you explain what it is for, like explain it like I’m five and why it’s so crucial. I really want to understand it, but it just feels a bit like some kind of corporate speak at this point.

Leanne Elliott: Yeah, it’s a bit corporate speak, I guess. Employee engagement is actually a psychological term rather than a corporate term. It basically means how, how much people give a monkey’s about your business and how much they want to be there. Um, so employee engagement, this is how it works, right? Predictive model of employee engagement.

Which basically means it’s like a funnel, right? So whatever we put in, we’re going to get back out, but we need to put effort in the top in terms of sales or marketing to get the, you know, the, the lovely engaged leads coming out. Is that right, Al? Am I using a fair analogy here? Yeah. Don’t know sales. No, that works.

Al Elliott: That’s a funnel. Yep. Yeah, that works.

Leanne Elliott: So we need to put some kind of effort into engaging people, into bringing people into our world, into our organization. And there’s various things that we can do to encourage that. And typically that’s things like giving people meaningful work, making sure relationships in the organization are great, making sure communication is clear, making sure people have great roles, that they’re treated fairly, they’re compensated fairly, making sure they have all the tools and resources they need to do their job.

And if we get those things right, then it basically means that people will think positively about our business and feel positively about our business. So they like it basically. And when they think and feel in a positive way, they behave in a positive way. They will engage in behaviors or enact behaviors that are going to be desirable within the organization, such as extra role effort.

Going the extra mile, such as advocating for your organization, which can be simple as, as getting a friend to use our services or advising a friend that could come and should come and work for your organization. It could be organizational commitment. So then they’re going to stay with the organization for a longer period of time.

In fact, it’s thought that only about 40 percent of people are actually engaged in their work. So actually enjoy their job. And I’m willing to invest. Energy in their job to deliver positive results for their business. 60 percent plus are disengaged and people are actively disengaged. That’s when we also tip into sabotage.

So people will be actually be doing things to just screw with the business and the business leaders. From a commercial sense, what that also means is if we’ve got people that aren’t performing, who are leaving frequently, who aren’t treating our customers very well, who. don’t really make much effort and they’re going to be on Facebook or TikTok half the day and pretend to be working.

Well, that’s going to impact performance of a business, the financial performance of our business, um, the longevity of our business. So really any organization, which has, you know, Humans that has people and particularly in more service based organizations where they’re, they’re so critical to this, you know, the, the, what your business does, employee engagement is a hot topic because without people thinking and feeling positively about our business, without them behaving in ways that we want them to, um, then we’re not going to perform and our business probably will go bust because we won’t make the money.

So that’s kind of what employee engagement is. The other cool thing about employee engagement as well actually, is there’s a massive crossover, um, between employee engagement and organizational level wellbeing. So what I mean by that, there’s lots of different things that can impact our individual wellbeing.

It could be finances, it could be things at home, it could be, um, physical aspects that affect our mental health, but a big part of it is our psychological wellbeing. Um, and that is massively shaped by, um, The world around us, the relationships around us. And of course, with that work, um, if we are engaged in our work, if we have positive experiences in our work, then it massively impacts positively our mental health, our mental fitness, our sense of wellbeing, we’re all just round, all round happier and more effective people.

Um, so that’s why people care because if you get it wrong, it costs your business. Thousands and thousands Thousands of pounds every year. In fact, it’s something like that every, I’m not going to have to be careful. I get this right, but there was some research that showed that for every employee who is disengaged, it costs the business and this isn’t, this isn’t a case of like if they leave, um, but it costs their business about 5, 000 pounds per year in lost productivity and performance.

And that’s conservative. Um, so if you’ve got lots of people who aren’t engaged, then, then that’s it. But hopefully I explained that. Okay. I think we’ve got some episodes on this. If you look back, I’m sure I’ll leave a, leave a link.

Al Elliott: Yeah. I’m pretty much used to be just to say which episodes aren’t about it.

Um, it is, I mean, in practical sense, if you’ve ever, if you have an Android and you’ve ever spoken to someone who’s got an Apple iPhone or vice versa, and you have arguments about which one’s better, then that the people who are so like all Apple heads and they’re like, right, okay, this is the only way to go.

That’s what you want your employees to feel like, to feel so ready to defend the company and so innovative. Involved in the company, that that’s what a great employee engagement looks like. Whereas, you know, Nokia, bless them, no one’s really going out there fighting the, uh, fighting the fight for Nokia anymore.

I don’t know. They’re still, I think they still make phones, but not very good ones by all accounts. Anyway, so Lee, are you ready for question number three? So this is from a business owner. So he said, I’m a business owner who built a good company, but I’m exhausted from fighting fires every day. It feels like all I do is deal with team problems instead of focusing on growing the business.

I don’t have the energy to keep going like this. And I’m seriously thinking about giving it all up. What do I do?

Leanne Elliott: Again, it’s hard to know kind of how big your business is, how many people you’ve got, how long it has been going. Um, my thought is that if you’re constantly firefighting with people issues, you might have the wrong people in your business or you might not be managing the people you have in your business very effectively.

People are, being a line manager is hard and people are work and they require, um, attention and they, they work. Require nurturing, um, but it shouldn’t be a daily headache by any means. So my thought would be, do you have the right people in your business? Are you the right person to be managing those people in your business?

Or is your business just scaled to a point where you need a really effective number two? We’ve talked before, you know, entrepreneurs are amazing in startup. They are risk takers. They are innovative. They are creative. They love the disruption. They are willing to drive people forward and people, you know, Get energy from being around somebody who has so much vision and so much passion, but your business gets to a point where your people don’t want disruption.

They don’t want ambiguity. They don’t want constant change. It might be that your people are, are pushing back a little bit because you are giving them lots of change still and ambiguity and they’re looking for stability. It feels like maybe there’s a tension here and it’s going to be about identifying where that tension, tension point is.

I mean, in terms of, of. You know, thinking of giving up, it’s well, I guess if, if it’s getting to that point where it’s seriously impacting your own sense of worth, your own sense of purpose, your own mental health. And of course that is a valid option. And I think there are lots of people that be like, no, don’t do that.

We can fix it. Maybe it is time and that’s a valid option. It’s one worth exploring. I would recommend that you engage a coach. That you work through a couple of sessions just to really understand where the, where the core problem is here and where this frustration and this overwhelm is coming from. It might not be coming from the place that you think it is.

There’s a whole world of possibilities that. You could be projecting on your people because actually you don’t want to run your business anymore. It could be that you have fallen into this entrepreneur trap and you need a more stable work environment for your people now, it could be that you’ve just recruited the wrong people into your business and you kind of do need that overhaul and go again.

Um, it could just be that, you know. Time has come and you want to walk away. I would say, engage a coach, figure out what your motivations are first, because the, the business died, the people said that’s fixable, that’s a fixable problem. If you figured out how you want to progress with this business, and if you want to progress with this business, figure that out first, then drop me an email and we’ll talk about how to figure out the people’s situation.

Al Elliott: Lovely answer. Really, really. I, I like you when you, when you talk like around about the psychology of people and then you also talk about the psychology of the actual sort of business owner. I think that’s that sets you aside. And I know I’m blowing smoke up your ass a little bit here, but that’s what sets you aside.

Can we

Leanne Elliott: say ass on the podcast? We

Al Elliott: just did twice. Um, I think the other thing is just consider that if you are like an entrepreneur, like I’m an entrepreneur and I hate saying I’m an entrepreneur, it sounds such a weird thing to say, but like that is my skillset. That’s what I like doing. I like solving problems, and if the problem’s no longer interesting, I lose interest in it.

And so maybe you just got to the point where this is your, the manifestation of you, like Leanne said, losing interest in the business because you’ve sold all the interesting problems. Now there’s problems with people which might not be as interesting to you. And I know there’s some people who won’t really understand that, but there’s a lot of people like people like Leanne, they live for solving problems around people, people who are perhaps more sort of software orientated or, you know, Sales orientated.

They don’t really want that. They’re just more excited about solving an interesting problem. So that is I hope that’s good advice. Um, let’s know how it goes. Yeah, keep in touch. Um, and if you’re coming, if you come across any one of these problems yourself, that sounds very, very familiar to you, then you can get in touch with Leanne.

Um, I believe if I just, am I going to drop you in it by saying you, you, you give everyone like one or everyone, but you give people who are potential clients half an hour free on zoom or something.

Leanne Elliott: I do. I absolutely do. I think, I think I also put a link in the, in the show notes each week where you can book direct in.

Al Elliott: So there you go. Jump on the show notes and you can book half an hour in William. Um, and just basically tell her, tell her all your problems and she’ll make them go away. Well, she won’t, but she’ll tell you how to make them go away. Leigh, I think that is the end of the episode. Anything you’ve got to add or you want to add?

Leanne Elliott: No, I don’t think so. We’re going to get some more questions on for you soon because I liked it when you answered a question. I thought you gave a really, really good. Good response and good advice.

Al Elliott: Thank you. Well, I’ll tell you what next week, then maybe I’ll do two questions for you and you do one for me.

And then if you think that if you’d rather have Leanne then go on to the show notes and Jeff, click the links and tell us that you don’t hear from me because you’re not here for me. Okay. So if you’ve enjoyed this, then there is a way to say thank you. And that is to click on the subscribe button and to also leave us a review, um, rating.

There’s two different types. You rate people, you rate podcasts, you give them like five stars, and then you can actually write a physical review. Reviews mean so much more, not only to the algorithm, but also to us because we love reading them. And even if they, we’ve had a few reviews where people have said, uh, this bit I love, but this bit I don’t.

Fine. We changed it. You’ve seen, we keep changing things every few weeks. So definitely thank you so much for listening. And I think we’re going to see you in two days time, is that right, Lee?

Leanne Elliott: Absolutely. We were back on Thursday with our regular Thursday episodes. And again, the following Tuesday, we’re kind of predictable like that.

Tuesday and Thursdays we’ll be here. We hope you will be too.

Al Elliott: See you soon.

Leanne Elliott: Bye.

Al Elliott: Bye bye.

You know, we do all this for free. Not, don’t get the violins out yet. It’s not

Leanne Elliott: entirely true.

Al Elliott: Actually, that is not true. That is not true. I’m not

Leanne Elliott: sure that’s true in any way.

Al Elliott: It feels like all I do with, It feels like all I deal with.

Leanne Elliott: 60 percent of people are, that’s not right. In fact, it’s thought that only about 40 percent of people are actually engaged in their work. How many? No, I can’t say.

Al Elliott: Don’t forget Tuesdays, just Leanne and I, we tend to talk about

Leanne Elliott: all by myself.