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We all make mistakes. But sometimes we forget that technology does, too — especially when it comes to AI, which is still in its early days in many respects.
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Anna Heim
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The job market has been up and down over the last 6 years, Covid upended things and we came and went through the Great Resignation. For a portion of the country, they have the ability to look at their job and think – is this right for me? Others may not have options and feel stuck, especially those in the service and industrial sectors. But two things are clear, the era of tech people being able to pick and choose is coming to an end.
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Your job is the place where you spend large portions of your days, in some cases, the majority of them. It’s also one of the activities that demand the most energy and commitment out of you. An unhappy relationship with your job can strain your personal life, mental health and happiness. The other, is the Great Resignation is over and people are relooking at their job. The number of quits is now back to pre-pandemic levels, when the balance of power had already shifted in favor of workers, as the number of job openings exceeded the number of unemployed workers for large parts of 2018 and 2019.
What what if your job makes you miserable? Here are 5 signs indicating your job isn’t make you happy and you might need a change. Leaving your job is a huge decision which comes with a lot of repercussions. It takes a lot of guts, thought, and financial preparation to decide that you’ll leave the place where you’ve invested a lot of time and effort. Thankfully, there are some noticeable signs that can help you realize if your job is making you unhappy or if you feel like you’re not advancing anymore.
According to the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, it’s easy to get stuck on jobs, especially if you’re good or enjoy what you’re doing. If you see that the people who surround you are getting promotions, and advancing in their careers, then maybe it’s time to look for another job that’ll help you develop your skills and grow as a professional.
If you never meet any upper management people and see that your co-workers have important meetings without you, then maybe they see you as someone who’s simply filling in a desk and not providing much input. To solve this, you could try to be more proactive in your work or discussing matters with a superior. If that doesn’t work then it’s time to look for another job or company that better suits your needs.
One of the most frustrating things to experience is to feel like you know more than your coworkers. When you feel this with your superior, then it’s definitely time to consider other options. Considering your boss inferior to you also means that you don’t trust your company’s leadership and that your job isn’t as stable as it should be.
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Whether you work at an office or at home, some find themselves hating being a part of it. It’s important to differentiate the casual Sunday night blues with just plain unhappiness over the fact that you have to work. Your job will always be your job, which means that it’s never the most fun activity in the world, but you should get some fulfillment out of it.
If you find yourself lashing out on friends, significant others, and family members over your job, you must reevaluate yourself. When it comes to leaving, be smart about it and explain your situation clearly. You must always get the best out of every situation, even one where you’re unhappy with your workplace.
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Maria Loreto
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With CEOs increasingly issuing return-to-office mandates and remote work advocates saying not so fast, managers can be forgiven for feeling confused.
Many bosses feel that their younger employees, in order to grow and absorb the company culture, need in-person guidance and a chance to connect with other workers. Meanwhile many senior employees, especially ones with kids, feel that working from home is actually more effective in their case.
One problem with today’s return-to-office debates is that they often lump these two very different types of employees together, believes Hung Lee, the writer and founder of the Recruiting Brainfood newsletter.
“We’ve treated things monolithically, and sometimes we need to make generalizations, of course, in order to have a conversation,” he said in an a16z podcast episode published this week. “But we’re probably at the point now where we need to bring in the nuance because what is positive for one group of people is negative for another.”
He pointed to an iCIMS report’s survey showing that, among university seniors entering the workforce, fully remote work held little appeal. Only 2% of them said they wanted such an arrangement. Nearly 60% said they don’t have all the equipment they need at home, and a third said they lack a dedicated workspace. Nearly 90% said they wanted to frequently meet in person with coworkers to build relationships and network.
If you look at companies that were already successfully remote-first before the pandemic, they tended to avoid such employees and instead focused on senior workers with plenty of experience, Lee noted. Today, “the people who are most pro-remote—the remote evangelists, so to speak—they are all of that demographic,” he said. “They are individual contributors who have established a level of expertise.”
Such workers have typically already built up social capital and have an effective workspace at home, he noted, and often have children they want to be near: “They don’t feel they need to come to the office in order to make friends.”
By contrast, younger workers might live with roommates or their parents or perhaps feel isolated in a small apartment and crave the opportunity to connect face-to-face with colleagues. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, believes remote work has “detonated” the way we connect, with younger workers suffering the most. “You get to sit in your studio apartment in front of your laptop and good luck—you’re cut off from everything else,” he said at a summit last November.
Many companies are settling on a hybrid schedule, with employees asked (or required) to work in the office three or four days a week. It isn’t always going smoothly. Amazon recently saw an employee walkout over its return-to-office mandate, and last month workers at Google let their displeasure be known.
“There is a bit of a tension at this point where some companies are rolling back the remote policies, or at least they’re starting to put additional conditions upon it, which you can see it’s kind of a mission creep back to the office,” said Lee.
He believes that power is swinging back toward employers, who are seeing “an opportunity to claw back some of what they may have always perceived to be an overly permissive position when it comes down to working remote.”
Either way, when “building a company or designing an organization,” employee demographics have to be kept in mind, Lee says. “If we are absolutely a remote-first company, we are probably optimized as an employer for a senior individual contributor that has already achieved a certain degree of material comfort.”
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Steve Mollman
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As we enter artificial intelligence’s brave new world, humans have naturally come to fear what the future holds. Do computers like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey pose an existential threat? Or in an incident not from Hollywood fiction, an Air Force official’s recent remarks implying that a drone had autonomously changed course and killed its operator, only to be later declared a hypothetical, certainly raised alarm.
Closer to home for most of us, the release of large language models like ChatGPT have renewed worries about automation, reminiscent of earlier fears about mechanization. AI has advanced far beyond rote data-storage tasks and can even pass the bar exam, or write news, or research papers, leading to fears of massive white-collar unemployment.
But, as new research looking at data of job churn over the past two decades finds, the impact of automation on workers and industries is, in fact, pretty hard to predict given the complexity of the labor market, requiring carefully crafted policies that take these nuances into account.
First, changes in exposure to automation are not intuitive: they do not easily mesh with “blue-collar” and “white-collar” jobs, as typically defined. Instead, automation is more closely linked to the tasks and characteristics of each job, such as repetitiveness and face-to-face interactions. That translates to the three most automation-exposed jobs: office and administrative support, production, and business and financial operations occupations.
Meanwhile, the three least automation-exposed jobs are in personal care; installation, maintenance and repair occupations; and teaching. In other words, even with the Internet of Things controlling your HVAC system, it cannot fix itself when it needs new refrigerant, but its smart-panel interface can help the technician diagnose the problem remotely quickly and know what equipment to bring for a repair. But back-end accountants in that company may not fare as well in the AI jobs sweepstakes.
While automation can displace workers, history suggests that new technology also tends to boost productivity and create new jobs. Consider the automobile: while horses and buggies are outdated, we still need humans to drive (at least until autonomous vehicles come to full fruition), and the assembly line helped automate manufacturing with entire new classes of jobs created for every part of a car and all its electronic systems, with almost 1 million U.S. workers in auto manufacturing today.
But automation has continued in the auto industry over the decades, with robots helping to make hard and heavy physical labor tasks easier, without fully displacing workers. So there is a push-pull with automation, and the relative sizes of these countervailing effects remains an area of active scholarly debate.
“ It is rare for an entire job class to disappear overnight; changes mainly take place over generations ”
Second, it is rare for an entire job class to disappear overnight; changes mainly take place over generations. The research shows that newer generations of workers, perhaps deterred by the job insecurity observed in earlier generations and lured by high wages in the technology sector, are less inclined to enter automation-prone jobs than those before them. However, after embarking down those career paths, workers tend to stay in their fields, even if the prospects of automation loom large, likely because reskilling is time-consuming and expensive. It is relatively easy for recent high school graduates to opt for tech-centric college degrees like computer science, but learning new skills like coding is more difficult for mid-career professionals in automation-susceptible fields like manufacturing.
Adjustments to automation can be slow on the business side as well. Incorporating automated technology takes time because modern production tasks tend to be so intertwined that automating one part of a business can affect all other operations. For example, when AT&T, once the country’s largest firm, began replacing telephone operators with mechanical switchboards, they found that operators had become central to the complex production system that grew around them, which is why there are fewer operators today, but some still exist.
Third, the research found that the share of workers in highly automation-exposed occupations tends to be clustered, ranging from about 25% to 36% across commuting zones. The least-exposed areas in the U.S. are across the Mountain West, thanks to the area’s high shares of workers in management, retail sales and construction (which hasn’t had much automation or productivity improvement in decades but additive manufacturing may be a game-changer), as well as those on the East and West coasts, with their more innovative finance and tech industries.
On the other hand, those most exposed to automation tend to be located in the Great Plains and Rust Belt, namely due to agriculture. In spite of the fact that U.S. agriculture has been exposed to automation for over a century (more efficient machines and advances in biotechnology), it has become even more technology-driven recently, making ag workers more likely to be impacted by automation.
Read: How artificial intelligence can make hiring bias worse
So will the robots take over your job soon? More likely, they will make our jobs easier and more efficient. Trying to slow the adoption of technology is both futile and counterproductive: taxing or overregulating tech adoption may backfire, especially given global competitiveness and other countries who may not pause. While the advent of a new era of automation is likely to be both gradually incorporated and result in complements to human labor rather than full replacement, thoughtful policies can help disrupted workers transition to new and better opportunities, ensuring we can harness the transformative power of automation and foster a future of work that benefits all.
Eric Carlson is associate economist at the Economic Innovation Group; DJ Nordquist is EIG’s executive vice president.
More: AI is ready to take on menial tasks in the workplace, but don’t sweat robot replacement (just yet)
Also read: ‘Make friends with this technology’: Yes, AI is coming for your job. Here’s how to prepare.
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American Employees Increasingly Skeptical of Employers’ Intentions, Desiring Genuine Communication Amid Uncertain Economy
NEW YORK, May 23, 2023 (Newswire.com)
–
Two-thirds of American workers (67%) have experienced “therapy speak” at their workplace, according to the “Work & Talk Survey,” the latest research from The Harris Poll Thought Leadership Practice, released today. “Therapy speak” refers to an empathetic-sounding language or tone used as a sign of understanding but often fails with appropriate follow-through.
Out of those who said they experienced “therapy speak,” 34% said that it came from a direct manager, 33% from company leadership, and 30% from colleagues. The percentage is higher among Millennials, with eight in 10 experiencing “therapy speak” at work (79%).
Within the last year, 66% of workers have experienced at least one kind of a cutback, including layoffs (28%), as well as slashed raises, and bonuses (29%). The survey also shows that 37% suffered from reduced spending budgets, 33% from a hiring freeze, and 28% from announcing layoffs.
“The data clearly points to a disconnect in the workplace. While employers feel they are connecting empathetically, employees are increasingly skeptical of platitudes that are too often used with no follow through,” said Abbey Lunney, managing director at The Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Futures Practice.
Employees reported that their employers were very or somewhat insensitive in the way they approached a situation through communication, especially regarding bad news, including when announcing reduced or eliminated raises, discussing autonomy for remote or hybrid work, and communicating about layoffs.
Employer’s catchphrases also did not ring true and came across as disingenuous sentiments. Among the worst was “Your feedback is important to us” with 72% of employers using the phrase, and “We’re all in this together” used 69% of the time.
“This matters for building strong relationships, retaining employees, and maintaining productivity,” Lunney said. “There is an opportunity for more genuine engagement that is thoughtful, compassionate, and human to rise above the ‘therapy speak.’”
The survey indicates that employees are seeing right through the communications tactics, and they are becoming increasingly skeptical of their employers’ intentions.
Half of the employees said they are thinking of looking for a new job and have become more resentful and less excited at work. Encountering “therapy speak” in the workplace makes 61% more hesitant to recommend the employer to others, 59% feel less excited about their job, 57% have resentment toward the leadership team, and 55% feel less valued as an employee.
How does this make employee-employer relationships feel more transactional and transitory?
Finally, the survey found eight in 10 employees say communication at work heavily affects how they feel about their jobs. They would prefer an employer that is more genuine and honest.
The survey was conducted online April 28-30, 2023, among 2,075 U.S. adults comprising 810 full-time employees.
For more information, please visit The Harris Poll Thought Leadership Practice or subscribe to their newsletter, The Next Big Think, for the latest research.
About Harris Poll Thought Leadership Practice
Building on 50+ years of experience pulsing societal opinion, we design research that is credible, creative, and culturally relevant. Our practice drives thought leadership and unearthed trends for today’s biggest brands. We are focused on helping our clients get ahead of what is next.
About Harris Poll
The Harris Poll is one of the longest-running surveys in the U.S., tracking public opinion, motivations, and social sentiment since 1963, and is now part of Harris Insights & Analytics, a global consulting and market research firm that delivers social intelligence for transformational times. We work with clients in three primary areas: building 21st-century corporate reputation, crafting brand strategy and performance tracking, and earning organic media through public relations research. Our mission is to provide insights and guidance to help leaders make the best decisions possible. To learn more, please visit www.theharrispoll.com.
Source: Harris Poll
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Update, May 13, 2023 2:35 p.m.: Clarkson has responded to Rolling Stone’s allegations in an Instagram post. “In my 20 years in the entertainment industry, I’ve always led with my heart and what I believed to be right,” she wrote Friday. “I love my team at The Kelly Clarkson Show, and to find out that anyone is feeling unheard and or disrespected on this show is unacceptable.”
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
NBCUniversal responded with a statement of its own: “We are committed to a safe and respectful work environment and take workplace complaints very seriously, and to insinuate otherwise is untrue. When issues are reported, they are promptly reviewed, investigated and acted upon as appropriate. The Kelly Clarkson Show strives to build a safe, respectful and equitable workplace that nurtures a culture of inclusivity and creativity.”
The original post continues below.
While The Kelly Clarkson Show is sunny and full of song onscreen, employees allege that the program is toxic for workers behind the scenes, according to a new Rolling Stone report.
One current employee and 10 former staffers, all anonymous, characterized the NBC daytime talk show, which debuted in September 2019, as an environment where employees are overworked, underpaid, and subjected to bullying and favoritism from high-level producers. But sources made clear that host Kelly Clarkson isn’t privy to the alleged issues plaguing her namesake show. “NBC is protecting the show because it’s their new moneymaker, but Kelly has no clue how unhappy her staff is,” a former employee told Rolling Stone. (NBC, Clarkson, and the show’s executive producer, Alex Duda, didn’t respond to the outlet’s requests for comment. Vanity Fair has reached out to reps for NBC, Clarkson, and Duda for comment as well.)
“Kelly is fantastic. She is a person who never treats anyone with anything but dignity and is incredibly appreciative,” a former employee said. “I would be shocked if she knew. I’d be floored if she knew the staff wasn’t getting paid for two weeks of Christmas hiatus. The Kelly that I interacted with and that everyone knows would probably be pretty aghast to learn that.”
Multiple staffers instead lay the blame on executive producer and showrunner Duda, who had similar duties on Steve Harvey and The Tyra Banks Show. “I think Alex Duda’s a monster,” a former employee alleged. “I have a friend who’s an executive producer who warned me about taking this job because apparently she has done this on every show she’s worked on.”
Employees further claimed that they were only made aware of exact details regarding the production’s relocation from Los Angeles to New York minutes before Variety confirmed the news on Monday. Several employees also claimed that though they brought their workplace concerns to HR, they were ultimately met with inaction. One former staffer who has worked on multiple sets said The Kelly Clarkson Show “is by far the worst experience I’ve ever had in my entire life,” adding, “It deterred me from wanting to work in daytime ever again. When I say I was traumatized, I was really traumatized.”
The show, which is currently in its fourth season and has been renewed through its sixth season in 2025, is also being investigated by the Writers Guild of America. According to emails obtained by Rolling Stone, producers allegedly wrote episodes of the unionized show, which is a contractual violation. One of the program’s current employees said that new episodes were meant to be taped until May 20, but because of the ongoing strike, staffers believe it’s unlikely that the latest season will be completed. (The WGA didn’t immediately respond to the outlet’s request for comment.)
Ultimately, the show’s cheery disposition doesn’t jibe with its off-air toxicity, as one current employee puts it: “Kelly uses a sign-off, ‘Make it a great day and if it’s not great, change it,’ but it’s hard to exist and work in a machine that’s pumping out this happy, bubbly, positive messaging and then you have people here who are just treated badly.”
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Savannah Walsh
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The deep uncertainty that the COVID pandemic created in the workforce hasn’t waned. U.S. workers are struggling with inflation, burnout, and fresh waves of layoffs. This comes as people expect more from employers — more leadership, more urgency, more action, and better jobs.
The public’s perspective is clear and consistent: companies need to prioritize their employees. In today’s unstable economic climate, worker wages and treatment are more important to Americans than ever.
When it comes to creating U.S. jobs with strong wages, good benefits, safe environments and opportunities for upward mobility, a handful of companies lead the pack.
Bank of America
BAC,
NVIDIA
NVDA
and Microsoft
MSFT
are the top-three companies in JUST Capital’s 2023 rankings of America’s most JUST companies. They all share one crucial thing in common — a clear commitment to addressing worker issues and investing in employees.
Since 2018, JUST Capital’s rankings have provided a snapshot of how U.S. companies are measuring up to the public’s priorities, as determined through an annual survey to identify issues that define principled business behavior. Companies that are just provide a clear benefit for investors. For example, If an investor purchased an index tracking the JUST 100 companies at its March 2019 inception, the index would have generated 13.3% in excess return versus the Russell 1000 as of December 2022.
Worker issues have risen to the forefront of Americans’ vision for what is a just business. Paying a fair and living wage, supporting workforce advancement, protecting worker health and safety, and providing benefits and work-life balance are top priorities for the public. Notably, regardless of demographic differences including political affiliation, Americans agree that companies should do more to address worker needs.
Bank of America demonstrates strong leadership on the top priority — paying a fair, living wage – by raising its minimum wage to $22 per hour, a key step in its pledge to offer a $25 starting wage by 2025. In addition, employees receive an extensive benefit package, including 16 weeks of paid parental leave for primary- and secondary caregivers, and career development opportunities through tuition assistance and professional training.
NVIDIA works to ensure equal pay for equal work, performing detailed pay equity analyses, and is one of only a few companies to disclose pay-analysis results separated by racial and ethnic categories. Like Bank of America, NVIDIA is one of 10% of Russell 1000
RUI
companies that offer at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave for both caregivers, providing 22 weeks of paid leave to primary caregivers.
Microsoft offers at least 12 weeks of parental leave for both caregivers, in addition many other generous paid-time-off benefits, including 15 days of paid vacation and an additional 10 days of paid sick leave for every worker — a policy still rare for many companies. Additionally, Microsoft discloses the results of its pay-equity analyses, going above and beyond other companies by disaggregating pay ratios for specific racial and ethnic categories — including Black, Asian and Latinx — all of whom are paid on par with their white counterparts.
“ When companies ensure the economic security, advancement, equity and safety of their workforces, employees are more engaged and productive. ”
These efforts provide tangible benefits to employees, but prioritizing workers offers much more to companies than just an assurance of moral good. When companies ensure the economic security, advancement, equity, and safety of their workforces employees are more engaged and productive, strengthening their companies’ business in turn.
Americans expect the private sector to better support employees. Effective business leadership today puts workers at the center of an organization’s strategy. When businesses take this approach, we get much closer to an economy that works for all Americans.
Alison Omens is chief strategy officer at JUST Capital.
Also read: Tech companies are hiring — a lot — despite recent wave of layoffs
More: Unemployment rate is now 3.5%. Is this the last chance for job switchers to jump ship?
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Securing the next generation of accountants won’t be easy. It may take some grassroots campaigning by mentors and family members to influence their loved ones to go that path, a technology boost, and a “CPA Evolution.”
“There’s definitely an accountant shortage out there,” says Ben Lansford, an accounting professor and director of the Master of Accounting program at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. “I hear it from the firms.” And in talking with colleagues at universities nationwide, “we see the declining enrollment in graduate accounting programs,” Lansford says.
In 2021, there was a 17% drop in employed accountants and auditors from a 2019 peak, according to a Bloomberg Tax analysis. But the number of companies trying to hire accountants hasn’t slowed one bit.
Between 2021 and 2031, on average, about 136,400 openings for accountants and auditors are projected each year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) occupational outlook handbook. The openings are due to workers leaving the field for different occupations or retiring.
“In general, employment growth of accountants and auditors is expected to be closely tied to the health of the overall economy,” BLS states in the handbook.
The next generation of accountants and auditors is in demand, but Lansford explained why some are hesitant. “Accounting is difficult,” he says. “It’s just a tough subject area, and you need a fifth year of college education to qualify to sit for the CPA exam. It makes a major less appealing to a lot of people.”
But what needs to be communicated to students and young professionals is the time and energy is worth it, Lansford says. “It’s still a good path,” he says. “A rock-solid foundation.” The Big Four accounting firms are even reaching out to high school students to share that message and creating more flexible work environments, Lansford says.
But it may take a village to get a student interested in accounting.
“I find that often those students have an older family member, parent, aunt, or uncle, or friend of the family who took that same path and counseled the student about the benefits of accounting,” Lansford says.
Over the past three years, Lansford has observed more students in graduate accounting programs choosing consulting jobs because they pay more than being entry-level accountants at a firm, he says. According to the BLS, the median annual wage for accountants and auditors was $77,250 in May 2021.
But changes to the CPA are coming—with the hope of attracting tech workers to the profession. “The AICPA is calling it a CPA Evolution, and it’s really an overhaul of the CPA exam,” Lansford explains. Starting in 2024, “everyone will take the same three sections, but for the fourth exam section, you can specialize in financial reporting, auditing, tax, or you can specialize in IT. The goal of the change is to make the tent bigger, so to speak.” That’s an interesting addition, since CFOs are increasingly finding themselves at the center of major IT projects.
But one drawback under the new CPA exam model is everyone still gets the same CPA certification, Lansford says. There’s no special designation that you took the IT exam area, he says. “So, we as academics are interested in seeing how things play out,” he says.
In recent years MBAs seem to have eclipsed CPAs. But maybe the number crunchers shouldn’t be counted out just yet.
See you tomorrow.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
An increase in customer expectations for e-commerce is placing “intense pressure” on retailers to rebuild their supply chains. That’s one of the key findings of “Increase your pace in the e-commerce race,” a new study conducted by the CMO Council and Business Performance Innovation Network, in cooperation with Attabotics, a robotics and software company. Executives are acutely aware of the need for supply chain and fulfillment transformation and looking for innovative and economically-sound ways to drive change. But they face significant financial and technological hurdles. Legacy systems (70%) and infrastructure in addition to the cost of replacement (61%), were listed as the top barriers to supply chain transformation. The findings are based on a survey of more than 150 executives and professionals across retail, e-commerce, consumer products, distribution, and consulting firms involved in consumer supply chains.
Courtesy of the CMO Council
“San Francisco died so the Bay Area could thrive: What the 10 fastest-growing metro areas reveal about the world of remote work,” a new Fortune report, delves into the findings of research by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, which points to the metro areas experiencing the most growth as business establishes a new normal after the pandemic.
Deborah Thomas, EVP, and CFO at Hasbro, Inc. (Nasdaq: HAS), a global entertainment company, plans to retire. Hasbro is conducting an internal and external search for a successor. Thomas will remain as CFO until her successor is in place. She joined the company in 1998.
Michael W. Kalb was named EVP and CFO at CinCor Pharma, Inc., effective Nov. 4. He succeeded Terry Coelho who has retired. Kalb was previously CFO for Amarin Corporation, a cardiovascular-focused pharmaceutical company. Before Amarin, he worked at Taro Pharmaceuticals where he was the CFO and chief accounting officer. His experience also includes a director in the Accounting and Financial Consulting Group of Huron Consulting Group Inc., and over 10 years at Ernst & Young, LLP.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to employees on Wednesday announcing the company was reducing its workforce and letting go of more than 11,000 employees, Fortune reported.
This is the web version of CFO Daily, a newsletter on the trends and individuals shaping corporate finance. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
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Sheryl Estrada
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There probably will be many times you’ll suspect that a co-worker is subtly undermining your work or career to further their own ambitions.
On “The Mole,” it’s the reality. In the newly refreshed Netflix reality series, competitors have two objectives: increase the grand prize money by winning a series of challenges, and figure out who among them is actually a “mole” hired by the producers to quietly sabotage their efforts and cause havoc.
What’s more fun than watching contestants pull off “Ocean 11”-like bank heists and sunken treasure hunts for cash is watching them endure the psychological challenge of figuring out who is merely bad at the games and who is actually trying to cost them money. Each non-mole player wants the team to win the challenges, so the cash pool is big if they win the game. But to win, they have to correctly guess who the mole is.
Each player believes their career and life experiences have prepared them to win challenges and suss out a saboteur.
Joi Schweitzer, a commercial airline pilot, banks on her navigational skills to help her win challenges, while Greg Shapiro, who works in marketing, is convinced the interrogational skills he’s honed managing focus groups will carry him through.
The pleasure of watching “The Mole” is knowing that everyone is told upfront that there is a saboteur among them, and that they are right to be sneaky and suspicious. But in real life, at work, we don’t have that certainty, and it can make us especially paranoid when it comes to office politics.
“If someone is paranoid, they might interpret a simple benign interaction as an insult,” said Trevor Foulk, an organizational management professor at the University of Maryland. “For example, if someone walks by in the hall and doesn’t say ‘hi,’ under normal circumstances you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re just busy today.’ But when paranoid, you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re mad at me, why didn’t they say ‘hi?’ Oh, I hope they’re not talking about me behind my back.’”
At some point, you will probably experience paranoia at work resulting from a colleague’s seemingly harmful or selfish behavior. That’s why we asked paranoia experts and the TV contestant who was revealed as the mole to weigh in on how to figure out when your paranoia is totally justified, and what to do if you’re stuck with a mole-ish co-worker.
(Obviously, there’s a major spoiler about “The Mole” below.)
If you finished the new season of “The Mole,” then you know Kesi Neblett turned out to be the saboteur all along. Neblett, a former computer analyst, was an excellent mole who flew under the radar most of the season, subtly wrecking challenges with a friendly smile.
“If she’s the mole, then she’s just so blatant and so obvious,” one player tells the camera about halfway through the season. “But because of that, I just don’t think she’s the mole.”
Neblett told HuffPost that she studied psychology, watched the original Belgian series that “The Mole” is adapted from, and read John le Carré spy books to get into the headspace of a saboteur. She’s seen the techniques she learned demonstrated at work, too, especially when it comes to people who lack strong skillsets but still manage to convince others they’re amazing workers.
“People honestly believe what you say more so than what you do,” Neblett said. “All along the way, I’m doing things that don’t make sense, but also I’m having the ability to explain myself, to give this narrative to each player about why this happened, and to build these connections with them.”
On “The Mole,” Neblett’s sabotage ranged from her purposeful inability to snag a bag of cash from a moving train to bold, devious moves like choosing immunity she didn’t need in order to make the rest of the group spend the night on a smelly cold warehouse floor, losing $20,000 from the prize pot as a result.
The closest you may come to the actual game scenarios on “The Mole” is a bad night at an escape room during a corporate team-building retreat. But feeling like you’re dealing with mole-ish behavior in the office or questioning a colleague’s true intentions is a universal experience.
Foulk said employees from all backgrounds can experience paranoia, from managers who worry that their employees are only being nice to them to secure a promotion to lower-level employees fearing career-ending threats. As any person who has worked with a toxic colleague knows, being undermined by a co-worker before a promotion is awarded or having a boss pass your ideas as their own can wreak havoc on your psyche.
To suss out this type of potentially mole-ish colleague, Neblett said it helps to get to know them better.
“Do they care about excellence? Do they care about fame? Do they care about notoriety? What is it that they value?” she said. “If you understand their past and their history, take a moment to get to know them and figure out the essence of them, then you’ll understand the decisions that they will and will not make. And then you’ll understand if their words are matching with their actions.”
To avoid being beaten by this person, don’t go all-in on them being a bad operator and act accordingly. On “The Mole,” the most successful players often went with the majority feeling or hedged with votes on several people during elimination quizzes on who they thought was the mole in order to survive to the next round.
Neblett thinks this strategy can apply to workplaces, too. If you encounter a mole-ish person at work, she said, you should diversify your networks so that you’re not relying on that one person to succeed.
“Let’s say they turn out to not be the co-worker you expected them to be, or lived up to be, now you have another part of your network that can save you,” she said.
Research backs up her idea that testing assumptions and forging strong networks is how you can lessen your paranoia at work. And generally, the more powerless you feel in your organization, the more paranoid you are likely to be, Foulk and his colleagues say in a study they published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
“As the old saying goes, ‘It isn’t paranoia if they’re really out to get you.’ Paranoia is often — but not always — justified,” study co-author Michael Schaerer told HuffPost. “A good way to evaluate whether a threat is real, and whether you should worry about a co-worker, is to explain the signals you are perceiving to a good friend or close colleague and see if they come to the same conclusion and if they perhaps have additional pieces of information that would solidify or challenge your conclusion to be paranoid.”
Schaerer gave the example of a colleague not responding to your email. If you feel like they’re doing it on purpose, put that assumption to the test and stop by their cubicle and say hello, or message them about something else, and see how they respond. “Oftentimes, it turns out there is a good explanation,” he said.
In their research, Foulk and Schaerer found that supportive organizational environments can lessen powerless employees’ paranoia.
“Since paranoia is a state of vigilance to potential threats, when we feel supported we are a little less worried about those threats,” Foulk said. “If you’re worried that people are talking behind your back, conspiring against you, etc., but you also feel that if it came to it, your manager would support you, the threat that those people represent –– again, whether real or not –– doesn’t seem as bad, since you know you’ll be able to protect yourself even if the threat became real.”
And if you’re stuck working with a mole-ish colleague, figure out what is valuable to them and try to align that with what is valuable to you, Neblett said. In other words, knowledge is power and you can use it to get ahead.
“Technically, you are working with a mole-ish type of co-worker, but it could also work in your favor if it’s a mutually beneficial situation,” Neblett said.
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Press Release
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updated: Jul 17, 2019
MINNEAPOLIS, July 17, 2019 (Newswire.com)
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Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner is pleased to have been recognized as being among the top 25 law firms within its size category in the U.S. for minority attorneys, as reported by Law360 on July 7, 2019.
“Both minority and gender diversity and inclusion are the focus of concerted efforts at Schwegman,” said Theresa Stadheim, Schwegman Principal and Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group member. “Schwegman has been very generous in providing support for diversity and inclusion events and has been visionary in its efforts, both nationally and locally, to get minorities and women interested in STEM careers at all levels.”
Steven Lundberg, Managing Principal, commented: “We have been very active in efforts for fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. Diversity can be particularly challenging in our demographic, since our intellectual property boutique firm is focused toward patent prosecution and our clients are somewhat skewed toward electrical and software technologies. While we have gained from a more diverse demographic in our San Jose office, and via our satellite attorney program that allows attorneys to work remotely from their preferred geographic locations, we continue to place great emphasis on diversity and inclusion at all locations and levels of our firm.”
Suneel Arora, Schwegman Principal and Hiring Committee member, elaborated further: “Diversity is an ongoing effort that is discussed at every firm Board meeting and considered throughout our recruiting process, but I believe that it is our inclusive firm culture and excellent track record of retaining attorneys that will make our efforts successful and sustainable. I can personally attest to the opportunities for growth and success that are available to all and that are actively fostered at Schwegman. Moreover, our flat organization and the respect and autonomy accorded to all attorneys (and staff) makes it easier for minority attorneys to succeed.”
“At Schwegman, attorneys have the ability to choose which technologies and clients are the best fit for their skills and interests, which is paramount to success, satisfaction, and longevity in our profession,” added Andre Marais, Schwegman Board and Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group member. “We don’t try to micromanage to achieve over-granular diversity objectives. Instead, we try to focus on recruiting, mentoring, and promoting with a focus on supporting individual team members, which we view as our best path to success for our entire team.”
Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner is an international intellectual property law firm that offers a full range of procurement and advanced portfolio management services.
Media Contact:
Suneel Arora
Phone: 612-373-695
Email: sarora@slwip.com
Source: Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner
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Three simple steps can make all the difference for caregivers in the workplace.
Press Release
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Feb 23, 2016
Nashville, TN, February 23, 2016 (Newswire.com)
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The unexpected and unrelenting challenges of caregiving affects not only caregivers, but their employers and their co-workers. With nearly half of America’s 65 million family caregivers participating in the workforce, the workplace is feeling the pinch of this growing pressure on their employees who also find themselves in the role of family caregiver. The emotional fatigue of caregiving alone can compromise a worker’s productivity, but throw in last minute schedule changes, continual phone calls, tardiness, and absenteeism—and more employers are finding themselves in the difficult place of wanting to express compassion while simultaneously maintaining a productive workplace.
Caregivers with Hope founder Peter Rosenberger says that caregiving employees can strengthen their professional standing in the workplace by taking 3 simple steps.
Nearly half of America’s 65 million family caregivers are participating in the workforce.
Peter Rosenberger, founder, Caregivers with Hope
“I’ve found that if an employee is forthright with their supervisor about their circumstances, asks for flexibility without an attitude of entitlement, and consistently provides a fair day’s work, their employer is more likely to be understanding and work with them,” states Rosenberger. “It is also important for the employer to still keep boundaries for these workers. They are not helping the caregiving employee by enabling poor workplace habits and performance.”
To address these and other concerns faced by the caregiver, Rosenberger founded Caregivers with Hope to offer clear, proven strategies to guide them towards a healthier lifestyle in every facet of their life. Peter is ‘the Caregivers Caregiver’ bringing diverse talent and outrageous humor and candor to encourage others. “The goal is not just making family caregivers feel better, but offering them the tools and empowerment to be better” says Rosenberger.
Through an unparalleled journey with his wife Gracie, Peter has navigated through a medical nightmare for the past three decades that has included 78 operations and the amputation of both of Gracie’s legs. In the process, he has learned that a caregiver cannot only survive, but thrive in the midst of oftentimes-grim circumstances. A most ardent champion for the cause of family caregivers for years as a speaker, author and radio host of his own weekly show on News Radio WLAC 1510 in Nashville (also on iHeart Radio), he is also an accomplished pianist and black belt in Hapkido.
Peter’s lengthy media credits include USA Today, Today, The Today Show, Fox news, Guideposts, AARP, BBC World News, among others, and he offers practical help in his latest book, Hope for the Caregiver – Encouraging Words to Strengthen Your Spirit (Worthy Inspired, September 2014).
For more information, go to www.caregiverswithhope.com
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