Workplace and Marriage: Communication is Key
I have been married for quite a while now. And what I have learned is what I had read about before I met my wife, and how I insisted early on in our relationship that she should never hold anything back, and to always speak what was on her mind, even if she thought it could hurt me. What has become clear to me as someone who’s been both an employee and an employer, is that the workplace is failing at this miserably.
Pre-pandemic world, the adage “the customer is always right” is what companies believed in, and what they instilled in their employees. But in that quest of communication with their customers, they often forgot about communicating with their employees properly. Employers had that luxury, that choice of dangling the carrot of employment in front of employees, all the while employees would feel happy (not always, but more often that not) to have that job. Then 2020 Pandemic happened, and the world as we knew it (no it’s no longer coming back) was gone. The Pandemic shuttered many businesses, it allowed people to pause a bit and rethink what they actually wanted. Like a failing marriage, where one partner realizes they have been the ones to mostly give, but not get what they wanted back, employees suddenly realized they were actually not happy. So they left. First it was because the world had shut down, then it was while they thought of going back, or not going back that happened. And in Summer 2021, The Great Resignation was in full force. Many employees who were choosing not to go back to work, decided to start their own businesses with 2021 showing new businesses starting were 50% higher than it was pre-Pandemic. So what gives? What are the reasons for the Great Disconnect between employers and employees? Is it money? Is it culture? Is it benefits (or lack thereof)? Or something else such as being a remote world now? Remember you are no longer spending chit chatting around the water cooler, nor are you really going out to lunch with your colleagues, so perhaps it’s a disconnect emotionally from your peers that has caused the rift. What’s interesting is that no matter how you slice and dice it, communication is at the center of this. What I mean with this is that how do you know what your employees want in terms of salaries? How do you communicate properly about your retirement benefits? How do you convey culture, and more?
At my company Advice Analytics, we have built an Email AI platform to enable employers to communicate the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Now, you can communicate about culture to those who need to hear it, communicate about your benefits to new employees, or retiring ones, or conveying the amazing impact the work has on the customers through the hard work everyone is doing. The way successful marriages work is that you speak to your spouse on topics of interest to them, you keep them interested in you, you do for them what they need, and you mediate on where you both give and take. With giving always coming first. It’s similar to how successful companies work too.
This Thursday on ClubHouse I will be holding a discussion on this, and would welcome your input and thoughts on this. If you cannot attend, I will record it and it will be available on ClubHouse for later listening.
Regards,
